tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-194425762024-03-13T11:03:21.845-04:00Compostable MatterMonicahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02278069976663981869noreply@blogger.comBlogger700125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19442576.post-3291451205654510572023-12-22T16:19:00.008-05:002023-12-22T16:20:16.940-05:00Something is Mssing<p> </p><div class="gmail_quote" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left-color: rgb(204, 204, 204); border-left-style: solid; border-left-width: 1px; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"><div style="line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;">Shortly before we relocated to Santa Fe, New Mexico Jim was discussing our impending move with one of the members of our Newington, CT health club. “Do they have supermarkets out there?” he asked in all seriousness. Jim assured him that they did – with paved parking lots even.</div><div dir="auto" style="line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;">Although at the time we were quite surprised by the question we’ve since come to realize that New Mexico is, to put it mildly, not a “known quantity” to a good portion of those who live outside of our country’s 47th state.<br /><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;">Something residents of the “Land of Enchantment” have become used to – and bemused by. New Mexico Magazine – the nation’s first state magazine (1923) and published monthly in print, online and via an iOS app (yeah we have that out here also) – has a regular column called “One of Our 50 is Missing” wherein readers submit their own “missing moments.”<br /><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;">Some are probably because people just don’t listen carefully or mis-hear what is being said, e.g. – a resident of Rio Rancho, NM tried to refill a prescription while vacationing on Cape Cod, MA to be told by the pharmacist that they had no idea how to process an order from a foreign country.<br /><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;">Others are clearly a lack of knowledge – an article in a London England newspaper showing a map of a new luxury railroad in Utah placed New Mexico east of Colorado.<br /><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;">A few simply defy explanation – at Texas Christian University, in Fort Worth one Santa Fean was asked if we have different stars in New Mexico. “Probably because they only have one in Texas,” the magazine opined.<br /><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;">And our own personal “missing moment,” which was more disconcerting than humorous. We were on the computer updating one of our financial accounts to our new New Mexico home address. The change was processed without a hitch. But we were re-classified us a “foreign investors.” We turned the problem over to our investment advisor.<br /><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;">And then there’s New Mexico’s imaginary cactus. Residents of Arizona are rightfully proud of their Saguaros, tree-like cacti that can grow to be between 40-60 feet tall – but only in their part of the Sonoran Desert plus the Mexican state of Sonora and California’s Whipple Mountains and Imperial County. NOT New Mexico!<br /><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;">That doesn’t prevent it from being used as NM imagery. Grammy-winning country musician Kacey Musgraves’ song “Dime Store Cowgirl,” includes the line “I’ve driven through New Mexico, where the saguaro cactus grow.”</div><div dir="auto" style="line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div style="text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjEQcW613JH8mH4a3CgLDb53xn5OLw1YonJASog61NFkwmjMId1doyr6UbFDwhqR540KJJRrBiRoF7PveX-NUoHc1Z_fFS5aSJsAubDdyR7VfQrfJkVI7_JTlBxVKwfUdi8wv0uBqjj2W6clTEXbFeY8a3Wzt1BIrkhBBd9SY7tq5Syi1fJdXr5" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="451" data-original-width="640" height="226" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjEQcW613JH8mH4a3CgLDb53xn5OLw1YonJASog61NFkwmjMId1doyr6UbFDwhqR540KJJRrBiRoF7PveX-NUoHc1Z_fFS5aSJsAubDdyR7VfQrfJkVI7_JTlBxVKwfUdi8wv0uBqjj2W6clTEXbFeY8a3Wzt1BIrkhBBd9SY7tq5Syi1fJdXr5" width="320" /></a></div><br /></div><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;">Even Progressive Insurance’s ever-cheerful spokesperson Flo is featured on a mail-offer envelope amid images of a saguaro cacti and the invitation to “Enjoy Big Savings in the Land of Enchantment.”</div><div dir="auto" style="line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;">Or maybe New Mexico actually is “missing.” Jim was explaining to guests at El Rancho de las Golondrinas that its big grist mill (Molino Grande) was once a commercial business from the 1880s through the 1920s. (It was moved from Las Vegas, NM to the museum in the 1970s.) It was unusual he said that the machinery remained intact through 50 years of non-use, especially during WWII when the U.S. was looking for scrap metal for the war effort. One visitor, clearly a local, commented, “nobody knew where we were then either.”<br /><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: center; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhHIMzw4fULxs2nPwuUcyMoJHnxRfe2S5jEdGB9xLBFgtpLKdUqBZFUn9QD7XENca-gCgfFPfwUQKQDL9yepPyITj-Ni9GIAC89OJqYRsWoB3qQqb-uFr5uhBACKb8VIXsVAds2TB0WFJfaHmIwzTw3qyC5jHcwetcU4B64uLctBtPQ3SUKLkXS" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="814" data-original-width="1190" height="219" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhHIMzw4fULxs2nPwuUcyMoJHnxRfe2S5jEdGB9xLBFgtpLKdUqBZFUn9QD7XENca-gCgfFPfwUQKQDL9yepPyITj-Ni9GIAC89OJqYRsWoB3qQqb-uFr5uhBACKb8VIXsVAds2TB0WFJfaHmIwzTw3qyC5jHcwetcU4B64uLctBtPQ3SUKLkXS" width="320" /></a></div></div><div dir="auto" style="line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;">And truth be told we did not know much at all about New Mexico before we landed here in September 1992 looking to celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary in an exotic but stateside locale. Our interest was piqued by a retrospective of the New Mexican artist Georgia O’Keeffe’s works at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City – super-arid deserts, psychedelic colored mountains, floating desiccated cow skulls, stark wooden crosses in the middle of nowhere – those sorts of things. We immediately knew we wanted to see the surreal environment inspired these crazily abstract paintings.<br /><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: center; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEii4sVg7meXLnwhpKDltTFRz5Agmz9bftngmUvGz4-Auq5JOdwg25GA6C4syj6pYR7TxBQgC-MEDSCbK_CHALcypS11YvT7ZMo3veF43MrWjppdeXtkaSN__uAJX0D_doWVNfdll322RZX28DYRHB382L54cdTS9Gb2QWlu0CWWUnB0gCA5UQlb" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="568" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEii4sVg7meXLnwhpKDltTFRz5Agmz9bftngmUvGz4-Auq5JOdwg25GA6C4syj6pYR7TxBQgC-MEDSCbK_CHALcypS11YvT7ZMo3veF43MrWjppdeXtkaSN__uAJX0D_doWVNfdll322RZX28DYRHB382L54cdTS9Gb2QWlu0CWWUnB0gCA5UQlb" width="284" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjH-yDJMLLcafmDScjBt6XMSs1QzL5_caEzsHDMs50qMYSJvR5nmo9uY48eEqy1-Tdcd5c0TmXYBbZ-TEjRyzcMoDpi2WpUcbmi6k3SIdYOT-UnWd9N8fIjvvORXxCOhWt9c32iNrxByYwawlnP2T-FmiM03uVFndY94qw54MOAD6DcIKsdsWuP" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="428" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjH-yDJMLLcafmDScjBt6XMSs1QzL5_caEzsHDMs50qMYSJvR5nmo9uY48eEqy1-Tdcd5c0TmXYBbZ-TEjRyzcMoDpi2WpUcbmi6k3SIdYOT-UnWd9N8fIjvvORXxCOhWt9c32iNrxByYwawlnP2T-FmiM03uVFndY94qw54MOAD6DcIKsdsWuP" width="161" /></a></div><br /><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: center; word-wrap: break-word;"><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;">Other than that, our knowledge of the Land of Enchantment was pretty much based upon Jim’s dim recollection of a turquoise stone in a collection of “Gemstones by State” given to him as a child (his favorite of the set of then 48.) And what we got from the novel “The Milagro Beanfield War” by John Nichols and its eponymous movie adaptation – “the book all newcomers to New Mexico should read, offering the flavor of this place with its competing cultures and values,” according to the Santa Fe New Mexican. Set in the fictional Chicano village of Milagro the “War” is a folklore fable in the Latin American magical realism tradition (daily earthly meetups with heavenly angels) where a small-time farmer is struggling to defend his modest beanfield and community against larger business and state political interests. An “earthily naturalistic, often highly romanticized, blend of the supernatural and whimsical” per movie critic Richard Scheib. (Sadly, while this essay was being composed author John Nichols died at the age of 83.)<br /><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;">An impressionistic landscape, out-of-the ordinary gemology and magical elements as a normal part of life – that was enough for us. So off we went with no fixed agenda other than four nights in Santa Fe and three in Taos. (We had not much vacation time available then. And weren’t totally sure we would like it enough to spend more than week there anyway.)<br /><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;">We quickly learned that (1) the super-arid deserts were not the vast expanses of sand we expected but rather vast expanses of “high desert” (ecosystems at high altitudes with little precipitation.) And the state’s geology also included snow-capped 13,000’ peaks dressed in pines and spruce, brilliant wildflower fields, forests of towering cottonwoods, white sand dunes and vast expanses of prairie. (2) The psychedelic colored mountains really did exist – in certain places, at certain times, in certain light – for example the Sangre de Cristo mountains at sunrise seen from the parking area at the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge 10 miles northwest of Taos. (3) Desiccated cow skulls are pretty commonplace, esp. in gift shops, but never hovering aloft. At least not on that trip. (4) The stark wooden crosses in the middle of nowhere are intentional, put there by a secretive Catholic lay brotherhood known as Penitentes. And (5) turquoise is anything but out-of-the ordinary here – although the jewelry into which it is incorporated definitely can be.<br /><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;">On our mid-vacation drive from Santa Fe to Taos we passed by the village of Truchas where the Milagro Beanfield War movie was filmed. The tiny rural township looked exactly like what it was portrayed as – a tiny rural township just trying to live its day-to-day life. We did not stop to look around. So no reports on the actuality of angels dancing out of a sunrise or into a sunset. And spent our time instead in the more tourist-oriented towns of Santa Fe, Taos and Albuquerque. All were foreign to us (as in different) – yet familiar (as if we belonged.)<br />Maybe it was the beige – said by some to be boring, by others neutral, calm, and relaxing.<br /><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;">Everything around us seemed to be a pale sandy yellowish-brown. Adobe buildings, foliage-free landscapes. All under a deep blue sky. And art was everywhere. Hispanic-Catholic folk art portrayed a comfortable, personal relationship between the artist, their religious subject matter and their faith. The hand-dug, hand-coiled, hand-painted Native American clay pottery told of their craftsperson’s connection to the land and geometric complexity of their indigenous beliefs.<br /><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;">With the little knowledge that we now had, we were already hooked.<br /><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;">On our way north from Santa Fe, driving for the first time down what we now know as Opera Hill on U.S. Route 25 we looked out on the vast expanse of Espanola Valley – beige (of course) under the boundless blue sky. No saguaro cactus for hundreds of miles. Both of our jaws dropped (at least in our minds.) Marsha thought. “this is where I belong.”<br />Thirty-seven years later we finally got here – and contacted our long-time homeowners and auto insurer AMICA who has a southwest office with a representative who frequents Santa Fe. It is fun to joke about living in a place that no one knows about. But not when our financial protection is involved. Sorry Flo.<br /><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;">Incidentally: Even Santa Claus almost “missed” New Mexico. He was not a part of Indigenous Native, Spanish or Mexican culture and probably did not arrive in any form until the late 19th century when the railroads came to town – the beginning of the end of New Mexico’s isolation. But Santa didn’t begin to catch on among the locals until post WWII, when servicemen came home inculcated with northern European influences. And not quite then even. Poet Maria Leyba remembers, “In the early 50’s we lived in Santa Fe, my Mexican mom had never heard of Santa Claus but all our vecinas [neighbors] explained to her about this tradition. Wanting to fit in she made sure we weren’t deprived of Santa. But my cousins in México celebrated the three kings and the Santo Nino, not Santa Claus!”<br /><br /></div><div dir="auto" style="line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;">Nowadays Saint Nick knows the way to Santa Fe. When he looks down and sees Arizona’s saguaro forest he turns east until he comes to a cow skull floating over a Penitente cross in the high desert. That’s New Mexico.</div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></blockquote><p> </p><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left-color: rgb(204, 204, 204); border-left-style: solid; border-left-width: 1px; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"><div style="line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div style="text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi9R-ZSyFHWOiGO2Z-k9_s3QJ_weKSyRQlF0dUeEsD6ph_bYqx_GPaj8hqtlqTSconyBZ7-1WTb_HTPEIfOkYlO3MHbOPRjDcOUjA6_UJ5iLsfJaabF3WNBJCb1R66bZdH0_2HSAwmguQymv1RWjR-ld6LKh6EcyaHZ3paL-lRaaHS1iDC5XQjm" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="582" data-original-width="480" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi9R-ZSyFHWOiGO2Z-k9_s3QJ_weKSyRQlF0dUeEsD6ph_bYqx_GPaj8hqtlqTSconyBZ7-1WTb_HTPEIfOkYlO3MHbOPRjDcOUjA6_UJ5iLsfJaabF3WNBJCb1R66bZdH0_2HSAwmguQymv1RWjR-ld6LKh6EcyaHZ3paL-lRaaHS1iDC5XQjm" width="198" /></a></div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>(Found this by Google searching for “Santa Claus in New Mexico."</i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>Apparently Santa’s Graphic Design department did not get the saguaro memo.)</i></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><br /></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></blockquote></div>Jimhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08407095418542335994noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19442576.post-86837804265787544452023-12-22T16:11:00.000-05:002023-12-22T16:11:28.076-05:00The Case of the Curiously Convenient Coffin!<p>
</p><p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">It was a normal trip for Kate
Messervy Kingsbury – two months of dust, mud, gnats, mosquitoes and
heat, plus the occasional swollen stream, wildfire, hailstorm, strong
wind, blizzard and ever-present peril of Ute or Apache Indian attack.
She disliked both of her previous treks, but knew that this, her
third such punishing journey, offered the last, best hope for
survival. Then, just east of Dodge City, Kansas her husband John
opened a crate labeled “private stores” – and inside it was a
zinc-lined casket. </span>
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> “The
Case of the Curiously Convenient Coffin!” True crime TV from CBS’s
48 Hours or NBC’s Dateline? No. Just another tale from the Santa
Fe Trail – one of New Mexico’s most historic transportation
avenues. </span>
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> Each
of New Mexico’s major eras – Pre-Columbian, Spanish Colonial,
Mexican and United States – had its own major artery – the
North-South Indigenous Trade Route, El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro,
Santa Fe Trail and Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railway (AT&SF.)
</span>
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> Long
before the Europeans arrived the kingdoms and tribes of northern
Mexico set up the NORTH-SOUTH INDIGENOUS TRADE ROUTE into present day
Colorado to swap items such as turquoise, obsidian, salt and feathers
with Native Americans.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> Built
from this original pathway EL <span style="font-weight: normal;">CAMINO
REAL</span> was a 1,600 mile long road linking Mexico City and San
Juan Pueblo, 40 miles north of Santa Fe. Used as a trade route by
the Spanish Colonials from 1598 to 1821 and – since the mother
country forbade business dealings with anyone else – THE ONLY
source of commerce and culture into New Mexico. </span>
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">
SANTA FE TRAIL was an 800-mile wagon route connecting Missouri and
Santa Fe between 1821 and 1880. (Mexico, unlike Spain, welcomed
outside trade, especially from United States.) After the U.S. -
Mexico War ended in 1848, it became THE highway that connected the
more settled parts of the United States to the new southwest
territories – used by merchants, the military, stagecoach lines,
gold seekers, adventurers, missionaries and emigrants.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> In
1866 railroad expansion began in the new state of Kansas, and by
1873, two different rail lines reached from there into Colorado.
Three different railroads vied to serve the New Mexico market. The
ATCHISON, TOPEKA & SANTA FE <span style="font-weight: normal;">got
there first</span><span style="font-weight: normal;"> i</span>n
February 1880.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> El
Rancho de las Golondrinas Living History Museum, our volunteer gig,
was a working ranch and camping stop on the Camino Real beginning
around 1720. Its gateway exhibit area, Golondrinas Placita, is
interpreted as such. The adjacent section, Baca Placita, depicts
the era of the Santa Fe Trail from 1821 to 1846. Across the creek on
the “Far Side” portrays late 19<sup>th</sup> century New Mexico
after the arrival of the railroad.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">
We are given instruction and historical information on each period.
And encouraged to educate ourselves further. To that end we also
belong to the End of the Trail chapter of Santa Fe Trail Association
(SFTA.) (Our branch’s name refers to its position as the terminus
of the trade route – not to the age of its supporters.) Its
membership includes many retired educators and others with an
interest in studying, documenting and sharing their findings about
the Trail in person and on paper. Plus local historians and
archaeologists who also bring interesting subjects to the table.
Such as “The Case of the Curiously Convenient Coffin!” –
actual title “Death at the End of the Trail.” (Less tabloid-y.
But still informative, like the lecture itself.) </span>
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> Much
of the SF Trail research is based on personal accounts and diaries of
those who traveled that road. Among them the roadway’s founder,
Captain William Becknell – here describing his virgin voyage. “The
next day, after crossing a mountainous country, we arrived at Santa
Fe and were received with apparent pleasure and joy. It is situated
in a valley of the mountains, on a branch of the Rio del Norte [Rio
Grande] … about two miles long and one mile wide, and compactly
settled.” </span>
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> Most
travelers were merchants seeking to quickly sell their goods and
return home – “a short-term enterprise, with all the attendant
hardships and exposure to harm, so it held no place or attraction for
women,” according to historian and co-founder of the SFTA Marc
Simmons. “Notwithstanding, there was a significant number of women
who faced the westering experience with unquenchable optimism and,
indeed, if diaries can be accepted as barometers of true sentiment,
there were some who embarked with downright eagerness. The change of
routine, the excitement of prairie travel, and life in the open air
soon won over others who had started with dread and apprehension. </span>
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> “Marian
[Sloan] Russell, perhaps best representative of such women,
discovered on the trail to New Mexico an exhilarating adventure that
shaped the future course of her life,” As Mrs Russell phrased it,
“this was a land of enchantment, where gods walked in the cool of
the evening.” (Possibly the first usage of New Mexico’s
nickname.) </span>
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> Additional
chroniclers were nuns like Sister Blandina Segale of the Sisters of
Charity – “Trinidad [Colorado] has lost its frontier aspect …
Billy the Kid’s gang is dissolved … The remaining men who were
ready at the least provocation or no provocation (except that of
strong drink) to raise the trigger have settled down to domestic
infelicity.” (Is that disappointment in her voice?)</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> Another
group was wives of military officers assigned to the forts being
established in the southwest during 1850s and 60s. Alice Blackwood
Baldwin made her trip in the fortification’s ambulance – upscaled
for comfort. “Soft, upholstered seats that were extended when
required and served as beds at night … The floor was covered with
straw, over which rugs were laid to keep out as much of the cold as
possible.” </span>
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> Merchants
settling in New Mexico to establish permanent shops often took their
wives and families. Samuel Magoffin brought his new 18-year-old
bride Susan Shelby – the “properly educated” daughter of a
wealthy plantation-owning family. Like Alice Baldwin she traveled
west in relative luxury – “one Dearborn with two mules (this
concern carries my maid), our own carriage with two more mules.”
They “glamped” (in modern lingo) in a carpeted tent with a bed
and mattress, table and chairs.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> Her
carriage rolled over and the tent collapsed during a violent storm.
Susan took ill in Bent Fort, CO and one day after her 19<sup>th</sup>
birthday suffered a miscarriage. Reaching Santa Fe on August 31 they
moved into “quite a nice little place.” Two months later, and
once again expecting, the couple headed to Mexico on the Camino Real.
“I do think a woman emberaso [pregnant] has a hard time of it,
some sickness all the time, heartburn, headache, cramps etc., after
all this thing of marrying is not what it is cracked up to be.”</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> In
July 1847 she gave birth to a son, who died shortly thereafter. Her
diary ends two months later. Samuel sold the Santa Fe business and
the couple moved to Kirkwood, Missouri where Susan gave birth to two
daughters, then died in 1855 at age 28. </span>
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><a name="__DdeLink__6956_739642988"></a></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> All these individual stories
made us wonder about journeyers on the Trail from our former home
state. We found but one – a memoir-writing merchant with a
serendipitous two-degrees-of-separation connection to the
aforementioned occupant of the zinc-lined coffin. </span>
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> Born
in Warren, CT “James Josiah Webb was one of the most prominent
traders on the Santa Fe Trail from the 1840s into the early 1860s. He
made 18 trips to Santa Fe as well as maintaining a store there.”
Among his partners were William S. Messervy and John M. Kingsbury –
brother and husband of the casket’s occupant. In 1839 Webb and
Messervy opened a store in Santa Fe selling fabrics, groceries,
housewares, and hardware obtained in the northern marketplaces.
Kingsbury joined the firm in 1849 spending the majority of his time
until 1861 in Santa Fe. He married Kate in 1853.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> Prior
to her marriage Kate was diagnosed with tuberculosis. “One
prescribed therapy for the disease … was a regimen of travel to
more healthful climates, where fresh air and rest supposedly provided
much of the cure” </span>
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> Kate
moved to Santa Fe in 1854 and gave birth to a son in January 1855.
According to correspondence between the two brothers-in-law the child
was “not perfect.” Kingsbury, concerned that Kate’s health and
stamina “were weary” from caring for their sick child, sent them
both home to her family in Massachusetts, where sadly the boy died. </span>
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> Kate’s
doctor advised them, “her lungs are past cure. All that remains
... is to get her back again to Santa Fe if possible. Her friends
think different. They say if we start she will never reach St. Louis
… What am I to do? She is willing to start & wants to leave
here.”</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> Mid-March
1857 Kate, John, her sister Eliza Ann and Facunda (her New Mexican
maid) were on their way back to Santa Fe. James Josiah Webb
described her last night, June 5, 1857. </span>
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> “Mrs.
Kingsbury was at no time improved in health on the whole route …
then just after midnight she seemed to realize the end was close. She
said, ‘is it possible that I have come this far on my way and must
now take leave of you all?’ She then commended with perfect
composure, and took leave of her sister and John. She wished to
assure them that the course they had pursued was in every respect to
her satisfaction, and asked forgiveness for every hasty expression,
or unkind word that had passed her lips during her illness, her every
wish had been complied with, and everything in the power of man had
been done to promote her comfort.”</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"> <span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> John
had anticipated this sad possibility and wanted to give his wife a
proper Christian burial rather than leaving her in an unprotected
grave at the side of the Trail. He knew that neither embalming nor
ice would be available. So Kate’s body was placed in the
tightly-sealed zinc-lined box to slow down the rate of bodily
decomposition. Then he and Eliza Ann accompanied it to Santa Fe,
covering the 375 miles in a record 11 days. She was interred at
Masons and Odd Fellows Cemetery, the only burying ground for people
not of the Catholic faith. At the end of the 19th century, several
old cemeteries were “decommissioned” and new ones placed outside
of town. Sometime between 1890 and 1903, Kate’s remains were
exhumed and moved to the new Odd Fellows Cemetery. </span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> James
Josiah Webb provided almost 20 years of retail service to New Mexico
– most while living in Connecticut. He retired from the trade
business in 1861 and died in Hamden, CT 28 years later.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> The
Trail Association says that Webb “left a comprehensive archive …
more extensive than any other trader.” So excited about the new
land, culture and people he was experiencing that he just had to
share it.</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"> Some
people are like that you know. </span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"> </p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span>
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span>
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">You
may ask – “Any idea how many died along the trail? No clue. No
records of any kind relating to that were kept. But probably not many
compared to the totality of those who traveled the Trail … many
were buried in unmarked graves.” (Larry D. Short, President, SFTA)</span></p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span>
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;">Numerous
diaries and journals of the above-mentioned travelers and others are
available online or
through Amazon.com and
other booksellers – e.g.
William Becknell,
<a href="https://archive.org/details/GR_0225/mode/2up">https://archive.org/details/GR_0225/mode/2up</a>
Marian Sloan Russell,
<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Land-Enchantment-Memoirs-Marian-Russell/dp/0826308058">https://www.amazon.com/Land-Enchantment-Memoirs-Marian-Russell/dp/0826308058</a>
James Josiah Webb.
<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Books-James-Josiah-Webb/s?rh=n%3A283155%2Cp_27%3AJames+Josiah+Webb">https://www.amazon.com/Books-James-Josiah-Webb/s?rh=n%3A283155%2Cp_27%3AJames+Josiah+Webb</a></span>
</p>
<p style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span>
</p>
<p style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span>
</p>
<p style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: medium;"><br /></span>
</p>
<p style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</p>
<p><style type="text/css">p { line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0.1in; background: transparent }a:link { color: #000080; so-language: zxx; text-decoration: underline }</style></p>Jimhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08407095418542335994noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19442576.post-12649709863842695452023-07-05T17:13:00.001-04:002023-07-05T17:13:26.303-04:00Interesting individuals artfully memorialized in a distinctive setting<div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: Helvetica; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi1fLDkvHA0YdnJ0Fk3GjeKsd0sPxkOCiinmXZsP-_8JX2y4iQ4VZJrTqpWPuX2g2kdJbgdGPt6B80_4aC4wJtgt1FF7m7P_BfUmfKE9l4aq4W2H7Yv-aE2dSCL1xitmtr7jGdsmrbbW_NA7hDhRujbBrGVhAo6Xs-HBMh_ab43fGabqqxYHpyR" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="640" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi1fLDkvHA0YdnJ0Fk3GjeKsd0sPxkOCiinmXZsP-_8JX2y4iQ4VZJrTqpWPuX2g2kdJbgdGPt6B80_4aC4wJtgt1FF7m7P_BfUmfKE9l4aq4W2H7Yv-aE2dSCL1xitmtr7jGdsmrbbW_NA7hDhRujbBrGVhAo6Xs-HBMh_ab43fGabqqxYHpyR" width="320" /></a><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Recently we toured the cemetery in Madrid in the San Pedro Mountains on NM 14 (the “Turquoise Trail.”) 30 miles south of our Santa Fe home. Our guides were three local friends – current neighbor J, and former ones L and J, with whom we get together for lunch every month or so. This was our May meetup. “But why visit that town’s graveyard?” you might ask. Well we would respond, Madrid is much more than a small community of 300 people living in the remnants of a once-thriving, coal-mining company town. It now is one of “the 12 Best Hippie Cities For Stressed-Out Progressives.” With such a unique past and present, who wouldn’t want to see how they memorialize their deceased? Plus its <a href="https://www.themineshafttavern.com/" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;"> village tavern</a> serves a pretty darn good buffalo burger.</span></p></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: Helvetica; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: Helvetica; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;">There are nine other towns in the world named Madrid. The capitol city of Spain of course. Plus one each in Alabama, Colorado, Iowa, Kentucky, Maine, Nebraska, New York and Virginia. Most pronounce it “Muh-DRID” – the way the Spanish do. Alabamans and Mainers say MAD-rid. New Yorkers accept either version. “Madroids,” as the NM town’s residents like to call themselves, emphasize the “MAD.” </span></p></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: Helvetica; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: Helvetica; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;">All of these cities have their own history. Here briefly is that of Madrid, New Mexico.</span></p></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: Helvetica; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: Helvetica; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The town most likely was given its name by Roque Madrid – a 17th & 18th century Spanish conquistador who briefly became interested in mining lead in the area. “Madrid” is a “habitational surname” indicating where a person came from – meaning Roque would have pronounced both his last name and that of his namesake village in the Spanish way. We could not find the answer as to why or when that pronunciation changed.</span></p></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: Helvetica; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: Helvetica; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 12pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Roque’s interest in quarrying went nowhere. And the small village remained of no particular importance until 1822 when gold miners came to the area, found coal and used it to operate their nearby gold mill at Dolores. (There was a small amount of the yellow metal in New Mexico.)</span></p></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: Helvetica; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 12pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;">By 1859 the New Mexico Mining Company owned the coalfield and sold the ore to military forts at Santa Fe and Las Vegas, NM during the Civil War. More coal was discovered – ownership changed hands – and in the 1890's Madrid had become a regional mining center and company town with around 2,500 inhabitants belonging to the Albuquerque & Cerrillos Coal Co. By 1920 all Madrid homes were wired for electricity from the company-owned power plant. Plus there were Elementary and High Schools, a fully equipped hospital, a Company Store, and the first lighted ballpark West of the Mississippi – home to the Madrid Blues, who competed with squads from Santa Fe, Albuquerque, Bernalillo and Isleta Pueblo.</span></p></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: Helvetica; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 12pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Madrid’s coal production peaked in 1928 with almost 200,000 tons. And in 1943 one hundred tons of coal a day were delivered to its new primary customer, the then secret city of Los Alamos. In 1947 the A&CCC’s Chief Operating Officer Oscar Huber purchased the company becoming the sole owner of the now flourishing town.</span></p></div><p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0in; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgfusoZBfcpibpGCAOTJmy2zxhi40MlkpyBK8qLd_PWDIz3aHD0De6Y-08Z4ZdffjH4IAT0QrMBRl24KUbeQvhFnpomaayXj9S2w8pjkDwLnUwSsXs56ta3hE8y-Ivj4E9_2KV2MGiovxFpeYRhcfnbzdZHOgcPv_ASxgwuNqk3oafVhMCoGvje" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="404" data-original-width="551" height="235" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgfusoZBfcpibpGCAOTJmy2zxhi40MlkpyBK8qLd_PWDIz3aHD0De6Y-08Z4ZdffjH4IAT0QrMBRl24KUbeQvhFnpomaayXj9S2w8pjkDwLnUwSsXs56ta3hE8y-Ivj4E9_2KV2MGiovxFpeYRhcfnbzdZHOgcPv_ASxgwuNqk3oafVhMCoGvje" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: Helvetica; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 12pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Life was good. Until natural gas came on the scene in the late 1940s and the coal market collapsed. By 1954 the mining company had closed, all but a hundred or so residents had moved away, and an ad in the Wall Street Journal listed the entire town for sale at a price of $250,000 ($2.8 million today.) There were no takers.</span></p></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: Helvetica; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Oscar Huber died in 1962. In the early 1970s his son Joe rented a few of the old company houses to artists and craftsmen who wanted to work and live in the mountains of New Mexico. Having success he put the remaining buildings on sale – $1,500 to $2,000, sold them all in 16 days and Madrid’s population swelled to 80. Huber donated more land and a new Madrid began to rise from the coal dust. How well did it go? In 2016 the town was named number four of “The 12 Best Hippie Cities For Stressed-Out Progressives” by ReverbPress. “Madrid is a town reborn. Originally a coal-mining town, it disappeared along with the popularity of coal, becoming a ghost town of abandoned buildings. Those buildings have been restored … painted in a colorful array of hues [and] become home to an artists’ colony, but in a deserty, mountainous environment [and unlike SantaFe] removed from the madding crowd.”</span></p></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: Helvetica; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgBDwTJxglqFv9td0yXgHkfFEcpB1tP2QsSbzbKLUcf0E4OPaLj1XCSCzCPjP1v6vaNTRdR1cyFcJWmdMJ_104I07Qqb4bv-E0ni_E6lHBqoxnmawhRTIw6yppIAY3wP8xEZ12_bl9DP4i06S9-eAzBHcKIIAW91_lMl7MVQCjdple40-5bp2_Z" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="226" data-original-width="563" height="128" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgBDwTJxglqFv9td0yXgHkfFEcpB1tP2QsSbzbKLUcf0E4OPaLj1XCSCzCPjP1v6vaNTRdR1cyFcJWmdMJ_104I07Qqb4bv-E0ni_E6lHBqoxnmawhRTIw6yppIAY3wP8xEZ12_bl9DP4i06S9-eAzBHcKIIAW91_lMl7MVQCjdple40-5bp2_Z" width="320" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /><br /></span><p></p></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: Helvetica; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;">(Actual, untouched-up photo of downtown Madrid.)</span></p></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: Helvetica; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: Helvetica; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 12pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;">A brief stop in Madrid was a regular part of our New Mexico visits – usually after spending our arrival day and night in Albuquerque, and driving the Turquoise Trail to Santa Fe the next morning. And we’ve continued these trips now that the town is just down the road from our Santa Fe home. Easily 50 or more stopovers. But we had never heard about “Madrid’s Bone Orchard.”</span></p></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: Helvetica; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;">And we definitely would have sought it out. As we’ve indicated in some of our earlier writings we are definitely “FoCs” (Fans of Cemeteries.) Back in CT we particularly enjoyed visiting <a href="https://cedarhillfoundation.org/" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;">Hartford, CT’s Cedar Hill </a>and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Wethersfield_Village_Cemetery" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;">Wethersfield, CT’s Old Village </a> – interesting individuals artfully memorialized in a distinctive setting, </span></p></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: Helvetica; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: Helvetica; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;">But there were no indications of Madrid Cemetery anywhere that we had seen. Like so many things out here – you gotta know somebody who knows somebody. It this case it was our neighbor J whose former companion’s ashes are interred there.</span></p></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: Helvetica; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: Helvetica; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 12pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;">We rode in two cars – none of us having large vehicles. We were following J. As we slowly drove into the town (posted speed limit 15 mph) she made an abrupt right into what appeared to be a narrow alleyway. But turned out to be a slightly less narrow, two-mile long, uphill, winding dirt and rock road (unposted speed limit 10 mph.) The unimproved path passed by several colorfully and artfully decorated small houses before coming to an end next to a wrought iron entry gate welcoming us to the “Land of the Dead.”</span></p></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: Helvetica; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 12pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Given our two-score-plus-ten previous explorations of the town, our self-proclaimed FoC zealotry and familiarity with our friends’ overall standards we had pretty high expectations for the burying grounds. And we have to say they were absolutely exceeded.</span></p></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: Helvetica; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 12pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;">At this point we would normally interject a little history of Madrid Cemetery. But Jim’s internet research has turned up nothing. There is no Madrid Historical Society. Not surprising in a town that died then was re-birthed in the past 50 years by a small group of people who look more to the present and future than to the past. Jim thought of having one-on-ones with locals over beers at the town’s Mindshaft Tavern to see what they might know. But under doctor/spousal advice we will instead do our own conjecturing based on what we have learned about NM cemeteries in general.</span></p></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: Helvetica; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 12pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Prior to the arrival of the Spanish the only funerary practices were those of the Native Indians – most involving burial, some cremation. The 16th and 17th century conquering Spanish sought to change these rituals to those of the Catholic religion – with varying degrees of success. In most instances the Native Americans simply added Catholicism to their traditional ceremonies and belief. Sometimes they carried on their old rituals secretly under the veil of their newly taught religion. Only Catholics were allowed burial in Catholic cemeteries. For non-Catholics there were no official cemeteries</span></p></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: Helvetica; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 12pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;">When Mexico acquired New Mexico in their war of independence from Spain they invited trade from the United States, largely in the form of merchants who traveled the Santa Fe Trail. Many were Jewish or Protestant. This brought missionary ministers and Rabbis to care spiritually for those newcomers who chose to stay. And to convert those already here whose religious needs were not being fulfilled by the inadequate number of Catholic priests. Their arrival resulted in the establishment of non-Catholic burying grounds. In Santa Fe the Masons and Odd Fellows established the initial such cemetery in 1853. In 1881 the Montefiore Cemetery in Las Vegas, NM became one of the first Jewish burial places west of the Mississippi. And many Company Towns established them for their deceased residents.</span></p></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: Helvetica; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 12pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;">So why all this background? Today’s Madrid Cemetery is actually two graveyards – old and new, side by side – both set in a totally untilled, take-it-as-it-is, high desert landscape partially enclosed by one non-continuous strand of barbed wire. To the right is a typical western rural cemetery – wooden crosses, weathered/crumbling/intact headstones and piles of stones. (The corpses are “six feet under.” The rocks protect from the ravages of coyotes, etc.) The names that we saw here were Hispanic and the dates of death from the 1920s and 30s. Some sites were being taken over by nature. Others cared for and decorated with fresh plastic flowers. One new gravestone seemed out of sync with its plot.</span></p></div><p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0in; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjkIXKG2emDGAvLQJYhrX6WeOKjA6i9JwIqsf4-TN989Iyd-wfaqyoblNmMvh5_jCyygQq1FZa9NNXtap93GKsFvc-1a5rrF4LuxKiWETwdtTDOJkD_ANapJLkmb7yb9dRAGQpVcr2ZibnFRW7dpW5IFJGesoJmRY4ZoQZXZcPeLKtfXXO3CvWk" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="480" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjkIXKG2emDGAvLQJYhrX6WeOKjA6i9JwIqsf4-TN989Iyd-wfaqyoblNmMvh5_jCyygQq1FZa9NNXtap93GKsFvc-1a5rrF4LuxKiWETwdtTDOJkD_ANapJLkmb7yb9dRAGQpVcr2ZibnFRW7dpW5IFJGesoJmRY4ZoQZXZcPeLKtfXXO3CvWk" width="180" /></a></div><br /><br /><p></p><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: Helvetica; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: Helvetica; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 12pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The layout of this section is largely freeform and overgrown. We did not wander its entirety and could not even guess at its total size. Clearly from the coal mining era – but Catholic, private non-sectarian, company provided? No way to know for sure.<br />However, with just a little knowledge of today’s Madrid, even a first time visitor can decipher the heritage of the new section.</span></p></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: Helvetica; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;">If not for the adjacent traditional burial ground, and a couple of similar stone-covered sites you might easily mistake this for a sculpture garden of quirky works of folk art with an ironically titled entry portal. Until you read the accompanying signage with names and date ranges and realize that you are gazing instead at a collection of highly personalized, heart-felt memorials. A front bicycle tire and handlebars, a sewing machine, a fire extinguisher and hard-hat – phrases such as “to the butte” or an illustration of racked pool balls on the marker – a wrought-iron portrayal of someone reading on a bench. By the shape of the plot you can tell that some are resting places for bodies, some for ashes. The new section also had a rudimentary performance stage with folding chairs leaning against its side. As well as a Maypole complete with ribbons. (It was that month.)</span></p></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: Helvetica; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p></div><p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0in; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjjNoteIH7osEyrULoqhaFkKvpMdjugn7X5KnLRHbFweS1DefodKoVN1d3DHBX1Lb4pNLvEkp6-AfFd7CBxxxjt5EEoKFfiTxw1MidhHPyPVpYy3YdjG1PI4rf9L67kDLxqzGVy0JlJbGsE9nRkddwqtRKpDnJ7Pb00Rx6YRzoiypPeUlGcKAhC" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="480" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjjNoteIH7osEyrULoqhaFkKvpMdjugn7X5KnLRHbFweS1DefodKoVN1d3DHBX1Lb4pNLvEkp6-AfFd7CBxxxjt5EEoKFfiTxw1MidhHPyPVpYy3YdjG1PI4rf9L67kDLxqzGVy0JlJbGsE9nRkddwqtRKpDnJ7Pb00Rx6YRzoiypPeUlGcKAhC" width="180" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjntJgHT_keSJnhFhXEuu3-j4Wg-P6k6hvjWm8MPzoxqnOKBHdcHW667yEFbxqFB0zW5sOhwnWciBZJviStuR3o9AwhCShItChc60HuhEviww1fICCAq35jqbRwSuV045QLR7JAA5BAXH5qScBjXZBARhEA_6aqhRuOkvW6ftTyhjjpXpriDOAM" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="480" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjntJgHT_keSJnhFhXEuu3-j4Wg-P6k6hvjWm8MPzoxqnOKBHdcHW667yEFbxqFB0zW5sOhwnWciBZJviStuR3o9AwhCShItChc60HuhEviww1fICCAq35jqbRwSuV045QLR7JAA5BAXH5qScBjXZBARhEA_6aqhRuOkvW6ftTyhjjpXpriDOAM" width="180" /></a></div><br /><br /><p></p><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: Helvetica; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: Helvetica; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: Helvetica; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Interesting individuals artfully memorialized in a distinctive setting? Most definitely yes! And as survivors of the 1960s we would also add, “far out!”</span></p></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: Helvetica; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p></div><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p style="margin-left: 40px; text-align: center;"><br /></p>Jimhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08407095418542335994noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19442576.post-11119745090265181772023-01-25T13:28:00.003-05:002023-01-25T13:28:54.831-05:00Crescit Eundo<p> </p><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 12pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The impetus for the following was a concert of Medieval Christmas Music by the <a href="https://bostoncamerata.org/programs-repertoire/" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;">Boston Camarata</a> at Cristo Rey Catholic Church on Canyon Road in Santa Fe. Unfamiliar songs, performed by a group we had never heard or even heard of, in a venue we knew of but had not been in. Both the ensemble and their selections were outstanding. The site – the largest adobe building in the United States and home of the “Reredos of Our Lady of Light” altar screen – even more so. We are not what you would call pious people. But we are very much drawn to art and architecture that depicts subjects, themes, and imagery from religion.</span></span></p></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 12pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">It began in 1997 during a vacation in Malta. We chose to go there simply because Marsha saw a magazine article about "Vacations Off The Beaten Path" one day at our hairstylist – and that was one of the places. The story showed a photo of the walled city of Valletta and she immediately said "we have to go there." Jim looked at the same picture and instantly agreed. It probably was the light. We both are drawn to almost blindingly-bright-with-natural-light locations – high desert in New Mexico, arid wasteland in the Big Bend of Texas, sand bunkers on golf courses. (Marsha not so much the latter.) Five years earlier, with images of sun-blanched desert skulls from a recently seen Georgia O'Keeffe exhibit fresh in our own skulls, it took us about the same amount of time to decide on our first trip to New Mexico.</span></span></p></div><p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0in; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg7bONCjdQkk9bHRWIBwORkaczh8Nen__fPmX4IMubwHyq_sRjCewZWi7QVabYgcm0ASnX7ltpanHZqiQR2aO47HtGh5xUs2_oKp6nNsA6p_rZZZXccXB5cEgsIHuLm4qDpGYmW9O0HI8t_QEQZE2ioNu5-NujTWy2Lm40X_evXNa-1oCqf0A" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="427" data-original-width="640" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg7bONCjdQkk9bHRWIBwORkaczh8Nen__fPmX4IMubwHyq_sRjCewZWi7QVabYgcm0ASnX7ltpanHZqiQR2aO47HtGh5xUs2_oKp6nNsA6p_rZZZXccXB5cEgsIHuLm4qDpGYmW9O0HI8t_QEQZE2ioNu5-NujTWy2Lm40X_evXNa-1oCqf0A" width="320" /></a></span></div><p></p><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 12pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Our travel agent D arranged the vacation with a perfect mix of planned day trips, on-our-own-to-explore time and tour-company support.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>👏</span></span></p></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 12pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Although it was the brightness that brought us there we were attracted to one of Malta’s main houses of worship by the darkness – specifically the chiaroscuro contrasts between light and dark in the paintings of Caravaggio – “the most famous name who worked in Malta.” <a href="https://www.mercuryholidays.co.uk/destination/europe/malta-and-gozo/malta/holidays/travel-guides/the-story-of-st-paul-in-malta" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;">(St. Paul not withstanding.)</a> Caravaggio was there in 1608 while on the lam from a shady past in sunny Italy where, perhaps unintentionally, he had killed a man. He left behind two masterpieces, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beheading_of_St_John_the_Baptist_(Caravaggio)" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;">“Beheading of St John the Baptist”</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Jerome_Writing_(Caravaggio,_Valletta)" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;">“St. Jerome Writing”</a> – both on display at the<a href="https://www.stjohnscocathedral.com/" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;"> Co-Cathedral of St. John</a>. </span></span></p></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 12pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Once inside we were totally awed by the expansive ornate interior with its intricately carved limestone walls, painted vaulted ceiling, elaborate side altars and self-proclaimed "most beautiful floor in the world.” More ecclesiastical space than we had ever been in, and seemingly none of it blank. Sure, we had seen similar images in magazines and on TV. But never before the real thing. “Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Connecticut anymore.”</span></span></p></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 12pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The experience whet our appetite for more. There are (believe it or not) 359 churches and chapels on the 122 sq. mi. archipelago. We visited a few more, but not enough. So in 2002, ten years after our first trip to New Mexico, we ventured to Barcelona, Spain on an Elderhostel (now Road Scholar) program to learn more about the works of Antonio Gaudi whose Catalan Modernist architecture features organic shapes inspired by natural forms. At the top of our list was La Sagrada Famiglia Church, his possibly never-to-be-finished attempt to transubstantiate the configurations of the physical world into a manmade metaphysical monument to his God. The construction began in March 1882 and is still incomplete. Gaudi himself projected it would take 200 years. An interesting estimate since, as was his wont, he never made a complete blueprint, preferring to add the details as he saw the structure coming to life. Gaudi died in 1926 and other architects are continuing the work.</span></span></p></div><p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0in; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhDErYzwi67eS0_WwFH5krPvHKCZRCb8H8Njo9plu6EOjMlcd0cz8FcG_9D5ceZwgqh7TmvCUZ1q841wslk1tSsy4ky7LRNohFqt_TawW-eFtVJMSluHogvnOZYJLahR2zD0FtOw6NMPbKbFEDrSBXAfDh4RZvE56LFhtoPgymqQ2cyYcp1AQ" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="240" data-original-width="320" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhDErYzwi67eS0_WwFH5krPvHKCZRCb8H8Njo9plu6EOjMlcd0cz8FcG_9D5ceZwgqh7TmvCUZ1q841wslk1tSsy4ky7LRNohFqt_TawW-eFtVJMSluHogvnOZYJLahR2zD0FtOw6NMPbKbFEDrSBXAfDh4RZvE56LFhtoPgymqQ2cyYcp1AQ" width="320" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhbvgx75JQD2nnOk0pO4WQcq_baDcJX2wND5sc_VRen6jG8igT0jteBkzNAGUP-olrhJjqs1BLZVMIHvvkJR7tyLU4sMkejBiQdGWzvoGRNq8NSCKjNzDJ1lLVDZYKNHNxrpy7QisEZOQBxfx_9FzYaqe_2CK5IUVQYHsEXsNQX2iDrNdIBKw" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="320" data-original-width="205" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhbvgx75JQD2nnOk0pO4WQcq_baDcJX2wND5sc_VRen6jG8igT0jteBkzNAGUP-olrhJjqs1BLZVMIHvvkJR7tyLU4sMkejBiQdGWzvoGRNq8NSCKjNzDJ1lLVDZYKNHNxrpy7QisEZOQBxfx_9FzYaqe_2CK5IUVQYHsEXsNQX2iDrNdIBKw" width="154" /></a></div><br /><br /></span><p></p><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 12pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The texture and shape of La Sagrada has been described as looking like melting wax or sculpted sand. And evoked in us the same feelings of awe and peace that we feel in parts of New Mexico’s landscape – towering shapes that somehow manage to be both harshly unsettling and at the same time comforting in their soft lines and colorless color.</span></span></p></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 12pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">In addition to bringing to mind the terrain of our new home state Gaudi’s organic design philosophy also exemplified the Official State Motto of New Mexico, “Crescit Eundo” (“It Grows As It Goes”.) The expression is from a 1st century poem by Lucretius, where it describes a thunderbolt streaking across the sky, growing bolder and mightier the longer its magnificent journey continues.</span></span></p></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 12pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Still not enough sacredness for us. So, four years later we listened as another Elderhostel Art Historian told us, “ninety percent of all the great art in the world is in Italy. And eighty-nine percent of that is in Florence,”.</span></span></p></div><p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0in; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhjnWm3-9eMexaQ1R8XH7V4xKh0jShz9aA5XWg35934Kp9B7iZWj958bwM5tj1c2Nf1WE4RvC5StZbyii6vU4V7uJA48trAp1GgbXkGtTAuXuFPJXuTYdQalMtGFYvPHubsT3rtZayYEU1ZqaqMyZ8IVyi09yESdEBfgiKd1j11BsRNsm93rA" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="425" data-original-width="640" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhjnWm3-9eMexaQ1R8XH7V4xKh0jShz9aA5XWg35934Kp9B7iZWj958bwM5tj1c2Nf1WE4RvC5StZbyii6vU4V7uJA48trAp1GgbXkGtTAuXuFPJXuTYdQalMtGFYvPHubsT3rtZayYEU1ZqaqMyZ8IVyi09yESdEBfgiKd1j11BsRNsm93rA" width="320" /></a></span></div><p></p><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 12pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The city’s churches and museums can be overwhelming in both their vastness and the sheer volume of masterpiece-level works of fine art within them. The religious buildings more so because all the artwork is done “in situ” – sometimes in seemingly impossible places. Like Malta every apparent inch of available space was used. Here, some artists’ works also hung in the city’s museums.</span></span></p></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 12pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">For various unrelated reasons our survey of the sacred art of Europe ended after our Florentine adventure. Which was okay because, while all of the above was happening we discovered something completely different in the churches of northern New Mexico.</span></span></p></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 12pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Beginning in the late 16th century the Spanish came here with the intent of bringing their culture – and most importantly their Catholic religion – to this unfamiliar New World territory. But there were two major obstacles. There were never enough priests. And, while the artists and crafts people were here, the raw materials needed to create the familiar sacred art and architecture just did not exist locally. As a result…</span></span></p></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 12pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">“There are few iconic structures more fundamental to the culture and history of the Southwest than its adobe churches,” wrote John Benigno whose project “to photograph as many adobe churches as possible while they were still in their traditional state” can be seen at <a href="https://luminous-landscape.com/adobe-churches-new-mexico-built-earth-faith" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;">https://luminous-landscape.com/adobe-churches-new-mexico-built-earth-faith</a>.</span></span></p></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 12pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The architects of these edifices were the European Franciscan priests and brothers who planned to replicate the dressed-stone <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortress_church" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;">"fortress-churches"</a> that their fellow clergy had erected in Mexico during their conquest of that colony. However, “carried to New Mexico, to a semiarid frontier environment where inconstant adobe, field stone, and wood replaced reliable masonry, such ideals were [quickly forgotten.] Local materials, relatively few and unskilled workmen, poverty, and isolation all contributed to a unique and, as it turned out, an all but invariable New Mexican style.” (<a href="http://npshistory.org/" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;">npshistory.org</a>)</span></span></p></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 12pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Still, while not what they had hoped for, adobe did satisfy “the invaders' insistence on erecting churches of churchly proportions.” Interiors would be 25’ x 80’ or more. Height never exceeded width. Most churches had windows on only one side. To illuminate the altar they used a “transverse clerestory window” – a wide low overhead opening that spanned the structure. The effect was theatrical – focusing the viewer “immediately on the stream of light descending like the Dove precisely on altar and reredos.”</span></span></p></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 12pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Decorations were sparse. “Above the main altar, if the painted wall itself did not serve, stood the carved and painted wooden reredos, or retablo, forming a matrix for the patron and companion saints who stared out from timeworn statues or from animal-hide paintings.” There were no pews – with sometimes a bench along the wall, and perhaps a modest side altar.</span></span></p></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 12pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Instead of gold leaf inlay there were thinly sliced pieces of straw. Tin replaced silver. “Separated from their nearest supply points in Mexico, Spanish colonial-era artists in New Mexico made do with the materials they found here. Cottonwood branches and roots became bultos, or statues. Pigments derived from rocks and insects turned into paint for retablos, the flat paintings of saints. Animal hides served as canvas. Those creative colonists gave birth to an art-form that was unique to the Southwest – and that still thrives today.” (New Mexico Magazine)</span></span></p></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 12pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">This lasted until the 1850 arrival of U.S. Territorial New Mexico’s first Bishop, Jean Baptiste Lamy (from France by way of Cincinnati.) To him these adobe churches “were lowly, obscene, utterly lacking in architectural character, like the stable of Bethlehem.” Not at all “the high architectural art whose tradition he had inherited. [He would be] a civilizer, a bringer of orthodoxy to benighted folk Catholics.”</span></span></p></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 12pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">In Santa Fe Lamy helmed the construction of the French Romanesque Revival <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathedral_Basilica_of_St._Francis_of_Assisi_(Santa_Fe)" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;">Cathedral Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi (aka St. Francis Cathedral)</a> and Gothic-Revival <a href="https://www.lorettochapel.com/our-story" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;">Loretto Chapel</a> with its “miraculous staircase.” His actions also led ultimately to the 1940 erection of the setting for “one of the most extraordinary pieces of ecclesiastical art in the country” – and prompted this piece of writing.</span></span></p></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 12pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The 25’ x 18’ stone “Reredos of Our Lady of Light” altar screen at Cristo Rey church was carved in 1761 to be hung in La Castrense military chapel on the Santa Fe Plaza. Lamy removed the reredos and transferred it to La Parroquia, the main parish church of Santa Fe at the time. He then sold the Castrense. When La Parroquia was replaced by the Cathedral the screen was consigned to a small room away from public view at St Francis until 1940, when it was moved to its present adobe church abode.</span></span></p></div><p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0in; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjv9H9nuCF-wBmx3WBtJLONeJO4eOQ9TYyzzDVHvkzSxzQZiaS7M8QwkKqcGnvreCQ82VpwgFvItFLi5MIr-Iv0eVc6JVsvs-jpfFxVHlErShp1dAnl1KAiZn8QXBE8tS6t124w-2FirHCWRqlFWN8pVRqGB6LsdyuItJUu5vcOo5Gp_oDbbg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="426" data-original-width="640" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjv9H9nuCF-wBmx3WBtJLONeJO4eOQ9TYyzzDVHvkzSxzQZiaS7M8QwkKqcGnvreCQ82VpwgFvItFLi5MIr-Iv0eVc6JVsvs-jpfFxVHlErShp1dAnl1KAiZn8QXBE8tS6t124w-2FirHCWRqlFWN8pVRqGB6LsdyuItJUu5vcOo5Gp_oDbbg" width="320" /></a></span></div><p></p><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 12pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">It was our first time in Cristo Rey. We lived for a short time in its neighborhood during our 2017 summer of house-hunting – but its doors were never open for spontaneous tourism.</span></span></p></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 12pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Described as the “last great adobe mission,” by architecture critic Chris Wilson the church was designed in the what is now known as the Pueblo Revival style by John Gaw Meem, who revolutionized architecture in the southwest by mixing progressive elements and materials with well-known regional architectural styles.</span></span></p></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 12pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">125’L x 40’W x 33’H, with walls up to nine feet thick the building is made up of around 200,000 individual adobes supported by a hidden steel frame. The Reredos dominates the otherwise barely adorned altar. A window above illuminates the textured form of the stone carving, while also drawing attention to the area upon which the liturgy is focussed. 14 Stations of the Cross with frames of handworked tin line the side walls. And that’s about it. Just the way it should be out here.</span></span></p></div><p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0in; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiPM7xb0phz9M_QLfkK4ocRLr8XsQSJv83jUaRZgp_-KF9AOLxoM5yKNqxAUoqvQgbi9vJXXuaQWgpQc3O90Z93fps_mAai-KHs_elLC5sQ-bhlHAex_rZuCpNx0Jv3MLEr6-inJeuOk0AvbkZkWuH7_Za3PzuyBV3RPSi4_EMlMfqwXA2_Qw" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="405" data-original-width="640" height="203" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiPM7xb0phz9M_QLfkK4ocRLr8XsQSJv83jUaRZgp_-KF9AOLxoM5yKNqxAUoqvQgbi9vJXXuaQWgpQc3O90Z93fps_mAai-KHs_elLC5sQ-bhlHAex_rZuCpNx0Jv3MLEr6-inJeuOk0AvbkZkWuH7_Za3PzuyBV3RPSi4_EMlMfqwXA2_Qw" width="320" /></a></span></div><p></p><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 12pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Over the years we’ve been able to sample several stops on the spectrum of sacred art – from Old World complexity to New Mexican minimalism. Meanwhile Barcelona’s La Sagrada Famiglia is becoming less like an outgrowth of the earth and more and more of a cathedral – iteratively transcending even our own state’s aspirationally ambitious motto. It grows, as it goes, as it goes, as it goes…</span></span></p></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; margin: 0in 0in 12pt;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Speaking of which. Theodore Roosevelt once said “Do what you can, with what you've got, where you are.” From what we’ve learned visiting and living here, that would be just perfect as an expression of New Mexico’s beliefs and ideals. It certainly has become our preferred aesthetic viewpoint.<br /><br /></span></span><br /></p></div>Jimhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08407095418542335994noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19442576.post-12299879932346390232022-12-16T14:14:00.001-05:002022-12-16T14:14:17.121-05:00Breakfast of Champions<p style="text-align: center;"> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgkjj-5Wa4DIG1YmPJWBK-Lq9y85f8DjWuVi0CZ94XRtCG39QCIkLKkyOjj2wPK_nbcrAE9T-4pBQGTV6KRqEyP7ICfbRiiFA9aXKh-CtcyW362NUmQaupYe9xXXopeoFqK78DURNg_HsuttsY5O9-B4BkHlRYH9mPCfrLwjwSY1KJnos8mTw" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="602" data-original-width="504" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgkjj-5Wa4DIG1YmPJWBK-Lq9y85f8DjWuVi0CZ94XRtCG39QCIkLKkyOjj2wPK_nbcrAE9T-4pBQGTV6KRqEyP7ICfbRiiFA9aXKh-CtcyW362NUmQaupYe9xXXopeoFqK78DURNg_HsuttsY5O9-B4BkHlRYH9mPCfrLwjwSY1KJnos8mTw" width="201" /></a></div><p></p><div class="" dir="auto" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: Helvetica; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><p class="" style="line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i class="">“A foodie is a person who has an ardent or refined interest in food, and who eats food not only out of hunger but also as a hobby.”<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://wikipedia.com/">Wikipedia.</a></i><i class=""><a href="http://wikipedia.com/">com</a></i></span></p><p class="" style="line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;">We are not really “foodies.” It is true that back in CT we were members of a Gourmet Group for many years. And enjoyed lots of good food at each other’s homes and at local restaurants. But this crowd was as much about the camaraderie as about the cuisine. And for us it still is that way. One thing we really missed during the Covid lockdown out here was having meals with friends at restaurants. We held al fresco, BYO take-out get togethers at ours and other houses – and that took care of the “with friends” part of the experience. But we also wanted the atmosphere of the eatery. Poring over the menu and not limiting our choices to items that “travel well.” Background aromas that lingered on our clothing into the next day. Mouth-watering entrees being whisked past our table to those of other diners – many of which we only enjoy vicariously anyway, because they are just too damn spicy for our unpracticed New England taste buds. But it doesn’t hurt to look, does it?<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="" style="line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;">“Real” New Mexicans are a blend of Native American, Spanish and Anglo. As a result “New Mexico cuisine is a blend of Native American, Spanish and Anglo tastes. While it shares some traits with Mexican and Tex-Mex cuisine, it is distinctive. Chile (note the spelling) is the main ingredient that makes New Mexico food stand out ... New Mexico Pueblo tribes have been cultivating chile, [and the “three sisters”] corn, beans and squash for millennia.” When New Mexicans refer to chile they are talking about a red or green sauce made from those pods, not chili con carne. In the 1500s the Spanish introduced wheat, rice, beef, lamb and other foods and flavors. “Staples on New Mexico menus include beef and chicken enchiladas, tamales, carne adovada (red chile-marinated pork), burritos, huevos rancheros and chiles rellenos (green chiles stuffed with cheese then deep fried) … Calabacitas [which we do eat and enjoy] is a side dish of corn, squash, chile and beans ... An Anglo influence is New Mexico's beloved green-chile cheeseburger and Frito pie (red chile poured over a bag of Fritos).” (<a class="" href="http://travelchannel.com/">travelchannel.com</a>) Notice how many times “chile” appeared in that one paragraph.</span></p><div class=""><span style="font-size: medium;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgdykw6wCCQoM25RFM_tKbIG5wHEnSJhyTK23cd-GbverNSvFsT_9M0KRwBhyAZ_Hxi8ds7qq5bUolwUfb6c2n9Y8v8PbnBzTBZ5MDfg7dSEF9jRRw7n3d4W4g2LhTioqqtmOp7izxuvB7VMyzVvsN8NWDftGpNQX_uxPwJChkWaEBvsFxXKQ" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="896" data-original-width="944" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgdykw6wCCQoM25RFM_tKbIG5wHEnSJhyTK23cd-GbverNSvFsT_9M0KRwBhyAZ_Hxi8ds7qq5bUolwUfb6c2n9Y8v8PbnBzTBZ5MDfg7dSEF9jRRw7n3d4W4g2LhTioqqtmOp7izxuvB7VMyzVvsN8NWDftGpNQX_uxPwJChkWaEBvsFxXKQ" width="253" /></a></div></span></div><p class="" style="line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;">“Red or green (Chile)?” is the “Official State Question.” To which an acceptable answer is “Christmas” meaning both. And the operative word out here is “smothered” with just about everything buried under an avalanche of the spicy sauce – including the first meal of the day.</span></p><p class="" style="line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Just fine with our breakfast buddies L & P – also morning people so 8:00 a.m. gatherings around a social meal are just their cup of tea (so to speak.) We take turns picking the eatery, with the other’s concurrence. Recently we tried <a class="" href="https://santafe.com/heating-it-up-a-love-letter-to-breakfast-burritos/">Tia Sophia’s</a> in downtown Santa Fe – believed to be the first restaurant on earth to put the breakfast burrito on its menu. “Soft tortillas are stuffed with bacon and hash browns, smothered in melted cheese and served with a poached egg on top” – and buried under red and/or green chile. The dish made the Food Network 2015 list of best breakfast meals across the nation.</span></p><p class="" style="line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></p><div class=""><span style="font-size: medium;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgMoZGqoa-PGTBvff1uuxhZ7FDVepOvANHh_MYn_XIy7zgr4xhPGXGkcWJDv6tLpHnu7mdkWQXXCm2nQySfpW2yDUQ2IKgKVClwvRM0Yalzdg3LgH9ArTOVpg8pHVVmoejv4Fw3Q_BBmfTelTwS2x8gCoq5HdcRthzLrGQxDIAOfvs0kvAmUw" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="640" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgMoZGqoa-PGTBvff1uuxhZ7FDVepOvANHh_MYn_XIy7zgr4xhPGXGkcWJDv6tLpHnu7mdkWQXXCm2nQySfpW2yDUQ2IKgKVClwvRM0Yalzdg3LgH9ArTOVpg8pHVVmoejv4Fw3Q_BBmfTelTwS2x8gCoq5HdcRthzLrGQxDIAOfvs0kvAmUw" width="320" /></a></div></span></div><p class="" style="line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;">But we did not know all that history until after. Which might have changed our orders – or at least L’s and P’s who selected Huevos Rancheros instead, also smothered. We however went for blue corn pancakes (M) and blueberry pancakes (J) smothered in our “spice of choice” – real maple syrup. We know that we could always ask for the chile “on the side” and spatter it on in harmless helpings. That is, after all, what we advise newcomers to do. But that compromises the entire essence of the entree – its whole raison d'être. And that seems wrong to us. Better to admire it from a safe distance.</span></p><p class="" style="line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;">During Covid we looked for places with outdoor seating. This brought us back to <a class="" href="https://www.cafefinasantafe.com/">Cafe Fina</a> – “an old Fina gas station turned eatery” – where first we began our morning get togethers in 2019. The menu features the requisite breakfast burrito, a smothered “huevos” dish (in this case “Huevos Motulenos, over easy organic eggs on a corn tortilla with black beans, feta cheese, peas, sautéed bananas and red or green chile”) – plus lots of things for us heat-averse Anglos including “Migas, scrambled organic eggs with corn tortillas sautéed with mild salsa and NM asadero cheese. served with black beans, sour cream, guacamole and a whole wheat tortilla.” Note particularly the presence of the word “mild” and the absence of “smothered.”<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="" style="line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;">But not all Santa Fe breakfast bistros had pre-Covid open air seating. Some, like Claflutis a “low-key, French country-style spot for house-made baked goods & light breakfast/brunch/lunch fare,” created a pop up outdoor area in their parking lot under a white tent.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="" style="line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The two of us discovered Claflutis back in 2005 when Monica and Bram moved to Santa Fe and we began spending Christmas here with them. We rented a casita in the <a class="" href="https://www.myguadalupe.com/guadalupe-district.html">Guadalupe District</a> – west of downtown and, serendipitously, just down the street from the restaurant. (It has since moved to the <a class="" href="https://santafe.com/santa-fe-neighborhoods-south-capitol/">South Capitol area</a>.) We dined there several times per trip and always on December 24<sup class="">th</sup><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>when we picked up an assortment of French baked goods to bring to M & B’s on Christmas morning. At <a class="" href="https://www.clafoutis.biz/">Claflutis </a>the “c word” was not “chile” but “croissant” or “crepe.” The latter buried under a pile of fresh fruits or glazed peaches. As was the French toast. Both with syrup made from the sap of non-local maple trees.</span></p><p class="" style="line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh4U57J8CXjWXv_-UCHQtMzp7_0bv_bD-l44XPE4B5K6CemGCAoeUGM8k6jL4OvNAHIYibwJsrHoZy_Q29ptM-OG2V7vdf2wW7186zwj-HE7cTSMqW9aXaH6FgLtAfEo3IQHuTqpgbCh_CNBtOqsNKOajwreVP8MMYqDGyGukEkHvwRG371Kw" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="640" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh4U57J8CXjWXv_-UCHQtMzp7_0bv_bD-l44XPE4B5K6CemGCAoeUGM8k6jL4OvNAHIYibwJsrHoZy_Q29ptM-OG2V7vdf2wW7186zwj-HE7cTSMqW9aXaH6FgLtAfEo3IQHuTqpgbCh_CNBtOqsNKOajwreVP8MMYqDGyGukEkHvwRG371Kw" width="320" /></a></div><p></p><p class="" style="line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Another stop on the L&P&M&J breakfast tour was <a class="" href="https://www.cafecitosantafe.com/">Cafecito</a>, a “laid-back restaurant & coffee shop crafting Armenian, Argentinian & Italian dishes in an airy space.” We visited it during what passes for a “snow event” out here, but was just another drive in the country to us blizzard-hardened former New Englanders. The objects of our quest were empanadas – among them this Argentinian spin on NM’s mandatory morning meal, the “Breakfast Empanada filled with egg, hash browns, bacon, chorizo sausage, provolone. Served with chimichurri, green chile sauce and mixed greens.” The owner/waitress told us proudly that their chile was mild. And it was in fact quite tame. She also boasted that they never “smothered” anything with anything there.</span></p><p class="" style="line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;">There have been, and will be, many more breakfast outings. But writing about them is just making us hungry. Perhaps when you visit we can share some of them with you. Until then we will wrap it up with this brief story.</span></p><p class="" style="line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Tia Sophia’s describes itself as a “no-frills, diner-style eatery.” A crowded layout with rows of small wooden booths, narrow aisles, a couple of tables and a food bar. We ate there on the Sunday before election day. As we were leaving, walking single file, we passed the booth next to ours which sat kitty-corner to our route. And saw the incumbent Governor of New Mexico, Michelle Lujan Grisham, having a casual breakfast with two other women. She looked at us and smiled warmly. We reciprocated and when we caught up at the exit asked L & P, “was that the Guv?” They assured us it was. And L went back to say something supportive to her. (BTW It is not that easy to spot MLG in a crowd. At 5’1” she is the nation’s shortest, highest elected state executive. The attached shows her next to a 7’ tall NM State Trooper.)</span></p><p class="" style="line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgcLcQWyP4q32CiLwOPGJcjv7sXsFjzOCvTF4WBniQ8A-cXiThf0ENjxlxYkhcEJrSsyWRBPpG858Jd0ZYctN9KU8XBAkUKdy9_cNYqFB-yg-OIr8fHUiAaQYujiFJit6uAhhtsuAyRTVqJ07zQgeltng-mgExbqKXKaZEGpK0Q1W6-WDnnig" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="320" data-original-width="240" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgcLcQWyP4q32CiLwOPGJcjv7sXsFjzOCvTF4WBniQ8A-cXiThf0ENjxlxYkhcEJrSsyWRBPpG858Jd0ZYctN9KU8XBAkUKdy9_cNYqFB-yg-OIr8fHUiAaQYujiFJit6uAhhtsuAyRTVqJ07zQgeltng-mgExbqKXKaZEGpK0Q1W6-WDnnig" width="180" /></a></div><p></p><p class="" style="line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Her Republican opponent was, like us, a former New Englander (Vermont) – and assumedly raised with a northeastern food palate. We don’t know his position on maple syrup vis-à-vis other “spices” – or what he had for breakfast that day. But Grisham, a 12<sup class="">th</sup><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>generation New Mexican, was feasting on something that was so smothered in red and green sauce as to be unidentifiable.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="" style="line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;">She won the election 52% to 46%.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="" style="line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Did the morning meal choices of the candidates help determine the winner? Probably not. But we will never know for sure, will we?<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="" style="line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Either way, it should be clear to even someone without “an ardent or refined interest in food” (such as us) that chile, and lots of it, is the main ingredient of a “breakfast of champions” out here. </span></p></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br class="Apple-interchange-newline" /></span><br />Jimhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08407095418542335994noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19442576.post-66985916006883529082022-11-08T17:54:00.002-05:002022-11-08T17:54:34.853-05:00Amalo o Odialo (Love It or Hate It)<p> </p><blockquote style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-family: "Lucida Grande"; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;" type="cite"><div><div class="" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class=""><div class=""><div class=""><blockquote class="" type="cite"><div class=""><div class="" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class=""><div class=""><div class=""><blockquote class="" type="cite"><div class=""><div class="" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><br /><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9mBCgNU1uilEhfmF-wi3u376OLUtFPcFYH4zFvLfyIhdmwj2ROgHvA5TcD4eMEcjCYhJByAw0vFcmQ6oLun0HyWBjYGQ3DIAPHPRpfeSU-ipN8dEnK4gJqTSWVAEPoT7hkQdjkGjpMwUg4o5rUEg-ofL-ExvQ6JGWelea89XvE6nOCLFhMg/s640/Screen%20Shot%202022-05-20%20at%204.06.58%20PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="274" data-original-width="640" height="137" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9mBCgNU1uilEhfmF-wi3u376OLUtFPcFYH4zFvLfyIhdmwj2ROgHvA5TcD4eMEcjCYhJByAw0vFcmQ6oLun0HyWBjYGQ3DIAPHPRpfeSU-ipN8dEnK4gJqTSWVAEPoT7hkQdjkGjpMwUg4o5rUEg-ofL-ExvQ6JGWelea89XvE6nOCLFhMg/s320/Screen%20Shot%202022-05-20%20at%204.06.58%20PM.png" width="320" /></a></div><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; text-align: center; word-wrap: break-word;"><br class="Apple-interchange-newline" /></div><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; text-align: center; word-wrap: break-word;">(Aerial view of Santa Fe Opera)</div><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><br class="" /></div><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;">We first drove down Santa Fe’s “Opera Hill” heading north on U.S. Route 84 on our initial trip to New Mexico in 1992. Looking in wonder at the seemingly endless high desert landscape Marsha said to herself, “I’m home!” At the other end of town 382 years earlier a considerably less enthusiastic caravan of northbound Spanish settlers stood at the base of the basalt behemoth known as La Bajada and loudly moaned “are we there yet?”<br class="" /><br class="" /></div><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;">Both we and they were experiencing New Mexico for the first time. And, while the two of us liked to think that we were “exploring” someplace new, we had maps, pamphlets and locals to give us directions, recommendations and advice. El Colonos españoles were doing it for real, with nothing to guide them but their faith in God, their leader Juan de Oñate and the beaten path of the Indigenous Natives who preceded them on the trail that later became known as El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro.<br class="" /><br class="" /></div><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;">Last year Jim was talking to L, an epidemiologist from Los Alamos National Laboratories. (Apparently not top-secret work, so she didn’t have to kill him.**) During the conversation she mentioned that the Lab does much better retaining employees if they have lived previously in northern New Mexico. Her husband worked at LANL as part of Grad School. She herself was born and raised on “The Hill” – as her town of employment has been referred to since WWII’s Manhattan Project. (At the time the name “Los Alamos” was considered classified information.)<br class="" /><br class="" /></div><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;">“You either love it, or you hate it,” she went on. Most scientists who quit don’t do it because of the work, but because of landscape and physical environment. Thew same one that we so quickly fell in love with on our virgin visit. Of course we had our return flight booked two weeks out. So either way – not a problem for us. The colonists on the other hand only were given a one-way ticket when they set off on their 1,600 mile, multi-month hike to their future home. Going back was less of an option for them.<br class="" /><br class="" /></div><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;">The “road” on which the settlers traveled was an ancient trade route between the Southwestern and MesoAmerican Natives. Oñate received permission from the King of Spain to use it for his 1598 and subsequent colonization expeditions and established a settlement in the trail’s terminus San Gabriel – today known by its Native name of Ohkay Ohwingeh. In 1610 Don Pedro de Peralta, Oñate’s successor as Colonial Governor, moved the community back down the road 40 miles to the newly founded town of La Ciudad de Santa Fe de San Francisco (City of the Holy Faith of St. Francis, or Santa Fe for short.)</div><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><br class="" /></div><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;">To which the shortest, but not the easiest, way was La Bajada Hill – an ascension of 1,500 feet in 3/4 of a mile at an angle of 45°. (La Bajada is Spanish for "the descent.") Peralta was also the earliest documented Spanish user of the hill. As the caravans approached Santa Fe there were three choices: scaling La Bajada, following “the Santa Fe River through the yawning canyon of Las Bocas, [or] another, longer trek around La Bajada through the Galisteo Basin,” according to the National Park Service web site. Oñate opted for the third.<br class="" /></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></blockquote></div></div></div></div></div></blockquote></div></div></div></div></div></blockquote><p style="text-align: center;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2EiswXUugG_9Ej5hFXEcNQ_qK0pCbhk8i5tR5rG8Cy31juPYA6YG0_Z_sfoxTrGzh5Jh2dhrs5Zm8Vi_JCxqzRz0npA_mc7mG_xHKpD3UNVzjXTuV9dVRtcnSUXWBuDkqLs5REhDd7I9X1g60-1w9Brnpk79EtqiZsa4lPP52ANaX9OXdBQ/s640/Screen%20Shot%202022-06-03%20at%2010.13.26%20AM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="314" data-original-width="640" height="157" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2EiswXUugG_9Ej5hFXEcNQ_qK0pCbhk8i5tR5rG8Cy31juPYA6YG0_Z_sfoxTrGzh5Jh2dhrs5Zm8Vi_JCxqzRz0npA_mc7mG_xHKpD3UNVzjXTuV9dVRtcnSUXWBuDkqLs5REhDd7I9X1g60-1w9Brnpk79EtqiZsa4lPP52ANaX9OXdBQ/s320/Screen%20Shot%202022-06-03%20at%2010.13.26%20AM.png" width="320" /></a></p><blockquote style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-family: "Lucida Grande"; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;" type="cite"><div><div class="" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class=""><div class=""><div class=""><blockquote class="" type="cite"><div class=""><div class="" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class=""><div class=""><div class=""><blockquote class="" type="cite"><div class=""><div class="" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><br class="" /></div><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; text-align: center; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class=""></div><div class="">(La Bajada with Unidentified Aerial Phenomena – it is New Mexico after all.</div><div class="">Or it could be watermarks if you believe the government.)</div></div><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><br class="" /></div><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;">In the 20th century there were two alternative principal ways for getting from Albuquerque (where our flight came in) to Santa Fe. Interstate 25 is the most direct and fastest. NM 14 (the Turquoise Trail} more scenic and pleasant. And it turns out that nowadays off of the Santa Fe end of Route 14 is an entryway (entrada) to our home in Rancho Viejo – a 23,000-acre (39 sq. ml.) parcel of land south of the city. The Turquoise Trail was not available to Oñate, et al. But we like to think that these early colonists might nonetheless have passed through what is now our neighborhood. To have that connection to such an historic roadway would be pretty cool.</div><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><br class="" /></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></blockquote></div></div></div></div></div></blockquote></div></div></div></div></div></blockquote><p style="text-align: center;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXaRnyF4bW8q7ndtJHmenSHChJmf3vEvjsUvfWWzHJC8ghz9aZdGUU8fiXRMtuasqzahoa8YNRblMb_chgpObL6WuVoTpQxX1Km6UgEAUZwATSAbM56ptYybtF-MifdF6qPIRNzE_gObahzXb_EgO1-tkTHTqRzy1yzERrOOjUoBWtolaVSQ/s540/Screen%20Shot%202022-05-20%20at%204.04.42%20PM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="540" data-original-width="481" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXaRnyF4bW8q7ndtJHmenSHChJmf3vEvjsUvfWWzHJC8ghz9aZdGUU8fiXRMtuasqzahoa8YNRblMb_chgpObL6WuVoTpQxX1Km6UgEAUZwATSAbM56ptYybtF-MifdF6qPIRNzE_gObahzXb_EgO1-tkTHTqRzy1yzERrOOjUoBWtolaVSQ/s320/Screen%20Shot%202022-05-20%20at%204.04.42%20PM.png" width="285" /></a></p><blockquote style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-family: "Lucida Grande"; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;" type="cite"><div><div class="" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class=""><div class=""><div class=""><blockquote class="" type="cite"><div class=""><div class="" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class=""><div class=""><div class=""><blockquote class="" type="cite"><div class=""><div class="" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"></div><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" style="text-align: center;"></div><br class="" /></div><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;">Documentation shows Oñate’s chosen route brought him to the Native American settlement that the Spanish called Pueblo San Marcos – a short distance from what is today the southern end of the Ranch Viejo property.<br class="" /><br class="" /></div><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;">A major reason for coming this way was the presence of the Galisteo Creek/River. During the 1800s Santa Fe residents and visitors such as soldiers of both the U.S. Cavalry and the Confederate Army would regularly water their horses, and themselves, at the perennial stream that flows from the eastern highlands down into the Rio Grande through Galisteo. Jim learned all this during a one-on-one meeting he was fortunate enough to have with Dr. Eric Blinman, Director of the state’s Office of Archaeological Studies (OAS.) Jim was researching the <a class="" href="http://infhistrv.blogspot.com/">history of Rancho Viejo</a> And Dr. Blinman pointed out that it is a “straight shot” from Galisteo Creek through Rancho Viejo to Santa Fe. Like a lawyer who got the answer he hoped for, Jim quickly changed the subject.<br class="" /><br class="" /></div><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;">And it was during an evening class at the OAS taught by the same Dr. Blinman where we both learned of the historic significance of La Bajada – although the following comes mostly from the USDA Forest Service website.<br class="" /><br class="" /></div><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;">Archaeological findings place humans activity at the top of La Bajada Mesa during the early Archaic Period (5500 BC-AD1), a time “when cultures were shifting from reliance on now-extinct mega fauna to smaller game and wild plant gathering. The area provided high quality basalt for stone-tools and a diversity of useful plant and animal species.<br class="" /><br class="" /></div><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;">“In the few centuries before European contact (AD1300-1600) the population increased dramatically … Archaeologists have identified and dated the remains of several residential sites, known as pueblos, at the base of La Bajada … and large agricultural areas on top of the mesa [such as] grid gardens and … cobble mulch fields. “While it may not seem like the top of the mesa would be a good place to try to grow crops, people from the pueblo below knew how to make the most of the little moisture they received by creating stone alignments that collected and channeled the rainwater. They also used stones to mulch or cover the dirt in which they planted, to minimize evaporation. It is possible that the people who walked across the plateau tending their fields followed a route similar to the historic trail and road alignments that later climbed the same hill.”<br class="" /><br class="" /></div><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;">Today the NPS cautions, “only the best prepared, and most adventurous, modern-day trekkers will want to take on the black basalt backcountry of La Bajada.” And yet, driven by “God, Gold and Glory,” multiple expeditions of conquistadors and colonos españoles did just that. As did those that came after them, modifying the pathway into todays’ trail, which historians believe has “been in use [in basically that configuration] for some 300 years. The switchbacks on the road were supposedly blazed by U.S. Army troops in the 1860's for cavalry passage. In the early 1900's, because of the gravity-fed gas tanks of the time, many vehicles were forced to use their most powerful gear – reverse – to climb backwards up the steeper switchbacks. In the 1920's, the top half of the climb was rerouted on a gentler alignment just to the east of the old route … In 1934, the Highway Department "moved" the road three miles to the east to the same route currently used by I-25 … The La Bajada [walking] Trail is about 15 miles long and takes approximately 4 hours or so to complete." (New Mexico 4-Wheelers)<br class="" /><br class="" /></div><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; text-align: center; word-wrap: break-word;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaS46tnSmBiDFEOxS8Ity3oGIrueSwEX_-G1_50phlkbi7E0NwHMIFbXp50l-Z8iItuiUKUhooWRnNySbmFPeHPJveA3Dz0znAT8SyCtO2-bjyhTtVbHUFyXvfB0kGMFXR8RelX0laAaYflZDBxOSBey0UTQvRBrCi14wkVTLI61EXKBxdNg/s1008/Screen%20Shot%202022-05-20%20at%203.57.22%20PM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="614" data-original-width="1008" height="195" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaS46tnSmBiDFEOxS8Ity3oGIrueSwEX_-G1_50phlkbi7E0NwHMIFbXp50l-Z8iItuiUKUhooWRnNySbmFPeHPJveA3Dz0znAT8SyCtO2-bjyhTtVbHUFyXvfB0kGMFXR8RelX0laAaYflZDBxOSBey0UTQvRBrCi14wkVTLI61EXKBxdNg/s320/Screen%20Shot%202022-05-20%20at%203.57.22%20PM.png" width="320" /></a></div><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; text-align: center; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class=""></div><div class="">(Unclear if the vehicle is coming down or going up.)</div></div><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><br class="" /></div><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"> Juan de Oñate not only did not scale La Bajada. He also blew off Opera Hill – or whatever it was known as at the time. His journey north from Santa Fe north to his settlement at San Gabriel took him more than five miles to the west of the awe-inspiring panoramic view that continues to wow the two of us today. We are fortunate to be able say that the Royal Road MAY have passed near our backyard. Having it continue on to our favorite vista in the entire world would be asking way too much of history.</div><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><br class="" /></div><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;">American musician, conductor, arts administrator and Santa Fe Opera founder John O. Crosby learned of the property that would become Opera Hill in 1956, when it was a guest ranch catering to classical music luminaries of the day such as soprano Lily Pons and her husband conductor André Kostelanetz. At the time it was basically 76 acres of sparsely developed land following its previous lives as a pinto bean plantation, a mink ranch and a pig farm. Crosby signed a three year lease and the rest as they say is history.<br class="" /><br class="" /></div><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;">Was it the price and availability of the land? Probably. Was it the view? Most definitely. Each iteration of the auditorium – 1957, 1967 and 1998 – followed Crosby’s vision of of an open-air theatre that took advantage of Santa Fe’s “ideal climate, natural beauty, and [the] interest of the public in the great southwest.” The building faces west toward Jemez Mountains. To the east the Sangre de Cristos, the southernmost subrange of the Rockies. Panels behind the stage separate to revel a dramatic view of sky and mountains. Performances begin at sunset and, like <a class="" href="http://www.compostablematter.com/2020/06/not-bad-day-in-santa-fe.html">our experience at a Renee Fleming concert in 2019</a>, are sometimes accompanied by torrential thunderstorms that can drench parts of the audience and the performers.</div><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><br class="" /></div><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihm4Q1kQLOql3kJ70C-W7ugMdRp4aVBRGr81W09nDwpgpWnYF0jTVwZ9QQ17p4MT0xy97_83BFn0s9QXCqkc0qjpfXUqpy-UiGu4JltE_5apC-bsI5x30wALeqtS2KEuJ1wL8lvMx6xmpkx3zMsOrM3-6VwGYyK_UWoKbojkBlg8nYKL_MXA/s640/032_SFOPera_DIG.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="284" data-original-width="640" height="142" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihm4Q1kQLOql3kJ70C-W7ugMdRp4aVBRGr81W09nDwpgpWnYF0jTVwZ9QQ17p4MT0xy97_83BFn0s9QXCqkc0qjpfXUqpy-UiGu4JltE_5apC-bsI5x30wALeqtS2KEuJ1wL8lvMx6xmpkx3zMsOrM3-6VwGYyK_UWoKbojkBlg8nYKL_MXA/s320/032_SFOPera_DIG.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="" style="text-align: center;"><div class=""></div><div class="">(Santa Fe Opera founder John Crosby.)</div></div><br class="" /></div><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"> But as impressive as it is, the Opera grounds do not provide the best view in town. That viewing point was already taken by 1956 – Route 84 in Santa Fe having settled into its current location in 15 years earlier. The vista itself was there long before either of these dates. It was there when the first MesoAmericans walked north from Mexico City to San Juan Pueblo. It was there in 1200 A.D, when the Tesuque Natives created their first Pueblo on part of the land that makes up this panorama. It was there in 1598 when Juan de Oñate went north to proclaim the Pueblo of San Juan as the first Spanish settlement in New Mexico. It was there when we first drove north out of Santa Fe in 1992. And it will be there should you decide to take that same ride down Opera Hill.<br class="" /><br class="" /></div><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;">1,900 of our words cannot adequately describe it. Nor can an IPhone video shot at 75 mph capture it. You have to see it in person to decide. You’ll either love it or you’ll hate it. You already know how we feel.</div><div class="" style="overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEih6ZM6rhBWvjJay_aPFbKpITP6E1-Orh9SuH0rq6OQsDdLjG6oqzkpaeul2Uo_4-Zc4GBIo1DL998wR9rk-RI4BQwT4Tb5AMkpyYDelTv1IALb24beg8m9pe__jit9hLiA1gdx3lGHdcnRbJDu7GESlKoka7LEJZqbWRy1GnLwiTCUj_N-0g/s964/Screen%20Shot%202022-06-05%20at%2012.21.03%20PM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="734" data-original-width="964" height="244" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEih6ZM6rhBWvjJay_aPFbKpITP6E1-Orh9SuH0rq6OQsDdLjG6oqzkpaeul2Uo_4-Zc4GBIo1DL998wR9rk-RI4BQwT4Tb5AMkpyYDelTv1IALb24beg8m9pe__jit9hLiA1gdx3lGHdcnRbJDu7GESlKoka7LEJZqbWRy1GnLwiTCUj_N-0g/s320/Screen%20Shot%202022-06-05%20at%2012.21.03%20PM.png" width="320" /></a></div><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" style="text-align: center;"></div><div class="" style="text-align: center;">(Getting to “The Hill” ca. 1945)</div><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><br class="" /></div><br /></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></blockquote></div></div></div></div></div></blockquote></div></div></div></div></div></blockquote>Jimhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08407095418542335994noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19442576.post-26913677044678075952022-11-08T17:47:00.000-05:002022-11-08T17:47:03.303-05:00olor de santidad<p> </p><p> </p><p> <br /></p><blockquote style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-family: "Lucida Grande"; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;" type="cite"><div><div class="" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;">Written 5/9/22</div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></blockquote><p> </p><blockquote style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-family: "Lucida Grande"; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;" type="cite"><div><div class="" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;">So yes – there are fires out here. Not in our backyard, but one is 35 miles to our west. And another – at the moment the largest in the country – is the same distance to our east. Similar to being in Wethersfield and having blazes in New Haven and Springfield, MA. But our here because of the landscape we can see both from our neighborhood. Below, sunset in the Jemez Mountains (smoke not clouds) out our back yard. And the Sangre de Cristo mountains to the east taken from up the street a bit – note the dry landscape.</div><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><br class="" /></div><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;">Its early in the year for such things. The Governor has already declared a State of Emergency and is warning of the worst fire season ever. Feds have sent their entire fleet of fire-fighting <a class="" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrOFctYuXjc">"super scooper aircraft."</a> They are housed at the Santa Fe Airport and we’ve seen them flying over our neighborhood dangling buckets of water that look pitifully small for the task at hand. No rain in our two-week forecast. None in the past couple of months. Winds at 20 to 75 mph in the fire areas spreading sparks. Not good at all – but not personally worrisome for us yet.</div><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><br class="" /></div><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; text-align: center; word-wrap: break-word;"></div><div class="" style="overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: center;"><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrvE31k01UuEU8WUKCqFUSyujsL9pLZmW5QAV5yAXHO1BEYJ0o5bQuh415yKXP536UO48bJ1vmBlX3HWARJx70hOFlHVUYC-HDDboND_AwsVJ_iDqeVMDLsxtRJO_8254P0bgduk9QlzqvxTaO-gb-R972n03zcavGQpdL1be_H6RMSJ0mmw/s640/image.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="417" data-original-width="640" height="209" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrvE31k01UuEU8WUKCqFUSyujsL9pLZmW5QAV5yAXHO1BEYJ0o5bQuh415yKXP536UO48bJ1vmBlX3HWARJx70hOFlHVUYC-HDDboND_AwsVJ_iDqeVMDLsxtRJO_8254P0bgduk9QlzqvxTaO-gb-R972n03zcavGQpdL1be_H6RMSJ0mmw/s320/image.png" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgi6maICXcSo5hph9Yj5wFgdC9SIfAWgIM7vL4n_AAABjTvz79tWGGRpknXEUKcjoj7KDUV5XfFgSqA0dDQ-p74YiDiQkyAmwEMk8Z8vHFizgVuBc0xuF_C_z4pP6hSpqD6u835vW5-cLS4Evi1AHktd-SQrqBEk14auoLdb1cvwaq3j98eQg/s640/IMG_0188.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="640" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgi6maICXcSo5hph9Yj5wFgdC9SIfAWgIM7vL4n_AAABjTvz79tWGGRpknXEUKcjoj7KDUV5XfFgSqA0dDQ-p74YiDiQkyAmwEMk8Z8vHFizgVuBc0xuF_C_z4pP6hSpqD6u835vW5-cLS4Evi1AHktd-SQrqBEk14auoLdb1cvwaq3j98eQg/s320/IMG_0188.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></blockquote><blockquote style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-family: "Lucida Grande"; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;" type="cite"><div><div class="" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"></div><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;">So, even with all this going one, what are the top three things to do in Santa Fe? Most locals will tell you it is hiking, visiting museums, and eating out – the City Different Triathlon. Good by us. The high desert paths and arroyos in our community provide plenty of opportunities for foot traveling – but alas no art or gourmet opportunities. However more trails, a walkable downtown area, over 20 cultural institutions and triple that number of restaurants are all within a half-hour drive – making the CDTri pretty doable on any given day. Good thing, since it requires constant repetition to keep in top competitive condition.<br class="" /><br class="" /></div><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;">One recent training session involved some urban hiking, lunch at <a class="" href="https://www.clafoutis.biz/">our favorite “low-key, French country-style” eatery</a> and exhibitions at two of Santa Fe’s downtown museums. The first pair worked up an appetite and then satisfied it. While the culture part brought back memories of our early visits to northern New Mexico. “Western Eyes: 20th Century Art Here and Now” at the Museum of Art reminded us of what made us think of coming out here to begin with. And History Museum’s “Curative Powers: New Mexico’s Hot Springs” told the story of what became a regular part of our annual visits to this part of the world.<br class="" /><br class="" /></div><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;">So, what did make us think of coming out here to begin with? Well, for our 25th wedding anniversary in September, 1992 we were looking to go someplace special. That spring we happened to attend a retrospective of Georgia O’Keeffe paintings at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. From 1979 to 1989 the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford had mistakenly displayed her painting <a class="" href="https://smarthistory.org/georgia-okeeffe-the-lawrence-tree/">“The Lawrence Tree”</a> upside down – so we had some, albeit skewed, familiarity with her work. That image, plus other bits and pieces of her art and life, were enough to make us want to see more. And more was what there was at MOMA. We became really hooked on her southwestern paintings. And decided “let’s go see the place that inspired all these abstract pictures.”<br class="" /><br class="" /></div><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;">So we came. And they weren’t abstract. But they weren’t representational either. To help explain, lets jump ahead to that April 2022 exhibition of “southwestern modernist painting” – literally in the middle of which, both positionally and stylistically, was Georgia O’Keeffe. At one end were paintings whose “subject matter” consisted of a collection of colored dots. At the other, posed-in-the-studio, photo-realistic depictions of Native Americans.<br class="" /><br class="" /></div><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;">The O’Keeffe canvas portrayed a vertical somewhat luminescent turquoise rectangle inside a larger horizontal version of the same shape in an earthy, warm desert tan. On closer inspection – meaning you had to mentally step back and fill in the “whole picture” based upon your experience with northern New Mexico sights – it is a close-up view of the front door and wall of an adobe house. But thirty years ago we didn’t have that knowledge base. So we started to look at the landscape and architecture more O’Keeffe-ly. And it really was all there to see – well maybe not the <a class="" href="https://news.artnet.com/art-world/georgia-okeeffe-3-things-to-know-1925403">sun-bleached cow skulls floating in the clouds</a> – but still. We wanted to see more. So kept coming back for the next 25 years until at last we were able to stay. We are still “learning to look” as our old college art history book was titled.<br class="" /><br class="" /></div><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; text-align: center; word-wrap: break-word;"></div><div class="" style="overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBTkSKljgijGcU493pUnLIu5LCi7sCKSnzzkrWXmqsg-gry6GHYUbBiJTzWRP9tVog8ifnIZ9jTvRXMACeywQ4AG-Hb76OdwXf-tQKU8-GbYFVwoiMGKtqCxwR9KEPj4Brmg1PRlcgpPNLVzNckkyt0uFdPuctmtjqSdnTtzcqwhf5-Muv2w/s516/Screen%20Shot%202022-04-25%20at%2012.13.43%20PM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="516" data-original-width="480" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBTkSKljgijGcU493pUnLIu5LCi7sCKSnzzkrWXmqsg-gry6GHYUbBiJTzWRP9tVog8ifnIZ9jTvRXMACeywQ4AG-Hb76OdwXf-tQKU8-GbYFVwoiMGKtqCxwR9KEPj4Brmg1PRlcgpPNLVzNckkyt0uFdPuctmtjqSdnTtzcqwhf5-Muv2w/s320/Screen%20Shot%202022-04-25%20at%2012.13.43%20PM.png" width="298" /></a></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></blockquote><p> </p><blockquote style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-family: "Lucida Grande"; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;" type="cite"><div><div class="" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"></div><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;">On that first visit we made a day trip from Santa Fe to “take the [hot spring] waters” in the town of Jemez Springs, 90 minutes or so from our temporary home base. (And the origin point for the current fire to our west.) To our east coast eyes pretty much anything outside of New Mexico’s state capital was southwest rural – with a capital R. Two-lane roads with nothing beside them other than high desert nothingness. Little if any traffic in either direction. And no real idea of what lay ahead. Somewhat disconcerting for two Connecticut suburbanites – with a capital S.<br class="" /><br class="" /></div><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;">Looking for lunch we came upon an outdoor restaurant surrounded by a pack of parked motorcycles. A biker bar in an unfamiliar town on an unknown back road – what could possible go wrong? Hunger overcame anxiety. And we were seated in the midst of a “gang” of polo-shirted men many of whom were audibly communicating with their stock brokers on cell phones, while the remainder sipped their ice teas and Pellegrinos. Then we noticed that none of the carefully parked choppers had the distinctive Harley Davidson emblem on them. In fact many bore the same three letter brand name as the German luxury cars within which their owners likely commuted to their day jobs.<br class="" /><br class="" /></div><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;">After our meal we set off in search of the hot springs, whose past is what has now become a familiar storyline to us. Ancient Natives – in this case the Pueblo of Guisewa – were the first and only residents and users of “the waters” until the late 1500s. Followed by the Colonial Spanish (1598-1821), Mexicans (1821-1847) and then the Anglos (1847-today.)<br class="" />We must pause briefly here to point out the Spanish conquerers’ ideas of cleanliness when they first arrived in the New World. “Many things about Aztec civilization amazed the Spanish Conquistadores … But probably nothing seemed more bizarre … than the Aztec attitude to personal hygiene. [Around 1520] conquistador Andres de Tapia reported, in a tone of wonder, that [Emperor] Montezuma bathed twice a day.” No big deal since according to the Jesuit historian Francisco Javier Clavijero “everybody bathed often, and many of them every day in the rivers, lakes or pools.” (“Clean Aztecs, Dirty Spaniards” <a class="" href="http://www.mexicolore.co.uk/">www.mexicolore.co.uk</a>.)<br class="" /><br class="" /></div><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;">Following advice from the medical faculty of the University of Paris that the Black Death of 1347 was caused by “hot baths, which created openings in the skin [allowing] disease to enter the body,” the people of Europe pretty much avoided water for the next 400-500 years. The Spanish had an additional reason. “When the Visigoths conquered Spain in the 5th century, they scorned hot baths as effeminate and weakening, and they demolished the bath-houses. By the time the Moors invaded the country in 711, the Spanish … saw the Moors’ well-washed ways as part of their heretical convictions, and their own dirtiness as a Christian virtue.” To the mendicant monks physical dirt was THE test of moral purity and true faith. “By dining and sleeping from year’s end to year’s end in the same unchanged woolen frock [they] arrived at the height of their ambition … the odor of sanctity, the ‘olor de santidad.’”<br class="" /><br class="" /></div><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;">But fortunately not forever. According to “Policing Waters and Baths in Eighteenth Century Mexico City” (<a class="" href="http://jstor.org/">jstor.org</a>) – “In Spain, after a century in which bathing – especially social bathing – was discouraged, outlawed, and largely eradicated, people took to the water again in the 1600s. During that same period in Mesoamerica the conquerors repressed the sexual, social, and religious aspects of temazcal [sweat lodge] steambathing in favor of bathing for health and medicinal ends, a negotiation which enabled the temazcal as an institution to survive and spread across racial, ethnic, and class boundaries. Moreover, bathing in hot springs had surged back into popularity … was considered therapeutic, and the mineral waters themselves were thought to be medicinal.”<br class="" /><br class="" /></div><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;">Just in time for the Spanish colonization of New Mexico – where for hundreds of years Pueblo Natives had considered hot springs as sacred places, and believed in the miraculous healing powers of the heat and mineral waters. Some soaking pools were even declared DMZs within which warriors could rest and not be harassed by other tribes. (Aztecs and Pueblo Natives are not related but share a similar cosmology and theology, and pretty much identical personal hygiene regimes. For the “pagan” Indigenous People cleanliness was next to godliness. Their Catholic proselytizers, not so much. In fact, there was a time when they appeared to be more water-fearing than God-fearing.)<br class="" /><br class="" /></div><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;">The occupying Spaniards however seem not to have interfered with the Native’s ablution apparatuses. Nor the follow-on Mexican rulers. Enter the Anglos to monetize Mother Nature. Around 1860 one of the Jemez hot springs erupted, creating what should have been a temporary pool. But – cha-ching! – it was quickly enclosed with a rock wall and surrounding building, one of the first structures in the town. By 1881, a bath house and hotel were erected to accommodate travelers who came from as far away as Albuquerque to take the plunge – the beginnings of “health tourism.” Over 100 years later the two of us traveled from Santa Fe to soak and relax, ease our aches, absorb the beneficial minerals and rid our bodies of its harmful toxins. Or so we hoped.</div><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; text-align: center; word-wrap: break-word;"><br class="" /></div><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;">The pools turned out to be individual tubs – some in a women’s section and some in a men’s. Their were no other customers. We paid our fees, signed the necessary releases, went our separate ways and settled into our respective indoor bathing containers for 45 minutes of uninterrupted soaking in the thermally heated, mineral-laden delightfully relaxing waters. After which we were gently peeled out of our aqueous cocoons and poured back into our rental car for the languid drive back to our Santa Fe motel. In the distance we saw our first high desert thunderstorms and then drove through them. Jim spontaneously broke into heavy perspiration necessitating the use of a towel we accidentally purloined from the bath house. The last vestiges of his east coast toxins. We knew we would repeat it again. But this time in an al fresco setting.<br class="" /><br class="" /></div><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;">Which we found the next year among the Sangre de Cristo Mountains at Ojo Caliente Mineral Springs in the eponymous town of Ojo Caliente, 60 minutes or so from our Santa Fe home base. (“Ojo caliente, “hot eye,” was the name the Spanish gave to all the hot springs they found in New Mexico.)<br class="" /><br class="" /></div><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;">Ojo’s backstory is similar to Jemez Springs. Native American Tewas, to whom this was a sacred site, were the first to soak in the springs. Their Pueblo community, Posi-ouinge (“village at the place of the green bubbling springs”) was the largest of four prehistoric Indigenous villages studied by New Mexico archaeology all-stars Adolph Bandelier and Edgar Lee Hewett. The only historic record of Spanish or Mexican use of the pools we found was an 1807 report saying the former brought Zebulon Pike (American brigadier general and explorer) there for a dip. Pike was already in hot water after his arrest for his “incursion” into New Mexico.<br class="" /><br class="" /></div><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;">Then in 1868, Antonio Joseph, New Mexico’s first territorial representative to congress, built the initial bath house. Soon the town of Ojo had overnight lodging, a post office and a general store at which ledgers show frontier legend Kit Carson purchased supplies. In 1916 the then-owners built an adobe hotel to house their guests. Per Facebook, Ojo “is one of the oldest natural health resorts in the United States, and the only hot springs in the world with … four different sulfur-free mineral waters [lithia, soda, arsenic and iron.]” By the time we went there Ojo had added more buildings plus massages and other treatments – and relabeled itself as a “resort and spa.”<br class="" /><br class="" /></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></blockquote><p style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjksRjgE6Sp1VEFvChyRxtnBvxmxcfpDQn4A9LmOAm84u_HUu7fVhqzd4uz5eEipzn-2y286t37NfndPQwzkfXvUDxIRmftkME0AzhATzL5Bugz0VJyKrD1rZmMMrF64_fprs9LzKlXW9ulEbEJ1X7mOYFn4xZLFnLD4NFMChFYXNLunex-Q/s1280/Screen%20Shot%202022-04-26%20at%204.53.29%20PM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="747" data-original-width="1280" height="187" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjksRjgE6Sp1VEFvChyRxtnBvxmxcfpDQn4A9LmOAm84u_HUu7fVhqzd4uz5eEipzn-2y286t37NfndPQwzkfXvUDxIRmftkME0AzhATzL5Bugz0VJyKrD1rZmMMrF64_fprs9LzKlXW9ulEbEJ1X7mOYFn4xZLFnLD4NFMChFYXNLunex-Q/s320/Screen%20Shot%202022-04-26%20at%204.53.29%20PM.png" width="320" /></a> <br /></p><blockquote style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-family: "Lucida Grande"; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;" type="cite"><div><div class="" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"></div><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; text-align: center; word-wrap: break-word;"></div><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; text-align: center; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="">(Ojo Caliente Mineral Springs in 1916. </div><div class="">Seems like most of the paying guests still can’t quite get the hang of soaking...)</div><div class=""><br class="" /></div></div><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;">Our initial visit was a day trip where we hopped from one outdoor mineral pool to another (with recovery time between dips) and went home so relaxed that we decided next time to spend several days. We did the next year – staying in the adobe hotel, having massages, mud baths, facials, wraps and more. Then came back for a few days on pretty much every subsequent visit to NM.<br class="" /><br class="" /></div><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;">Our new state of residence is home to at least 77 natural mineral hot springs. Radium Springs, near the southern city of Las Cruces, is the hottest and strongest such spring in the world. Geronimo, the famous Apache Chief, made camp nearby, so he and his warriors could bathe in the revitalizing waters. Spanish settlers tired from their long trek up the El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro (The Royal Road of the Interior Land) discovered the beneficial powers of the Radium Springs. As did U.S. soldiers from Fort Selden 200+ years later. It is not necessarily true that those cavalrymen made easier targets at night.<br class="" /><br class="" /></div><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;">60 miles north the indigenous people of that area enjoyed their own local hot mineral springs. In the late 1500s the Spanish arrived, naming it Ojo Caliente de Las Palomas (Hot Springs of the Doves) and establishing it as a stopping point (paraje) on El Camino Real. By the late 1800s, bath houses and lodging popped up to accommodate visitors. The name of the town was anglicized to Palomas Hot Springs and it became a popular therapeutic destination. In 1916 they dropped “Palomas” and incorporated as Hot Springs, NM. Then in 1950 the locals accepted an offer from a popular NBC radio game-show and renamed the town “Truth or Consequences” – “T or C” to New Mexicans.<br class="" /><br class="" /></div><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;">The hot springs at T or C are on our radar as part of a return trip “down south.” We had gone to that part of NM for the first time literally days before the pandemic shutdown. But did not take the waters. Maybe this year we will – paired perhaps with a viewing of Bosque del Apache's annual fall migration of sandhill cranes, snow geese, and ducks about one hour away. Next door by New Mexico standards.<br class="" /><br class="" /></div><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;">Also, Ojo Caliente has opened an outpost next door to El Rancho de las Golondrinas – our volunteer gig and formerly the northernmost paraje on on El Camino Real. Ojo Santa Fe offers “thermal soaking pools ... with triple-filtered water from our own natural aquifer, which we gently heat to varying therapeutic temperatures so you can soak to your body’s content.” (The same water source in un-purified form irrigates El Rancho’s farm fields.) Ojo SF also offers an artificially salinated 80° lap pool to remind us of our Cape Cod, CT Shore and North Carolina ocean experiences. Well maybe not so much the northeast part.<br class="" /><br class="" /></div><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;">But our own local spa of choice is Ten Thousand Waves – “inspired by the great Japanese mountain hot spring resorts … ten minutes from downtown Santa Fe, but only minutes from the National Forest.” We were introduced to it by Monica and Bram after they moved here and we began visiting over the Christmas holidays. A hot-soak on the hillside in sub-freezing temperatures under starry skies became a new December tradition. Followed by dinner at a <a class="" href="https://wholehogcafenm.com/">local BBQ eatery</a>. The Steamy Heat & Smokey Meat Biathlon. Even die-hard Triathletes need some R&R.</div><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" style="text-align: center;"><br class="" /></div><div class="" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlGnbx65-GYP6nIMbE1y0ryTjmQkgK-wnCA-LmhnlvYEr6BNemPa3lFZw7NbtyB3bpZy_yHqKj3_Us1lv8wkB1XqiySPy0V3gYINEp8MJZ5_-gtwSbCyf9-LUyb2GAqHtZDZgNVKXLJfeoaMwaXDKAYIvGrl-CFZ874Q-1wF32jaYmKTb_zg/s320/DSC05034.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="240" data-original-width="320" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlGnbx65-GYP6nIMbE1y0ryTjmQkgK-wnCA-LmhnlvYEr6BNemPa3lFZw7NbtyB3bpZy_yHqKj3_Us1lv8wkB1XqiySPy0V3gYINEp8MJZ5_-gtwSbCyf9-LUyb2GAqHtZDZgNVKXLJfeoaMwaXDKAYIvGrl-CFZ874Q-1wF32jaYmKTb_zg/s1600/DSC05034.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="" style="text-align: center;"></div><div class="" style="text-align: center;">(…but we, on the other hand…)</div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></blockquote><br class="Apple-interchange-newline" /><br />Jimhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08407095418542335994noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19442576.post-4018036722148963262022-11-08T17:37:00.002-05:002022-11-08T17:37:56.380-05:00¿Qué es una ciénega?<p> </p><blockquote style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-family: "Lucida Grande"; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;" type="cite"><div><div class="" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="">Our former Connecticut neighbor Mark Twain was fond of saying, “if you don't like the weather in New England now, just wait a few minutes.” He should have added “or New Mexico.”<br class="" /><br class="" /></div><div class="">We began writing this issue of CMiNM on March 27 in sunny 70° temperatures. (Our thermometer in the sun on the placita (patio) actually read 100.) This was preceded by two days of the same – and followed by one more – then five days of snow showers, clouds and 50°. Three days before the heat wave it snowed enough to prompt outrage from school parents about the failure to cancel that day’s session. Being experienced New Englander drivers we however kept our 8:00 a.m. engagement that morning for breakfast with friends at an empanada restaurant a half-hour into town. The ice fog was a first-time experience for us out here. But the rest was, “been there, done that.” As this essay progressed from idea to draft to editing, the weather likewise has been inching its way spring-ward. And April 6 at 3:50 PM, MDT we saw our first official sign of that season’s arrival – the initial whiptail lizard of 2022 scurrying along one of our neighborhood sidewalks after having spent the winter hibernating in her shelter. (They all are female.) That night’s low was 28°. We hope the little lady didn’t jump the gun. But we’ll probably never know. They do all kind of look alike. BTW yesterday was 49° and sunny with winds gusting up to 50 mph.<br class="" /><br class="" /></div><div class="">We’ve been having all-day training sessions at El Rancho de las Golondrinas on three Saturdays in March and one in April – mornings on Zoom and in-person afternoon tours of the property.<br class="" /><br class="" /></div><div class="">We took advantage of our time at the initial onsite to walk the Torreón Trail, one of our favorite parts of the 200-acre property. The pathway, which begins in a scenic portion of the property’s ciénega, was once part of El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro and is the former site of a textbook Comanche raid in June, 1776.<br class="" /><br class="" /></div><div class="">Lots of unfamiliar Spanish Colonial stuff. Right? So first, who was this Torreón person anyway?<br class="" /><br class="" /></div><div class="">Actually Torreónes ("fortified buildings" or "towers") were circular defensive structures similar to English castle keeps or French donjons – and were a common sight throughout northern New Mexico during the Spanish colonial period. Some were scattered around the landscape for settlers to take shelter in during attacks when they were out working in the fields or otherwise away from their home base. Others were a tall safe-room in a hacienda. In both instances the structures also served as a lookout from which the watchman (usually a 12-14 year old boy) could see whether incoming groups were coming to socialize and do business, or raid and pillage. Archeological excavations confirm that the Torreón whose remains can be seen at the end of the short walking path at las Golondrinas was built in the 18th century.</div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></blockquote><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6qCuvPRNR0Yv-0XLNQOkY93kSn7qhQVujGam4oydNRm3r_jxUJNt-al0LyDfdFUfBAWmFu9iGGrDlq8VV0HY2MqCFALiF-BhPrwdNECPy0c2zYjlFpbLq76FTF64L-SM_iSY3wL3S-kFuvnqZYdGb1UJW3cM13wTt8pO96tWZ58MBBhaMBA/s583/image-asset.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="583" data-original-width="474" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6qCuvPRNR0Yv-0XLNQOkY93kSn7qhQVujGam4oydNRm3r_jxUJNt-al0LyDfdFUfBAWmFu9iGGrDlq8VV0HY2MqCFALiF-BhPrwdNECPy0c2zYjlFpbLq76FTF64L-SM_iSY3wL3S-kFuvnqZYdGb1UJW3cM13wTt8pO96tWZ58MBBhaMBA/s320/image-asset.jpg" width="260" /></a></div></div><blockquote style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-family: "Lucida Grande"; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;" type="cite"><div><div class="" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="">What allowed New Mexico to be settled, and what kept it going for its first 200-plus years, was the two-way trade with Spain via Mexico on El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro (The Royal Road of the Interior Land) – the northernmost of the four main Caminos Reales that linked Mexico City to its major cash cows in Acapulco, Veracruz, Audiencia (Guatemala) and Santa Fe. Long before the arrival of the Spanish, the Indigenous Peoples of the Valley of Mexico had established the route to support their own flourishing commerce in turquoise, obsidian, salt and feathers with customers as far away as the Rocky Mountains. Beginning in 1598 EVERYTHING that came into or out of Spain’s northernmost colony traveled on this 1,600 mile road, which actually ended at San Juan Pueblo (now known as Ohkay Owingeh) 25 miles north of Santa Fe. Travelers covered 8-10 miles day. Six months one way.<br class="" /></div><div class=""><br class="" /></div><div class="">The roadway passed through what today are the neighboring Census-Designated-Places of La Ciénega and La Ciéneguilla in Santa Fe County. El Rancho de las Golondrinas is located in the former of these two unincorporated townships (just 15 minutes from the current site of “Casa Meehan.”) During the 18th and early 19th centuries the ranch was one of many “parajes” or stopping places along El Camino Real at which journeyers would rest, swap goods, replenish supplies, and prepare for the next leg of their journey. Like the long-running Italian tavern near the Hartford-Wethersfield line back in CT, las Golondrinas was the “First & Last” stop coming from or going to Santa Fe – but without the pizza and beer. It is generally accepted that today’s 1/4 mile Torreón Trail was its entry way to El Rancho.<br class="" /><br class="" /></div><div class="">The Royal Road roughly followed the path of the Rio Grande through New Mexico. Good enough for traveling. But a place with a permanent source of water – such as a ciénega – would have had any real estate developers in the caravan lusting for the land. As you can see from the name of its hometown, las Golondrinas was and is in such a place. So, ¿Qué es una ciénega?</div><div class=""><br class="" /></div><div class="">“Ciénega is the Spanish word for ‘marsh,’ but it has also become an ecological term for a stable spring-fed wet meadow … in an otherwise, arid region – like an oasis in the desert. Arid-land spring ciénegas are very rare... Prehistoric and historic people of arid southwestern America have relied upon and exploited these uncommon sources of water and lush vegetation.” (<a class="" href="http://streamdynamic.us/">streamdynamic.us</a>) There are 169 identified ciénegas in New Mexico – most small and non-functional. The numerous springs and spring brooks within the one at las Golondrinas are created by igneous intrusions that force the aquifer to surface – most notably at the pond adjacent to the museum property in Leonora Curtin Wetland Preserve from which El Rancho draws the water to power its large grist mill, and at the small bodies of water that run along both sides of the Torreón Trail.</div><div class=""><br class="" /></div><div class="" style="text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuQBsnMcYqJZ_8aFlvQE3GNSIcFv1lbXFzPdidNmuIizB84ZS3KO8f08Nro951pCaJAe-PEg-Tp-1izuDVxAcS4eRWBs05x4oaikcxnDIj8nBlosFl8zS1SdudgoxQq-MPQa1PodYcdg39LZw1V9ArlFsELiC8KIKzfVgMO_N2wEmzhcJiLw/s1708/Screen%20Shot%202022-04-09%20at%203.02.46%20PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1708" data-original-width="1450" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuQBsnMcYqJZ_8aFlvQE3GNSIcFv1lbXFzPdidNmuIizB84ZS3KO8f08Nro951pCaJAe-PEg-Tp-1izuDVxAcS4eRWBs05x4oaikcxnDIj8nBlosFl8zS1SdudgoxQq-MPQa1PodYcdg39LZw1V9ArlFsELiC8KIKzfVgMO_N2wEmzhcJiLw/s320/Screen%20Shot%202022-04-09%20at%203.02.46%20PM.png" width="272" /></a></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></blockquote><blockquote style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-family: "Lucida Grande"; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;" type="cite"><div><div class="" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class=""></div><div class="">The ciénega also was something that the Indigenous Tano residents of Pueblo Ciénega (aka Pueblo Mesita) and Keres villagers at nearby Pueblo La Ciéneguilla took advantage of as early the 14th century. The exact site of the first-mentioned settlement is still uncertain. Remains of the latter have been found adjacent to mesas adorned with pre-Columbian native petroglyphs – <a class="" href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/la-cieneguilla-petroglyph-site">now a hiking area under the control of the Bureau of Land Management. </a>History tells us that both communities took part in the 1680 Pueblo Revolt. The drought, crop failure and famine, which were contributing factors to the uprising, did not however go away when the Spanish did. Many villages closed down and their occupants moved on to other Pueblos. It would seem that those sitting on a permanent water source should have survived. But Pueblos Mesita and La Ciéneguilla did not. The Spanish returned and reconquered New Mexico in 1692. King Philip V issued a Community Land Grant for La Ciénega in 1710 under which Miguel de la Vega y Coca and others established ranches that became known as El Rancho de las Golondrinas. La Ciéneguilla was begun under a Private Land Grant to Francisco Anaya De Almazan, but did not begin developing until the family sold the land in 1760.<br class="" /><br class="" /></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></blockquote><p style="text-align: center;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhT0Xx7NR44bZtGLAGdrBPMdK-2h4D2fYnEh4ZDWL6dycMHZ3NlxQft93RICJ59OgWjPL5V6R35yDgQGT_feeucw6B2loA_rg2DIFlbNhw7C-suCf2uSl9QuJlFEX7f3dOMps1gZErRLzgcNM_GmkAol4oQfmcpbODCuumHVnE6CsuY5OM70w/s1172/Screen%20Shot%202022-04-03%20at%204.52.09%20PM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1172" data-original-width="872" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhT0Xx7NR44bZtGLAGdrBPMdK-2h4D2fYnEh4ZDWL6dycMHZ3NlxQft93RICJ59OgWjPL5V6R35yDgQGT_feeucw6B2loA_rg2DIFlbNhw7C-suCf2uSl9QuJlFEX7f3dOMps1gZErRLzgcNM_GmkAol4oQfmcpbODCuumHVnE6CsuY5OM70w/s320/Screen%20Shot%202022-04-03%20at%204.52.09%20PM.png" width="238" /></a></p><blockquote style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-family: "Lucida Grande"; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;" type="cite"><div><div class="" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class=""></div><div class="" style="text-align: center;"></div><div class=""><br class="" /></div><div class="">In recognition of the Torreón Trail’s historic status the National Park Service has placed signage along the route. The last one of which tells about the June 20, 1776 “Attack at the Torreón” when “a party of Comanche warriors swept through the Spanish ranchos of La Ciénega … and La Ciéneguillia … killing nine men and boys and taking two young children captive. Antonio Sandoval, the owner of El Rancho de las Golondrinas, lost his 19-year old son … and nephew … who were killed as they tended crops. Scenes such as this were typical on the northern frontier.”<br class="" /><br class="" /></div><div class="">The Comanche Nation occupied and largely controlled significant portions of the southern plains including North, Central and West Texas as well as most of New Mexico – an area larger than all of New England (over 72,000 mi².) Historians such as Pekka Hämäläinen argue that this “Comancheria” fit the definition of an empire.<br class="" /><br class="" /></div><div class="">Interestingly though there was no central tribal authority in the Comanche Nation, but rather a number of largely independent sub-tribes (bands) who would periodically join forces to attack their enemies. This decentralized organization was something that the Spanish and U.S. authorities never quite caught on to as they would negotiate one unsuccessful treaty after another with chiefs whom they mistakenly thought spoke for the entire tribe. Little difference – since in many cases the U.S. in particular never intended to honor the terms of the agreements anyway. And the Comanche were mostly in it for the door prizes (aka bribes) such as horses and armaments. Only Don Fernando de la Concha, New Mexican Governor from 1787-1793, was able to achieve a period of conciliation with the Comanche. “Through his imaginative use of balance-of-power diplomacy [he] consolidated peace with troublesome Indian groups and effected a decade of stability and modest economic prosperity in New Mexico,” according to “Balance of Power Diplomacy in New Mexico.” by Jack August published in<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a class="" href="http://digitalrepository.unm.edu/">digitalrepository.unm.edu</a>.<br class="" /><br class="" /></div><div class="">The Comanche operated a highly successful “raiding economy” beginning in 1706 with sudden attacks on the Spanish colonies of New Spain that continued until the last bands of the tribe surrendered to the United States Army in 1875.<br class="" /><br class="" /></div><div class="">In his highly readable work “Empire Of The Summer Moon,” S C Gwynne writes, “no tribe in the history of the Spanish, French, Mexican, Texan, and American occupations of this land had ever caused so much havoc and death. None was even a close second.” He describes in detail the “demonic immorality of Comanche attacks [in which] torture, killings and gang-rapes were routine … The logic of Comanche raids was straightforward, all the men were killed, and any men who were captured alive were tortured; the captive women were gang raped. Babies were invariably killed.” According to dailymail.co.u, “Texans, Mexicans and other Indians living in the region all developed a particular dread of the full moon – still known as a ‘Comanche Moon’ in Texas – because that was when the Indigenous raiders came for cattle, horses and captives.”<br class="" /><br class="" /></div><div class="">The Comanche became expert horsemen, taking full advantage of the equines that the Spanish had introduced to the Americas. The Natives initially acquired them by trading and raiding; then by taking possession of many of those left behind when the Spaniards were driven from New Mexico in the 1680 Pueblo revolt; then by more and more raiding. Just like in the movies the Natives were able to swing down to the side of their mount and shoot arrow after arrow from behind the protection of the steed’s neck. They brought spare rides with them on their forays – swapping from one to another as they made their escapes and sometimes riding as much as 100 miles with their captives before stopping. A Comanche War Chief’s status was measured by the number of horses he owned. All of which were destroyed upon his death.<br class="" /><br class="" /></div><div class="">Conflicts with the Comanche ended in 1875 when the last of the tribe surrendered to the United States Army – thus, among other things, making the Torreón Trail safe for our Golondrinas guests. Yet the pathway remains the least visited site at the museum. This, we believe, is largely due to its location at the top of what is labeled “steep hill” on the attached map. (Torreón Trail is the snake-shaped set of dashes to the right.)<br class="" /><br class="" /></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></blockquote><p> </p><p style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVOy-rRlEVYr7qayc3KtmSjRDgZsfifJp_RlR8oC1SjUqlR_vahVrpyYy_pccR3uUdmoRS9rMmqn-IDqy-bMHkpYN6NSS3ystIuZ0gZ2v8rWtHDTQqxAwvUdyxJzsgHrD8WPWxi9HywUb-XSvK5FerVyuysnLNNwzcLF8a2bq3eiQLfBJr5w/s1024/Museum-Map-2017-copy-pdf-622x1024.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="622" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVOy-rRlEVYr7qayc3KtmSjRDgZsfifJp_RlR8oC1SjUqlR_vahVrpyYy_pccR3uUdmoRS9rMmqn-IDqy-bMHkpYN6NSS3ystIuZ0gZ2v8rWtHDTQqxAwvUdyxJzsgHrD8WPWxi9HywUb-XSvK5FerVyuysnLNNwzcLF8a2bq3eiQLfBJr5w/s320/Museum-Map-2017-copy-pdf-622x1024.jpg" width="194" /></a> <br /></p><blockquote style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-family: "Lucida Grande"; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;" type="cite"><div><div class="" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class=""></div><div class="" style="text-align: center;"></div><div class="">The normal and recommended staring point for tours of the 200-acre museum is the 18th century Spanish Colonial Golondrinas Placita (#1.) From there guests exit through the back past the churro sheep pen (#13), into the 1820s Mexican Period Baca Placita (#s 15-18) and then down a gently-sloped incline across the creek and into U.S. Territorial times on the “far side" (31-46.) After the uphill and downhill trek on rocky terrain around the 1847-1900 loop, mostly in the unfiltered and un-abating New Mexico sun, our visitors choose between the more direct but also more strenuous “steep” hill, or the longer but more gradual path on which they came down earlier from the upper ranch. The majority opt for the latter, completely missing the opening to the Torreón Trail. Most of those that choose to storm up the big hill may see the small sign pointing the way to the defensive tower, but they are gasping too hard to have any interest in adding another half-mile to their day’s step-count. Or if not they are, as we say, all “museum-ed out” from trying to absorb 200 years of the past in 200 minutes in the sun and heat.<br class="" /><br class="" /></div><div class="">We point them to the nearest shaded area and make sure that they have enough hydration. And – since most of our guests do return – suggest that on their next visit they begin with a gentle stroll through our on-site oasis along the earliest Euro-American trade route in the United States out to the place that made 1776 such a special year in New Mexico history. A solitary saunter is nice. A partnered promenade is better. An excursion with one of our volunteer interpreters is best.<br class="" /><br class="" /></div><div class="">As Mark Twain tells us, “the true charm of pedestrianism does not lie in the walking, or in the scenery, but in the talking... the scenery and the woodsy smells are good … but the supreme pleasure comes from the talk.”<br class="" /><br class="" /></div><div class="">Especially when you are literally immersed in the subject matter.</div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></blockquote>Jimhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08407095418542335994noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19442576.post-52877545631209192452022-11-08T17:26:00.002-05:002022-11-08T17:26:33.503-05:00All the glitters is not silver<p> </p><blockquote style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-family: "Lucida Grande"; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" type="cite"><div><div style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div><span style="font-size: medium;">2022 is the golden anniversary of El Rancho de las Golondrinas (our volunteer gig) as a living museum. The ranch itself is over 300 years old. And they are celebrating with “50 Events for 50 Years.” Some of these will be festivals that are part of the normal schedule – Spring & Fiber, Herb & Lavender, Wine, Viva México!, de los Niños (Children’s Party) and Harvest; plus Renaissance Faire and Spirits of New Mexico Past. Others will be “special events,” such as a “50th Anniversary Walk/Run,” are yet t/b/d. We have the advantage of being a mostly outdoor venue, but still we all were hoping the “post pandemic” world allows all/most of this to happen.<br /></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">The real action started on the 1st of June, but on the opening day of March we kicked off the behind-the-scenes part of volunteer season with our first official activity of the year – assembling the Tinworking Kits for Kids. Tinsmithing, along with weaving and adobe-brick making, are three of the hands-on-history activities the museum offers our guests. Marsha enjoys being docent at the “demo loom” in the weaving area where both adults and children can get an intro lesson on a two-treadle, “walking” machine. Jim sometimes oversees the making of small adobe bricks, which after baking in the sun are used to construct replica buildings during September’s Fiesta de los Niños. Kind of like mud Legos.<br /><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">The Tinmaking Kits for Kids are utilized at local libraries to spread the word about this unique and historic art form. Each paper bag contains English and Spanish instructions, string to be used as a necklace, a nail and most importantly a Tin Cap Roof Disk onto which is glued a paper stencil indicating the places into which the small metal spike is to be punched. Among the designs are a heart, a swallow (“la golondrina”) and a Zia Sun (our state symbol.) The disks, normally used to help hold down roofing or foam board insulation, are purchased at our local Tru-Value.<br /><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Not having our 21st century retail system New Mexico’s mid 19th century Hispano tinsmiths (“hojalateros”) got their metal from discarded five-gallon tin cans of lard, oysters, kerosene, etc, which began arriving in the territory at that time. And came up with their design ideas from architecture or their inventive imaginations. They adapted their leather-working punches to decorate the surface of the tin – stamping it from the front or embossing it from the back. The most common early patterns were rosettes, birds, scrolls, leaves, swags, triangular pediments and half-round arched lunettes.<br /><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The Spanish smithing tradition goes back to the 2nd century CE – but with silver, not tin. And always in service to those with the wealth and power. During the Colonial period the Catholic Church was the primary patron of the art – commissioning silver altars, candlesticks, lamps, statues, retables (frames enclosing decorated panels or revered objects) and other religious items. On the secular side Queen Isabella paid for a silver-overlaid-in-gold jewelry case, crown, scepter and mirror. Plus more. Silversmiths accompanied the 16th century Conquistadors in their vanquishment of the New World</span></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></blockquote><p style="text-align: center;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjZmjD8j-GgYFhX21DnIjXywG2WPaDTqK_y6i-dGeXNcOEvlynpylfivtftsHpQvkig3dHAvLLpLYvqT7W9VwmUNB5NELXid7kLT3RW3-PH2hIifED5YSQ6JCeSykzG0j4xNprOtKs0-_7HRatpH_7GJlwIC1LgcV9o7DCCtMiZt88l9zzcNA" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="868" data-original-width="962" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjZmjD8j-GgYFhX21DnIjXywG2WPaDTqK_y6i-dGeXNcOEvlynpylfivtftsHpQvkig3dHAvLLpLYvqT7W9VwmUNB5NELXid7kLT3RW3-PH2hIifED5YSQ6JCeSykzG0j4xNprOtKs0-_7HRatpH_7GJlwIC1LgcV9o7DCCtMiZt88l9zzcNA" width="266" /></a></div><p></p><blockquote style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-family: "Lucida Grande"; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" type="cite"><div><div style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;">(Colonial Silver Tabernacle Door)</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></blockquote><p style="text-align: center;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi6BGHUMR2t5ukE9A6023Iinu44vWUSaGeIRFt-7ZLoYmdtE2px4_9I7eQWde04d4_h1kpwxo2iu5z7NtXwZsNWaGKJEVF7vpM9pRvOBYYd4XHs_gGUIF3IgDSdDqRrrhSFm_3BTaCeODz_KtHbKlMwe8DCpHC_iOSZWLRhEKwBGPdOOxnqUg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="722" data-original-width="1100" height="210" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi6BGHUMR2t5ukE9A6023Iinu44vWUSaGeIRFt-7ZLoYmdtE2px4_9I7eQWde04d4_h1kpwxo2iu5z7NtXwZsNWaGKJEVF7vpM9pRvOBYYd4XHs_gGUIF3IgDSdDqRrrhSFm_3BTaCeODz_KtHbKlMwe8DCpHC_iOSZWLRhEKwBGPdOOxnqUg" width="320" /></a></div><br /> <p></p><blockquote style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-family: "Lucida Grande"; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" type="cite"><div><div style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Mexico is rich with natural metal deposits. And archeologists have discovered incredibly intricate vessels and ornamentation made of silver and other metals dating from pre-contact MesoAmerica. Nonetheless the precious shiny grayish-white metal was not a particularly prized by the Indigenous People. Tin on the other hand was a big deal. It was extracted with considerable labor and fashioned into personal decorative ornaments, as well as the functional pieces of currency that were used by Indigenous groups in the region. (Interestingly Spain would later set up a mint in Mexico City to produce the silver coins used throughout the Spanish Empire.)<br /><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">In 14th century Spain, tin emerged as a valued commodity used to coat heavy metals, adding strength and a tarnish-resistant finish. When the Spanish established New Spain in the 1500s they introduced this use of tin to the area.<br /><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Locally mined tin became an ingredient in making copper armaments – and its remnants were left as recycled scraps. Thus, like the lard and oyster tins in New Mexico 300 years later, this cheap and available metal become a THE medium of expression for Mexican artists creating objects such as masks, mirrors, milagros and ex-votos. Milagros (“miracles”) are small amulets offered as thanks to a saint, often attached to a saintly image in a church. The shape of the milagro is based on the problem it is intended to solve. It might be an animal, a person or a part of the body. Some take the form of vegetables or pieces of fruit. An ear of corn might be used to request a good harvest. Ex-votos, (“for a vow”) are paintings done as testaments of thanks to a Saint – and portray scenarios of assistance through divine intercession with a written section that describes the miracle including names of mediators, petitioners, persons in distress, locations, and dates. They often are painted on tinplated metal. Photos of our Milagro Tree and one of our ex-votos are attached.<br /></span></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></blockquote><p> </p><blockquote style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-family: "Lucida Grande"; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" type="cite"><div><div style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div><span style="font-size: medium;"></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhiiTSSAb1OTKHLr6JIucbO2lDyCKJW_ugH1niJucVAfE00BpJh9pazs25qHdITrym9po607EveBncB9zNchoD3rMDKE0J1M5T3vTAP_fONzZdu8XFKdZhBpeM5hMtzqVxmshrH5alWbImLjc7i7dbsFsPekYs2LO3jMDWIkZUMhVyRze5elA" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="480" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhiiTSSAb1OTKHLr6JIucbO2lDyCKJW_ugH1niJucVAfE00BpJh9pazs25qHdITrym9po607EveBncB9zNchoD3rMDKE0J1M5T3vTAP_fONzZdu8XFKdZhBpeM5hMtzqVxmshrH5alWbImLjc7i7dbsFsPekYs2LO3jMDWIkZUMhVyRze5elA" width="180" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgB4BHi6AmDaPpioLcQLUM6-mApnoQuCtBtDqW82rbsaBlZpT0lzY-AwZlcCho59Dnju87nxD3CfuS1jdS-AvZQ0B0OrlucZyWji65UEy1yTjWJSV0s-aICGKDic2TZIQKq5ZyL3dJ4-TDQJsL2DFt7fUKYI8seoTaKDEOVO1nhx5xVbt6vcw" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="480" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgB4BHi6AmDaPpioLcQLUM6-mApnoQuCtBtDqW82rbsaBlZpT0lzY-AwZlcCho59Dnju87nxD3CfuS1jdS-AvZQ0B0OrlucZyWji65UEy1yTjWJSV0s-aICGKDic2TZIQKq5ZyL3dJ4-TDQJsL2DFt7fUKYI8seoTaKDEOVO1nhx5xVbt6vcw" width="180" /></a></div></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">That all changed in 1522 when explorer Hernán Cortéz found silver in Taxco, Mexico. Hoping to buy him off Aztec ruler Moctezuma II presented him with a disk of gold and one of silver. Cortéz, who like most of the conquistadors self-funded his trip, heard “cha-ching, cha-ching!” When he still didn’t leave, Moctezuma laid a trap for him in Tenochtitlán. Cortéz, however, took Moctezuma prisoner – and the New World Spanish silver saga was off-and-running.</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">The Spanish brought new methods of silversmithing with them. And while other forms of metalwork in Mexico were subject to harsh restrictions from the mother country – both to protect the interests of metal guilds in Spain, and to prevent the creation of weapons in the wake of the Aztec conquest – silverworking was the exception. Silver from Mexico became an important trade commodity with Asia in the 16th century. Mexican silver guilds steadily gained power and influence and by the 17th century Mexico was known all over the world as the home of fine silverwork – with a distinct look unique to the region.<br /><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">All of which begs the questions (1) Why in the 21st century is Santa Fe Spanish Market replete with artistic tinwork, and very little silver, while the Santa Fe Indian Market is bursting with aesthetically pleasing silver creations, but no tin. (2) why in the mid 19th century were New Mexico Hispano craftsmen creating works of art with cast-off tin food containers while at the same time the Navajo Natives who lived just up the street were creating decorative jewelry made of silver?<br /><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Although some of the silversmiths (“plateros”) moved north, the tsunami of Mexican silver making did not accompany them into the colony of New Mexico. The supply of raw silver was just not there. Nor was there demand – either within the territory, which was struggling to get itself going, or in external markets that were being serviced more than adequately by the Mexican Guilds. The metalworkers kept their skills in shape doing crafting with the small amount of tin that was available. And in 1853 one of these plateros, Cassilio, taught the craft to Astidi Sani – generally recognized as the first Navajo silversmith.<br /><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">As a display of their wealth and an advertisement for their metalworking prowess Mexican plateros typically adorned themselves with silver – concha belts, buckles, shirt buttons, spangles on the sides of pants, hat bands, silver embellished saddles and headstalls (the part of the bridal that fits around a horse’s head.) Crafts dealer John Lawrence Hubbell opened his first trading post at Ganado, Arizona in 1873 selling Navajo blankets, pottery and leather work as well as goods from south of the border. When plateros came to offer their wares to Hubbell, the Navajo took notice – and began to trade horses and livestock to the silversmiths in exchange for learning their metal-working skills. To kickstart the learning process Hubbard brought in two Mexican silversmiths to teach their skills to the Navajo with whom he did business. The early Native silversmiths chose to use their own leather stamping tools for their designs, distinguishing their work from that of the Mexicans. Soon Navajo silversmiths began to develop unique designs and styles which continue to evolve today. And Pueblo tribes such as Zuni and Hopi also took up the craft.<br /><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Meanwhile back in the tinwork world – milagros did not appear in New Mexico until they recently were brought north by Mexican immigrants. Similarly the only ex votos we have seen or heard of are from the rural parts of Mexico.<br /><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Tinwork developed in NewMexico as the materials – the metal itself plus glass and printed religious images – became available to the craftsmen. There are accounts of a small number of tin crosses and boxes in 18th century New Mexican churches and tin mirrors in homes, so at least a few tinsmiths (“hojalateros”) were actively plying their trade. Most of this early work was unsigned. The tin began arriving shortly after General Stephen Kearney’s American Army of the West marched into Santa Fe in 1846 and declared New Mexico a territory of the United States. This opened up trade along the Santa Fe Trail that brought such items as the aforementioned five-gallon tin cans of lard, oysters, kerosene – plus window glass and wallpaper to New Mexico.<br /><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">At about the same time the French-born prelate Jean Baptiste Lamy was appointed head of the territory’s Catholic Church. Lamy recruited young French priests to be in charge of the mostly vacant parishes, and encouraged them to replace the old devotional images in the churches with modern prints and plaster statues. And, like Queen Isabella on a smaller scale, he commissioned the chomping-at-the bit former silversmiths to make religious objects from the now basically cost-free silver-colored metal. The priests came with lithographs of the saints and small devotional cards printed with religious images – items that when combined with a glass covering and decorative frames or holders made of skillfully smithed tin became reasonable replications of the silver retables seen back in Spanish churches. (Proving all that glitters is not silver.) As in Colonial Spain the art, it soon began appearing in the adobe haciendas of the New Mexican ricamente (wealthy.)</span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh44Ypuf7kfdU7PmpYvv6TYoGVCeX2ajKjTJzX4cEhgrxYo1DxvPvraTbPCQBZJcDC_i1DqZCJALS0m7dQYTKSFItbVl6hLo3le0Mzl2_tzyFIz6VDT6XWt9nN_SoDYvHZK8GM_cbuv3kJRaiCL9HV_bCvrP01YP2sRBYnGaD8lXP4rBQj_oA" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="375" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh44Ypuf7kfdU7PmpYvv6TYoGVCeX2ajKjTJzX4cEhgrxYo1DxvPvraTbPCQBZJcDC_i1DqZCJALS0m7dQYTKSFItbVl6hLo3le0Mzl2_tzyFIz6VDT6XWt9nN_SoDYvHZK8GM_cbuv3kJRaiCL9HV_bCvrP01YP2sRBYnGaD8lXP4rBQj_oA" width="141" /></a></div></span></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></blockquote><blockquote style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-family: "Lucida Grande"; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" type="cite"><div><div style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">Less expensive items from the east/midwest began arriving by train however. Pre-framed pictures replaced custom-made decorative frames. Electric lights and coal-oil lamps took the place of tin candle sconces. By 1915 most of the 19th century tinsmiths had stopped working. But shortly thereafter an influx of artists and tourists interested in the revival of Pueblo style architecture and decoration began coming to Santa Fe. Their demand for light fixtures, wastepaper baskets, tissue holders, and other handmade objects in the old styles brought about a revival of tinsmithing in the state. And over time decorative tinwork made its way to the walls of everyday New Mexicans – an audience that their silver counterparts would have been priced out of. Good news for folk-art lovers and the New Mexico tinsmithing community.<br /><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-size: medium;">And for El Rancho de las Golondrinas. Otherwise our Metalworking Kits for Kids would be more expensive to make than Moctezuma’s gift to Cortéz that started this whole megillah 500 years ago.</span></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></blockquote><span style="font-size: medium;"><br class="Apple-interchange-newline" /></span><br />Jimhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08407095418542335994noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19442576.post-47458405481352810092022-02-22T16:42:00.004-05:002022-02-22T16:42:24.334-05:00The Navajo Way <p> </p><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;">When we moved to New Mexico in 2017 we decided to leave behind most of our New England furnishings and decorations and instead give our new home a seriously Santa Fe look. We brought with us all of the southwestern art and craft works had already accumulated during our 25 years of vacationing out here. But left behind our oh-so-New-England Hitchcock dining room and replaced it with an equally regional table-and-chair set made of salvaged antique doors and other “[Spanish] colonial pieces,” handcrafted in “Old” Mexico. </span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;">The majority of our acquisitions however have been smaller and less functional – paintings, basketry, pottery – most of them Native American or Hispanic folk art found at estate sales throughout the town. With Covid precautions these company-run events have moved from the owner’s homes to a large store space in a shopping mall about 10 minutes from our address. The items are still just as varied and interesting, but no longer do we get to wander through stranger’s residences to see how they personalized their own space. </span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;">Our latest purchase came from that venue. The estate sale staff are not always totally knowledgeable about the items. This one, which now hangs on our living room wall, was said to be a contemporary Navajo Medallion. Could be. Or not. </span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh2cDfLHbqw2-Ua_5-zAxgsHlgSOWjvWY3_ycyPKIE15FinraL1BNuwokftR_iVYrulJRq_K-MFMB4-uToiPdheqAs0JFvpdBgbAB2JMKvPFt8O_1rsf8dbIaUElgoLOOIfRww4nqOEAiaLbV6qrdNRO8p1ydfSNsKvpvGkGo9Yya5070y5WA" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="640" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh2cDfLHbqw2-Ua_5-zAxgsHlgSOWjvWY3_ycyPKIE15FinraL1BNuwokftR_iVYrulJRq_K-MFMB4-uToiPdheqAs0JFvpdBgbAB2JMKvPFt8O_1rsf8dbIaUElgoLOOIfRww4nqOEAiaLbV6qrdNRO8p1ydfSNsKvpvGkGo9Yya5070y5WA" width="320" /></a></div><br /></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;">We do have two pre-pandemic purchases that we know for sure are both Navajo. Back then the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture had monthly “Meet the Curators” events to which the public could bring their items and have them authenticated – without the monetary valuation. They both are modern weavings – one of which we are hoping to bring to the Antiques Roadshow, which is slated to visit Santa Fe next summer. Pictures of them, and words about them will come in a separate email. We did enjoy seeing CT represented on the roadshow recently, taped in summer 2021 at the Wadsworth Mansion in Middletown.</span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;">But, speaking of Navajos…</span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg62JVTfRlFtd0NSUrCMRqveOKaCNr8UuwUe1YJdAiF6-ZMy-GaqNobaIiXerSB-bgNw_3Ck_l_GjkgRtV-kd-hRrtW2pY2TMmYW6OXOkzf7k5_0__tJ1INLXXyamV4uhPpHK0nhAzLzuWJ7NBMbiukUlqA2rVyINp3Hso7-e0fSPGCMfgn-w" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="578" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg62JVTfRlFtd0NSUrCMRqveOKaCNr8UuwUe1YJdAiF6-ZMy-GaqNobaIiXerSB-bgNw_3Ck_l_GjkgRtV-kd-hRrtW2pY2TMmYW6OXOkzf7k5_0__tJ1INLXXyamV4uhPpHK0nhAzLzuWJ7NBMbiukUlqA2rVyINp3Hso7-e0fSPGCMfgn-w" width="289" /></a></div><br /><br /></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;">Many people had never heard the term “Navajo Nation” before it appeared in the national news during the early days of the Covid pandemic. In parts of Connecticut, Red Sox Nation maybe. Since the Super Bowl, LA Ram Nation perhaps. But not Navajo, which unlike these sports team sovereign states is actually a real Nation – with real citizens (300,000, 36% in New Mexico) living on 27,000 sq. mi. of real estate located in parts of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah. In late 2020 it was one of the areas in the country hit hardest by the Corona virus. Now it is one of the safest, reports <a class="" href="http://thenation.com/">thenation.com</a>. “While the rest of the country were saying no to masks, no to staying home, and saying you’re taking away my freedoms, here on Navajo, it wasn’t about us individually...It was about protecting our families, our communities and our nation.”<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;">And it all began with Four Sacred Mountains.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;">In Christianity there is Adam and Eve. For the Navajo (or Diné as they prefer) it is the Emergence Story. In this account the Diné, passed through several underground worlds before emerging onto earth amid the quartet of mountains that demarcate their traditional homeland – Blanca Peak, Mount Taylor, San Francisco Peak, and Hesperus Mountain.</span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><div class="" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiwTd1ixkcYzrbM7eb7Wz08QHbaZ_k7xQvY_Hko9rxGZMdZZAAyXwyvjJqSYFXGFFiGMQn8Usd_-2d2BsrDkSjJ9BExwh2cGsxFvKc6IK6NaLeTcFIS1z2PW6Ae8HJH-QEBqz381fOeN-zMrh75YoWCIFD56u6ESlM01RgAnbGLdtA9xQ4XJA" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="528" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiwTd1ixkcYzrbM7eb7Wz08QHbaZ_k7xQvY_Hko9rxGZMdZZAAyXwyvjJqSYFXGFFiGMQn8Usd_-2d2BsrDkSjJ9BExwh2cGsxFvKc6IK6NaLeTcFIS1z2PW6Ae8HJH-QEBqz381fOeN-zMrh75YoWCIFD56u6ESlM01RgAnbGLdtA9xQ4XJA" width="264" /></a></div><br /><br /></span></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;">Or not. (Tribal oral accounts and modern social scientists often differ.)<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;">Anthropologists would say the Navajo migrated into the Southwest between 200 and 1300 A.D after splitting off from the Athabaskans – an Indigenous language family originating in western Canada and Alaska. New Mexico also has four Apache offshoots – Chiricahua, Mescalero, Jicarilla and Lipan.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;">Either way, between 900 A.D. and 1525 A.D. New Mexico Navajos were trading regularly with the Pueblo peoples – while introducing new goods and technologies, such as moccasins and flint to the area. In the 17th and 18th centuries the tribe spread into southeastern Utah and northeastern Arizona.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;">The Navajo first came into contact with Spanish explorers in the 16th century. The Natives quickly incorporated some of the Spanish agricultural techniques and animals (goats, churra sheep) into their subsistence system. They also adopted horses, which facilitated their slave and food raids on neighboring tribes. Both Navajo and Apache aided Pueblo Natives in the 1680 Pueblo Revolt, which temporarily drove the Spaniards out of New Mexico. In 1693 the Spanish reconquered the Rio Grande Valley, causing some Puebloans to take refuge among the Navajos, resulting in an intermixing of the two cultures.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Diné philosophy, spirituality, and sheep are intertwined like wool in the strongest weaving. Sheep symbolize the Good Life, living in harmony and balance on the land. Before they acquired domesticated sheep on this continent, Diné held the Idea of Sheep in their collective memory for thousands of years. While wild mountain sheep provided meat and the Diné gathered wool from the shedding places, the species of sheep in North America do not have a herd behavior that permits domestication. As a result, the Diné asked their Holy People to send them a sheep that would live with them and with care they would provide a sustainable living. In the early 1600s, Navajo acquisition of ‘la raza churra’ [churra breed] sheep from the Spanish colonists inspired a radical lifestyle change to an agro-pastoralist way of life and expanded mobility.” (<a class="" href="http://navajolifeway.com/">Navajolifeway.com</a>) The Navajo acquired their sheep through trading and raiding – ovine being much easier to rustle than equines or bovines, which would scatter. While the former would follow them like…<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;">In 1847 the United States took control of New Mexico – and messed up things biologically, economically, and semantically (corrupting the wool-givers honorific to “churro”).<br class="" />The Spanish and Natives controlled the breeding of their stock to ensure purity. But in the 1850's thousands of Churro were sent west to supply the California Gold Rush. And most of the remaining Spanish-owned Churro were cross-bred with “fine wool” rams to help fill the demand for garment wool generated by the increasing U.S. population, and the Civil War. Then in 1863 the U.S. Army declared war on the Navajo – as part of which they decimated the Navajo flocks. (More on this below.)<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;">According to their oral tradition, the Diné were taught to weave by two holy ones: Spider Man and Spider Woman – he created the loom of sunshine, lightning and rain, while she taught the Navajo how to weave.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;">Some anthropologists however say the Navajo learned the craft in the 17th century from the neighboring Pueblo tribes – perhaps during the Pueblo Revolt when many Puebloans sought refuge in Navajo homes. Others suggest that Navajo had picked it up earlier. There is however agreement that (1) BCE (Before Churro Era) both Navajo and Puebloans wove with cotton, which they grew, and found wool left behind by feral ovine. (2) Puebloans introduced the Navajo to vertical looms replacing their much smaller back-strap looms that could not produce a textile more than 18” wide. And (3) Diné were the most skillful Native American weavers, “prized for their vivid patterns, durability and all-around practicality.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Navajo people believed that no one was perfect but God, and thus what they created needed to have some degree of imperfection, a sort of humility. The Navajo also believed that they wove their soul into the pieces they created, so they’d implement a loose thread somewhere into their blankets. Invisible to the naked eye, the loose thread would allow their soul to escape.” (<a class="" href="http://heddels.com/">Heddels.com</a>)<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;">By the early 1860s Americans of European descent began to settle on and around Navajo lands creating conflict. U.S. Agents in the field negotiated multiple compromise agreements with the Indigenous People, which Congress declined to ratify. Then in April 1860, one thousand Navajo attacked Fort Defiance, located on Diné land. Only superior weaponry prevented the loss of the fort. In response the Army created a plan to remove all Navajo from their homeland. Once the threat of a Confederate invasion of New Mexico had been eliminated at the Battle of Glorietta Pass General James H. Carleton – now commander of the NM district – pivoted to fighting the Navajo. Viewing them as “the main obstacle to stability,” Carleton poured all of his energy into eliminating the “Indian problem.”<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;">The General fixated on an area known as Bosque Redondo along the Pecos River near Fort Sumner as the site for the reservation onto which the Navajo and Mescalero Apaches would be relocated – in spite of the fact the panel of Army officers had decided it could not support such a large population. He appointed Kit Carson to lead the relocation effort against the two tribes. The Apache fell first. In the summer of 1863, Carson initiated a scorched-earth policy to break the Navajo’s will and force their surrender by destroying their crops and killing their livestock. He then returned to Fort Wingate to await their surrender.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;">Between August 1863 and late 1866 more than 8,500 men, women, and children were forced to leave their homes in northeastern Arizona and northwestern New Mexico and make a series of forced marches (the “Long Walk”) to Bosque Redondo Reservation. Along the way, approximately 200 Navajos died of starvation and exposure to the elements. “Some old handicapped people, and children who couldn’t make the journey, were shot on the spot, and their bodies were left behind for the crows and coyotes to eat...families jump right down [tall cliffs] because they don’t want to be shot by the enemy,” recounted descendants of some survivors.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiziLxE2Zzm7fq18TBNzeJut1YS0s4KOS2SbJhxTNz12F4lj0MhMlvQm8TOarcAKBdqPCVsU89HGfhAsIvFjSL7htdrFxC6CS10wPdUHabYQYIvobd9O3p879FCXfbWOxG5Ujynn-N7VY4kx5seUQ4jBLnNhidX5IQ2D-MHgXn8fhDZnwZfFQ" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="286" data-original-width="640" height="143" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiziLxE2Zzm7fq18TBNzeJut1YS0s4KOS2SbJhxTNz12F4lj0MhMlvQm8TOarcAKBdqPCVsU89HGfhAsIvFjSL7htdrFxC6CS10wPdUHabYQYIvobd9O3p879FCXfbWOxG5Ujynn-N7VY4kx5seUQ4jBLnNhidX5IQ2D-MHgXn8fhDZnwZfFQ" width="320" /></a></div></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;">(Long Walk Home, mural by Richard K. Yazzie, 2005)</span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;">Carleton had anticipated 3,000 to 4,000 occupants, but nearly 8,000 were interred in the 160-acre camp. Tensions ran high between Navajo and Mescalero – traditional enemies. Army rations were not sufficient, bacon was often rancid and the Pecos River water was too alkaline to be drinkable. Dysentery and other ailments spread among the population. Meanwhile, not all Navajo had surrendered with about 1,000 remaining in Monument Valley, AZ. Today they are remembered with pride by many Diné people as having “conquered the United States.”<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;">General William T. Sherman came to investigate conditions there in 1868 and quickly realized that the “experiment” at Bosque Redondo had to be abandoned. Barboncito, one of the Diné leaders, implored Sherman to send him and his people “to no other country other than my own.” An agreement was negotiated allowing the Navajo to return to a portion of their traditional homeland in Arizona and New Mexico – and providing each family with one male and one female Churro sheep, to start breeding their own herds again. Being good shepherds the Navajo dramatically increased their number of livestock over the next 60 years. The sheep thrived under Diné pastoralists and assumed a central role in their creativity and culture as traditional Navajo weaving evolved to utilize the special qualities of the glossy Navajo-Churro wool.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;">The Federal Government increased the size of their reservation and provided protection from raiding and looting of the Navajo by outsiders. The Natives sold their wool both as a raw material and woven into rugs and blankets, while increasing the number of sheep from 15,000 in the 1870s to 500,000 in the 1920s. But during the 1930s “dust-bowl drought” the government recommended the number of reservation livestock be dramatically reduced. When the Natives refused, the Feds cut the size of the herds in half by buying or taking them to send to market – or slaughtering them. First to go were the Churro, which the agents thought were “scruffy and unfit.” Those who objected were arrested, and many Navajo lost their only source of income. Diné refer to this as the “Second Long Walk.” In the late 1930s, the government established a quota system for livestock on the reservation, which the Navajo Tribal Government later took over. By 1950 pure-bred Churro survivors were to be found only in isolated Northern New Mexico Hispanic villages and remote canyons on the Navajo Native Reservation, where the Natives had hidden them from the government’s sheep slaughterers.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;">By 1977, the "old type" Navajo sheep had dwindled to less than 500 head, so Utah State University’s Dr. Lyle McNeal formed the Navajo Sheep Project to revitalize this breed and keep it from further depletion. Currently there are over 4,500 registered churro, 1,500 on the Navajo Reservation. El Rancho de los Golondrinas living history museum where we volunteer has about 30 “true” churros.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhY-BOCujn9nafVklA_szJr7V18KPCsWX6z6efyCJ2evhq07MFNWimENn94PL0NqzddAy7CnIMMgN6vK26f_9PV5hqy4yFZAITy9feVE2mpuogrHo8quNJkfBlIqpCqf6TtjatSB6zoBx9qh7cuhtQtPYq92_GuvJWP7cvJtuOgs-UYZAMwbw" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="862" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhY-BOCujn9nafVklA_szJr7V18KPCsWX6z6efyCJ2evhq07MFNWimENn94PL0NqzddAy7CnIMMgN6vK26f_9PV5hqy4yFZAITy9feVE2mpuogrHo8quNJkfBlIqpCqf6TtjatSB6zoBx9qh7cuhtQtPYq92_GuvJWP7cvJtuOgs-UYZAMwbw" width="162" /></a></div><br /></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;">The Treaty of 1868 placed the Diné in a position to rebuild a sense of tribal identity. They resumed raising goats and sheep, and began exchanging weaving and silver-work with white traders. While somewhat economically independent, like most other tribes, the Navajo were still being forced to assimilate into white society. The first Bureau of Indian Affairs school opened at Fort Defiance in 1870, followed by eight others – all English only. (Many Navajos hid their children to keep them from being taken.) Education reforms under FDR closed these institutions, replacing them with two others less militaristic. However, one still continued to adhere to the old practices while the other had a family-like atmosphere, humane treatment, and a Navajo-based curriculum. The end result nevertheless was much language loss among the Navajo. Oil and gas discoveries in the 1950s and 1960s on the Utah portion of the reservation enriched the Nation, while at the same time contaminating water and damaging rangelands. Uranium mining, begun in the 1940s, brought additional funds to the tribal treasury, but radioactive contamination has left death and disease in mining communities.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;">Although not granted U.S. citizenship until 1924, many Navajo served in the First World War. In WW II 400 Navajo “Code Talkers” played a major part in winning the war in the Pacific by developing a communication system based on their Native language that was impossible for the Japanese to break. Over 3,000 Navajo also served in the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and Women’s Army Corps. While several thousand more left the reservation to work in war-related industries. The arm patch of the Navajo Code Talkers Association says, “the language they were forbidden to speak is the same language that saved this nation.”<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;">Despite operating three casinos (2 NM, 1 AZ) the Navajo Nation Gaming Enterprise has only turned over about $6 million in profits to the tribe. Many Elders on the reservation face food insecurity. <a class="" href="https://www.anelder.org/">Adopt-A-Native-Elder</a> delivers food, medical supplies, firewood and other forms of support as well as marketing Navajo weaving and jewelry through its website – and is one of the local charitable organizations we now support.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;">After having been inculcated with the prudent wisdom of our Puritan forefathers for 70+ years we are now trying to expand our horizons with the wise sayings of the Elders of our new southwest homeland. Many are similar, “Be patient and you will attain success.” Some are clearly more applicable to this part of the world, “A rattlesnake’s tail is the most eloquent thing on earth.” Others need to be modified to fit our New England sensibilities. “One ought to give his wealth to the worthy who are going to make the best use of it” The Diné are worthy for sure. And extremely generous. But our genetic makeup tells us, “all things in moderation.” Except, of course, moderation.<br class="" /></span></span></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br class="Apple-interchange-newline" /></span></span><br />Jimhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08407095418542335994noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19442576.post-12753706177357404062022-01-06T15:19:00.009-05:002022-01-06T15:20:40.137-05:00Chocolate<p> </p><div dir="auto" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: LucidaGrande; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Possible upside to climate change. Two days after Thanksgiving we put up our metal Victorian Christmas tree in the morning, then hit golf balls in our shirt sleeves after lunch with snow capped mountains in the background. (A few inches on top of a manmade base allowed Santa Fe Ski Basin to open for the season.) Other decorations, including our electric farolitos (aka “luminarias” in CT and southern NM) went up over the next few days.<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-4BA-oNGh3sI/YddOx8Js_TI/AAAAAAAACS4/LbbU4phbg-c_4eE2NWrHD0k6187_kpTWACNcBGAsYHQ/IMG_1339.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="640" height="240" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-4BA-oNGh3sI/YddOx8Js_TI/AAAAAAAACS4/LbbU4phbg-c_4eE2NWrHD0k6187_kpTWACNcBGAsYHQ/IMG_1339.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: LucidaGrande; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Actual downside to climate change. Unusually dry conditions and warm days are causing us to water the perennial planters, in-ground flowers and trees that would normally rely on Mother Nature for off-season maintenance moisture. This may go on throughout the winter. Fortunately the small amount of rain that accompanied the higher elevation snow temporarily replenished our barrels – the ski area is at 12,000 feet, we are 7,200 feet. Now the trick is to purposefully empty them out before the inevitable Dec-Feb freeze hits, and the hoped-for snow starts falling.<br /><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: LucidaGrande; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">We don’t know about you, but in our family sweets in the form of cookies, cakes, candy and the occasional pie are a big part of the winter holidays. And especially anything chocolate. Which also, it turns out, was the confection of choice for earlier New Mexican residents and incomers such as the first Indian settlers, the Spanish Conquistadors and Re-Conquistadors, Converso Jews, Native mercenaries in the Apache Wars, Anglo travelers on the Santa Fe Trail and early passengers of the Santa Fe Railroad.<br /><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: LucidaGrande; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">And even before them, for the ancient residents of southern Ecuador where 5,500-year-old ceramic pots and a piece of a mortar were found containing traces of cacao (from which chocolate is made.) Shamans among the Shuar Indians are believed to have used a heavy cylindrical stone called a “mano” to crush the beans on a grinding stone known as a “metate.” (The same device used in New Mexico into the 1900s to grind corn and wheat.) A fire softened the cacao into a paste that, after being left to dry, was grated and/or diluted in water to make hot chocolate.<br /><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: LucidaGrande; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">The beans also grew in the equatorial part of Mexico – and served as currency there until around 1740. “A turkey was 100 cacao beans,” according to archaeologist Cameron L. McNeil. But not just for Thanksgiving dinner. “Turkeys were probably used in...the creation of blankets, paints, tools, musical instruments, food, and art,” according to UNM anthropologist Patricia Crown.<br /></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: LucidaGrande; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-QdKXoMacZ8E/YddOj6l_KkI/AAAAAAAACSs/DT_i9V2NqloVesQXqyAKjQpoxpMXIKRGACNcBGAsYHQ/Screen%2BShot%2B2021-12-01%2Bat%2B1.57.22%2BPM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="790" data-original-width="634" height="240" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-QdKXoMacZ8E/YddOj6l_KkI/AAAAAAAACSs/DT_i9V2NqloVesQXqyAKjQpoxpMXIKRGACNcBGAsYHQ/Screen%2BShot%2B2021-12-01%2Bat%2B1.57.22%2BPM.png" width="193" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-l03VNAEiAG4/YddOiBvPEjI/AAAAAAAACSo/Qts0VYzVfcsHVRhlnEXlBCp4MqdV8q6eQCNcBGAsYHQ/Excavated%252Bturkey%252Bpens.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="432" data-original-width="288" height="240" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-l03VNAEiAG4/YddOiBvPEjI/AAAAAAAACSo/Qts0VYzVfcsHVRhlnEXlBCp4MqdV8q6eQCNcBGAsYHQ/Excavated%252Bturkey%252Bpens.jpg" width="160" /></a></div></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: LucidaGrande; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">(bowl fragment with two opposing turkeys & </span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: large;">excavated turkey pens</span>)</span></div><div dir="auto" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: LucidaGrande; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: LucidaGrande; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Guatemala and Venezuela ultimately became the primary growers of cocoa beans, which the natives ground, roasted and fermented into a drink. And chocolate became an important part of royal and religious events in both Mayan and Aztec cultures. But not for the common people. “It was used to commune with the gods,” something only a select few were entitled to do, according to Nicolasa Chávez, of Santa Fe’s Museum of International Folk Art. In the 1500s, only merchants, warriors, nobles, and the royals could obtain cocoa drinks, which they imbibed from golden cups and engraved or painted goblets.<br /><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: LucidaGrande; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">The Spanish love affair with the caffeine confection began with Christopher Columbus – or Hernando Cortés – or the Franciscan missionary monks. Chocolate historians disagree.<br /><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: LucidaGrande; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Columbus was greeted by the indigenous Nicaraguans with a bitter, spicy chocolate drink on his Fourth Voyage in 1502. Gourmet chocolatier Jacques Torres however believes that Hernando Cortés, conquerer of the Aztec kingdom, first brought it back to the European continent. In a 1520 letter to Carlos V, Cortés mentioned that the natives imbibed hot chocolate as a stimulant.<br /><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: LucidaGrande; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">“But cacao is not in the inventory of goods that he took to show [the king],” counters archaeologist Cameron L. McNeil. She attributes cacao’s introduction to the friars who escorted the Kekchi (Maya people of Guatemala and Beliz) to meet Prince Phillip in 1544. The friars had regular access to chocolate because many Meso-Americans continued their pre-conquest tradition of bringing it as a religious offering to places of worship. “The friars would turn around and sell the offerings and make a lot of money doing this. They could also consume a certain amount of the offerings themselves. Let’s be honest, the friars were often as greedy as the conquistadors.”<br /><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: LucidaGrande; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">In any event, by the late 1500s chocolate was a much-loved indulgence in the Spanish court. Soon, other European nations such as Italy and France visited parts of Central America, learned about cacao and brought it back to their respective countries.<br /><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: LucidaGrande; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Contrary to popular and scholarly opinion, the reason for chocolate’s success with Europeans was not that they could [disguise] indigenous flavors with sugar. [They] did not alter chocolate to fit the predilections of their palate. Instead, Europeans...developed a taste for Indian chocolate, and sought to re-create the indigenous chocolate experience in America and in Europe,” according to Archaeological Scientist Heather Trigg.<br /><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: LucidaGrande; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">But one place they did not need to introduce their sweet new discovery was New Mexico. Traces of it have been found on a 1,000-year-old pottery shard unearthed at <a href="https://www.nps.gov/chcu/learn/historyculture/index.htm">Chaco Canyon</a> Discovered with the pots were scarlet macaw feathers – confirming trade with Central America, likely using the same commercial trail that was to become El Camino Real under the Spanish. Most Chacoans however did not get to enjoy the chocolate, which still was “an expensive delicacy enjoyed by few during elaborate rituals,” per Smithsonian Magazine.<br /> </span></div><div dir="auto" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: LucidaGrande; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">The pre-contact Pueblo Indians (descendants of the ancient Anasazi) probably continued trading with the successors of those Meso-American Natives. But reconnaissance into New Mexico before the first colonization indicated that if the incoming Spanish felt that they really needed something, they ought to bring it themselves.<br /><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: LucidaGrande; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Although the inventory of goods taken on Juan de Oñate’s 1598 first settlement expedition contains only one reference to chocolate, the repeated mention of sugar, and the discovery of shards of small handle-less Chinese porcelain cups, suggest that the confection was consumed by at least some members of his party. Two years after his arrival Oñate reported having “eighty small boxes of chocolate” – so precious that he stored it in intricate spice jars with locking metal lids to protect it from thieves. The early settlers also brought their own cocoa beans, which would not grow in the New Mexico climate – leading to a need to import their beloved sweet, and 420 years later prompting this reaction from a young museum guest to Marsha’s story that the confection was only consumed on very special occasions. “No chocolate! That’s the worst thing ever!”<br /><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: LucidaGrande; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Meanwhile back in Mexico – NM’s faraway supplier – it was apparently more available to the masses. Just not during them. According to Englishman Thomas Gage, in 1637 the women of Chiapas, Mexico “made a habit of sipping chocolate during long church services [which] so inflamed the bishop that he forbade it as an interruption of Mass. When the parishioners retaliated by celebrating Mass in convents, he threatened both the congregants and the nuns with excommunication. Soon afterword, the bishop grew ill. He died from a poisoned cup of chocolate.” (Nicolasa Chávez.) Revenge is sweet.<br /><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: LucidaGrande; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">In 1661, Nuevo México Territorial Governor, Lopez de Mendizabal, wrote of enjoying time spent sipping chocolate with his wife Dona Teresa. Next year they both were imprisoned and tried by the Spanish Inquisition for the crime of judaizante, the hidden practice of Jewish rituals. One of their offenses – an excessive consumption of chocolate. After being imprisoned in a cell for six months Teresa rebutted each of the 47 charges against her. Her case was suspended and she was ultimately released after 28 months in prison. But her life was essentially ruined. Her husband died while in jail, and she spent the rest of her days fighting to get all of her possessions back from the courts. (Hear Dona Teresa “in her own words” @) <a href="https://video.wttw.com/video/moments-time-dona-teresa-her-own-words/">https://video.wttw.com/video/moments-time-dona-teresa-her-own-words/</a>)<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-UJlSgXLvQ0Y/YddOWmYXQuI/AAAAAAAACSg/Zjhjo22bS384wctHK1WjBFS_tKvCv3e0wCNcBGAsYHQ/Screen%2BShot%2B2021-12-01%2Bat%2B2.06.42%2BPM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="752" data-original-width="1280" height="188" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-UJlSgXLvQ0Y/YddOWmYXQuI/AAAAAAAACSg/Zjhjo22bS384wctHK1WjBFS_tKvCv3e0wCNcBGAsYHQ/Screen%2BShot%2B2021-12-01%2Bat%2B2.06.42%2BPM.png" width="320" /></a></div></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: LucidaGrande; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">The Spanish were chased from New Mexico by the Natives in the 1680 Pueblo Revolt. And returned in the Reconquista of 1692. “When Diego DeVargas marched north for the reconquest... each of his soldiers carried a wedge of chocolate all the way up the Camino Real. And as he negotiated with the people who had toppled Spanish rule...he enticed them with a bit of chocolate diplomacy.” National Geographic reports that subsequent Spanish “settlers traveling to Santa Fe [in 1695] record having chocolate among their food supplies.”<br /> </span></div><div dir="auto" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: LucidaGrande; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">But confections alone did not lead to cordial coexistence. The year 1787 saw “extraordinary expenditures of the Peace and War of this Province of New Mexico...3 arrobas [75 pounds] of ordinary chocolate.” Next year Governor Juan Bautista de Anza, authorized payment of chocolate to the Comanche Indians for their assistance in the Spanish-Apache wars “Merchandise that has been delivered to the Lieutenant Jose Maldonado, Pay Master of the Presidio of Santa Fe, New Mexico for the reward of the Comanches: un cajon de buen chocolate [a large box of good chocolate.]” (Wiley Online Library, Chocolate Timeline)<br /><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: LucidaGrande; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">In the first half of the 1800s chocolate was a special treat for those who successfully completed the trek along the Santa Fe Trail. “There’s accounts of people coming up the Santa Fe Trail being greeted with a steaming, frothy cup of chocolate,” according to Nicolasa Chávez.<br /><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: LucidaGrande; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">And from 1880 to 1889 The Santa Fe Railroad offered an entrée of “sweetbreads, sautéed with mushrooms Spanish puffs and chocolate glaze to tempt reluctant travelers aboard. (Wiley Online Library)</span></div><div dir="auto" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: LucidaGrande; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: LucidaGrande; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">But what about today’s travelers to the Land of Enchantment? Should we, like Juan de Oñate, BYOC? Not to worry. For us there is the Santa Fe Chocolate Trail – “a cocoa-dusted route that connects...esteemed purveyors of this fine food of the gods...using an array of sweet treats and organic ingredients native to New Mexico, including chile, pinon nuts and lavender.” Among the stops is Kakawa Chocolate House whose hot chocolate “elixirs” regularly relax, refresh and revive us on our runs into town.<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-HP2vj_afBFo/YddOPkg--HI/AAAAAAAACSc/VYMPdDJ8wPQLv2f3oSaGVxs8SYlJ4wm5wCNcBGAsYHQ/Screen%2BShot%2B2021-12-01%2Bat%2B2.22.38%2BPM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="768" data-original-width="680" height="240" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-HP2vj_afBFo/YddOPkg--HI/AAAAAAAACSc/VYMPdDJ8wPQLv2f3oSaGVxs8SYlJ4wm5wCNcBGAsYHQ/Screen%2BShot%2B2021-12-01%2Bat%2B2.22.38%2BPM.png" width="213" /></a></div></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: LucidaGrande; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">For us, chocolate will continue to appear on the scene throughout the holidays in such treats as croissants, as well as chocolate-chili and black-and-white cookies. More will be gifted to us. And from us. Some of it will come from stops on “the trail.” In fact, as this was being written, the scent of Pumpkin Chocolate Chip cookies from Wethersfield Historical Society’s Heritage Family Cookbook filled the air – and the caffeine jolt from the excess Trader Joe’s semi-sweet pieces fueled Jim’s fingers.<br /><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: LucidaGrande; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">But we know that not everyone is a chocaholic. Or even a chocolate liker. So we hope that all of you enjoy the aromas and tastes – whether sweet or savory – as well as the sights, sounds and other sensations that make YOUR winter festivities special to YOU.<br /><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: LucidaGrande; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Oh, if you happen to end up with some extra chocolate that can’t really find a use for...remember it is always welcome to stay, however briefly, at our house.<br /><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: LucidaGrande; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">BTW – at least part of the “old normal” may be back. During the final editing of this piece Santa Fe’s temps dropped into the 40s (mid 20s overnight) – and TV meteorologists were excietedly predicting the “first official winter storm of the season” featuring “west winds 35 to 45 mph with gusts up to 65 mph” plus snow in the heights, rain at our elevation and something in between, in between.<br /><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: LucidaGrande; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">They were spot-on with the wind speed and temperatures – not so much with the precipitation. From our neighborhood view there looked to be barely a dusting in the mountains. While the water level hardly moved in our rain barrels. (Even though we likely could use them this winter, we will drain and store them in the garage to prevent cracking during the freezin’ season. And hope that it won’t be a dry cold.) Two days later we walked in sunny downtown Santa Fe and revived ourselves with chocolate elixirs at Kakawa while sitting outside in borderline 60 degree weather. More of the same is expected – at least for the short term.</span></div><div dir="auto" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: LucidaGrande; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: LucidaGrande; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><div style="font-family: LucidaGrande;"><span style="font-size: large;">Felices Vacaciones (Happy Holidays) </span></div><div style="font-family: LucidaGrande;"><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></div></div><div dir="auto" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: LucidaGrande; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-qcaGiimI2Ns/YddOH7RR3zI/AAAAAAAACSY/xicPdT6DZO8AtvFVOz_vugIwQ1btgX04ACNcBGAsYHQ/DSC07317.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="480" height="240" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-qcaGiimI2Ns/YddOH7RR3zI/AAAAAAAACSY/xicPdT6DZO8AtvFVOz_vugIwQ1btgX04ACNcBGAsYHQ/DSC07317.jpeg" width="180" /></a></div></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">(A portion of Christmas brunch)</span></div></div>Jimhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08407095418542335994noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19442576.post-76769635563245733282021-11-26T17:13:00.001-05:002021-11-26T17:13:09.589-05:00What's not to love?<p>
</p><br /><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;">Well, this season of “volunteer interpreting” at El Rancho de las Golondrinas has come to a close. The last event of the year was October 23’s “Spirits of New Mexico” – “meet the ghosts of history who lived and died in the Land of Enchantment!...a diverse assortment of characters from New Mexico’s illustrious and often little-known past...a family-friendly, but spooky Halloween atmosphere.”</span></span></div><div class="" dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; word-wrap: break-word;"><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-vYjz57Ddj1Y/YaFbHAJTysI/AAAAAAAACRY/ynckIQheMzYEcnELvBdzqP_4AxfXd41RgCLcBGAsYHQ/Screen%2BShot%2B2021-11-09%2Bat%2B9.05.32%2BAM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="752" data-original-width="1280" height="188" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-vYjz57Ddj1Y/YaFbHAJTysI/AAAAAAAACRY/ynckIQheMzYEcnELvBdzqP_4AxfXd41RgCLcBGAsYHQ/Screen%2BShot%2B2021-11-09%2Bat%2B9.05.32%2BAM.png" width="320" /></a></div><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;">This was our fourth time at Spirits – 2017 as visitors and 2018 & 19 as volunteer specters. The event did not happen in 2020. But Golondrinas did open late September through early October for limited numbers of masked guests to walk the property with the buildings closed and a few of us equally masked Volunteer Interpreters (VIs) on site. So we still got the opportunity to put on our costumes and share our ever growing knowledge of our new home state’s history with a much smaller than usual number of visitors. Most of them seemed intently interested in what we had to say – perhaps indicating how really starved for entertainment and human contact they were. All of them appeared as thrilled to be out and about as we were.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;">The museum covers 200 acres of a former 700 acre ranch and paraje (rest stop) on El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro (the Royal Road of the Interior) – THE trade route with Mexico. It was owned by one family from the early 1700s to 1932. The property was refashioned into a living museum in the 1960s with what can be thought of as three major sections: Golondrinas Plaza (Placita), Baca Plaza, and the “Far Side.” The first is a partially reconstructed example of an 18th century Spanish colonial hacienda on El Camino Real. The second shows New Mexico in the first half of the 1800s after the arrival of goods from the United States along the Santa Fe Trail. The third segment portrays the territory/state from mid-19th to early 20th centuries – when the railroad came to New Mexico. Marsha is usually assigned somewhere in Golondrinas Plaza. Jim on the Far Side.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;">Normally the season begins with full-day training sessions on the four Saturdays of March. As was becoming normal, this year all the meetings were conducted on Zoom. Not held was the annual April series of “Spanish Heritage Days” wherein school kids from all over New Mexico – 1,000/day – are bused in for a crash course in the history of their state. The museum is defended by 20 unarmed docents. These sessions teach us to condense our stories of the past into bite-sized pieces and deliver them at warp speed to a perpetually moving audience. And to ferret out the “runaway teachers” who try to hide in the nooks and crannies of the property.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;">El Rancho reopened in June 2021 under the same ground rules as fall 2020. And we, now double vaxxed, were eager to get back on the job. Buildings were opened for guests in mid-summer when NM relaxed some of its Covid restrictions. Still, many of the VIs understandably did not return.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;">Golondrinas Placita is the entry point to the museum – and a necessary first stop in order to understand the story of New Mexico. With a smaller number of docents Marsha was frequently on her own or with one other guide.</span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-VrA-uDbKCkY/YaFbRAO2dfI/AAAAAAAACRc/ToY1v2NibcM8VMslysRB_TGolu43aHykACLcBGAsYHQ/Screen%2BShot%2B2021-11-16%2Bat%2B3.16.12%2BPM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="512" data-original-width="1158" height="141" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-VrA-uDbKCkY/YaFbRAO2dfI/AAAAAAAACRc/ToY1v2NibcM8VMslysRB_TGolu43aHykACLcBGAsYHQ/Screen%2BShot%2B2021-11-16%2Bat%2B3.16.12%2BPM.png" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-ZzG6HWTXFJQ/YaFbSlqfJvI/AAAAAAAACRg/nORw8QRDdA4xMxeqbypA9msgAfXp_u7AQCLcBGAsYHQ/hqdefault.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="360" data-original-width="480" height="240" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-ZzG6HWTXFJQ/YaFbSlqfJvI/AAAAAAAACRg/nORw8QRDdA4xMxeqbypA9msgAfXp_u7AQCLcBGAsYHQ/hqdefault.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;">The closed rectangular adobe architecture is designed fortress-style around an inner plaza for protection with two zaguanes (covered entries.) Comanche and Apache raids for food, sheep and human captives to be used or sold as slaves were not uncommon. Also other colonists who had e.g. a bad ranching/farming year might decide to replenish their larders by larcenous means. The rooms surrounding the placita make up the defensive exterior walls, with doors between the rooms and out into the plaza. Windows facing in are barred or shuttered, and large to allow air and light in. Exterior-facing ones are small, inset with selenite or mica to permit light in, and covered with animal skins and wood rejas (bars.) But, while there is a great deal of history to talk about on the outside, the story of the 1700s in New Mexico is best told by its interiors.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;">There are ten rooms: la cocina (kitchen,) capilla (chapel,) el cuarto de recibo (reception room,) el cuarto de familia (family room,) torreon (lookout tower/safe room,) la dispensa (pantry,) three talleres de hilar y tejer (weaving & spinning rooms) – and el cuarto de los cautivos y los criados (the captives & servants room.) Oh yeah, the Spanish also did that. There is no baño (bathroom.) It probably wasn’t even a word at the time. Each space covers different aspects of Colonial life in New Mexico – and depending on the size of that day’s volunteer turnout Marsha will interpret one, several, or all of them. Visitors are immediately confused by the small doorways and the lack of familiar looking furniture – and she likes to make sure our they learn at least that story before they leave Golondrinas Placita.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;">Door heights at that time were a little over five feet. (The phrases most frequently heard at las Golondrinas are, “watch your head” and “where is the ice pack?”) This was not because the people of that time were that much shorter, They actually were pretty much the same height as we are today. Away from the mountains there was a shortage of wood with which to construct them. Plus the smaller entryways helped maintain heat in a room – and to slow down unwanted intruders by forcing them to stoop over and slow down when entering. This is a fortress after all.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;">The interior design style came directly from medieval Spain and could also be seen in other Spanish colonies. North African Moors ruled the motherland all or in part from 711 AD until 1492, and the colonists brought the resulting customs and practices with them to the New World – most prominently “the low plain of existence”. Even in well-to-do homes everyday life occurred much closer to the ground than 21st century Americans (or New Englanders of the 1600s and 1700s) are used to. Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries New Mexicans typically sat, ate and slept on floor cushions, short stools and low bancos (benches attached to the walls.) Some of these seating areas (estrados) were exceptionally lush with soft mattresses, pillows and textiles. This custom ultimately died out in the 1900s due to increasing American influence and affordable mass-produced furniture.<br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><h2 class=""><span style="font-family: arial;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-VeU6sUvounU/YaFbcYu4R8I/AAAAAAAACRo/l7pHRbg8ngkqDwt9RtuxPnN3qQX9Yq-pACLcBGAsYHQ/Golo-family.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="398" data-original-width="600" height="212" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-VeU6sUvounU/YaFbcYu4R8I/AAAAAAAACRo/l7pHRbg8ngkqDwt9RtuxPnN3qQX9Yq-pACLcBGAsYHQ/Golo-family.jpg" width="320" /></a></div></span></h2></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;">The best place to explain this is the familia – a true family room where parents, children, grandparents, et al ate, slept and prayed at their home religious altars. And where Marsha also likes to talk about one of everybody’s favorite subjects, chocolate – and how, having to be brought up El Camino Real, it was such a precious commodity that it was only consumed on special occasions such as Christmas. “Oh no!” wailed one young boy. “No chocolate! That’s the worst thing ever!”<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;">Another part of Golondrinas Placita that seems to attract the interest of the youthful set, and many adults, is the demonstration loom in one of the weaving rooms. A small two-peddle device that allows our guests, most of whom are totally unfamiliar with the fiber craft, to get a first hand (and foot) primer on the subject. Some people get really hooked on it. One pre-teen girl told her parents to go tour the rest of the ranch since she was ‘just going to stay here and work.” It was a slow day and no other novice weavers were in sight, so Marsha let the girl remain while mom & dad wandered the grounds. A story that the couple later shared with Jim who was on duty at Sierra Homestead, which along with the “Big Mill” is one of his usual assignments on the Far Side.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;">This group of homes and outbuildings depicts a family farm in the mountains occupied by a young couple with children and their elderly parents in the mid-to-late 1800s. The insides of the three dwellings – Mora House, Grandmother’s house and Grandfather’s house – show life in a mountain village after the arrival of the railroad in the 1880s. (Her mother, his father.) The homes also can be interpreted to show the progression of architecture/construction beginning with the Casita Primitiva (Grandfather) when the family first came to the high sierras (dirt floor, flat roof) – to Grandmother’s abode (wood floor, pitched roof) – to the Mora House (high ceilings & doors, wood floor, pitched roof, three and ½ rooms) as the family became larger and more established. Each living space shows a mix of both purchased and handmade items that would have been typical of the times.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;">The compound seems to have two particular fan favs – each appealing to a different audience. Several women come to see the pig pen, in which actor Emilio Estavez hid during the <a class="" href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096487/">1988 movie “Young Guns</a> – or “Young Buns,” as many of these devoted fans refer to the film. But the big favorite is Grandmother’s House. The log-and-adobe cabin from Truchas NM was built in the 1880s and occupied into the 1920s. It was donated to the ranch when the museum was being created in the 1960s.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-2AtWD1ZeYrI/YaFbhzkR2YI/AAAAAAAACRs/YWBSFwb64V4GG_xVkL6mo7QKw01RRrvXQCLcBGAsYHQ/Sierra-grandma.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="398" data-original-width="600" height="212" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-2AtWD1ZeYrI/YaFbhzkR2YI/AAAAAAAACRs/YWBSFwb64V4GG_xVkL6mo7QKw01RRrvXQCLcBGAsYHQ/Sierra-grandma.jpg" width="320" /></a></div></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;">Young girls particularly are fascinated by the second bed in the residence. The grandchildren would spend extended periods of time with their “abuela” while she taught them traditional skills such as weaving, knitting and the folkways of the past including how to use the medicinal plants of the mountain areas. Grandmother would often be a curandera or traditional healer.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;">For older guests the home sparks memories of their own grandparents or parents who lived in nearly identical houses in various parts of New Mexico or Mexico. One thirty-something woman from Guatemala fought back tears as she told Jim of growing up with her own grandmother in her home country. “She even had the same stencils on the wall,” she sobbed.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;">At Spirits of New Mexico only the “upper part” of the ranch was open. Marsha was assigned to the weaving area in Golondrinas Placita. Although the looms are inside, in order to better engage with our guests, she was not. Jim was placed indoors at the main house in the Baca Placita. It was his first time there, but good information in the museum’s training manuals and general knowledge about NM history got him through the night.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;">Tickets were capped at 1,200 for the evening, which ran from 5 pm til 9 pm. In addition to the history there was hard cider, beer and food-truck food; entertainment by the <a class="" href="https://www.lightningboyfoundation.com/">“Lightning Boy” Native hoop dancers</a> and <a class="" href="https://allthatsinteresting.com/la-llorona">La Llorona</a> a folkloric ghost who roams waterfront areas mourning her children whom she drowned. The buildings had indoor fireplaces lit; hornos [outdoor baking ovens] in both placitas were burning; and barrel bonfires, candles, lanterns, farolitos and luminarias lighted the grounds and pathways. (“Farolitos are the candles inside of a bag,” says Damian Wilson, Assistant Professor of Spanish at the University of New Mexico. “But a luminaria is a stack of wood where you stack it, two by two to create sort of a tower.”) </span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;">Masks were mandatory for visitors going indoors. Volunteers were provided with pizza and hot and cold drinks – and we were encouraged to “paint a ghostly face” on ourselves. Something that we enthusiastically embraced. (Guilty pleasure confession – we have been streaming <a class="" href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9680524/">Netflix’s “Glow Up” </a> cosmetics competition series. This was our first opportunity to put into practice what we have learned from watching the program’s MUAs (Make Up Artists) in action.)<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;">Enthusiastic guests who engage with us, embrace what they are hearing, and share their own personal histories. Plus free pepperoni ‘za to satisfy our hunger, face painting to nourish our artistic appetite, and low 50° temps. What’s not to love?<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;">No wonder we’ll be back next year for more.</span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-sBOq_3Hjyd4/YaFbq8IOyCI/AAAAAAAACR0/oAyu-HhKylkFKDkxUoMYQ-BptZJYrNjkwCLcBGAsYHQ/2021_Spirits_of_New_Mexico_Photo_by_Richard_Gonzales-9466.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="427" data-original-width="640" height="214" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-sBOq_3Hjyd4/YaFbq8IOyCI/AAAAAAAACR0/oAyu-HhKylkFKDkxUoMYQ-BptZJYrNjkwCLcBGAsYHQ/2021_Spirits_of_New_Mexico_Photo_by_Richard_Gonzales-9466.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><br /> </span></span></div></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;"></span></span><br /><p><style type="text/css">pre { font-family: "Liberation Mono", monospace; font-size: 10pt; background: transparent }p { margin-bottom: 0.1in; line-height: 115%; background: transparent }</style></p>Jimhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08407095418542335994noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19442576.post-83374495351659058302021-11-06T15:25:00.005-04:002021-11-06T15:25:57.688-04:00Santa Fe's Founding Mothers<p> </p><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><div class=""><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">We are pleased to report that El Rancho de las Golondrinas – our volunteer gig – was voted 2nd Best Museum in the Santa Fe Reporter’s “Best of Santa Fe 2021” reader’s poll. Not bad in a city that hypes such institutions as a main part of its tourist appeal. The Museum of International Folk Art (MoIFA) was 1st and the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum 3rd in the voting.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class=""><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Each of the three was established by one of Santa Fe’s “founding mothers,” women who came to New Mexico, fell in love with the place, saw a need, had the will and wherewithal to act on it, and did. That seems to be the way things happen out here – especially culture, art and history – but not always without controversy.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class=""><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">One of the town’s current hot button issues is the construction of the Vladem Contemporary in the city’s Railyard District – the epicenter of Santa Fe’s gentrification over the past few decades. Named in honor of the $4 million gift from Ellen and Robert Vladem, the building will be an addition to the downtown Museum of Art – “physically and ideologically [bringing] the museum into dialogue with the cultural scene in the Santa Fe Railyard district,” according to the State Historical Preservation Office. More arts entertainment for residents and tourists.</span></span></div><div class=""><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"></span></span></div><div class=""><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"></span></span></div><div class=""><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"></span></span></div><div class=""><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"></span></span></div><div class="" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-tlnDJ7pnF8Q/YYbV0oXJI5I/AAAAAAAACQ8/D2NrtFLyMPADLbhuexoPjjXVWHjFvL1xwCPcBGAYYCw/s640/Mural.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="640" height="240" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-tlnDJ7pnF8Q/YYbV0oXJI5I/AAAAAAAACQ8/D2NrtFLyMPADLbhuexoPjjXVWHjFvL1xwCPcBGAYYCw/s320/Mural.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div></span></span></div><div class=""><div style="text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">It also means the destruction of a 40-year-old mural created by one of <a class="" href="https://sflivingtreasures.org/">Santa Fe’s “Living Treasures”</a> Gilberto Guzman, which is located on the side of the building to which the Vladem will be added. “The work is supportive of the folks and the native peoples, and the mix of cultures,” according to El Museo Cultural de Santa Fe. Ironically the mural’s site also bears a sign that reads “a nation that forgets its past has no future.” Efforts to have the painting integrated into the new building, or saved in some other way have thus been futile.</span></span></div></span></div><br class="" /><span style="font-family: times;"></span></div><span style="font-family: times;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: times;"></span></div></span></div><div class=""><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Such acts of largesse usually receive respectful recognition rather than rancor. Less contentious e.g. was the founding of the <a class="" href="https://www.okeeffemuseum.org/">Georgia O’Keeffe Museum</a> in November 1995 by Fort Worth Texans and part-time Santa Feans Anne Windfohr Marion (heiress, rancher, horse breeder, business executive, philanthropist and art collector) and her husband John (Chair of Sotheby’s Auction House.)<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class=""><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">“I’ve always loved [O’Keeffe’s] work. I grew up with it in my home – my mother had two of her paintings,” Anne Marion said. The Museum of Art in Santa Fe, having dissed the artist as a mere “bone painter,” had but one of her works. The O’Keeffe opened in 1997 with fifty paintings (many from Anne Marion’s personal collection) at the former site of an art gallery that had been carved from a Spanish Baptist mission church. It now includes around 3,000 items – some at O’Keefe’s former <a class="" href="https://www.okeeffemuseum.org/home-and-studio/">home and studio in Abiquiú</a> “An idea waiting to happen, the inevitable brought to life by spontaneous combustion of a longtime dream, perfect timing and Texas money galore,” said the Washington Post.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class=""><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">In 1996 while vacationing here we came upon a spin-off event of the upcoming opening. The U.S. Post Office had issued a Georgia O’Keeffe stamp and was selling First Day of Issue commemorative envelopes and a postmarked poster of the artist’s “Red Poppy” painting. After spending twenty-one years in the family room of our former Wethersfield, CT home our copies now hang on the wall adjacent to the spot at which this is being written.<br class="" /></span></span></div><div class=""><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-d9OtGwx5638/YYbV0vgK70I/AAAAAAAACQ4/E6mHvOgg0xo9JUf0Hw7dH3Y8mhO8hsERACPcBGAYYCw/s640/IMG_1857.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="480" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-d9OtGwx5638/YYbV0vgK70I/AAAAAAAACQ4/E6mHvOgg0xo9JUf0Hw7dH3Y8mhO8hsERACPcBGAYYCw/s320/IMG_1857.jpeg" width="240" /></a></div><span style="font-family: times;"></span></div><div class=""><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class=""><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">2021’s “Best of Santa Fe” Museum (MOIFA) was founded in 1953 by Florence Dibell Bartlett (1881-1954) – a Chicago heiress and folk art collector who began visiting New Mexico in the 1920s. Soon she built a winter home, “El Mirador,” in Alcalde, New Mexico, near that of anthropologist <a class="" href="https://wheelwright.org/exhibitions/a-certain-fire-mary-cabot-wheelwright-collects-the-southwest/">Mary Cabot Wheelwright</a>, herself the founder of Santa Fe’s Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian.</span></span></div><div class=""><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class=""><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Like her father Adophus (wealthy partner in a large wholesale hardware business that became part of True Value Hardware,) and sister Maie Heard (co-founder of the Heard Museum in Phoenix, AZ,) Ms. Bartlett was a generous philanthropist with a strong sense of civic responsibility. She traveled the world on her own learning about local women and their customs – and buying stuff. Lots of stuff. </span></span></div><div class=""><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class=""><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">The MOIFA website says Bartlett “envisioned and funded the original building...donated the museum’s founding collection of more than 2,500 objects including textiles, costumes, ceramics, wood carvings, paintings, and jewelry [and] established a foundation dedicated to supporting the mission of the museum.” She gave her Alcalde house and property to the State of New Mexico, as part of her gift that founded MOIFA. (The museum is state-run.) Part of the land is now the site of New Mexico State University's Sustainable Agriculture Science Center (SASC.)<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class=""><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Bartlett plunged to her death in 1954, from the patio of her seventeenth-floor penthouse apartment in Chicago. Her cook, told police she saw Bartlett make three attempts to climb over the three-foot brick wall of the porch which overlooks Lake Michigan, but did not see her leap.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class=""><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Our own volunteer casa-away-from-casa, El Rancho de las Golondrinas, owes its existence to the work of three remarkable women: Eva Scott Fényes, (1849-1930) and her daughter and granddaughter, Leonora Scott Muse Curtin (1879-1972) and Leonora Francis Curtin Paloheimo (1903-1999) – aka Eva and the Leonoras.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-xf1enO0jlbM/YYbV1F01nYI/AAAAAAAACRA/PAt4UxttWtEVJda5lAsdjU-wkuM5UKzkQCPcBGAYYCw/s1004/Screen%2BShot%2B2021-09-02%2Bat%2B3.47.45%2BPM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1004" data-original-width="816" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-xf1enO0jlbM/YYbV1F01nYI/AAAAAAAACRA/PAt4UxttWtEVJda5lAsdjU-wkuM5UKzkQCPcBGAYYCw/s320/Screen%2BShot%2B2021-09-02%2Bat%2B3.47.45%2BPM.png" width="260" /></a></div><span style="font-family: times;"></span></div><div class=""><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class=""><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">A child of privilege, educated at a formal all-girls school and recipient of an arts education in New York, Europe, and Egypt Eva Scott Fényes created her own path in life. In 1878 she married U.S. Marine Corps Lieutenant William Muse, then gave birth to Leonora Scott Muse in 1879. On a trip to Florida she met imprisoned Native artists Zo-Tom and Howling Wolf and was inspired to commission notebooks of their work and provide them with art supplies – the beginning of her arts philanthropy.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class=""><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Finding her married life “unsatisfying,” she obtained a divorce in 1890 and moved to Santa Fe where she continued her support of artists and began collecting Native American crafts. In Cairo, Egypt Eva met Hungarian physician and entomologist Adalbert Fényes. They married in 1896 and together they moved to Pasadena, California to reside in the “Feynes Mansion.”<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class=""><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">In 1898, author and preservationist Charles Lummis suggested that Eva <a class="" href="http://collections.theautry.org/mwebcgi/mweb.exe?request=record;id=PE62552;type=701">document California’s remaining Spanish missions and other historic buildings</a>. Her 300 watercolors and more than 3,000 sketches are held at the Pasadena Museum of History.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class=""><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Meanwhile Leonora(1) met her husband, Thomas E. Curtin, a lawyer in the Santa Fe District Attorney’s office, married in 1903, gave birth to Leonora(2) and moved to Colorado Springs where Thomas developed railroads and resorts. He died in 1911 and the two Leonoras went to live with Eva in Pasadena.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qnDh_PicRnU/YYbV7oHE3RI/AAAAAAAACRE/UXVK1zoV8PQXg5ACH84W2v5ZdS31abM7QCPcBGAYYCw/s588/ZI-0KAH-2009-SEP00-IDSI-43-1.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="588" data-original-width="480" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qnDh_PicRnU/YYbV7oHE3RI/AAAAAAAACRE/UXVK1zoV8PQXg5ACH84W2v5ZdS31abM7QCPcBGAYYCw/s320/ZI-0KAH-2009-SEP00-IDSI-43-1.jpeg" width="261" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></div><div class=""><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class=""><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Adalbert’s career and wealth expanded, to the delight of Eva who wanted to ensure that her daughter and granddaughter had the same financial independence and security that she had. The Leonoras fell in love with Santa Fe, became familiar with its needs and opportunities, and were taught “how to” by Eva’s and other women’s examples.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class=""><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">It worked. Leonora(1) studied the local herbs and plants used for healing by both the Native American and Spanish American cultures interviewing local native healers. This research resulted in two widely respected ethno-botancial works, “By the Prophet of the Earth” and “Healing Herbs of the Upper Rio Grande.” Leonora(1) also served on the Executive Board of the School of American Research and the Board of Directors of the Southwest Museum of Los Angeles, California. Leonora(2) established Santa Fe’s Native (now Indian) Market. Together they were founding members of the Spanish Colonial Arts Society..<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class=""><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Returning often to New Mexico, where they nurtured friendships with a building colony of artists, writers, and archaeologists, they soon determined to build a house of their own in Santa Fe,” (“The House of the Three Wise Women: A Family Legacy in the American Southwest.”) The adobe house was built in 1926 and now holds the Women’s International Study Center. Much of the information herein comes from the WISC website.<br class="" /></span></span></div><div class=""><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class=""><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">While Eva returned often to Pasadena, the Lenoras began to see Santa Fe as their primary home.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class=""><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">In 1932 they purchased El Rancho de las Golondrinas (The Ranch of the Swallows) – an historic rancho strategically located on the Camino Real, the trade route from Mexico City to Santa Fe. The ranch provided goods for trade and was a paraje – an official rest stop – the first when leaving Santa Fe and the last when coming to it.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class=""><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">While much of the land in northern New Mexico was given as land grants from the King of Spain, La Cienega where Golondrinas is located had no such formal “deed.” The land was instead acquired by “royal purchase” with the first owner of record being Miguel Vega y Coca in the early 1700s. The family raised livestock including sheep the wool from which was used to weave cloth for clothing and household items; grew and ground their own wheat grain in water powered mills; and made tools from iron imported from Mexico. The ranch remained in the Vega y Coca family until sold to the Leonoras by the heirs at the time, the Bacas.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class=""><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">The new owners leased part of the property to a dairy, but kept the other portion as a country retreat. After Leonora(2)’s marriage to Finnish Consul to the United States Yrjö Alfred (Y.A.) Paloheimo in 1946, she and her husband saw the potential in the old ranch as a site for an outdoor living history museum – and devoted themselves to transforming the property into a place where visitors could physically immerse themselves in the history, heritage and culture of 18th and 19th century New Mexico. Existing buildings were restored, a few period structures were replicated and others were brought in from sites around New Mexico. (The parts were numbered with metal tags, disassembled and reconstructed on site.) The museum opened in 1972.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class=""><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Leonora and Yrjö were parents to four adopted children: Eric, Eva, George and Christine. Some family members now reside in houses on parts of the property not devoted to the museum. Another portion of the original ranch is set aside as the Leonora Curtin Wetland Preserve, part of the Santa Fe Botanical Garden. (La Cieniga where the property is located translates to “the swamp” – a wetland system unique to the American Southwest in otherwise arid landscapes. A main reason that the original ranch was built there.) </span></span></div><div class=""><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class=""><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">In 1973 Leonora and Yrjö created the Paloheimo Foundation to support and benefit those charitable and educational endeavors and organizations the couple supported during their lifetimes. Their former home in Pasadena is now part of the Pasadena History Museum along with a house that Yrjö purchased as the Finnish Consulate in 1949, now the Finnish Folk Art Museum. Eva passed on in 1930, Leonora(1) in 1972, Yrjö in 1986 and Leonora(2) in 1999.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class=""><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">As docents we are frequently asked how the museum came to be. We are glad to talk about it. After all, the stories of those who worked to preserve Santa Fe’s history are themselves an important part of that history.</span></span></div></div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br class="Apple-interchange-newline" /></span></span><br />Jimhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08407095418542335994noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19442576.post-60434459386312074852021-11-06T15:15:00.001-04:002021-11-06T15:15:13.758-04:00One, Two, Three<p> </p><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: times;">We recently came upon the grave of American frontier legend Kit Carson. No, not on one of our daily walks on the trails in our community. We were in Taos, NM on our first overnight out-of-town jaunt since a February 2020 trip to the southern part of our state with CT friends D & P and new New Mexico friends S & P. A vacation that wrapped up minutes before the Covid lockdown began.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: times;">We’ve been visiting Taos ("place of red willows” in Tewa Native-speak) since our first trip to NM in 1992 – hiking in the nearby wilderness areas, exploring its museums and buying works of Folk Art from local Santera Lydia Garcia. A “Santera” (female) or “Santero” (male) is a creator of religious depictions of Saints (“santos”) – either “retablos” (flat painted images) or “bultos” (statues.) So we were well aware of the legendary frontiersman’s presence there.</span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-R4pmi5x35To/YYbS0b8a3DI/AAAAAAAACQM/zr-SOOUMtiMALOd7uCyv4rTkfprtPIlvQCLcBGAsYHQ/s590/IMG_1863%2B2.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="590" height="260" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-R4pmi5x35To/YYbS0b8a3DI/AAAAAAAACQM/zr-SOOUMtiMALOd7uCyv4rTkfprtPIlvQCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/IMG_1863%2B2.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: times;">(A portion of our “Lydia Wall”)</span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: times;">The public park in the center of town is named in his honor. The <a class="" href="https://www.casabenavides.com/">Bed & Breakfast we were staying at</a> is on Kit Carson Road, just up the street from the <a class="" href="http://www.kitcarsonmuseum.org/">Kit Carson Home and Museum</a> at which we took a self-guided tour a couple of years ago. Jim has read <a class="" href="http://www.hamptonsides.com/writing/blood-and-thunder/">Hampton Side’s “Blood and Thunder,”</a> an account of Kit’s place in America’s western expansion – and in Taos. “An illiterate mountain man who twice married Indian women and understood and respected the tribes better than any other American alive [and yet] a cold-blooded killer who willingly followed orders tantamount to massacre. [His] almost unimaginable exploits made him a household name when they were written up in pulp novels known as ‘blood-and-thunders,’ but now that name is a bitter curse for contemporary Navajo, who cannot forget his role in the travails of their ancestors.” (<a class="" href="http://amazon.com/">Amazon.com</a>) But we had never seen his final resting place.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: times;">After breakfast on our first morning we strolled down an unpaved roadway that led from our B&B towards what we assumed was the park. From the end of the street we could see dog walkers emerging from a small, semi-fenced, semi-mowed grassy area dotted with a handful of headstones. It had the appearance of the small family cemeteries we’ve seen on the backroads of rural North Carolina.</span><br /><span style="font-family: times;"><br class="" /></span></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-cLBqjAJBb6g/YYbS0P_fQqI/AAAAAAAACQU/xIkL4lzra_kPvM5uXOvd5CS1HgYqeYX9gCPcBGAYYCw/s640/IMG_0025.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="480" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-cLBqjAJBb6g/YYbS0P_fQqI/AAAAAAAACQU/xIkL4lzra_kPvM5uXOvd5CS1HgYqeYX9gCPcBGAYYCw/s320/IMG_0025.jpeg" width="240" /></a></div><br /></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: times;">The names on most plaques were unfamiliar to us – except for that of Christopher Houston “Kit” Carson. We later learned that he and his third wife Maria Josefa Jaramillo both drowned in 1868 in Boggsville, Colorado and were interred here one year later. Further research showed that noted-people-wise this is the Taos equivalent of Hartford’s park-like <a class="" href="https://cedarhillfoundation.org/">Cedar Hill Cemetery</a> – resting place of luminaries such as Katherine Hepburn and Samuel Colt. However, although located near the beach-volleyball courts of a public recreation area, this cemetery is definitely not “park-like” in the sense of a Victorian “rural cemetery.” And the monuments are way smaller.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: times;">Established as “The American Cemetery” in 1847 for U.S. soldiers and civilians killed during that year’s Taos Rebellion, it was at the time the only burial ground for non-Catholics. When the Carsons arrived it was renamed in Kit’s honor. Also interred there are servicemen of the 1846 Mexican War, Indian Campaigns of the 1850's, Civil War, Spanish American War, WWI and WWII as well as many of the early Taos traders and merchants, plus members of old Spanish, French and American families. Trust us, it does not look anywhere big enough for all that.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: times;">As much as we love historic graveyards however, that was not why we took this trip. Our itinerary was threefold: (1) to drive the “High Road to Taos,” (2) to see the “Santo Lowride: Norteño Car Culture and the Santos Tradition” exhibit at the town’s Harwood museum and (3) have lunch at the Sopapilla Factory in Espanola. Plus, we hoped, a couple of surprises.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: times;">(1) The "High Road" (actually NM Rtes 503, 76, 518 and 68) winds slowly for 60 miles or so through the Sangre de Cristo Mountains and villages such as Chimayó with its traditional weavers and 19th-century <a class="" href="https://www.holychimayo.us/">Santuario (sanctuary) known as the "Lourdes of the Southwest"</a>; Cordova, Truchas and Ojo Sarco with galleries selling woodcarvings, pottery, rugs and other local arts and crafts; and Las Trampas with its 18th-century mission church San Jose de Gracia. It then climbs through the Carson National Forest to Ranchos de Taos and the frequently photographed and painted <a class="" href="https://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/american_latino_heritage/san_francisco_de_assisi_mission_church.html">San Francisco de Asis Church</a>. “Dramatic and varied geography, from low deserts and sun-baked pastures to piney mountain passes, wide sandstone cliffs, and river valleys dotted with tin-roofed shacks,” per <a class="" href="http://lonelyplanet.com/">lonelyplanet.com</a>. A lovely and peaceful drive to put us in a laidback New Mexico state of mind – it is our preferred route to the northern New Mexico artist colony.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: times;">After checking in at our B&B we strolled into town to see what was new since our last visit, had BBQ Pork Ribs at a restaurant overlooking the town plaza and relaxed and read in the B&B’s courtyard. The next morning, after our graveyard discovery, we headed off on foot to the second entry on our things-to-do list.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: times;">(2) “Just as [New Mexico’s Santeros] seek a physical channel between the heavens and their daily life, the lowrider [car] has evolved as a modern-day vessel for the belief systems of multicultural Norteño communities...[this exhibition shows] how these two art forms share subject matter and religious function, binding them across past and present peoples.” (Harwood Museum of Art)</span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: times;"> </span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: times;">“During colonial times New Mexico was completely isolated from the outside culture and had a whole different and unique set of influences – Franciscan piety and spirituality, local folk traditions and the indigenous cultures of the area...for many years when there were very few priests in New Mexico, these paintings and statues were the New Mexican peoples' primary connection with the spiritual domain.” (<a class="" href="http://colonialmexicoinsideandout.blogspot.com/">colonialmexicoinsideandout.blogspot.com/</a>) Likewise the artwork on the lowrider cars of Northern New Mexico are much, much more than just colorful decorations.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: times;">While we are really hooked on this style of folk art – cars included – we don’t claim to experience that same linkage to the divine when we look at them. They do however speak to us in a different way than the other genres that we see hanging on museum walls, or even in our own home.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: times;">The Harwood Museum of Art is located on Ledoux Street, a one-way, narrow curvy roadway lined with adobe shops, galleries, museums and studios – many with country flower gardens and wall murals. Like similar roads in Santa Fe it probably was once a pre-automobile dirt trail. An Historical marker says it, “was named after the French trapper and guide Antonine Ledoux, who settled in the area around 1844 [and the street was] developed in the fortress style with gates at each end.”<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: times;">Next door to the Harwood is the Ernest Blumenschein Home and Museum, which we decided to visit knowing only that its owner was one of the founders of the Taos Society of Artists in the early 1900s. (In 1898 Blumenschein was traveling through the Southwest with fellow eastern artist Bert Phillips. In northern New Mexico, a wheel from their carriage slipped into a deep rut and broke. Blumenschein lost the coin toss and rode 23 miles into Taos to have the wheel repaired. They became so entranced with the beauty of Taos Valley that they decided to make it their home.)<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: times;">According to the institution’s website the house “is maintained much as it was when the artist and his family lived here...filled with a superb collection of the Blumenschein family's art, a representative sampling of works by other famous Taos artists, fine European and Spanish Colonial style antiques, and the family's lifetime of personal possessions [that] illustrates the lifestyle of Taos artists in the first half of the twentieth century.”<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: times;">From the outside the adobe building appears to be u-shaped. But, as is frequently the case with such homes out here, the inner reality does not seem to reflect the outer appearance. Rooms enter directly into other rooms in a pattern that seems to bare little resemblance to the path that was indicated from the outside. And the interior appears to take up more space than the exterior walls can hold. We entered through the kitchen whose utensils and appliances reminded us of Wethersfield Historical Society’s Hurlbut-Dunham House, for those of you familiar with it. The remaining spaces were like a well-curated small museum of furniture, crafts and artwork. Interesting tour through some nice digs – even if it is made of mud.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: times;">On the last day of the trip it was time to check off our third itinerary item.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: times;">(3) The Sopapilla Factory, like the Cheesecake Factory, is not a manufacturing plant, but rather a restaurant. Its eponymous menu item is a kind of fried pastry found in areas with Spanish heritage. Hollow inside, and puffier than fried dough or Indian Fry Bread, sopapillas look similar to French beignets and taste a little like American donuts. Here in New Mexico they are eaten with honey and/or butter.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: times;">In addition to several sopapilla-based entrees, each meal at “the Factory” is accompanied by a basket of them, much like Hush Puppies might be served in the south or bread in the northeast. As you might expect each eatery has its own variation. This, IOHO, is the best one. Nonetheless, deep fried dough, no matter how light and fluffy, is not the best thing for septuagenarians to indulge in on a daily basis. Thankfully the restaurant is 35 minutes away so we only stop there when we are already in the neighborhood.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kt6Xc9dYPv0/YYbS0RZzjCI/AAAAAAAACQg/FG7cetU7ayobH3YiaYKivJd-1B6Zj4tPACPcBGAYYCw/s640/los-luceros-lrg.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="320" data-original-width="640" height="160" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kt6Xc9dYPv0/YYbS0RZzjCI/AAAAAAAACQg/FG7cetU7ayobH3YiaYKivJd-1B6Zj4tPACPcBGAYYCw/s320/los-luceros-lrg.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: times;"></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: times;">Or, as in this case, plan our day around being there at lunch time. Which we did by taking the “low road” from Taos along the Rio Grande to the town of Alcade and the 148-acre Los Luceros Historic Site – whose 5,700 sq. ft. Territorial-style 18th century adobe hacienda “Casa Grande,” chapel, Victorian cottage, carriage house, guesthouse, and farmyard were once the home grounds of Mary Cabot Wheelwright, founder of Santa Fe’s Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian. We walked enough of the property, and absorbed enough history to work off most of our B&Breakfast, and build up an appetite for lunch.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qqo2YT0nm_4/YYbS0EiIfuI/AAAAAAAACQY/RCxAeoZ6vzgomC7jKqkwtQ63uP-niRBpwCPcBGAYYCw/s640/IMG_0029.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="640" height="240" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qqo2YT0nm_4/YYbS0EiIfuI/AAAAAAAACQY/RCxAeoZ6vzgomC7jKqkwtQ63uP-niRBpwCPcBGAYYCw/s320/IMG_0029.jpeg" width="320" /></a></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: times;"></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: times;">This visit’s food of choice was Pueblo Tacos – “chicken, ground beef or shredded beef with whole beans. Served on a round sopaipilla with onions, sour cream, garnish and red or green chile.” Plus two sopapillas in a basket – our dessert. We ate half of the entrees at the restaurant and took the rest home for dinner – with a couple more “sopas” to go. (BTW, other than BYOScissors, does anyone know the secret to opening those single packages of (in this case) honey without breaking a sweat, or a fingernail?)<br class="" />Then we headed back to Santa Fe. Three goals accomplished. Two nice surprises. One good mini-vacation.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-tH073N_gFls/YYbSXG8yKlI/AAAAAAAACP0/jXmAyhMmsHEkmmiSvZyTMiwkXkDfO8mOgCPcBGAYYCw/s640/IMG_1850%2B2.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="640" height="240" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-tH073N_gFls/YYbSXG8yKlI/AAAAAAAACP0/jXmAyhMmsHEkmmiSvZyTMiwkXkDfO8mOgCPcBGAYYCw/s320/IMG_1850%2B2.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><span style="font-family: times;"></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: times;">As he was writing this essay one of those images – a kind of apparitional painting of a lowrider in front of El Santuario de Chimayó – spontaneously started appearing on Jim’s IPhone screen. Marsha took the photos with her SLR camera – then downloaded them to our photo library in “the cloud,” to which both of our IPhones have access. His device was locked and inactive each time that it happened. Kinda makes you wonder.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: times;">Brief PSA: For those of you in the Greater Hartford area who have not visited Cedar Hill Cemetery, or taken advantage of its programs and events we urge you to check it out. <a class="" href="http://cedarhillfoundation.org/">cedarhillfoundation.org/</a></span></span></div>Jimhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08407095418542335994noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19442576.post-78593523096910449832021-11-06T15:00:00.001-04:002021-11-06T15:00:14.069-04:00BYO, PYO, UPS, LEO<p> </p><div dir="auto" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Autumn is coming reluctantly to our part of the world. The Aspen in the nearby Sangre de Cristo Mountains have turned their bright yellow. While the one on our placita stubbornly sports its mid-April colors. In our community the Cottonwoods and Locusts are still undecided. El Rancho de las Golondrinas held its annual Harvest Festival. And – in spite of the fact that our Geraniums and Hollyhocks continue to bud and blossom – the cold nights, cool mornings and evenings, and warm sunny days are telling us that the time to gather and reap is here.<br /><br /></span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">John Chapman, aka Johnny Appleseed, was an American pioneer nurseryman who introduced apple trees to large parts of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, West Virginia and Ontario, Canada – but not New Mexico. No need to. When it came to such crops, and most of their foods, the Colonial Spanish were all for BYO.<br /></span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">This acronym, along with the time of year, puts us in mind of PYO harvesting. So, like many of you, we are heading off to our local Pick Your Own orchard for the year’s last round of self-harvesting and… Wait Toto, we’re not in Connecticut anymore.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-wEZUgfBaUuU/YYbPZjuUaeI/AAAAAAAACN0/TQiFzYRQO6o100N2zrpOK2pxl9l1-YpdQCLcBGAsYHQ/241781939_10159193639846855_7831486062355613497_n.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="478" height="240" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-wEZUgfBaUuU/YYbPZjuUaeI/AAAAAAAACN0/TQiFzYRQO6o100N2zrpOK2pxl9l1-YpdQCLcBGAsYHQ/241781939_10159193639846855_7831486062355613497_n.jpeg" width="179" /></a></div><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Here’s what the native NM apples are like: “sweet and leathery...bitter sweet [and] the size of a plumb... small sweet variety of very little value” – at least in the 1870s according to out-of-state commentators as quoted in “Fruit, Fiber, and Fire” By William Randall Carleton. (The title refers to apples, cotton and chiles – all successful New Mexican crops during parts of the 19th and 20th centuries.)</span></span><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: times;"></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Things have changed since then. The local fruits are better than that now, but still not as good as the ones at e.g. Belltown Orchard in Glastonbury, CT – our erstwhile PYO of choice. Not enough to warrant twelve hours of flying back-and-forth – but certainly worth a phone call. More on that later. First a little about the history of apples in our new territorial home.<br /><br /></span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">According to the Food Empowerment Project, “Europeans believed that food shaped the colonial body [and that] the European constitution differed from that of Indigenous people because the Spanish diet differed from the Indigenous diet...thus the fear that by consuming ‘inferior’ Indigenous foods, Spaniards would eventually become ‘like them.’ Only proper European foods would maintain the superior nature of European bodies, and only these ‘right foods’ would be able to protect colonizers from the challenges posed by the ‘new world’ and its unfamiliar environments.” That Spanish diet was composed mainly of bread, olive oil, olives, meat, and wine. In addition Catholic doctrine decreed that “the proper matter for [communion] is wheaten bread … [and] only wine from the grape,” per Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologica.<br /><br /></span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-QB8BdCcjInc/YYbPh9-ywKI/AAAAAAAACN4/ZZu65RtmPXEf4NTlU0lHdx-UfB5XxxEOwCLcBGAsYHQ/download.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="176" data-original-width="286" height="197" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-QB8BdCcjInc/YYbPh9-ywKI/AAAAAAAACN4/ZZu65RtmPXEf4NTlU0lHdx-UfB5XxxEOwCLcBGAsYHQ/download.jpg" width="320" /></a></div> </span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">However early explorers found “neither wheat, nor grapevines, nor any proper animal…present in the new colonies.” Thus, the Spaniards who settled New Mexico in 1598 brought with them the so-called “tríada Mediterránea” of wheat, grapevines, and olives – plus Eve’s forbidden fruit. The new territory’s climate, altitude, and soil mirrored that of the best apple-producing areas in Spain. Not so for the olive trees. Lard replaced EVOO. So much for the Mediterranean Diet. For a “proper animal” the Spaniards brought Churro Sheep, which provided both meat and clothing – and now gives us the chance to talk to las Golondrinas guests about the “Three W’s” of colonization, “wheat, wool and wine.”<br />So what varieties were these incoming Spanish apples, and how were they consumed?<br /><br /></span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">We have been unable to answer the first question. A New Mexico State University “fruit specialist” is attempting to create a Colonial Heritage Orchard with cuttings from what are believed to be direct descendants of the original Spanish fruit stock – but not yet.<br /><br /></span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">As to the second query, based upon what happened in other places, the fruit was most likely too bitter and chewy to be eaten direct from the tree. Instead it was made into cider – hard cider, which had a longer shelf life and whose octane could be adjusted for the kid’s menu. (Northern Spain has been making cider since 55 B.C. The Principality of Asturias boasts annual consumption of 14 gallons per person/per year – probably the highest in the world.)<br /><br /></span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-lnN8ykiWGNM/YYbPp8tF6NI/AAAAAAAACOA/TO-xYPy8VgcUS4DQOuhXMOtFgZf3L8FLgCLcBGAsYHQ/d03_jd_01aug_1name-1200x800.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="427" data-original-width="640" height="214" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-lnN8ykiWGNM/YYbPp8tF6NI/AAAAAAAACOA/TO-xYPy8VgcUS4DQOuhXMOtFgZf3L8FLgCLcBGAsYHQ/d03_jd_01aug_1name-1200x800.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div></span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">(Monzano Mountains)</span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">“The first apple trees seem to be the handiwork of Franciscans at the Abó and Quarai pueblo missions [now the Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument.] Planted in the 1630s, the friars also taught the Pueblo Indians and the nearby colonists how to graft the seedlings for a hearty crop. Within years, apple trees and orchards were flourishing along the mountains north of today's Mountainair. When the Spaniards returned to the area following the 1680 Pueblo Revolt, they found apple trees...still bearing fruit, all along the mountains. So dominant were these apple trees, the returning settlers named the mountain range the “Manzanos” – the Spanish word for apple trees.” (<a href="http://socorrohistory.org/">socorrohistory.org</a>) Such naming conventions are not uncommon out here. Albuquerque’s Sandia Mountains are so-labeled for their resemblance at sunset to a ripe watermelon.<br /><br /></span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">“New Mexico is indeed home to the first apple-growing region in the country,” claims Craig Moya, New Mexico Hard Cider owner. A 1926 survey of the Manzano Forest Reserve identified a tree believed to have been planted before 1676.<br /><br /></span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Under Spanish rule New Mexico was pretty much isolated from the surrounding United States until 1821 when Mexico took control and opened up trade along the Santa Fe Trail. So for 200-plus years it is probable that not much changed vis-à-vis the state of apples in the territory. Then in the middle of the 19th century come the horticultural efforts of Archbishop Jean Baptiste Lamy.<br /><br /></span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-ao5UpxvpTAE/YYbP4TXwKHI/AAAAAAAACOI/R4T8DzCpmh0ko-zk-7s3NXI7mpUyDpTQACLcBGAsYHQ/default.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="307" data-original-width="432" height="227" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-ao5UpxvpTAE/YYbP4TXwKHI/AAAAAAAACOI/R4T8DzCpmh0ko-zk-7s3NXI7mpUyDpTQACLcBGAsYHQ/default.jpg" width="320" /></a></div></span></span></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><br /><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">(Archbishop Lamy 2nd from left.)</span></span></span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">According to historian Marc Simmons, “a total of four acres bordering Alameda [Street] were enclosed by an adobe wall and transformed into a bountiful oasis. On several trips east, Lamy brought back flowering shrubs and fruit trees, transporting them in cans of water inside ox-drawn wagons. The churchman’s garden was shaded by large ornamental trees such as locust, maple, cottonwood and willow. Then there were fruit trees of several varieties – peach, pear, apple and cherry-plus almond trees.” The food was distributed to the poor and hungry in northern New Mexico.<br /><br /></span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">In 1859, John Clark planted apples from Missouri north of Santa Fe at Los Luceros. Anglo settlers – among them Mormons – brought in tree cuttings in the late 19th and early 20th century. As mentioned previously these newcomers viewed the local apples as inferior in taste, texture and size. But they were still proof of the territory’s good soil and fruit-growing conditions. By the 1870s, apples from this small number of new orchards were receiving praise from far as away as Colorado.<br /><br /></span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">And in the 1920s, the Stark Brothers, the nation’s leading purveyor of trees and the developers of Red and Golden Delicious apples, came to the Española Valley to sell their product to aspiring orchardists. (BTW the story of Stark Bros. is in itself an interesting one. <a href="http://www.starkbros.com/about">www.starkbros.com/about</a>)<br /><br /></span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">“A salesman from the Missouri-based company rode the train to Santa Fe [and] helped fill agricultural tracts that had been appropriated by the U.S. government and returned to [original Spanish] land grant heirs in 1908,” according to current day fruit-grower Eddie Velarde<br /><br /></span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Nonetheless apples in New Mexico were largely considered a secondary crop. “The families here grew most of their food and used the orchards for alcohol production...Often they were given last priority if there was a water shortage. Then the trees were cut down during Prohibition,” said Moya.<br /><br /></span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Malus, “a quarterly print journal featuring bitter-sharp criticism and commentary by America’s great cider thinkers” takes issue with the story that orchards were “destroyed or replaced due to local or national prohibition laws or the temperance movement.” “The oft-repeated example of the unnamed orchardist who took an axe to his trees in a fit of Temperance fervor is, even if true, an isolated example,” wrote cider historian Ben Watson.<br /><br /></span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">The misinformation is attributed to Michael Pollan and his book Botany of Desire. “Just about the only reason to plant an orchard of the sort of seedling apples [Johnny Appleseed] had for sale would have been for its intoxicating harvest of drink...Eventually they [temperance advocates] would attack cider directly and launch their campaign to chop down apple trees.” “Unless your neighbors dropped a dime on you, no one was going around trying to eradicate cider,” says Watson.<br /><br /></span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Still websites such as<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://smithsonianmagazine.com/">smithsonianmagazine.com</a><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://andthreeriversparks.org/">andthreeriversparks.org</a> aver, “by the end of Prohibition, the only apples left were those for eating, not for making hard cider. And thus, beer became the drink of choice, and the resource needed to make hard cider – cider apples – had been completely destroyed.”<br /></span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-JpU3U4xa5UY/YYbQKoNd2ZI/AAAAAAAACOU/O0EG-B2sSfUDgQedHmjxpQvIlj17NX7CACLcBGAsYHQ/GolondrinasInsideSantaFe.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="449" data-original-width="600" height="239" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-JpU3U4xa5UY/YYbQKoNd2ZI/AAAAAAAACOU/O0EG-B2sSfUDgQedHmjxpQvIlj17NX7CACLcBGAsYHQ/GolondrinasInsideSantaFe.jpg" width="320" /></a></div></span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">As for New Mexico’s prohibition-inspired apple tree destruction we offer this semi-analogical explanation. The “Big Mill” at El Rancho de las Golondrinas was a commercial business near Las Vegas, NM supplying wheat flour to the U.S. Army forts in New Mexico, Arizona and Oklahoma from 1880 to 1920. When the forts shut down the mill did also – sitting intact until the 1960s when it was donated and moved to the museum. Surprisingly its metal parts were not scavenged by the U.S. Government for the WWII war effort, as other vacated factories were. One Golondrinas guest told Jim that it showed that even then no one knew New Mexico existed. Similarly it seems unlikely that the Revenuers would have thought to look for hard cider scofflaws here in the Land of Enchantment. On the other hand New Mexicans did approve state-wide prohibition by three-to-one in 1917 – three years before the national law went into effect. Perhaps that “fit of Temperance fervor” carried over to NM’s orchardists. Our home state has clearly changed its point-of-view and is now ranked sixth in “States with the Worst DUI Problems,” per<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://backgroundchecks.org/">backgroundchecks.org</a>. CT is number 38.<br /><br /></span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Whatever the reason, during the 1920s many trees were cut down – and over the years development and drought has taken its toll on New Mexico’s orchards. One of the oldest and most popular, Dixon’s Apple Farm in Peña Blanca, shut their doors in 2012 after fire followed by flooding.<br /><br /></span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">So the apple situation was not that great in New Mexico when we moved here in 2017. And now this. “Historically, the [orchard] had about 10 days per year when temperatures hit 100 degrees, but last year had 62 such days, Eddie Velarde said. Trees that were formerly on a 14-day watering cycle are now watered every 10 days. The peak of the picking season used to fall around Labor Day, but now it’s in August. Global warming is happening.”<br /><br /></span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">A sad state of affairs for those of us who were used to years-and-years of bi-monthly PYOing just across the river from our Wethersfield home. Apple season for us in 2017 was consumed instead by looking for and moving into our new home in Santa Fe. In 2018 we searched unsuccessfully for a NM orchard at which we could self-harvest, and for “real” apples at the Farmers Markets – and we seriously began missing our favorite New England fruit. In later October, close to the edge of total apple despair, Marsha took her cell phone in hand, punched in Belltown’s phone number and soon enough by way of a “Big Brown” delivery truck an assortment of “the ones that travel best” were in our eagerly quivering hands. We rationed ourselves to one-a-day savoring each crunch and drop of juice on our chins. Repeated the process in 2019, 2020 – and soon will in the current year.<br /><br /></span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">On the down side, all this gustatory goodness put us in mind of other CT favorite foods. Some, such as Polska kielbasa from Martin Rosol’s in New Britain, CT, we will have shipped to us,. Others we probably will never have again. For example a sausage, eggplant and pepper grinder with provolone cheese and sauce “in the oven,” from our old neighborhood pizzeria, “Leo’s.” (For you non-Connecticuters grinder = hoagy = submarine=hero.)<br /></span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">We have found nothing that comes even remotely close. In fact the only similarly shaped sandwich we’ve found is at the local Subway franchise. There was no Spanish BYO of either it or its ingredients – except perhaps berenjena (eggplant.) PYO doesn’t even make sense. And UPS doesn’t offer a GrubHub type on-time delivery guarantee. There is certainly an abundance of indigenous (small “i”) foods to take its place. And we definitely are not concerned about becoming “like them.”<br /><br /></span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">But still…</span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></span></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-96WbLCYJjhc/YYbQS4Gm_vI/AAAAAAAACOY/rfv5Hf4Z16QfUVBEHKT4gr4dSw5Mv_NCACLcBGAsYHQ/Screen%2BShot%2B2021-10-22%2Bat%2B5.48.51%2BPM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1158" data-original-width="960" height="240" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-96WbLCYJjhc/YYbQS4Gm_vI/AAAAAAAACOY/rfv5Hf4Z16QfUVBEHKT4gr4dSw5Mv_NCACLcBGAsYHQ/Screen%2BShot%2B2021-10-22%2Bat%2B5.48.51%2BPM.png" width="199" /></a></div><br /></span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br class="Apple-interchange-newline" /></span></span><br />Jimhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08407095418542335994noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19442576.post-21945232071917115722021-04-20T18:35:00.024-04:002021-04-24T17:28:04.479-04:00Easter in New Mexico<p> </p><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">The main event at Marsha’s family’s Easter gathering was the egg fight.<br /></span></span></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">The sparring match involved knocking a hard-boiled, colored egg against that of your opponent until one of them cracked. The player with the intact egg then took on another opponent and so forth. The final winner was the one person whose egg didn’t crack – in this case the red one.</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-Q_nETZbl0jM/YISM773QzUI/AAAAAAAACK4/XSgXL-w5z2QtyOimXrs08Kn0mRwbBuovQCLcBGAsYHQ/440px-Eierkippen.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="293" data-original-width="440" height="213" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-Q_nETZbl0jM/YISM773QzUI/AAAAAAAACK4/XSgXL-w5z2QtyOimXrs08Kn0mRwbBuovQCLcBGAsYHQ/440px-Eierkippen.jpg" width="320" /></a></div></span></span></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />Although Irish/Italian Jim had never seen or heard of this Polish tradition – it is not unique to just the Kosinski family or their former homeland. The practice is said to have started during medieval times in Europe and is variously known as “egg tapping,” “egg knocking,” “egg picking,” “eiertikken” (the Netherlands), “Koni-juj” (India), “epper” (Central Europe) and “tsougrisma” (Greece.)</span><span style="font-size: large;"><br /><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: times;"></span></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">New Mexican families also practice a similar, but less violent, Easter tradition. They paint and decorate empty eggshells, refill them with small pieces of colored paper and seal them up with tape or tissue paper. The confetti-filled eggs are known as “cascarones." On Easter Sunday or soon thereafter those eggs get cracked over the heads of unsuspecting (or maybe not so unsuspecting) family members and friends. The word cascarone comes from the Spanish word “cascara,” which means eggshell.<br /></span></span></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-PtyILF9ycFQ/YISNC-LkVKI/AAAAAAAACK8/plUx_sSi6ioIulSsOMaFEv_B4AGBud1rQCLcBGAsYHQ/440px-090130_eggs_shells_cascarones.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="330" data-original-width="440" height="240" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-PtyILF9ycFQ/YISNC-LkVKI/AAAAAAAACK8/plUx_sSi6ioIulSsOMaFEv_B4AGBud1rQCLcBGAsYHQ/440px-090130_eggs_shells_cascarones.jpg" width="320" /></a></div></span></span></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">“People will start saving cascarones early before the Lenten season,” says retired professor Juan López. “Then the family will gather a week or two before Easter with the kids to decorate them.”<br /><br /></span></span></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">The idea started in Asia, where the eggs were filled with perfumed powder. Explorer Marco Polo brought the custom to Italy from where it spread to Spain and finally Mexico in the mid-1800s.<br /><br /></span></span></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Like so many other Old World traditions the practice came to New Mexico with travelers along El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro (The Royal Road of the Interior Land) according to former TV reporter Carla Aragón. Aragón celebrated the custom with her family as a child but with an added component – dance. She wrote a children’s book on the subject in 2010 called “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Dance-Eggshells-Baile-Los-Cascarones/dp/0826347703">Dance of the Eggshells (Baile de los Cascarones</a>).”<br /><br /></span></span></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">“In the old days, people would not eat meat for all of the Lenten season,” Aragon said. “What they did to get protein was make a lot of egg dishes. They also couldn’t dance (during Lent.” A week after Easter northern New Mexicans would get together to celebrate and take joy in being allowed to once again dance. “If you want to ask someone to dance, you break an egg on their head,” Aragón said. “It’s said the people with the most confetti in their hair are the most popular dancers.” The La Sociedad Folklórica group in Santa Fe has tried to preserve this tradition by hosting an annual Baile de los Cascarones. For the event, the group makes cascarones that are sold during the dance.</span></span></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">But here in deeply Catholic New Mexico Easter obviously has more serious and spiritual traditions.<br /><br /></span></span></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Holy Week is the most important part of the year for many Los Hermanos Penitentes (a Catholic order of lay men who provide community service, mutual aid and community charity – as well as sometimes practicing physical acts of penance and atonement.) During the week before Easter members are praying the rosary with the community, participating in Mass at the local Catholic church, and serving dinner for their neighbors. But at certain times during the next few days, the doors of their meetinghouses close and the brothers retreat inside by themselves to take part in their secret, sacred rituals.<br /><br /></span></span></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">According to Huffington post, “Unlike the very public penances conducted in other parts of the world, such as the crucifixions that occur every year in the Philippines, the brotherhood in New Mexico gathers inside small, windowless buildings, called moradas...sacred spaces where the men of the community meet to conduct religious rituals.<br /><br /></span></span></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">In 2014 NPR reported, “They typically sing alabados [ancient Spanish hymns about life, death and piety that they've helped preserve] at wakes...and during Holy Week services like this one. Alabado comes from the Spanish verb alabar — to praise. "We say alabado, but it's really a longer phrase — it is Alabado sea Dios o Alabado sea el Señor," says A. Gabriel Melendez, a professor of American studies at the UNM in Albuquerque and a Penitente brother himself. "It would be translated 'Praised be the Lord, praised be God.’ "<br /><br /></span></span></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">“As the Tenebrae service [a ceremony observed during the final part of Holy Week] nears midnight, all of the candles have been extinguished. In the darkness, the oratorio smells of wood smoke, and there's a feeling of suspense. Then, just after midnight, the brothers create – in sound – the moment when Jesus died, with a cacophony of yelling, noisemakers and drums. Despite the late hour when the alabados have lulled everyone into spiritual serenity, the cacophony startles the congregation.<br /><br /></span></span></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">"’When I sing an alabado it's a moment in which I am at the doorway, at the boundary line between the present and the eternal,’ Melendez says. There is a funeral-hymn alabado that is sung in the voice of the deceased. ‘This life is a riddle,’ it goes. ‘And it keeps us in a dream. And we invent amusements, in order to support the pain.’”<br /><br /></span></span></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">And there is one other New Mexican Easter tradition, which while it is conducted largely in public is nonetheless intensely private – the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rF6ielXyH5M">pilgrimage to Chimayó Chapel</a>.<br /></span></span></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-ruB95xsrAX0/YISNLUTGMOI/AAAAAAAACLI/EBxTUOawdGIVyle3-izYmzJjLj_tLQxOgCLcBGAsYHQ/500px-Santuario_Chimayo.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="423" height="240" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-ruB95xsrAX0/YISNLUTGMOI/AAAAAAAACLI/EBxTUOawdGIVyle3-izYmzJjLj_tLQxOgCLcBGAsYHQ/500px-Santuario_Chimayo.jpeg" width="159" /></a></div><br /></span></span></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">“The Santuario de Chimayó is an adobe church nestled in the dusty hills of New Mexico north of Santa Fe. Each year during the week before Easter, the secondary roads winding through these hills toward Chimayó are filled with pilgrims. Some may walk only the seven miles from Española, others thirty miles from Santa Fe. A few will have walked more than seventy miles, all the way from Albuquerque. It is estimated that more than 60,000 pilgrims come to Chimayó during Easter week, making this the largest ritual pilgrimage in the United States.” (<a href="http://pluralism.org/">pluralism.org</a>)<br /><br /></span></span></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">The sanctuary is a place of healing, sometimes referred to as the “Lourdes of the Southwest.” The Pueblo Indians of this region long believed the mud springs at Chimayó to be a sacred, therapeutic place. Then, according to local legend, on Good Friday early in the 1800s a Spanish villager found a cross buried in the earth in this space. He brought the cross to his local priest, but the cross disappeared. Again the villager found it in the earth at Chimayó. The villagers took this as a sign to build a church, which was completed around 1815. Hispanics and Native Americans have come here on pilgrimage for over a century.<br /><br /></span></span></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Elementary school teacher Anne Probst trekked the final eight miles of the journey carrying on her back a hand-carved statue of the crucifixion that was made by her ailing father. “There are healing powers here, and there is meditation and prayer on the walk,” she said.<br /><br /></span></span></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">At the shrine, the faithful duck their heads and file through a low doorway into a room adjacent to the chapel with a small open pit of dirt that some say has curative powers (tierra bendita.) Pilgrims and other visitors kneel to scoop the earth into plastic bags, ambling by the hundreds through a narrow passageway lined with cast-off crutches that bear testimony to healing.</span></span></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/--OgbZ4G-LcU/YISNSvZA0bI/AAAAAAAACLQ/bQMCC9XlHqAHO0eXq45LJAKvlfpx7xVngCLcBGAsYHQ/el_pocito-768x1024.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="480" height="240" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/--OgbZ4G-LcU/YISNSvZA0bI/AAAAAAAACLQ/bQMCC9XlHqAHO0eXq45LJAKvlfpx7xVngCLcBGAsYHQ/el_pocito-768x1024.jpeg" width="180" /></a></div></span></span></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">2020’s and this year’s pilgrimages were cancelled due to Covid.<br /><br /></span></span></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Other public events with private meanings occur at some of the nineteen Pueblos of New Mexico. Many of the Native’s traditional religious rituals and feasts were co-opted by the Spanish Franciscan missionaries into Catholic practices and beliefs during the 17th and 18th centuries. Today, as we have mentioned before, many Pueblo Indians profess to practicing both Catholicism and their tribal faith. At Easter several Pueblos decorate their churches and hold their Basket and Corn Dances, which are generally open to the public to observe, with no explanations as to what is happening or being symbolized.<br /><br /></span></span></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">We ourselves have not yet been to any of the aforementioned events. Some we would not consider watching – feeling it would be intrusive on our part.<br /><br /></span></span></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">However, if someday you should choose to take part then remember one important thing. Never let someone break an Easter egg on your head if their last name ends in “ski.”<br /><br /></span></span></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">So “Wesołych Świąt Wielkanocnych,” “Felices Pascuas,” or just plain “Happy Easter” – depending of course on how you like your eggs prepared.</span></span></div>Jimhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08407095418542335994noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19442576.post-32682337777054859572021-04-20T18:28:00.001-04:002021-04-20T18:28:28.597-04:00They lived off those sheep<p> </p><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">During most of the twentieth century Rancho Viejo (where we live) and its surrounding real estate was a succession of ranches the sizes and shapes of which ebbed and flowed as a series of buyers and sellers purchased or sold entire properties and parts thereof. One thing was constant however – sheep.<br /><br /></span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: center; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: times;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-MRcULPnPVao/YH9UxayXkzI/AAAAAAAACJw/Qn4sgzpHUbg9thwCz-LjqzoGwdYNx9Y4wCLcBGAsYHQ/mocho%2Bbrothers.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="231" data-original-width="320" height="231" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-MRcULPnPVao/YH9UxayXkzI/AAAAAAAACJw/Qn4sgzpHUbg9thwCz-LjqzoGwdYNx9Y4wCLcBGAsYHQ/mocho%2Bbrothers.png" width="320" /></a></div></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">In the early 1900s the land was a part of the 115,000 acre Mocho Family Ranch – owned and run by turn-of-the-century Basque Country immigrants Jean Baptiste (“James”) and John Mocho, and home to as many as 800 head of cattle and 10,000 ewes. Although the bovines ($80/head) were worth more than the ovine ($14) – sheep raising was by far the bigger business in New Mexico since the late 18th and early 19th centuries. ($2,480 and $434 today respectively.)<br /><br /></span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">It began in 1598 when Juan de Onate and his party of 400-plus Spanish settlers arrived with 2,517 Churro sheep – the first domesticated breed in the New World. The gentle ovine turned out to be ideally suited for New Mexico’s climate and topography. Descended from the Churra, an ancient Iberian breed (corrupted to "Churro" by American frontiersmen) they were prized by the Spanish for their remarkable hardiness, adaptability and fertility. “The settlers and explorers, they lived off those sheep,” explained Spanish Market and El Rancho de las Golondrinas <a href="https://golondrinas.org/tag/julia-gomez/">colcha artist and weaver Julia Gomez</a>.<br /><br /></span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">And it turned out that the sheep were better received than the people. When the Pueblo Indians revolted in 1680, they ejected the Spanish and their religion but kept their wooly-coated ruminants. At the end of the 1700s, a century after the Spanish reconquered the colony, sheep raising had developed into a major regional industry.<br /><br /></span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">There were three major reasons: ease of maintenance, difficulty of theft, and “partido."<br /><br /></span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">(1) By the 1700s most New Mexicans lived on small subsistence farms with unfenced fields. It was easy to keep sheep away from the crops, since shepherds were with them all the time. Cattle however had a long history of getting into the farmer’s plots and eating up the winter supply of grain.<br /><br /></span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">(2) The Navajo definitely wanted the Churro – for which they traded and sometimes raided. But their thefts put only a small dent in the total held by New Mexicans. The history of the tribe’s sheep raising and weaving in New Mexico is complicated and often contradictory. Suffice it to say that the Dine ("Di Nay" as they now choose to be called) adapted to using the churro wool to the extent that the ovine became known as Navajo-Churro sheep.<br /><br /></span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Most hostile Indians however preferred to steal cattle, which were less difficult to round up and much easier to drive long distances.<br /><br /></span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">At the first sign of Indian attack, the Spanish shepherds had instructions to scatter the flock. The plunderers, always in a hurry, would gather what they could and ride on. When the owner came, he might find his shepherds dead – but he could send the dogs out to seek and round up what was left of his sheep. Had they been cattle, he would have suffered a total loss.<br /><br /></span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">(3) But perhaps the major reason for the dominance of sheep over cattle was the development of the “partido” business model in the mid 1800s.<br /><br /></span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Under this system the owner of a flock (most of the time a “chico rico” (rich guy) lent a specific quantity of sheep to an individual – and expected in return an equal number in three to five years. The renter paid around 20% of the flock to the owner each year. If the sheep reproduced in sufficient numbers, the system worked well for both parties. The owners received annual payments – while someone else cared for their livestock. The renter could build his own flock and eventually lend out some sheep of his own. (Think of a pyramid scheme whose participants have thick, wooly coats.)<br /><br /></span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">But if the flock did not reproduce as hoped, the renter remained in debt to the owner. (Now think of “payday loans” – a business whose max interest rate today in NM is 135%.) Or even worse for the sheep-sitter he could become the collateral damage of an Indian attack. Although the partido system resulted in economic opportunity for some – in general it worked to the advantage of the rich.<br /><br /></span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">One of the buildings at las Golondrinas is the Shepherd’s Cabin – an example of the housing in which a herdsman would live while tending his borrowed flock. His family would have remained at their farm, although he might occasionally bring along one of his sons for on-the-job training.</span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-y2Mby5sNjL8/YH9U7fulIwI/AAAAAAAACJ0/cNzgaStSUeQoKVyyfn3JUQIa4wf3qyvvgCLcBGAsYHQ/Screen%2BShot%2B2021-03-29%2Bat%2B3.10.06%2BPM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="759" data-original-width="1280" height="190" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-y2Mby5sNjL8/YH9U7fulIwI/AAAAAAAACJ0/cNzgaStSUeQoKVyyfn3JUQIa4wf3qyvvgCLcBGAsYHQ/Screen%2BShot%2B2021-03-29%2Bat%2B3.10.06%2BPM.png" width="320" /></a></div></span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: center; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: center; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: times;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-oBq3Qn6IPxw/YH9U9zuXd0I/AAAAAAAACJ4/4ENJMTQANTo6KofDXECG17RkkY1UFxhAgCLcBGAsYHQ/Screen%2BShot%2B2021-03-29%2Bat%2B3.12.53%2BPM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="845" data-original-width="1280" height="211" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-oBq3Qn6IPxw/YH9U9zuXd0I/AAAAAAAACJ4/4ENJMTQANTo6KofDXECG17RkkY1UFxhAgCLcBGAsYHQ/Screen%2BShot%2B2021-03-29%2Bat%2B3.12.53%2BPM.png" width="320" /></a></div><br /></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">The hut came to us from southern Colorado. It has all of the comforts of a mid-1800s part-time residence including a small dining area, home entertainment center (guitar), and self-defense/hunting implements. The scissors-like objects over the fireplace are blade sheep shears. At Golondrinas professional shearers use such implements to cut the wool off our flock of thirty or so Churros during our Spring Fiber Festival. The resulting fleece i washed and carded at a mill in Mora, NM then comes back to the ranch to be spun, dyed and woven. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMICPLC0q2s">This “New Mexico True” video </a>about the living museum contains a brief clip of the shearing (pun intended.) <br /><br /></span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Patents for shearing machines started to be granted in the 1860s and in 1882, Australian Jack Gray became the first man to completely shear a sheep using mechanical cutters. Machines allowed the wool to be clipped up to three times closer to the skin. However hand-shearers contend that the remaining wool cover left by their method protects the sheep – while their process causes less stress, risk of injury and fewer second cuts – plus increased wool growth and superior fleece for hand-spinners.<br /><br /></span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Over time the Spanish and the Americans introduced other varieties of sheep to New Mexico and Churro became a minority breed – except with the Navajo. By the early 1800s ovine were the most important asset of nearly all well-off New Mexicans. More stable than bitcoins – and so much cuter. In the 1880s more than 5 million sheep and lambs of various breeds roamed New Mexico. But in 2012 the USDA reported that only about 90,000 sheep and lambs were being raised in the state. One hundred years earlier the Mocho Family Ranch in our part of Santa Fe by itself had 10,000.<br /><br /></span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">The Churro themselves were brought to the edge of extinction during the 1860s when, in order to drive the Navajo out of their homeland their villages were burned and their livestock and people killed by U.S. soldiers. During the "Long Walk" of 1864, about 8,000 Navajo were forced to march from their traditional lands to forced confinement at Fort Sumner, N.M. Before the march, some Navajo were able to release Churro into the hidden canyons near their homes. Then during a drought in 1930, the federal government said the Navajo were overgrazing their lands and killed more than 250,000 Navajo sheep, goats and horses.<br /><br /></span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Since the early 1980s, the Churro have been making a comeback, largely through the efforts of the Navajo Sheep Project at the Utah State University and the Navajo-Churro Sheep Association in Ojo Caliente, N.M. [In 2006 there were] about 2,000 registered Churro sheep, and another 2,000 unregistered sheep in the country,” according to the Arizona Daily Sun.<br /><br /></span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">The Churro at las Golondrinas are carefully bred and monitored to ensure their absolute Churro-ness. (Because of the natural variety of colors and patterns in the breed, it would otherwise impossible to pick out the black sheep in the family.) They live out their natural lives grazing on pelleted food, cat-napping and politely greeting their guests.<br /><br /></span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">It is our way of celebrating these fluffy Spanish ovine for all they have contributed to the making of New Mexico. The admittedly biased Navajo-Churro Sheep Association puts it this way, “the fact that these sheep still exist today is a testimony to their endurance and endearment. No other sheep population in the history of the world has survived so much selective pressure with such dignity and spirit.”<br /><br /></span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">And they just make you smile too – don’t they?</span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-6wOEMCXEgGU/YH9VLBmzSII/AAAAAAAACKA/wZjsE0WcHl0mHzD-QoyNwMXX-Wkof0_vACLcBGAsYHQ/Screen%2BShot%2B2021-04-04%2Bat%2B3.55.42%2BPM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="772" data-original-width="990" height="240" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-6wOEMCXEgGU/YH9VLBmzSII/AAAAAAAACKA/wZjsE0WcHl0mHzD-QoyNwMXX-Wkof0_vACLcBGAsYHQ/Screen%2BShot%2B2021-04-04%2Bat%2B3.55.42%2BPM.png" width="308" /></a></div></span></span><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">***************************</span></span></div></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">BTW Like Churro sheep, the New Mexican sheep dog traces its bloodline back to Spain and was also introduced to the Americas at the time of the Conquest. They were larger and tougher than the Scotch and English breeds. “I very much doubt if there are shepherd dogs in any other part of the world...equal to those of New Mexico in value. The famed Scotch and English dogs sink into insignificance by the side of them.” (The Practical Shepherd: A Complete Treatise on the Breeding, Management and By Henry Stephens Randall) “Two or three of them will follow a flock of sheep for a distance of several miles as orderly as a shepherd, and drive them back to the pen again at night without any other guidance than their own extraordinary instincts.” (Gregg’s Commerce of the Prairies, or, The Journal of a Santa Fé Trader, 1831-1839)<br /><br /></span></span></div><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-bnwH9UNA-3g/YH9VRhGEx5I/AAAAAAAACKE/7A3FSstJP-o59N_VgYif0ujnmXSK2SKGgCLcBGAsYHQ/Screen%2BShot%2B2021-04-07%2Bat%2B11.50.41%2BAM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="572" data-original-width="944" height="194" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-bnwH9UNA-3g/YH9VRhGEx5I/AAAAAAAACKE/7A3FSstJP-o59N_VgYif0ujnmXSK2SKGgCLcBGAsYHQ/Screen%2BShot%2B2021-04-07%2Bat%2B11.50.41%2BAM.png" width="320" /></a></div><br /><br /></span></div></div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br class="Apple-interchange-newline" /></span></span><br />Jimhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08407095418542335994noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19442576.post-48992215442404481922021-02-08T17:29:00.001-05:002021-02-08T17:30:00.526-05:00Yankeedom and El Norte<p> </p><div style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Within days of setting foot in Santa Fe for the first time in 1992 we knew this was where we were meant to be. And not just for that particular day.<br /><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">However, had we first read Colin Woodard’s "American Nations" we might have cancelled our New Mexico plans and just driven straight to Cape Cod instead. We obviously are glad that we didn’t. But why?<br /><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">The book identifies eleven distinct cultures within the U.S. and Canada – and “makes the provocative claim that our culture wars are inevitable. North America was settled by groups with distinct political and religious values – and we haven’t had a moment’s peace since."<br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YFUEp-Df914/YCG6gl69KKI/AAAAAAAACIw/GeOdPMPJv84NJKu1kbm9s055iH4_r9S5ACLcBGAsYHQ/s640/eleven%2Bnations%2Bmap.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="436" data-original-width="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YFUEp-Df914/YCG6gl69KKI/AAAAAAAACIw/GeOdPMPJv84NJKu1kbm9s055iH4_r9S5ACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/eleven%2Bnations%2Bmap.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><br /></span></div></div></div></div></div></div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"></span></span><div style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Two in particular who should not get along are Yankeedom and El Norte – the “nations” that apply to us. We both grew up in the former and lived there for seventy-four years. Then, after vacationing in the second of the two for twenty-five years, we relocated there. Shouldn’t we have experienced at least a culture skirmish, if not a full blown conflict?<br /><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Our former homeland was begun by the Puritans in New England and spread across upper New York, the northern parts of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa, into the eastern Dakotas, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and the Canadian Maritime.<br /><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">As a whole the people of the region value education, intellectual achievement, communal empowerment, and citizen participation in government – are comfortable with government regulation – and have a "Utopian streak" believing in the ultimate perfectibility of man, guided by the right types of reforms of course. The area was settled by radical Calvinists – Puritans who believed it was their mission from God to “propagate His will on a corrupt and sinful world [and that] personal wealth was expected to be reinvested in one’s good works. Yankeedom has, since the outset, put great emphasis on perfecting earthly civilization through social engineering, denial of self for the common good, and assimilation of outsiders.”<br /><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Except for that evangelical zealotry part – we say amen! We definitely could comfortably live there. In fact…<br /><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">El Norte is home to the oldest European subculture in the United States. Started by Catholic Spanish settlers in the 16th century, and later augmented by Anglo-Americans from the Deep South and Greater Appalacia, it includes south and west Texas, southern California and its Imperial Valley, southern Arizona, New Mexico, parts of Colorado, and several Mexican states.<br />Spain’s colonization of the land was driven by a desire for gold and the compulsion to convert every living soul to Catholicism. The latter idea really irritated the Protestant countries – and lead to “the lasting hatred of the English, Scots, and Dutch who regarded [the Spanish] as the decadent, unthinking tools of the Vatican’s conspiracy to enslave the world. This virulent anti-Hispanic feeling became deeply engrained in the cultures of Yankeedom, Appalachia, Tidewater, and the Deep South.” And was one of the reasons New Mexico was denied statehood for so many years.<br /><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Spain sent lots of men, but not nearly enough women, leading to intermarriage with the local Natives and an ethnically mixed “mestizo” populace. Partially because of their widespread proselytization efforts the Spanish spread themselves too thin and were not able to watch over their charges very closely. Thus the people here became exceptionally independent, self-sufficient, adaptable, and focused on work. Hispanic culture dominates in El Norte – making it "a place apart" from the rest of North America, as well as "a hotbed of democratic reform and revolutionary sentiment.”<br /><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">We like to think of ourselves as relatively independent, self-sufficient, adaptable, and focused on work (or now on our avocations.) But revolutionaries? One of us prefers not to wear gold – but likes turquoise and silver. The other was raised Catholic. We both are drawn to New Mexican architecture and folk art – with a special affinity for depictions of the Virgin of Guadalupe, whether on persons, places or things. And we seem to be missing that deeply engrained “virulent anti-Hispanic” Yankeedom gene.<br /><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Were we unknowing El Norteños for three quarters of a century? Real ones in some prior incarnation?<br /><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Or is it that Santa Fe is enough of a “City Different,” to allow us to retain our thoroughly instilled Yankee sensibilities – while at the same time letting us immerse ourselves in our new culture’s way of life. After all we were not the first ones from our homeland to come here and stay – among them the <a href="https://uapress.arizona.edu/book/ladies-of-the-canyons">“Ladies of the Canyons,”</a> as documented by Leslie Poling-Kempes.<br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: times;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-tcHVdlrra8U/YCG6gWKzrhI/AAAAAAAACIs/j5U24NqBSmcV2L5t6sJeYoCeDjDOaWW9QCLcBGAsYHQ/s499/51vE7df-Q4L._SX331_BO1%252C204%252C203%252C200_.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="499" data-original-width="333" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-tcHVdlrra8U/YCG6gWKzrhI/AAAAAAAACIs/j5U24NqBSmcV2L5t6sJeYoCeDjDOaWW9QCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/51vE7df-Q4L._SX331_BO1%252C204%252C203%252C200_.jpg" /></a></span></span></span></div></div></div></div></div></div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"></span></span><div style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Educated, restless, and inquisitive, Natalie Curtis, Carol Stanley, Alice Klauber, and Mary Cabot Wheelwright were plucky, intrepid women whose lives were transformed in the first decades of the twentieth century by the people and country of the American Southwest. Within the wild, raw beauty of the high desert and mountain landscape these ladies imagined and created a new home territory, a new society, and a new identity for themselves and for the [men and] women who would follow them.”<br /><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Curtis was an ethnomusicologist who transcribed the songs of hundreds of Native American tribes – and published them in 1905 as ‘The Indians’ Book: Songs and Legends of the American Indians.” She also brought her friend President Theodore Roosevelt to see his first (perhaps only) <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrK_8tqKIcY">Hopi Snake Dance</a>. Stanley was a brilliant pianist and educator who founded Ghost Ranch – without which Georgia O’Keeffe might not have discovered the abstract landscapes of New Mexico. (Wanting to see the source of Ms O’K’s nonrepresentational visions was one of our primary reasons for first coming out here. On that trip we realized that they were actually pretty realistic.) Klauber was a painter from San Diego who helped start up the NM Museum of Art in 1917. And Wheelwright founded the Museum of the American Indian in 1937 to preserve and showcase Navajo culture and religion.<br /><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Along with other “immigrants” the Ladies of the Canyon used their newfound independence to construct a unique refuge of cultural diversity. A “City Different” in this “place apart” – all set in a gorgeous landscape where the air is clean and the weather usually bright, sunny and dry, but not too warm. (Although a little rain now and then would be nice.)<br /><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">El Norte culture in its native form is however still alive and well throughout New Mexico. There are religious aspects – and other parts of the Norteño lifestyle that are almost as sacrosanct out here.<br /><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">After winning its independence from Spain in the early 19th century Mexico ousted all of the Spanish missionaries from its provinces, but failed to replace them with enough of their own clergy. As a result many secluded Nuevo Méxican villages could expect only a once-yearly visit from a parish priest. Hardly enough for people falling in love, having babies, raising children, dying, etc. The men in those communities came together as “Los Penitentes” and dedicated themselves to providing mutual aid, community charity – and to memorializing the spirit of the penance and the Passion of Christ (including their own self-flagellation practices.) Almost expelled from, then reconciled with the Catholic Church, the brotherhood continues to perform a modified form of its religious rituals, and to pursue its commitment to acts of community charity.<br /><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">In what most New Mexicans consider their sacred right – the state has some of the least restrictive firearms laws in the country, with around one-half of the state population owning guns. It allows the open carrying of loaded weapons without a specific permit. A special license is required to secretly pack a shooting iron however.<br /><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Sheriffs are locally elected, and regularly decline to enforce (or sometimes even obey) state laws. In February Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham signed a red-flag gun bill that allows state district courts to order the temporary surrender of firearms if a gun owner displays dangerous or threatening behavior. And she urged (not commanded or compelled) sheriffs to resign if they refused to enforce it. Likewise masks. (And we naively thought that a stylish bandanna was an integral part of southwestern cowboy fashion. I guess when somebody tells you that you HAVE TO do something…)<br /><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Some of that Yankee "sacrifice for the common good" ideal seems to be catching on however. As our country’s thirty-fifth president might have put it – “mask not what your country can do for you – <span style="text-align: center;">mask what you can do for your country.” </span>Face-coverings are becoming a more common sight, and NM’s Covid numbers have returned to yellow or green on most maps. </span></span></div></div></div></div></div></div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"></span></span><div style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Less contentiously the land of Enchantment’s independence and self-sufficiency can also be seen on a day-to-day basis in many of its 200 unincorporated communities (aka Census Designated Places or CDPs.)<br /><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Twenty minutes to our south is the dirt-street, mud-house town of Los Cerrillos – a CDP with 110 adobe homes and a population of 230. Settled in 1879 – within a few years over 3,000 full-time prospectors were extracting gold, silver, lead, zinc, and turquoise from the surrounding mountains, and in their leisure time supporting twenty-one saloons, five brothels, four hotels, several newspapers and an opera house in the city. For a time Los Cerrillos was seriously considered as a new site for the capital of New Mexico. Today it is officially a “ghost town.”</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: times;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-fUjeoeVbgUI/YCG6gSq8LBI/AAAAAAAACI0/XbpDNihtttkx2D1JZ8tNeP66MzrVPUiKACLcBGAsYHQ/s500/LosCerrillosOperaHouse-500.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="375" data-original-width="500" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-fUjeoeVbgUI/YCG6gSq8LBI/AAAAAAAACI0/XbpDNihtttkx2D1JZ8tNeP66MzrVPUiKACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/LosCerrillosOperaHouse-500.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></span></span></div></div></div></div></div></div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"></span></span><div style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-wrap: break-word;"><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">A little further down the road is Madrid (MAD-rid, not Ma-DRID) – similarly categorized, even though this small village of about 400 residents is bustling during the (normal) summer months with shops, restaurants, and galleries catering to its many visitors. Madrid was a booming coal mining community in the early 20th century – the Cerrillos Coal & Iron Co. developed all the housing, mines, and facilities – until natural gas came on the scene in the late 1940s. By 1954 most residents had moved away, and an ad in the Wall Street Journal listed the entire town for sale at a price of $250,000 (2.4 million 2020 dollars.) There were no takers. Today artists, craftsmen, and other individuals wanting to make their homes in the mountains live in what once was company provided housing.<br /><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Closer to us is the village of Agua Fría – in their own words “an obscure community five miles southwest of the Santa Fe Plaza [founded by] humble and poor farmers, who spoke only Spanish, watching the world go by on the El Camino Real de Adentro [Royal Road of the Interior Land.]” Realtors describe the town as a “Traditional Historic Community” with a “sparse suburban feel.” But the 2,000 people in their 720 adobe houses quietly demur – and insist that Agua Fría is simply a state of mind.<br /><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">At a younger point in our lives we might have considered settling in one of these three places. But what we really wish is that we had had the opportunity to hang out with those early 20th century Utopian-minded newcomers who socially engineered Santa Fe into the City Different. As our radical Calvinist forerunners would tell us, it is after all the type of thing that expatriates from Yankeedom, are predestined to do.</span></span></div></div></div></div></div></div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br class="Apple-interchange-newline" /></span></span><br />Jimhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08407095418542335994noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19442576.post-9318221462487388542021-02-08T17:22:00.000-05:002021-02-08T17:22:24.461-05:00A Little Old-time Religion<p> </p><p style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Northern New Mexico is overwhelmingly Catholic. But we don’t mean religiously. The Spanish, who came to the New World in the 16<sup>th</sup><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>century for “glory, gold and God,” are no longer attempting to forcibly convert everyone to the Catholic religion. But their “primitive” attempts to recreate the religious iconography of their home country have established themselves as THE art of the region.</span></span></p><p style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Santos” – 2-D “retablos” and 3-D “bultos” portray the Church’s saints. “Ex Voto” paintings tell the stories of their interventions in the lives of everyday people. Crosses made of straw (in lieu of gold), tin (not silver) or hand-carved from wood decorate the walls of both believers and non. A visitor might be hard-pressed to know whether they were in the home of a devoted Catholic, a museum, a chapel or an art collector’s casita.</span></span></p><p style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Rw1tBkApHCU/YCG4EghmtJI/AAAAAAAACHw/ONkfzBknllci6HhNz4RDAJ0puzJFoj6ZQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1040/Screen%2BShot%2B2020-10-21%2Bat%2B10.33.41%2BAM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="1040" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Rw1tBkApHCU/YCG4EghmtJI/AAAAAAAACHw/ONkfzBknllci6HhNz4RDAJ0puzJFoj6ZQCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Screen%2BShot%2B2020-10-21%2Bat%2B10.33.41%2BAM.png" width="320" /></a></div><p></p><p style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Catholic churches are the focal points of most northern New Mexico villages. Some are simple buildings maintained for centuries by parishioners, townspeople and historic preservationists – organic-looking structures sculpted from adobe with old-world charm. Religious folk art adorns the walls and altars.</span></span></p><p style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Roadside crosses (descansos) mark the spot on earth where loved ones took their last breath. Calvario crosses of the Penitentes appear randomly on hills – and by design in the paintings of Georgia O'Keeffe.</span></span></p><p style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Hispanics in northern New Mexico still maintain strong family and Catholic ties, and continue to honor traditions associated with both. On holidays there may be religious processions – most notably the pilgrimage to the Santuario de Chimayo, an hour's drive north of Santa Fe. Constructed in 1816, the sanctuary has long been a worshiping site for Catholics who attribute miraculous healing powers to the earth found in the chapel's anteroom. Several days before Easter, fervent believers begin walking the highway headed to Chimayo, some carrying large crosses – others nothing but small bottles of water – most praying for a miracle.</span></span></p><p style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KI7V3Frs7Ow/YCG4EiIf_TI/AAAAAAAACH0/c0waEkEVEHscEIfOdXXi0wmztoJfu9LVACLcBGAsYHQ/s1280/Screen%2BShot%2B2020-10-21%2Bat%2B10.39.08%2BAM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="956" data-original-width="1280" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KI7V3Frs7Ow/YCG4EiIf_TI/AAAAAAAACH0/c0waEkEVEHscEIfOdXXi0wmztoJfu9LVACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Screen%2BShot%2B2020-10-21%2Bat%2B10.39.08%2BAM.png" width="320" /></a></p><p style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">But our recent talk with new Santa Fe friends L & J reminded us that Catholicism is not the only system of faith and worship in our new home state. In fact religion has always been a central, defining element in New Mexico’s history beginning with the Pueblo people.</span></span></p><p style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">In his novel “Alburquerque,” Rudolfo Anaya has one of his main characters explain the spiritual roots of Santuario de Chimayo. “Before there was the raza [hispanics] here, the Indians used to come to this place. Chimayo is an Indian word; you see, they had named their universe and the sacred places. They used the earth for healing. The Mexicano who built the first chapel saw a saint standing over this spot. The earth is sacred.”</span></span></p><p style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Within the Puebloan cosmos all living creatures are mutually dependent and every relationship, whether with a person, an animal, or a plant, has spiritual significance. A hunter prays before killing a deer, asking the creature to sacrifice itself to the tribe. The harvesting of plants requires prayer, thanks, and ritual.</span></span></p><p style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">The Puebloans believe that their ancestors originally lived under the ground – the source of all life. The first people, encouraged by burrowing animals, entered the world of humans – the "fourth" world – through a hole, a sipapu. Rituals and deities vary from tribe to tribe, but most believe this world is enclosed by four sacred mountains, where the sacred colors – coral, black, turquoise, and yellow or white – predominate.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></p><p style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Not surprisingly given the co-mingling of Native religion and Catholicism exemplified by Santuario de Chimayo, many Pueblo Natives will tell you that they practice BOTH their tribal religion AND Catholicism.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></p><p style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Our research has turned up some (we think) interesting history on three of the other denominations here in New Mexico: United Methodist, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and Presbyterian – the subject of our discussion with L and J.</span></span></p><p align="center" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 0in; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>An Area of Degradation and Ignorance</b></span></span></p><p style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">In her historical novel “Not Ordered by Men, the first 100 years of History of First Presbyterian Church of Santa Fe,” T.D. Allen tells the church’s beginning from viewpoint of Jennie St. John Mitchell, wife of the General Robert B. Mitchell, New Mexico’s Territorial Governor from 1866 to 1869. In the novel Mrs. Mitchell writes to the Presbyterian Church’s Board of Domestic Missions imploring them to send a minister to Santa Fe.</span></span></p><p style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">“I want above all else to see my church come into this area of degradation and ignorance. It is well known that Presbyterians have ever gone into this country’s frontiers, fostering hand-in-hand both faith and truth, carrying the Bible in one hand and readers and spellers in the other, building...both churches and schools.”<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></p><p style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">An actual 1866 letter written by Mrs. Isabella Graham in 1866 paints a more detailed picture. “Children and dogs run the streets all day long, splashing in the odorous puddles where swill collects. There are no schools as you know them, and none but Catholic churches. The Catholics are building a great church...but the saloon keepers have out built everybody. The poor men of Protestant persuasion who are stationed here in the Army are left with no worthwhile diversion...The town is a living example of the filth and degradation to which human beings can sink when they are not enlightened and are left without the uplifting influences of the Church.”</span></span></p><p style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">While Mrs. Mitchell’s letter may be fictional, Church records show that she was one of the original members of First Presbyterian Church, and invited the congregation to have its first worship service in the Council Chamber of the governor’s residence.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></p><p style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Sent by the Board of Domestic Missions, the Rev. David F. McFarland stepped off the stage in Santa Fe on November 22, 1866. He called on Mrs. Mitchell the next day. The first worship service was held two days later with forty persons present, many of them Army wives in their late twenties. Sabbath School was held that afternoon. With a petition signed by twelve persons, McFarland officially organized the church in the Palace of the Governors on January 6, 1867 – at the time the only Protestant church in New Mexico. In March of that year, the ruins of an unsuccessful Baptist Church were purchased for $5,100. The church remains in that same location, 208 Grant Avenue, today.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></p><p style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">The new parish struggled in its early years. All original trustees were gone – three had moved and two had been murdered. The only person on the rolls in 1874 was the postmaster. By 1881, however the old adobe structure was replaced with a new red brick building and a Victorian style manse was built nearby. The following photo shows the sanctuary in 1955.</span></span></p><p style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VcouyJLMeZo/YCG4FTmwH6I/AAAAAAAACH8/4X0g9gx1OAo4ca6m-mFG8vYdHckP1v2rQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1220/Screen%2BShot%2B2020-10-21%2Bat%2B10.44.21%2BAM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="1220" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VcouyJLMeZo/YCG4FTmwH6I/AAAAAAAACH8/4X0g9gx1OAo4ca6m-mFG8vYdHckP1v2rQCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Screen%2BShot%2B2020-10-21%2Bat%2B10.44.21%2BAM.png" width="320" /></a></p><p style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">In 1908, Rev. Hugh A. Cooper, a Presbyterian pastor in Albuquerque, founded the Southwest Presbyterian Sanatorium, a facility for the hundreds of indigent tuberculosis victims he often visited since he himself moved from Iowa to ABQ in 1903 as a TB patient. In 1950, with tuberculosis under control, the “San” evolved into The Presbyterian Hospital Center. Today Presbyterian Healthcare Services owns and operates eight hospitals in seven New Mexico communities (one in our part of Santa Fe) as well as the Presbyterian Health Plan.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></p><p style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">The church also operates Ghost Ranch, a 21,000-acre retreat and education center located near the village of Abiquiú in north central New Mexico – former site of the home and studio of Georgia O'Keeffe, as well as the subject of many of her paintings. Originally won in a poker game in 1928 by Roy Pfaffle, it was so-named by his wife Carol Stanley (the legal owner of the property) who constructed guest quarters and created an exclusive dude ranch that was visited by many of the wealthy and creative people of the time – the “Mother of American Modernism” among them. Many of Stanley’s friends moved to New Mexico for its peaceful atmosphere. In 1935 she sold the ranch to one of them, Arthur Newton Pack, writer and editor of Nature Magazine. Pack and his wife Phoebe gave the ranch to the Presbyterian Church in 1955 where it is now open to the public for “the spiritual health and well being of all mankind.”</span></span></p><p align="center" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 0in; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>“</b><b>Hello. My name is<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></b><b>Elder</b><b><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></b><b>Hamblin</b><b>...”</b></span></span></p><p style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Along I-25 between Santa Fe and Albuquerque stands The Mormon Battalion Monument – an historic obelisk built in honor of members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who served in the United States Army's Mormon Battalion during the Mexican-American War of 1846 -1848, and traversed New Mexico from its northeast to its southwest corner in 1846.</span></span></p><p style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-z4frvsP-SbY/YCG4CzzizDI/AAAAAAAACHs/TXDUvH1TVYwl0u2bGPqcZXx_H5z1C2mXQCLcBGAsYHQ/s640/600px-Mormon_Battalion_Monument_Santa_Fe%252C_NM.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="480" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-z4frvsP-SbY/YCG4CzzizDI/AAAAAAAACHs/TXDUvH1TVYwl0u2bGPqcZXx_H5z1C2mXQCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/600px-Mormon_Battalion_Monument_Santa_Fe%252C_NM.jpeg" /></a></p><p style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Significant LDS contact in the territory did not occur however until 1876 when Jacob Hamblin and James S. Brown, two members of a group of missionaries assigned to Mexico, found some success proselytizing among the Zuni and Navajo in the western of the territory. That year Mormon missionaries founded the settlement of Savoia, about twenty miles east of the Zuni village, and were joined by LDS converts from the southern states. In 1882 they relocated a few miles south to a village they named Ramah, which continues today as a predominantly LDS community – and was a major focus in a landmark 1941 interdisciplinary Harvard study of the village’s five cultures: 500 Navajo, 40 Spanish-Americans, 300 Mormons, 130 Texans (aka “El Morro People”) and 30 “Southwestern Anglos.” (Today there are 470 residents.)<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></p><p style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Unlike their brethren in other parts of the Southwest whose ideology and colonization techniques brought relatively good relations with the Navajos, the Ramah Mormons never succeeded to any degree in overcoming the [passive Navajo hostility]… and only a few of the Indians would work for or learn from the Mormon settlers.” An influx of Texas cattle ranchers followed by Anglo farmers eventually took over much of the land. The Indian Service Administration moved the Natives to the south and decreed the sending of their children to Indian Boarding Schools leading to more resentment. Spanish-Americans, mainly sheep herders, moved in and became the dominant group. They were followed and displaced both in numbers and power by more Texans who also overruled the Mormons. By the time of the study, “virtually no Ramah Mormons had nay but bitter word for the “Administration...and any small success against ‘Washington’ was greeted happily.”</span></span></p><p style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Latter-day Saints also settled in northwestern New Mexico along the San Juan River at Fruitland, Kirtland, Waterflow and Bluewater. (For a time Brigham Young, Jr. maintained one of his residences at Fruitland.) Additional LDS congregations were established in western New Mexico at Pleasanton, Socorro County (1882) – and at Virden, Hidalgo County (1915), which was settled by Mormon refugees from south of the border dislodged by the Mexican Revolution. In the first third of the 20<sup>th</sup><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>century, congregations were organized at Albuquerque, Gallup, Taos, Silver City, Clovis, Tres Piedras, Pagosa Springs, and Thoreau. In 2000 the first temple in New Mexico was dedicated in Albuquerque. By 2010 there were 67,637 New Mexican Mormons.</span></span></p><p align="center" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 0in; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>The Snowshoe Itinerant</b></span></span></p><p style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Following the example set by its founder John Wesley in England a century earlier to take the message to where the people were instead of waiting for the people to come to them, hundreds of dedicated circuit riders like <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Snow-Shoe-Itinerant-Autobiography-John-Dyer/dp/1932738657">“Father” John L Dyer (aka “The Snowshoe Itinerant”)</a> spread Methodism throughout the frontier areas of the United States. (The title was not conferred by the Methodist Church but was bestowed the people as a sign of respect and endearment. The “snowshoes” were actually nine to eleven foot Norwegian skis made of pine or spruce.) Dyer’s itinerant ministry included much of present-day Colorado and New Mexico and lasted almost four decades. It was a difficult life with minimal financial compensation. And preaching often took place in very informal, frequently quite seedy, settings.</span></span></p><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><br /><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4sv23pTyJdA/YCG4FU4LyWI/AAAAAAAACH4/zhOBx94gFLIOtwqGwVcnxZkxSQeXde16ACLcBGAsYHQ/s558/father-john-dyer.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="558" data-original-width="235" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4sv23pTyJdA/YCG4FU4LyWI/AAAAAAAACH4/zhOBx94gFLIOtwqGwVcnxZkxSQeXde16ACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/father-john-dyer.jpg" /></a></span></span></div><p style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Dyer was present when Colonel and Pastor John Chivington, the presiding elder, said of Native Americans, “I am fully satisfied, gentlemen, that to kill them is the only way we will ever have peace and quiet.” Chivington later led a regiment of Colorado Volunteers to the Sand Creek reservation where, true to his word, he slaughtered 200 Cheyenne including women and children – the “Sand Creek Massacre.”</span></span></p><p style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">As Dyer began to travel into New Mexico, he noted of the Apache, “If sighted by them it was necessary to outrun them, kill them, or get scalped.” Later he declared it, was “impossible to tame and educate an Indian until he is subdued...We can but desire the Navajo tribe to become enlightened and as perfect in religion as their squaws were in weaving blankets.”</span></span></p><p style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">In 1882 W. W. Welsh, the presiding elder of the MEC,S (Methodist Episcopal Church, South) in Colorado, said of the 10,000 Pueblo Indians in New Mexico, saying, “They are feeble in intellect, unable to originate, but can imitate like monkeys.” (An 1844 dispute over the ownership of two slaves by an MEC Bishop led Methodists in the South to break off and form a separate denomination.)</span></span></p><p style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">The Women’s Home Missionary Society of the church established schools among the Jicarilla Apache in Dulce and on the Navajo Reservation in the 1880s. In 1891 they helped create the Navajo Mission School, which like other Indian boarding schools operated on the principle of “kill the Indian, save the man.” “Not provided were the love and care you would get from a parent,” recalled one former student. Another was told by his father, “What have you done. You are a Navajo. And your Navajo religion is over here.’”</span></span></p><p style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Methodism came to in Santa Fe in 1850 with the arrival of Reverend E.G. Nicholson. Nineteen years later “Father” Dyer visited to convey his support for a permanent parish. Shortly thereafter an adobe structure with a short steeple was built on San Francisco Street to house the St John’s Methodist-Episcopal Church. Now known as St. John’s United Methodist Church the parish is located on Old Pecos Trail near Museum Hill.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></p><p align="center" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 0in; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>And we must mention..</b><b>.</b></span></span></p><p style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">In recent years, New Mexico has become known (and ridiculed) for its New Age pilgrims and practitioners – and their alternative churches, healing centers, and healing schools. "A spiritual mini-mecca for a semi-godless age,” per the New York Times. The roots of the movement are hard to trace. But many alternative believers seem to have been drawn by the spirituality, beliefs and deeply-felt connection to the land of the Pueblo people.</span></span></p><p style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">While others may laugh, we think that the Natives might be grateful to finally have someone who likes them just the way they are.</span></span></p><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Jimhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08407095418542335994noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19442576.post-74898294902466488942021-02-06T16:27:00.002-05:002021-02-06T16:27:53.511-05:00Red or Green? Golden or Amber?<p><br /></p><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">New Mexico is famous for its tear-inducing red and green chile peppers, and the stew-like dishes made from the them. (That was not a typo, the Spanish who came here in the 1500's converted the Central Mexican Nahuatl (Aztec) name, chilli, to chile – the spelling used today by most New Mexicans.) </span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">The de jure “Official State Question” (not a typo either, we really do have one) is “red or green?” – asked every day by every wait-person on pretty much every restaurant order. </span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">“None of the above” is not on the menu. “Christmas,” meaning both, is always an unadvertised option. </span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-ykHhts4e6fg/YB8JDey0frI/AAAAAAAACGw/64QV0WA3_-0OkFGKWI8uQOiTrOkWs34hwCLcBGAsYHQ/100percent-agave-christmas.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="425" data-original-width="640" height="213" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-ykHhts4e6fg/YB8JDey0frI/AAAAAAAACGw/64QV0WA3_-0OkFGKWI8uQOiTrOkWs34hwCLcBGAsYHQ/100percent-agave-christmas.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><br /></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">In response to your answer the chef will eagerly smother your enchiladas, chile rellenos or really, anything you can think of in a blanket of your chosen color(s). Including a gyro plate from a Greek restaurant. </span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Sometimes they don’t ask. Imagine the surprise at biting into your benign looking tuna Florentine expecting comfort food creaminess only to discover… As a result of such experiences, and following advice we were given on our first trip out here, when asked THE QUESTION we tell our server, “whichever is milder. And on the side please.”<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Recently J, a dear friend from Connecticut, emailed this tip for those of us trying to trust the science. “Chili peppers may help you live longer. Scientists have linked consumption of chili peppers to a reduced chance of early death due to such things as cancer or heart disease, according to an American Heart Association study... comparing the longevity of those who ate chili peppers on a regular basis with those who ate them very little or never, finding that those who did had a 26% less chance of dying of cardiovascular problems and a 23% less chance of dying of cancer.”<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">We thanked him for the info – but mentioned that (1) like many other things in life that are now thought to be good for us it is probably too late for us to start, and (2) when someone expresses surprise at our reluctance to bury our otherwise wonderful meal under a coating of throat-numbing, sweat-inducing “flavoring” we tell them, “we’re from New England. Our idea of spicy food is maple syrup.”<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">In early-to-mid-March when temperatures drop below freezing at night and rise to the forties during the day the maple sap starts to flow. Sugar, black, red and silver maples tapped with old school metal buckets, or higher tech vacuum-pumped brightly colored tubing appear on the landscape. </span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Sugarhouses large and small boil the collected sap, evaporating the water out and sending clouds of sweet maple scented steam billowing from their cupolas and steam stacks. As the water evaporates, the sap thickens. At the 219 degrees F the syrup is drawn off, filtered, and graded for flavor and color – golden, amber, dark or very dark – New England’s de-facto, but unaccredited, official food colors.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-7nSLOlFYihU/YB8JITYEFrI/AAAAAAAACG0/mxJ07VfLeAQg6yBgp5imiLvyxLoDF81YwCLcBGAsYHQ/sugar-house-tank-boiling.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="344" data-original-width="640" height="172" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-7nSLOlFYihU/YB8JITYEFrI/AAAAAAAACG0/mxJ07VfLeAQg6yBgp5imiLvyxLoDF81YwCLcBGAsYHQ/sugar-house-tank-boiling.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Just as the running of the sap heralds the coming of spring in New England, <a class="" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIckX4jMIFA">the sounds and scents of roasting chiles</a> signal harvest time in New Mexico. Hand-turned black wire cages with spinning peppers heated by propane flames appear at grocery stores, farmers markets and roadside stands throughout the state. The sound of gushing gas and the snap, crackle, and pop of roasting chiles provides the musical background to the smoky, sweet, pungent perfume that wafts through the fall air.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-O98W8mUvwrg/YB8JQPRZIuI/AAAAAAAACG4/K6evEqucLWANoKESHrD7vmyVxAxfy8ugQCLcBGAsYHQ/iStock_458289837_0d8d0418-5ed3-4fa6-8d81-a49f740b8d08.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="588" height="240" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-O98W8mUvwrg/YB8JQPRZIuI/AAAAAAAACG4/K6evEqucLWANoKESHrD7vmyVxAxfy8ugQCLcBGAsYHQ/iStock_458289837_0d8d0418-5ed3-4fa6-8d81-a49f740b8d08.jpeg" width="294" /></a></div><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">It is almost enough to make even the most hard-core New Englander throw caution to the wind and… Almost. But no, not us anyway.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Maple trees are few and far between out here, only growing in a small number of cool mountainous places – and on our placita thanks to a previous owner. A NMSU professor has developed the “Mesa Glow” hybrid specifically for the state’s warm and dry desert climate – but not a syrup producing one. “I was inspired...because of its fall color.”<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">So what are those of us who prefer our food preferences measured in Percent Sucrose Equivalents rather than Scoville Heat Units to do? For many the answer is sweet sorghum, a flowering grass that has been a source of saccharine satisfaction to people around the world for over 10,000 years. Back in CT we may have heard the name – and, if so, probably thought it was some kind of silage for cattle (it is), or perhaps the surname of a Dogpatch resident in the comic strip L’il Abner (it isn’t.)<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">But we really knew nothing about sorghum until we began volunteering at El Rancho de las Golondrinas. And did not actually taste any till about a month ago.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">So here is some of what we have learned.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Things apparently were not that sweet in the New World until Columbus brought sugar cane to Hispaniola on his second voyage in December 1493. Thirty years later it was introduced into Mexico by Hernán Cortés. Until then sorghum had followed much the same Africa-to-Europe path as sugar cane – however, it is unclear when it made its way into the Spanish New World.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">We do know however it did not become a commercially viable crop in the United States until just prior to the Civil War. And, as much as New Mexicans hate to give Texans credit for anything, it was extensively cultivated there in the mid-19th century and most likely made its way westward from there to the Land of Enchantment.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Prior to that, Nuevo Méxicanos did their sweetening with mashed or pressed fruit, honey (when available) and processed sugar from lower Mexico and, after the 1821 opening of the Santa Fe Trail, the United States. Attempts to grow sugar cane here were stymied by altitude and climate. Sorghum cane, however, adapted well. “Corn guzzles water. Sorghum sips it.” (americansorghum.rom)<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">At las Golondrinas living museum we grow enough of the crop to be used for demo purposes at our annual fall “Harvest Festival.”<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">The ranch has three sorghum processing devices (“melaseras”) – two mortar-and-pestle presses (a hollowed log with pounding stick, and a fulcrum-and-lever model) plus a roller mill. Syrup is made from the green juice, which is extracted from the crushed stalks and then heated to steam off the excess water.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-iCe8l9eOOZI/YB8JVGNZEqI/AAAAAAAACHA/fXjc2D52tfsIjKGlWzHDpAQJQp7VVZd6wCLcBGAsYHQ/Sorghum1.gif" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="367" data-original-width="640" height="184" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-iCe8l9eOOZI/YB8JVGNZEqI/AAAAAAAACHA/fXjc2D52tfsIjKGlWzHDpAQJQp7VVZd6wCLcBGAsYHQ/Sorghum1.gif" width="320" /></a></div><br /><br /></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">The mortar-and-pestles presses were people-powered, while the roller mill was turned by a horse or burro, hitched to the wooden bar. We have at the moment two of the small donkeys on the ranch. (Marsha has become quite good at rolling her Rs, pronouncing <a class="" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJ6W2nYUzdo">“boorowe.”</a> Jim not so much – <a class="" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBz5NoxYQyc">“bo͝orō”</a>.)<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-C359WK2dzF0/YB8JXv0oHMI/AAAAAAAACHE/v4la5X-JJ4EZepcxAkd0vVC-SGL6fRcFwCLcBGAsYHQ/Sorghum2.gif" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="367" data-original-width="640" height="184" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-C359WK2dzF0/YB8JXv0oHMI/AAAAAAAACHE/v4la5X-JJ4EZepcxAkd0vVC-SGL6fRcFwCLcBGAsYHQ/Sorghum2.gif" width="320" /></a></div><br /><br /></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Such mills were relatively expensive, so like the small Spanish grist mills mentioned in our last email, a single sorghum mill would serve an entire community. And, as with wheat, processing fees were bartered. The sorghum growers brought their crops in at harvest time and took back home with them a portion of the resultant molasses (“miel.”) And like trips to the grist mill, sorghum milling was also an occasion for communal feasting, dancing and catching up on local gossip.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">The roller mill at las Golondrinas has a Sears, Roebuck and Company label with the date 1895. It was not original to the ranch. Like most of the buildings and display objects it was moved here from other parts of the state when the museum was being created.<br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Our first taste of sweet sorghum syrup however was provided to us by SF friends and neighbors L and J, whose delicious gift of corn bread and the accompanying topping was the inspiration for this article.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">So, how does it compare to maple syrup? We don’t think we can do better than this description from the North Carolina website<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a class="" href="http://ourstate.com/">ourstate.com</a><br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">“It's got a whang to it,...an initial, intense note of sweet, followed by a sharp sour and the faintest twinge of bitter, although not brackish like blackstrap molasses. Sorghum's flavor contains a buttery depth, which I like to call Appalachian umami.”<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">But truth be told we have not been totally without our beloved real maple syrup out here in Santa Fe. There is LL Bean and Trader Joe’s. And local restaurants serve it with entrees such as French toast, waffles and our new breakfast fave “blue corn pancakes.” And not that stuff made with corn syrup and artificial maple extract like some Connecticut eateries did.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Disappointingly however the waitpersons do not ask, “golden or amber?”</span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-QToMmnyVrKc/YB8JdhrlkFI/AAAAAAAACHM/lbYXJg540LcxCnHoqXX2IPAlaDSO6pHlgCLcBGAsYHQ/Screen%2BShot%2B2020-11-20%2Bat%2B10.31.21%2BAM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="656" data-original-width="1280" height="164" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-QToMmnyVrKc/YB8JdhrlkFI/AAAAAAAACHM/lbYXJg540LcxCnHoqXX2IPAlaDSO6pHlgCLcBGAsYHQ/Screen%2BShot%2B2020-11-20%2Bat%2B10.31.21%2BAM.png" width="320" /></a></div><br /><br class="" /></span></span></div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br class="Apple-interchange-newline" /></span></span><br />Jimhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08407095418542335994noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19442576.post-58257556384946759292021-01-27T18:40:00.002-05:002021-01-27T18:40:28.793-05:00Words whose ancestries we do not even know<p> </p><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><div class=""><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: times;">Choosing the proper word can be complicated out here in the City Different also. And we do not mean political correctness. Take “villa” for example. </span></span></div><div class=""><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class=""><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: times;">Back in Connecticut we used the term to refer to a large and luxurious country residence. In Spanish, however, “villa” means a town. But not just any township. In Nuevo México’s Colonial days (1598 – 1812) it signified a municipality that was legally sanctioned with rights, privileges and a title granted by the king of Spain. During that time only four such villas were established – Santa Fe, El Paso, Santa Cruz and Albuquerque.</span></span></div><div class=""><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class=""><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: times;">“La Villa Real de la Santa Fe de San Francisco de Assisi” (“The Royal Villa of the Holy Faith of St. Francis of Assisi”), or sometimes simply the “La Villa de Santa Fe” was chartered in 1610. The city gloried in its pre-eminence as both the territorial capital, and THE ONLY villa in New Mexico – with the locals referring to themselves not as Santa Feans but rather “Villeros,” or “The Townsmen.” Perhaps a more appropriate nickname than Demons and Jaguars for one of the city’s two high schools.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class=""><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: times;">El Paso – “La Villa Real del Paso del Norte” (“The Royal Village of the North Pass”) – became the southernmost villa of the Provincia de Nuevo Mexico in the early 1680s. Driven out of northern New Mexico by the 1680 Pueblo Revolt more than 2,000 Spanish refugees and 317 Natives retreated to El Paso – at the time a small village. After an unsuccessful attempt by Governor Antonio de Otermín to take back New Mexico in 1681-1682 the Spanish realized that a reconquest was not going to happen quickly – and established El Paso as the temporary capital. It grew to be the territory’s largest city when it was ceded to the United States in 1850 as part of the Treaty of Guadalupe. (Fun factoid: the El Paso Museum of History is located on Santa Fe Street in El Paso.)<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class=""><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: times;">New Mexico’s third villa was established on April 21, 1695, when Gov. Diego de Vargas – after successfully re-conquering New Mexico – marched twenty miles north from Santa Fe to the east side of the Española Valley and placed settlers in the “Villa Nueva de Santa Cruz de los Españoles Mejicanos del Rey Nuestro Señor Carlos Segundo” (“The New Town of the Holy Cross of Mexican Spaniards under the King Our Lord Charles II”) – later shortened simply to Santa Cruz de la Cañada. La Cañada translates as "a small river or creek valley." The villa remained the smallest and least known of the four – and the only one that did not grow into a major city before the 20th century..<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class=""><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: times;">“La Villa de San Francisco Javier de Alburquerque,” (“The Town of San Francis Xavier of Alburquerque”) was the creation of Governor Francisco Cuervo y Valdez, a Spanish nobleman, who escorted thirty-five families down the Rio Grande from La Villa de Santa Fe in 1706 – settling them on the east bank of the river where they became prosperous farmers and ranchers. Cuervo named the city after his boss, the Duke of Alburquerque, Viceroy of New Spain. Apparently he got the name half right. According to<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a class="" href="http://arizona.edu/">arizona.edu</a>, “when...Cuervo y Valdez notified the viceroy of what he had done, he received in reply a reprimand for having established a new town without authority, and the viceroy himself changed the name of the locality to that of San Felipe de Alburquerque in honor of the kind, Don Felipe” – his headman, King Philip of Spain. It was further revised in 1776, by Father Francisco Atanasio Dominguez – to “La Villa de San Felipe Neri de Alburquerque” (“The Town of Saint Philip Neri of Alburquerque.”) And there was yet one more alteration when the first “r,” was dropped by early English-speaking visitors. Today Albuquerque (minus the first “r”) is informally known as “The Duke City.”<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class=""><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: times;">While La Villa de Santa Fe may have been our home state’s first official villa – it was by no means the earliest community at that site. Between 1050 and 1150 CE the locale was occupied by a number of Pueblo Indian villages – one as early as 900 CE in what is now the downtown area. 'Ogap'oge, as it was known, consisted of a cluster of homes centered around the site of today’s Plaza, and spread for half a mile to the south and west. The Santa Fe River – a year-round stream until the 1700s – provided water.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: times;">When colonial Governor Don Pedro de Peralta established the colony’s capital in 1610 the Spanish built a walled fort and village which included a central plaza and the Palace of the Governors. The Spanish used it as a defensible position in case of attacks by the Pueblo Indians, with the town’s elites living around the plaza.</span></span></div><div class="" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-yNCm_8Yxg_A/YBH5MPHFAmI/AAAAAAAACGM/hvQsIoUd7EMNc8LJKsVfDeMKVj9g-Mp2QCLcBGAsYHQ/s640/fortess%2Bplaza.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="457" data-original-width="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-yNCm_8Yxg_A/YBH5MPHFAmI/AAAAAAAACGM/hvQsIoUd7EMNc8LJKsVfDeMKVj9g-Mp2QCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/fortess%2Bplaza.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /></span></span></div><div class=""><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: times;">Originally, the royal houses and grounds ran from the Plaza north to the site of the present day federal buildings – and contained the governor's private apartments, official reception rooms and offices, military barracks, stables, arsenal, and servants' quarters. Vegetable gardens were planted in a central patio consisting of some ten acres. The Palace extended farther to the west in Spanish times and had two torreones, or defense towers, on the east and west corners of the facade. The western tower served as a prison and for storage of gunpowder.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class=""><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: times;">Between 1610 and 1680, the Palace of the Governors may have been a two-story adobe building – larger than today’s structure but lacking its now-trademark portal. We say “may” because many official documents were destroyed during the Pueblo Revolt.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: times;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-T1BOHGneN2c/YBH5PQ4ugpI/AAAAAAAACGU/3c6JDB6eEqQnWDtChvXQF4W6sX0jLQ-xgCLcBGAsYHQ/s640/two%2Bstory%2BPotG.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="232" data-original-width="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-T1BOHGneN2c/YBH5PQ4ugpI/AAAAAAAACGU/3c6JDB6eEqQnWDtChvXQF4W6sX0jLQ-xgCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/two%2Bstory%2BPotG.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: times;"></span></span></div><div class=""><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: times;">But not all of the Spanish Colonials lived in the Plaza area – which brings us back to another semantic dissimilarity between our old and new lexicons. Back in CT we considered a barrio to not be a good place in which to live. Here it is a National Historic Landmark.</span></span></div><div class=""><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class=""><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: times;">Barrio de Analco is the second oldest settlement of European origin in Santa Fe after the Plaza – and therefore one of the oldest neighborhoods in the United States. According to legend, it was originally occupied by Tlaxcalan Indian servants from Central Mexico who came with the Franciscan missionaries and Spanish officials in the early 17th century. These Nahuatl speaking Natives called their new home “analco” (“the other side of the water”) to distinguish it from the Plaza area, which was on the north side of the Santa Fe River.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: times;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-O2DyWe-BQn0/YBH5M281rzI/AAAAAAAACGQ/-2Nujoasvi0TAuA47PT-8WNo5KW4wGl4QCLcBGAsYHQ/s1280/mural.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="919" data-original-width="1280" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-O2DyWe-BQn0/YBH5M281rzI/AAAAAAAACGQ/-2Nujoasvi0TAuA47PT-8WNo5KW4wGl4QCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/mural.png" width="320" /></a></span></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: times;"></span></span></div><div class=""><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class=""><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: times;">The Tlaxcalans had a long, largely friendly, and productive relationship with the conquering Spanish – beginning when they provided Fernando Cortez with thousands of warriors to augment his small army of soldiers, and helped to conquer the Aztec empire in the early 1500s. The Spaniards always remembered this assistance, and the king granted the Tlaxcalans a number of political, social and economic privileges denied to other Indians – e.g. they were allowed to carry European arms. In the latter 1500s, many of them were recruited as colonists on Mexico’s dangerous northern frontier.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class=""><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: times;">Soon after Analco was settled San Miguel Chapel was built by the Franciscans to serve as the mission church and for the use of the Indians. It is generally considered to be the oldest church in the United States – although it is likely that little of the original structure is still present.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: times;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-efB8J2UkzzU/YBH5R8TMrbI/AAAAAAAACGY/4xKushK8deIjxUQxlIU-_jYSiQieQ1aNQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1280/san%2Bmiguel%2Bchapel.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="911" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-efB8J2UkzzU/YBH5R8TMrbI/AAAAAAAACGY/4xKushK8deIjxUQxlIU-_jYSiQieQ1aNQCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/san%2Bmiguel%2Bchapel.png" /></a></span></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: times;"></span></span></div><div class=""><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class=""><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: times;">The Barrio was the first section of Santa Fe to be sacked and razed during the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 – perhaps because the Puebloans also never forgot the legacy of assistance given to the Spanish by the Tlaxcalans. (In spite of the lack of technology, news did travel in those days.) Those able to escape took refuge in the Palace of the Governors with the besieged Spaniards and later retreated with Governor Otermín to El Paso. Ultimately most of the Tlaxcalans remained in the south where they assimilated into the local population. A few however returned to Santa Fe with Gen. Diego de Vargas on his 1692 Reconquista of New Mexico and reclaimed their former homes in the Barrio – assisting in the reconstruction of the burned-out shell of San Miguel. Most of the district however was rebuilt by new residents.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class=""><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: times;">By 1776 the Barrio de Analco was occupied by married Spanish soldiers, laborers, genízario servants (Native Americans who, through war or trade, were taken into Hispano villages as servants, shepherds etc.) and skilled artisans such as shoemakers, tailors, musicians, silversmiths, blacksmiths, masons, adobe makers, bricklayers, and carpenters.<br class="" />In the 1960’s, the neighborhood was a focus of Urban Renewal. Large areas were bulldozed and replaced by the Hilton Hotel, First Northern Bank and other buildings. That, plus the ever expanding state buildings around the Capital including the Public Employee Retirement Association (PERA) have left little of the original Barrio.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class=""><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: times;">Today seven standing adobe buildings are designated as The National Historic Landmark Barrio de Analco Historic District: San Miguel Chapel; the “Oldest House” (said to be one of the earliest buildings in America;) Roque Tudesqui House (c. 1840;) Gregorio Crespin House (parts of which may date to the 18th century;) Boyle House (c. 1766) and Valdes House (altered to become part of El Castillo Continuing Care Retirement Community.)<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class=""><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: times;">The area was also the site of St. Michael’s College – of which only the Dormitory and Lew Wallace Building remain. El Colegio de San Miguel was founded in 1859 by four brothers of the De La Salle Christian order from France in an adobe hut next to the San Miguel Mission. In 1874, St. Michael’s expanded to include a program of higher education under a charter granted to the “College of the Christian Brothers of New Mexico.” But due of financial issues, the university program was dropped after WWI. St. Michael’s High School continues to operate in a different location in town.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class=""><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: times;">There was a large cemetery as well, which now is underneath the PERA parking lot. Four human skeletal elements were initially exposed during construction, and three more by the State’s Office of Archaeological Studies, which monitored the work. Archival research and local informants indicated that these remains are associated with the San Miguel Cemetery – most likely from individuals interred between the eighteenth and late nineteenth centuries.</span></span></div><div class=""><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class=""><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: times;">We did find two other instances of the designation “barrio" in our town’s history: “Dogpatch" and "La Cañada."<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class=""><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: times;">The former refers to a triangular stretch in the city's historic east side. We rented an Airbnb in the area for a few weeks while house-hunting here in 2017. At the time we were unaware of the neighborhood’s colorful, rural sobriquet – which seems to have been now largely laid to rest by its current house prices.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class=""><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: times;">(The name Dogpatch derives from the fictional setting of Al Capp's 1934–1977 classic comic strip, “Li'l Abner “– “an average stone-age community nestled in a bleak valley, between two cheap and uninteresting hills,” per its creator. The inhabitants, he said, were lazy hillbillies who wanted nothing to do with progress.)<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class=""><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: times;">The labelling of the area as a “barrio” seems to have first appeared in 1970 in “La Juventud del Barrio del Cristo Rey” (“The Youth of the Barrio del Cristo Rey”) – a group of young community activists. Members came from different parts of the city, but the Catholic parish of Cristo Rey where they were founded is located on Upper Canyon Road in the heart of the Dogpatch. The church is one of the most important buildings designed by noted Santa Fe architect John Gaw Meem, and is claimed by some to be the largest adobe building in the United States. Taos Pueblo disagrees.</span></span></div><div class="" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: times;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-by9mFBOVIsQ/YBH5L0FladI/AAAAAAAACGI/7Cl_H9aQ4JE3Rh2-xINCTqYdcLOvPw5-gCLcBGAsYHQ/s640/0908b44ac30bbbb2c498411f88830046-800.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="384" data-original-width="640" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-by9mFBOVIsQ/YBH5L0FladI/AAAAAAAACGI/7Cl_H9aQ4JE3Rh2-xINCTqYdcLOvPw5-gCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/0908b44ac30bbbb2c498411f88830046-800.jpeg" width="320" /></a></span></span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: times;"></span></span></div><div class="" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class=""><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: times;">The young people’s organization included local chicanos and chicanas (male and female Mexican-Americans) who often donned sunglasses and brown berets and worked to raise money for non-profits such as El Vicio, then a local drug rehabilitation center. The group also had plans to build a Chicanx library.</span></span></div><div class=""><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class=""><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: times;">Also claiming the “b" label is “Barrio La Cañada” (“The Valley Neighborhood”) – a half Spanish/half Anglo community of about 100 houses with the oldest built in 1939 and ninety-percent put up between 1960 and 2010. There is no evidence to indicate that the area was settled by explorers from north of the border. Eh. And at least one thing that tells us it wasn’t – “ñ.” Interestingly the name Canada (“n”) most likely comes from the Huron-Iroquois word “kanata,” meaning “village” or “settlement” – or “villa.”<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class=""><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: times;">The founders of Santa Fe de San Francisco de Assisi who built and lived in the Plaza area did not feel any need to give their locale a unique Barrio moniker. Perhaps being the only “Villeros” in Nuevo Mexico at the time gave them enough street cred.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class=""><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: times;">And we can only speculate as to why the Tlaxcalan Indian servants who established the Barrio de Analco felt the need to brand their community with its own identifier. Even if Google Maps were around at the time, it would have only two neighborhoods to look for – Plaza and Not-Plaza. Perhaps it was intended as an ironical jibe at DeVargas and the city planners who, for whatever reasons, overlooked their fellow Villeros when it came to constructing living quarters in their own backyard. Maybe they were thinking ahead and reserving a name for future use in the National Registry. Or perhaps, after being uprooted from their home in Central Mexico and “asked” by the Spanish to assist them on their colonization of New Mexico, they just wanted to settle down somewhere at least partially of their own creation with a name of their own making.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class=""><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: times;">By the 1970s the meaning of barrio had become a more derogatory term, associated with lower income Spanish sections of a town. The Youth of the Barrio del Cristo Rey’s utilization of the term to describe a citywide organization as if it were a named neighborhood seems to come from the same desire for a positive sense of community that gave rise to the Barrio de Analco. As does Barrio La Cañada.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class=""><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: times;">There are however now several “villas” in modern day New Mexico – among them “Villas de Santa Fe – A Family-Friendly Resort...featuring one- or two-bedroom suites.” This seems to follow the British definition of a “detached or semidetached house in a residential district.” The Spanish would call them casitas, and save the “v” word for bigger things. Might have been Anglo developers trying to give their creations what they viewed as some local flavor.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class=""><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: times;">As Penelope Lively says in her 1987 novel Moon Tiger, “we open our mouths and out flow words whose ancestries we do not even know.”</span></span></div></div><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: times;"><br class="Apple-interchange-newline" /></span></span><br />Jimhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08407095418542335994noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19442576.post-42502611402591636722021-01-27T18:29:00.002-05:002021-01-27T18:29:36.048-05:00Saint Kate's<p> <span style="font-size: large;">(<span style="font-family: times;">Written in July, 2020. Since that time </span></span><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">U.S. Representative Debra Haaland has been nominated to be Secretary of the Interior by President Joe Biden.)<br /></span></span></p><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></span></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></span></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Connecticut has “the Kate,” officially known as the Katharine Hepburn Cultural Arts Center – named in honor of our old home state’s most renowned actress. </span></span></div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;" /></span></span><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Santa Fe has “Saint Kate’s,” aka St. Catherine’s Indian School – a former residential educational facility founded by Katherine Drexel, but named for St. Catherine of Siena.<br /></span></span></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kw9dh4PIaY0/YBH1uAhSjpI/AAAAAAAACFM/rMhxSkIdvwwcdlSJV0KqDIYRl8X6hyb2QCLcBGAsYHQ/s474/5ee55f695e687e404460e5b6efdabd1e--santa-fe-nm-abandoned-places.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="302" data-original-width="474" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kw9dh4PIaY0/YBH1uAhSjpI/AAAAAAAACFM/rMhxSkIdvwwcdlSJV0KqDIYRl8X6hyb2QCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/5ee55f695e687e404460e5b6efdabd1e--santa-fe-nm-abandoned-places.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /></div></span></span><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">We first heard about this Catholic educational institution in the short story “Hunger” – part of the anthology Santa Fe Noir published by <a href="http://www.akashicbooks.com/subject/noir-series/">Akashic Books, which also has collections set in New Haven, Cape Cod, and other places. </a><br /><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">We did not know of any Indian Schools in Connecticut’s history.* So with no local lore to draw upon, our initial awareness of these learning centers, like that of many people, came from hearing about the exploits of Jim Thorpe – member of the Sac and Fox Nation, American athlete, Olympic gold medalist and student at the Carlisle (Pennsylvania) Indian Industrial School. For a sports-minded blue-collar boy such as Jim whose understanding of higher education was basically limited to college football – Carlisle seemed a habitat of heroes, which anyone would aspire to attend. <br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8jjAfA7CVlw/YBH1tytKXLI/AAAAAAAACFE/VrC13uZ_ByMEaXsp9qXUU8BTVSZskL-ZACLcBGAsYHQ/s346/284px-JimThorpeGoudeycard.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="346" data-original-width="284" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8jjAfA7CVlw/YBH1tytKXLI/AAAAAAAACFE/VrC13uZ_ByMEaXsp9qXUU8BTVSZskL-ZACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/284px-JimThorpeGoudeycard.jpg" /></a></span></span></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">And that was pretty much our knowledge of such things until December 2013. Two years previous Marsha had reconnected with J, her former high school BFF, who it turned out now lived in Albuquerque, and was a docent in that city’s Indian Pueblo Cultural Center – “dedicated to the preservation and perpetuation of Pueblo Indian Culture, History and Art.” We linked up with J on our Christmas visit to NM, and she gave us a private tour of the museum’s then-current show “Albuquerque Indian School Retrospective With a Vision Forward.” The multi-room exhibit featured artifacts and evidence of the attempts by Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) to “kill the Indian to save the man” through a system of forced boarding schools for Native American children,<br /><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">The motto came from the school's founder, Colonel Richard Pratt, who declared in 1892, “A great general [Philip Sheridan] has said that the only good Indian is a dead one...I agree with the sentiment, but only in this: that all the Indian there is in the race should be dead. Kill the Indian in him, and save the man.”<br /><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Native American residential schools were established initially by Christian missionaries of various denominations. The BIA began its own system of boarding schools in 1860 on the Yakima Indian Reservation in Washington state. After Carlisle’s establishment in 1879 BIA schools followed the “model” used at that Pennsylvania school. “Enrollments” increased under the 1891 “Compulsory Attendance” law, which empowered federal officers to forcibly take Native American children from their homes and reservations. <br /><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">These institutions were all part of a plan devised by eastern reformers Herbert Welsh and Henry Pancoast to use education as a tool to “assimilate” Indian tribes into the mainstream of the “American Way of Life,” a Protestant ideology of the mid-1800s. <br /><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">“By the mid-nineteenth century it has become commonplace for American Protestant historians and educators to insist upon the supposed historical and ideological link between Protestantism and American Exceptionalism...making Protestantism central to the evolution of American identity. [They] saw Anglo-Saxon Protestants as the favored children of God because of their inherent ethnic superiority, greater ‘manliness’ and, most importantly, their Protestant faith [and] native people as both racially inferior and as unable conceptually to [adapt to] changing circumstances. ‘The Indian is hewn out of a rock. You can rarely change the form without destruction...he and his forest must perish together.’” (The Death and Afterlife of the North American Martyrs By Emma Anderson)<br /><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Natives were to be taught the importance of private property, material wealth and monogamous nuclear families. The guiding principle was that it was necessary to “civilize” Indian people – make them accept white men’s beliefs and value systems. Conversion to Christianity was deemed essential to the cause. Educational institutions where children were separated from their families and way of life were an ideal instrument for this acculturation. Begun in 1881 Albuquerque Indian School (AIS) was one of hundreds of such places – at least six in New Mexico. Students were stripped of all traces of their culture such as long hair, clothing, and native language. One student ran away from AIS so many times that they sent him to Carlisle, and he never came home. <br /><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Saint Catherine’s Industrial Indian School in Santa Fe was one of the non-BIA, NGO-established schools. It was begun in 1894 by Mother Katharine Drexel – wealthy heiress, nun and founder of the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament for Negroes and Indians. “Situated on a hill northwest of the Santa Fe Plaza [in] perhaps the largest adobe building in the Southwest,” SFIS was the first in a nationwide system of schools for the education of Native Americans and African Americans set up by that religious order.<br /><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Katherine Drexel (1858-1955) was born into one of the wealthiest families in America. Her great-grandfather founded the firm Drexel Burnham Lambert. Her grandfather partnered with J. P. Morgan to establish the banking giant Drexel, Morgan & Co., renamed J. P. Morgan. Her uncle founded Drexel University. <br /><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">The French-Catholic family was also deeply religious and intensely philanthropic, giving about $11 million to charitable causes annually. ($350 m today.) Katherine’s mother died a month after her birth and doctors expected to lose the baby as well. But she grew stronger and eventually was sent, with her older sister, to live with relatives. After her father’s remarriage to Emma Bouvier (great-great aunt of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis) the two girls returned home to be soon joined by a third sister.<br /><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Katherine enjoyed a pampered childhood – although at fourteen, she considered entering the religious life. She was talked out of it by her spiritual adviser, Bishop James O’Connor. “I do not know how I could bear the privations of poverty of the religious life,” she herself confided in her journal. “I have never been deprived of luxuries.” Later however, while on a family trip to the American West, Drexel was deeply moved by the poverty of Native Americans, who at that time were being forced from the rapidly shrinking frontier onto reservations. She carried that memory into adulthood.<br /><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">At the death of their parents, the Drexel sisters inherited the bulk of their estate. And Katharine began to devote a significant amount of her new personal fortune to missionary and charity work among American Indians – beginning in 1887 with SCIS – named for her patron saint, Catherine of Siena. <br /><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Katherine visited Pope Leo XIII in the Vatican to ask him to send missionaries to staff the various missions she had financed. The pontiff instead suggested that the missionary she needed was herself. To the disbelief of Philadelphia society she decided to become a Catholic nun – initially joining the Sisters of Mercy and then founding the “Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament for Negroes and Indians,” to which she devoted her inheritance and talents.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-spL-WzS6bnY/YBH1uCO9u9I/AAAAAAAACFQ/tdgyElZIn80iu4fgR36wGpCzJoc3epeTACLcBGAsYHQ/s346/Katherine-drexel.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="346" data-original-width="287" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-spL-WzS6bnY/YBH1uCO9u9I/AAAAAAAACFQ/tdgyElZIn80iu4fgR36wGpCzJoc3epeTACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Katherine-drexel.jpg" /></a></span></span></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Most of the order’s efforts went into developing a network of 145 missions – plus twelve schools for Native Americans, and fifty for African Americans throughout the West and South offering vocational training and religious instruction.<br /><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">In contrast to that of the BIA, the order’s schools’ mission explicitly renounced assimilation as a goal – and students did not have to be, or become, Catholic to enroll.<br /><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Saint Catherine’s Industrial Indian School initially was meant to serve as a boarding school for Indian girls. But two weeks after its April 1887 dedication the building received its first students – sixty boys from an Indian school in Bernalillo, NM. From the beginning there was a chronic shortage of teachers. The Sisters of Loretto managed the school for two years, then members of the Benedictine Fathers of Kansas, followed by a series of lay instructors. <br /><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Even with this outside help, the school continued to struggle, and in 1893 was forced to close due to a lack of water for its agriculture. The BIA-run Santa Fe Indian School had also opened in 1890 and was drawing away students. In 1894 Mother Katharine and the Sisters of Blessed Sacrament took direct control – bringing in teaching nuns from Philadelphia, and offering both academic instruction and “industrial” training in trades such as tailoring, carpentry, farming, blacksmithing and laundry. Girls were admitted, and by 1898, a two-story adobe dormitory behind the main building had been erected to accommodate them. Other buildings, including a two-story structure holding the carpentry and shoe shops, and a red-brick chapel and convent were added to the campus.<br /><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Although New Mexico’s initial state constitution gave Spanish children the right to “enjoy perfect equality...in all public schools,” education of Native American children remained under the direction of the federal government or religious charities. At the time of statehood (1912) enrollment at SCIS was about 150. In the 1960s some non-Indian children from Santa Fe and small villages in Northern New Mexico were also admitted. <br /><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Former pupils recalled their time at “Saint Kate’s” for a Santa Fe New Mexican article.<br /><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Students slept in barracks-style dormitories and got up at about 6:30 a.m. After eating breakfast together, they had to complete individual ‘charges,’ chores that helped the sisters maintain the facility with little extra cost. There was not real janitorial service such as nowadays. It was the students.”<br /><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">New Mexico District Judge Barbara Vigil remembered polishing a floor in the nun's quarters on her knees using Johnson Paste Wax. At the time she rebelled against the “absurd rule” barring students from wearing jeans. But now says “hindsight paints a better picture of the institution.<br /><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">And, while many government-run Indian schools aimed to mainstream Native American children into the Anglo-Christian culture, according to alumnae and former staff this Catholic boarding school was different – living up to Mother Katherine’s express renunciation of assimilation as a goal.<br /><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">One graduate said he wished his seven-year-old daughter, who is half Navajo, could attend a school like St. Kate's. "It would've given her the opportunity to explore her culture and the local tribal cultures, [Catholicism] wasn't shoved in your face. It was there if you wanted it, but you didn't have to do it. Former teacher Sister Patrick Marie Dempsey concurred. "We taught the Catholic religion, but had a respect for the other life that the (Native American students) led. It is two lives in some ways. And some of them, when they leave...still practice their Native ways.”</span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">However, Democrat U.S. Representative from New Mexico's 1st Congressional District Debra Haaland, Laguna Pueblo, sees it quite differently – conflating together the BIA and NGO centers of learning. “As a Native American woman, my family has experienced the violence of government-enforced family separation. My grandmother, grandfather, and my mother were all sent to boarding school under this policy. Grandfather, [to] Carlisle Indian School in PA, Mom and Grandma sent to St. Catherine's in Santa Fe.” (New Mexico Political Journal)<br /><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Haaland is a member of the House Armed Services Committee and spoke at the Opening Ceremony for Jim Thorpe Sports Days at The U.S. Army War College – since 1951 located in the former home of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School. <br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PV2yFBEgjXM/YBH1uBjN4RI/AAAAAAAACFI/BIqmv1c5KTQsJmOoosyzpzf_YmkTL6_0gCLcBGAsYHQ/s448/Carlisle_Tobacco_Cloth.1.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="448" data-original-width="355" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PV2yFBEgjXM/YBH1uBjN4RI/AAAAAAAACFI/BIqmv1c5KTQsJmOoosyzpzf_YmkTL6_0gCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Carlisle_Tobacco_Cloth.1.png" /></a></span></span></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Like many Native American children [Jim Thorpe] was sent to Indian boarding school in the hopes of obtaining an education that would serve to assimilate him into mainstream white society. At the time the school’s motto was ‘Kill the Indian, Save the Man.’<br /><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">“In spite of this traumatic history...Thorpe couldn’t ignore the gifts he was born with and succeeded far beyond what anyone could imagine...overcoming obstacles and adversity that should inspire us all to work harder and be proud of where we come from because that is what true greatness is.”<br /><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Katherine Drexel likewise could not ignore the gifts she was born with – and later inherited. She was proposed for sainthood in 1964 because of her “courage and initiative in addressing social inequality among minorities.” Thirty-six years later, Pope John Paul II decreed that a girl from Pennsylvania, had been cured of lifelong deafness by the nun’s intercession and she became the second American in history to be canonized. Katherine died in 1955 – and, per the terms of her father's will, the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament no longer had the Drexel fortune available to them. Still, the order continues to pursue its religious mission, working with African-Americans and Native Americans in twenty-one states and Haiti. <br /> </span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">A 1920s investigation into Indian Boarding Schools by U.S. Secretary of the Interior Hubert Work concluded that children at federal boarding schools were malnourished, overworked, harshly punished and poorly educated. A significant shift in Federal Native American policy began under President Franklin D. Roosevelt who established the Indian New Deal, with its centerpiece Indian Reorganization Act of 1934.<br /> </span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">But it was not until 1978, with the passing of the Indian Child Welfare Act, that Native American parents gained the legal right to deny their children’s placement in off-reservation schools. Today the Federal Bureau of Indian Education operates boarding schools in Anadarko, OK, Riverside, CA, Salem, OR and Flandreau, SD. <br /> </span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Albuquerque Indian School closed in 1981. The forty-six acres of land where the school once stood is being developed by a corporation owned by New Mexico's nineteen Indian Pueblos. The first occupant is the only freestanding Starbucks licensed to a Native-owned company in the United States – and the largest of that chain’s coffeehouses in New Mexico.<br /> </span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">With the passing of the SFIS Act in 2001, the Santa Fe Indian School took complete control of its educational curriculum, and ownership of the land under a trust held by the nineteen Pueblo Governors of New Mexico. Today the institution serves 700 Native American students in grades 7 – 12. <br /> </span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">In 1998 Saint Catherine’s Indian School became financially impossible to maintain, and closed its doors. In 2016 the Santa Fe Civic Housing Authority took title to the property for $2 million with thoughts of a mixed-use Section 8, and market-rate housing units. “It is a wonderful old property and it has some really important historic buildings.” The hope is to “at least get our money back and save this property.” In 2019 the site was used for some scenes in the film “Cliffs of Freedom,” starring Christopher Plummer and Billy Zane. <br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-iyIDsver8WI/YBH1u955I6I/AAAAAAAACFU/lA9KxcPB0UU8mf-CgwhmoirUpF8aGxhYgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1280/Screen%2BShot%2B2020-07-18%2Bat%2B2.42.42%2BPM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="783" data-original-width="1280" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-iyIDsver8WI/YBH1u955I6I/AAAAAAAACFU/lA9KxcPB0UU8mf-CgwhmoirUpF8aGxhYgCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Screen%2BShot%2B2020-07-18%2Bat%2B2.42.42%2BPM.png" width="320" /></a></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">History can be pretty complicated in this melting pot of Native Americans, Spanish, Anglos and combinations thereof – many of whom have family histories in New Mexico that go back to its very beginnings. A cultural continent formed from the tectonic plates of three traditions, whose fissures are not totally totally healed. Based on legends, stories, traditions, folklore, and oral traditions unique to each group, current-day descendants of those who lived through the events may have radically different versions of what actually happened – witness Saint Kate’s. <br /> </span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">For decades there have been disputes, disagreements, demonstrations and discussions about the celebrations, memorials and writings that compete to tell the story of the interactions between the three groups. Plus the occasional rectification of some of the issues. <br /> </span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">E.g. in 2018 the annual Santa Fe Fiesta removed its century-old Entrada pageant, which celebrated the 1692 re-entry of conquistador Don Diego de Vargas into Santa Fe after the Spanish had been expelled by the Pueblo Revolt of 1680. The now-excised tableau depicted the “bloodless and peaceful” Reconquista of Nuevo México – never mentioning the overt threats of force, or the years of bloodshed and brutality that followed. After decades of protests, and finally conversations, the performance has now been replaced by a series of Spanish and Native American events “to commemorate the negotiations of reconciliation.”<br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Comedian Trevor Noah is a child of a mixed race couple who grew up in South Africa during apartheid – and witnessed firsthand that country’s “negotiations of reconciliation.” </span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Commenting on current ethnic issues on a recent CBS TV Sunday Morning program Noah said, “Americans are always told that there are only two sides to every story – [and] if you only have two choices, people are always gonna make one. Which means people are automatically always going to be against each other. Nuance means you can't just take a stand and fight the other person. Nuance means we have to talk a little bit more.”<br /> </span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">This may be a particularly apt caution when considering New Mexico’s heritage. Like the piece of fiction that inspired this essay, at least some of the history out here could also perhaps be considered “noir,” (or noir-ish) – a narrative in which right and wrong are not clearly defined, with protagonists who are seriously and often tragically flawed.<br /><br /></span></span><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">*******</span></span></div></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">* It turns out there was at least one Indian School in our old home state. Since moving to Santa Fe, two different locals have mentioned Moor's Charity School – founded in 1754 in Lebanon, CT by Puritan Calvinist minister Eleazar Wheelock to provide education for Native Americans who wanted to become tribal missionaries. In 1770 it was moved to Hanover New Hampshire where it was re-established as Dartmouth College.</span></span></div></div>Jimhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08407095418542335994noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19442576.post-84182144730944116942021-01-27T18:09:00.000-05:002021-01-27T18:09:10.385-05:00Oh, the Places We [Would Like to] Go!<p> <span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: times;">Written July 202</span></span><br /></p><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">We both enjoy watching live performances. Plays, concerts, talks events with real, three-dimensional people doing their unrecorded thing in front of other sentient beings. And these shows are even better in venues whose architecture, interior design and history compete for your attention with the presentation itself – or at least give you something to look at and talk about before showtime and during intermission. On the east coast New York’s Carnegie Hall and Hartford’s Bushnell Memorial are such places.</span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Steel magnate Andrew Carnegie built his eponymous Hall at the request of his new wife, Louise Whitfield – a singer with the Oratorio Society of New York. The building was architected by William Burnet Tuthill who had never before designed a concert hall. And is made up of three structures arranged in an "L" shape: an eight story rectangular building, a sixteen-story eastern wing and a thirteen-story southern wing – each with its own auditorium. Total seating is 3,671. Tuthill chose the style from the Italian Renaissance – adding the elegance of the Victorian age. The interior contains a marble foyer with great slanting arches in the ceiling and doors, plus corner columns with intricate carvings. The brick exterior gives the building a reddish hue. At the cornerstone laying in 1891 Carnegie presciently proclaimed, “it is probable that this hall will intertwine itself with the history of our country.”</span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-NLNvoQl_Sw0/YBHxb0CMZLI/AAAAAAAACD8/IYsJXPICMCQQNS7ZGjRzn2oaCS2RMWwhACLcBGAsYHQ/NY-Carnegie.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="468" height="240" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-NLNvoQl_Sw0/YBHxb0CMZLI/AAAAAAAACD8/IYsJXPICMCQQNS7ZGjRzn2oaCS2RMWwhACLcBGAsYHQ/NY-Carnegie.jpeg" width="176" /></a></div><br /><br /></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">The Bushnell was built in Connecticut’s capital city in 1930 by Dotha Bushnell Hillyer as a "living memorial" to her father, the Reverend Dr. Horace Bushnell (1802–1876) – minister, theologian, philosopher and civic leader, and as "a gift to the people of Connecticut." In a fortuitous piece of market timing Dotha sold her stock in December of 1928 in order to begin construction in 1929. Designed by the same architects who did New York's Radio City Music Hall the 2,800 seat Mortensen Hall has a Georgian Revival exterior and rich Art Deco interior.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">An 187-by-40-foot hand-executed oil painting is suspended from the roof by numerous metal supports – the largest ceiling mural in the U.S. The work of Barry Faulkner of New York City, it was painted in panels, and took five months to complete, including three months to trace out the design. When it opened the Bushnell Auditorium was heralded as a "beacon of hope," in the midst of the Depression.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-glOQCcBrFjY/YBHxgoTaldI/AAAAAAAACEA/bvFBoxZckx4pGyXczTC13I7_ciAaFf7LQCLcBGAsYHQ/Screen%2BShot%2B2020-07-06%2Bat%2B2.59.50%2BPM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="806" data-original-width="1280" height="202" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-glOQCcBrFjY/YBHxgoTaldI/AAAAAAAACEA/bvFBoxZckx4pGyXczTC13I7_ciAaFf7LQCLcBGAsYHQ/Screen%2BShot%2B2020-07-06%2Bat%2B2.59.50%2BPM.png" width="320" /></a></div><br /></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">For school children bused in for forced culture (as we both were) the seemingly enormous edifice engendered a sense of awe, and a feeling that whatever was happening on the stage was massively important, even if we did not understand what, how or why.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Of the two of us only Jim has gotten to Carnegie Hall* – but not by practicing. And our cultural tastes as adults did not bring us to the Bushnell that often – the smaller, more intimate Hartford Stage Company and the performances therein were more our style. Nonetheless, we appreciated the beauty and importance of these structures. So in our new hometown of Santa Fe we look for likewise historically and culturally significant examples of auditorium architecture – along with something entertaining to watch within them.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Probably the best known of which is Santa Fe Opera – in a more normal summer a destination for tens of thousands of music aficionados, as well as fans of the physical building itself. TIME magazine called the complex “one of the handsomest operatic settings in the Western Hemisphere.” And Washington Post dubbed it a “shining white cloud in the red hills.”<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">SFO was founded in 1956 by New York based conductor John O. Crosby on a seventy-six acre piece of real estate located on a mesa seven miles north of the Santa Fe. (“The best view in town,”according to our realtor.) At the time the property contained a guest ranch whose visitors included musical luminaries such as Fritz Reiner and the married duo of soprano Lily Pons and conductor André Kostelanetz. Its previous incarnations included pinto bean plantation, mink ranch, and pig farm. The grounds have since grown to 150 acres.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">In addition to the acquisition of the land, and the construction of the first concert hall, Crosby served as General Director until 2000, as well as the first principal conductor. Its initial season began July 3, 1957 with Puccini's Madama Butterfly.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">There have been three theaters – each located on the same site with the audience facing west toward a horizon of sunsets and thunderstorms visible throughout many productions when no backdrops are used. It seats 2,128 plus 106 standees. The roof structure consists of front and rear portions supported by cables and joined together with a clerestory window – providing protection from the sky, but with the sides remaining open to the elements. Not complete shelter however as we observed at a <a class="" href="http://www.compostablematter.com/2020/06/not-bad-day-in-santa-fe.html">concert by Rene Fleming in August, 2019</a> – one of five performances we have seen there, as well as one visit each for an open-to-the-public backstage tour, and a costume and prop shop sale.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-1BAKM_No_eY/YBHxmH_KZSI/AAAAAAAACEE/atqn3V9UV0w7fn1mqTisUCUEHqOSqUwQwCLcBGAsYHQ/Screen%2BShot%2B2020-07-06%2Bat%2B2.48.41%2BPM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="1064" height="240" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-1BAKM_No_eY/YBHxmH_KZSI/AAAAAAAACEE/atqn3V9UV0w7fn1mqTisUCUEHqOSqUwQwCLcBGAsYHQ/Screen%2BShot%2B2020-07-06%2Bat%2B2.48.41%2BPM.png" width="266" /></a></div></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">If Santa Fe Opera marks the beginning of the city’s modern artistic identity, Saint Francis Auditorium in the New Mexico Museum of Art is the centerpiece of the state’s emergence as a world class art market.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">In 1912 Santa Fe declared itself the “City Different” and embarked on a campaign to become THE premier southwest arts and local culture tourist destination. Five years later NM Museum of Art opened on the northeast corner of Santa Fe Plaza – the first building in the state dedicated to the various forms of creative activity, with galleries, reception areas and a theatre made specifically to promote the state's rich heritage to visitors and locals alike.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Drawing inspiration from the churches that were built in New Mexico when Santa Fe was the capital of the colony of New Spain, and using modern construction materials, architects Isaac Hamilton and William Morris Rapp designed the structure – a blend of Pueblo Revival architecture with Native American and Spanish Colonial design styles – as a larger version of the New Mexico Building (“the Cathedral of the Desert”) they had made for the 1915 Panama-California Exposition in San Diego .<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">The auditorium seats 450 in its wooden church-like pews under rough-beam vigas protruding from irregular walls decorated with a series of murals depicting Saint Francis of Assisi, the patron saint of Santa Fe. Events we have seen there include the public lectures presented by El Ranch de las Golondrinas (our volunteer gig), concerts by the Santa Fe Community Orchestra, and the annual <a class="" href="https://www.santafenewmexican.com/pasatiempo/art/hanging-around-with-gus-the-printmaker-as-puppetmaster/article_9f533892-65b1-5a71-b037-76eac60a353e.html">Gustave Baumann Marionette Christmas Show</a>.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-IugMtc1fM5E/YBHxqyK4gTI/AAAAAAAACEI/0_bfWjBsrAIa9TzHPoReSCFlSgiu7U3XQCLcBGAsYHQ/Screen%2BShot%2B2020-07-06%2Bat%2B2.53.20%2BPM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="856" data-original-width="1280" height="214" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-IugMtc1fM5E/YBHxqyK4gTI/AAAAAAAACEI/0_bfWjBsrAIa9TzHPoReSCFlSgiu7U3XQCLcBGAsYHQ/Screen%2BShot%2B2020-07-06%2Bat%2B2.53.20%2BPM.png" width="320" /></a></div><br /><br /></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">We have however attended only one function at the city’s other noted downtown performance venue, the Lensic Theater – and oddly enough that was an opera, albeit on big screen HDTV.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">According to its website, “built in 1931, The Lensic is more than a theater to the people of Santa Fe. For most of the 20th century, The Lensic was a place for a first kiss in the balcony, a grand silver screen in the midst of the Depression, a vaudeville venue where the community could see the singers, actors, dancers, and comedians of the day..a place where magic happened,” all thanks to Syrian immigrant Nathan Salmon. </span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Born Na’aman Soleiman in July 1866, Salmon migrated to New York at age twenty-one. For three years he traveled the roads of southern Colorado and the Southwest, selling goods from a wagon until a snowstorm stranded him in Santa Fe with with just twenty-five cents to his name. After pawning his watch to wire a friend for a loan, he resumed business as a “cart peddler” with enough success to purchase a dry goods store in town on San Francisco Street.</span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">With further prosperity he bought property throughout Santa Fe and Albuquerque. In spite of the Great Depression, he announced on March 27, 1930, plans for a “Spanish-style” theater just up the street from his first brick and mortar business – with the latest projection and sound equipment offering live performances and “talkies” to Santa Fe’s 11,000 residents. “I made all my money here and I wanted to give the people something to show my appreciation,” he explained.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Salmon hired one of the best theater designers of the day, Boller Brothers of Los Angeles and Kansas City, to construct what he labeled the “wonder theater of the southwest.”<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-1Zn-SXWeb3U/YBHxwiM6VOI/AAAAAAAACEU/JFoVRHVOL20LPFB5-eTU6Ucsx_Q6RcupwCLcBGAsYHQ/8-9-9Racette23-1024x618.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="386" data-original-width="640" height="193" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-1Zn-SXWeb3U/YBHxwiM6VOI/AAAAAAAACEU/JFoVRHVOL20LPFB5-eTU6Ucsx_Q6RcupwCLcBGAsYHQ/8-9-9Racette23-1024x618.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Ground was broken in September, 1930, and Salmon offered a $25 prize for an appropriate name for the new theater – Spanish preferably, or, if not, one incorporating the initials of his six grandchildren. The winning combination came from Mrs. P. J. Smithwick, whose acronym “Lensic” not only combined the desired initials (for Lila, Elias John, Nathan, Sara, Mary Irene, and Charles,) but also suggested the “lens” of a movie projector and the scenic splendor of the theater’s interior.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">The movie house opened June 24, 1931 with a marquee that changed four times a week – three shows daily with ticket prices from twenty-five to seventy-five cents. But as the city and country grew, other entertainment options became available. And the evolving technical requirements of 20th century performances soon outstripped the capabilities of the old Lensic. In the 1990s, while managed by United Artists, the theater stopped hosting live events, and in 1999 it closed its doors altogether.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Four years prior to the Lensic’s birth, down the road in Albuquerque, the KiMo Theatre was opened by Italian immigrant Oreste Bachechi, another highly motivated entrepreneur from humble origins, whose businesses grew from a tent near the railroad tracks, to a liquor dealership, grocery store and Bachechi Amusement Association, which operated the Pastime Movie Theater (demolished and now the site of the State theater.) In 1925, Oreste decided to achieve his true dream – building his own stage and screen theatre with a unique look that fused the spirit of Native American cultures with the sleek stylized geometric forms and man-made materials in vogue at the time. He dubbed the resulting architectural style “Pueblo Deco.” Like Salmon, Bachechi also called upon Boller Brothers to implement the project. The name “KiMo” is a combination of two Indian words literally meaning “mountain lion” but more liberally interpreted as “king of its kind.” Like its Santa Fe cousin the KiMo fell on hard times and had to be saved from the wrecking ball by the city of Albuquerque in the 1970s.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-HZl3P7IpSz4/YBHx2LidRaI/AAAAAAAACEY/wknr1EL6oRUXsdJDo_KD7Oc7BZTk3uOQwCLcBGAsYHQ/Screen%2BShot%2B2020-07-06%2Bat%2B2.56.50%2BPM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="846" data-original-width="1280" height="212" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-HZl3P7IpSz4/YBHx2LidRaI/AAAAAAAACEY/wknr1EL6oRUXsdJDo_KD7Oc7BZTk3uOQwCLcBGAsYHQ/Screen%2BShot%2B2020-07-06%2Bat%2B2.56.50%2BPM.png" width="320" /></a></div><br /></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Back in Santa Fe the Lensic was reborn under the leadership of Bill and Nancy Zeckendorf, members of a distinguished New York real estate family, who moved to here in the 1980s. Working with local performing arts groups, the city government, individuals, and business leaders, they raised over $9 million and incorporated the theater as a nonprofit.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">The Lensic is now home to more than 200 events annually, including original presentations, education and outreach events, and a host of other concerts and events featuring acts from close to home and around the world. Among them “The Met: Live in HD,” whose November 23, 2019 broadcast of Akhnaten by Philip Glass brought us to the venerable pseudo-Moorish, Spanish Renaissance 821-seat venue for our only visit thus far. But the world will reopen, and we will return.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Just as we will go back to the Santa Fe Playhouse, which we originally sought out in hopes of replacing the Hartford Stage Company void in our lives. “Santa Fe is a music town, not a theater town,” we were told by several people, most memorably at a Santa Fe Opera pre-performance talk for “The Thirteenth Child” – a show we went to see solely because its director, Tony Award winner Darko Tresnjak had been the artistic director of Hartford Stage from 2011 to 2019.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Santa Fe Playhouse, “the oldest continuously producing theater west of the Mississippi,” was founded in 1919 by Mary Austin (1868-1934) – well-known social activist, prolific novelist, poet, critic, playwright, and essayist. In 1918, she was drawn to Santa Fe by the town’s growing reputation as a center for artists, writers, and intellectuals, along with her confidant Mabel Dodge Lujan, who later settled in Taos. Austin’s home in Santa Fe, Casa Querida (“Dear House”) is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as a “contributing building” in the Camino del Monte Sol Historic District in the southeast corner of Santa Fe, south of the Santa Fe River. From 1912 to WWII the area was home to a nationally known colony of artists, many of whom (like Mary Austin) built their own Pueblo Revival adobe houses. Helen Hunt starred in a 1989 adaptation of Austin’s essay collection, “The Land of Little Rain,” for the PBS American Playhouse series.</span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">In 1919 Austin started a small acting company called The Santa Fe Players, “to celebrate and preserve the rich texture of the unique culture of Santa Fe through live theater.” In their first year they presented three plays on February 14, and three others on May 13 at the newly constructed St. Francis Auditorium – whose architect, John Gaw Meem was an actor in at least one of them. Three years later the group incorporated and performed in various temporary venues around town, such as tents at the rodeo grounds, and under makeshift shelters on the Plaza.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Then in 1964 they renovated an old livery stable in the historic Barrio de Analco – the second oldest district of European origin in Santa Fe after the Plaza – making it into a permanent theater space which they renamed “The Santa Fe Little Theatre.” The first placard was hung over the door in 1983 to establish what became, and continues to be, the “Santa Fe Playhouse.” “Carrying on the tradition of our progressive founders, the Playhouse produces exciting plays each year including contemporary, classic, and eclectic theater,” among them the annual production of “Benchwarmers” – eight original ten-minute plays written, directed, and acted by local Santa Fe artists. With only one prop – a park bench.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Casts sometimes include Actors Equity members – but also former New York and Hollywood stage and screen professionals, as well as graduates of the now-defunct Santa Fe College of Art & Design. The setting is intimate, e.g. the two lighting and sound people work their way through the entry line of theatergoers in the lobby to climb up a wall-attached metal ladder to their overhead work area. And the audiences are much, much smaller than at Hartford Stage – you literally can count the number of seats while waiting for the show to begin. Which does give you something to talk about – since the design and architecture is basically non-existent compared to that of the other venues discussed herein.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-mN1U6shNHmg/YBHx6rZEZKI/AAAAAAAACEc/U8uIDlmX8p0wkOBIEDu9Iu4rOXCxvYQhwCLcBGAsYHQ/Screen%2BShot%2B2020-07-06%2Bat%2B2.57.44%2BPM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="814" data-original-width="1190" height="219" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-mN1U6shNHmg/YBHx6rZEZKI/AAAAAAAACEc/U8uIDlmX8p0wkOBIEDu9Iu4rOXCxvYQhwCLcBGAsYHQ/Screen%2BShot%2B2020-07-06%2Bat%2B2.57.44%2BPM.png" width="320" /></a></div><br /></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">But live plays performed before small audiences, at a former livery stable, in perhaps the second oldest European community in the United States, on a limited budget, in an avowed “music town” is kind of what regional theater is all about – and clearly gives Santa Fe Playhouse the cachet to be included as one of the City Different’s premier performance spaces.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">* Jim’s one visit to Carnegie Hall was during a four day business trip to New York City in the 1990s. The concert experience was memorable. But not as notable as what occurred outside at the intersection of 7th Avenue and 57th Street earlier that morning. We were dedicated recreational runners at the time. So even with morning February temperatures in the low thirties Jim went out for a jog around 6:30 a.m. clad in shorts, long sleeve tee shirt, knit cap and gloves. As he passed in front of the music venue to which he planned to go later that evening he looked up to see an unimaginably glammed up woman wearing a short fur jacket, micro-mini skirt and precipitously high stiletto heels standing at the corner staring back at him. When he got next to her she looked at him and said, through bubble gum scented breath, “ain’t youse cold?” Jim wittily responded, “aren’t you?” “Yeah,” she replied, “but I ain’t gonna be here long.” And at that moment a black limo with tinted windows pulled up, and she turned away and slid into the awaiting back seat.<br class="" /><br class="" /></span></span></div><div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span style="font-size: large;">Lesson learned – always dress for the occasion.</span></span></div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline" /><br />Jimhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08407095418542335994noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19442576.post-41393099079733462212020-06-20T16:08:00.003-04:002020-06-20T16:09:31.549-04:00The story of those who tell the story of the Storytellers<div class="">
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">This time out we are talking about a modern day artifact – a Storyteller necklace - the third item that we are hoping to bring to Antiques Roadshow if it comes to Santa Fe. It had been originally slated for July of 2020, however... No announcement yet about future dates.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">But more than just that – we want to tell the story of those who tell the story of the Storytellers.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Several years back, while here for the Christmas holidays, we wandered into the Golden Dawn Gallery near the main Plaza – the sales venue for the work of three generations of Native American visual artists: Pablita Velarde (1918-2006) part of the first wave of painters who fueled a national demand for traditional Native art; her daughter, Helen Hardin (1943-1984) one of a second group of artists bridging traditional and contemporary art; and her granddaughter Margarete Bagshaw (1964-2015) a Modernist whose works sometimes were permeated with elements of Native iconography. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Margarete’s husband Dan was the store manager. He was an absorbing conversationalist, proud of his in-law family’s history and their portfolio of work – and eager to share their story. We were interested listeners. So, while we browsed, he trailed along and told us about this remarkable trio of creative women.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Although impressed by all of the works on display we were most attracted to those of the grandmother – and in particular to one print entitled “Old Father Story Teller.”<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-converted-space"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Lrd3nb-oAjo/Xu5sOzQ1mnI/AAAAAAAACBY/6me3OnEW0R86aKgQW-3-5R82SEA5cjpmQCK4BGAYYCw/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2020-05-30%2Bat%2B4.41.54%2BPM.png" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="246" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Lrd3nb-oAjo/Xu5sOzQ1mnI/AAAAAAAACBY/6me3OnEW0R86aKgQW-3-5R82SEA5cjpmQCK4BGAYYCw/s320/Screen%2BShot%2B2020-05-30%2Bat%2B4.41.54%2BPM.png" width="320" /></a> </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Born at Santa Clara Pueblo Pablita Velarde (Tewa name Tse Tsan, “Golden Dawn”) was the first full-time female student in Dorothy Dunn's “Studio School” art class at the Santa Fe Indian School. Contrary to what was being taught at other such institutions Dunn insisted that her students use Native American subjects and a flat-art style like that of the wall paintings and rock pictographs that had been created for millennia and are still visible throughout the Southwest. She believed that this yielded authentic representations of Indian culture (ceremonies, dancing and mythology) that were free of foreign influences, which may have been introduced by traders or outside training in art. After first working in watercolors, Velarde moved on to paints that she herself made from natural pigments (“fresco secco”), and with which she created what she called “earth paintings.” </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i class="">“We’ve always given Dorothy Dunn credit for bringing in art at the Santa Fe Indian School in 1932,” said [Santa Fe’s Adobe] gallery’s Alexander E. Anthony Jr., “but before that, as early as 1900, the teacher at the San Ildefonso Day School, Esther Hoyt, encouraged her kids to paint whatever they wanted to paint. That was against government policy [which was] very strongly trying to downplay the paganism of the Indians and to get rid of their religion and voodoo kind of dancing.”<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></i><i class="">(</i><i class="">Santa Fe New Mexican)<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></i></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">In 1939 Pablita Velarde was commissioned by the National Park Service, under a Works Progress Administration (WPA) grant, to depict scenes of traditional Pueblo life for the Visitor Center at the Bandelier National Monument. She then went on to become one of the most accomplished Native American painters of her generation, with solo exhibitions throughout the United States as well as creating other murals under the auspices of the WPA. Her work at Bandelier was restored in 2006 as part of the monument's 90th anniversary celebration. Several of her murals also can be seen at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center in Albuquerque.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">In a 1979 interview she said, "Painting was not considered women's work in my time. A woman was supposed to be just a woman, like a housewife and a mother and chief cook. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Those were things I wasn't interested in.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">The piece that we gravitated to, “Old Father Story Teller,” turned out to be the cover and title-page of a book written and illustrated by Velarde – and is perhaps her best known work of art. In the picture, the tribal elder is shown telling people of the pueblo stories about the stars and constellations, which march in an arc across the sky.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">“I was one of the fortunate children of my generation who were probably the last to hear stories firsthand from Great-grandfather or Grandfather. I treasure that memory, and I have tried to preserve it in this book so that my children as well as other people may have a glimpse of what used to be.” The painting won the Grand Prize at the 1955 Gallup Inter-Tribal Indian Ceremonial. We left the store with a print and a copy of the book.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">“Old Father Story Teller” was first published in 1960. Four years later in Cochiti Pueblo Helen Cordero created the first three-dimensional clay storyteller figure.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">In the late 1950s, at the age of forty-five with her six children grown, Cordero was doing beadwork and leatherwork with her husband Fred’s cousin, Juanita Arquero, to make a little extra money. Most of the profits, however, went to buy more materials. "Why don't you girls go back to the potteries?" Fred's aunt Juana asked. "You don't have to buy anything; Mother Earth gives it all to you."</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Juanita had learned how to make earthenware pots and other functional objects as a child, and for six months Helen tried to learn the craft from her. But her bowls and jars “just kept coming out all crooked, and I was ready to quit." So Juanita suggested that she try making figures instead. And soon large numbers of small frogs, birds, animals and, "little people" (eight to nine inches high) came to life. "It was like a flower blooming," Cordero said.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">When Helen showed her new creations at a Santo Domingo Pueblo feast day, Santa Fe folk art collector <a class="" href="https://www.fastcompany.com/90135171/how-alexander-girards-folk-art-obsession-changed-the-course-of-modernism">Alexander Girard</a> bought all of them, requested that she make some larger figures, and commissioned a 250-piece Nativity set.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Then in 1964 he “asked Helen to make an even larger seated figure with children. Perhaps he was thinking of the ‘Singing Mothers’ – figures of women holding or carrying a child or two that several Cochiti potters were making. Helen went home and thought about Girard's request. ‘I kept seeing my grandfather (Santiago Quintana)...he was a really good storyteller, and there were always lots of us grandchildren around him.’ [He] was also a leading member of one of the clown societies...who wanted his traditions preserved and maintained’” (The Collector’s Guide to Santa Fe and Taos.)</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i class="">Dr. Eric Blinman, head of the State of New Mexico Office of Archaeological Studies says</i><i class=""><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>to think of the Pueblo Indian belief system as like an onion with the<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></i><i class="">immutable<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></i><i class="">core beliefs in the center and additional layers added as new rituals and beliefs<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></i><i class="">were adopted and adapted</i><i class="">. The core<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></i><i class="">for most tribes is the<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></i><i class="">Clown Socie</i><i class="">ty</i><i class="">. The</i><i class="">se</i><i class=""><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></i><i class="">ostensibly comic entertainers</i><i class=""><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>play a crucial role in ceremonies<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></i><i class="">where</i><i class=""><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>they may mimic strangers and members of other tribes<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></i><i class="">and<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></i><i class="">reverse the normal order of things.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></i><i class="">Their purpose however is not just to get laughs – but rather to<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></i><i class="">reinforce<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></i><i class="">and teach the tribe’s<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></i><i class="">behavior</i><i class="">al norms</i><i class="">. In order to perform meaningful social commentary<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></i><i class="">their<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></i><i class="">identity<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></i><i class="">is<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></i><i class="">usually concealed. Th</i><i class="">ose</i><i class=""><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>of the Pueblo people<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></i><i class="">disguise themselves with</i><i class=""><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>body paint and head dresses,<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></i><i class="">rather than masks</i><i class="">.</i></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i class="">“Generally, Pueblo clowning may include acts of gluttony, including eating the inedible; simulating sexual activities; begging; joking; burlesquing ritual and ceremony; performing skits which satirize individuals or elements of their own [or] other societies (other pueblos, Navajos, and especially European-Americans); acting and speaking in opposites; inverse or backwards behavior; and doing virtually anything to make people laugh.</i></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i class=""><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-DHpy7mq2a10/Xu5sjlBLisI/AAAAAAAACBw/uTuMGR4Cl5ka2ixWdpb1Fyb7eI7BWo_dACK4BGAYYCw/s1600/Sacred_clown.jpeg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-DHpy7mq2a10/Xu5sjlBLisI/AAAAAAAACBw/uTuMGR4Cl5ka2ixWdpb1Fyb7eI7BWo_dACK4BGAYYCw/s320/Sacred_clown.jpeg" width="256" /></a> </i></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i class="">“</i><i class="">The clowns represent mankind in a pre-moral state. Among the Hopi [e.g.], this is a state where the basic tribal values of self-control in eating, decorous and respectful interpersonal relations, nonaggression, non-acquisitiveness, non-inquisitiveness, sexual modesty, etc. are overturned, reversed, and burlesqued in the typical fashion of inversionary ritual. This serves to remind people of the importance of these values.”<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><a class="" href="http://nativeamericannetroots.net/">nativeamericannetroots.net</a>) Some clown societies also function as healers, for example, the Zuni Ne' wekwe is a highly regarded medicine society.</i></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">When Helen remembered her grandfather's voice and shaped that earliest image of him telling stories to five grandchildren, she made two significant modifications to the Singing Mother tradition. (1) She showed the primary figure as male, since men were traditionally the storytellers in her tribe, and (2) she placed an unrealistic number of children with him (one of that initial quintet was the artist herself as a young girl.) Subsequent Cordero storytellers had as many as thirty.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ZJk5QvlCVMo/Xu5spbSmUyI/AAAAAAAACB8/A74S3l0-4DEtr7Gl2GirOVLvy3wZr6wPgCK4BGAYYCw/s1600/fa014_01.gif" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ZJk5QvlCVMo/Xu5spbSmUyI/AAAAAAAACB8/A74S3l0-4DEtr7Gl2GirOVLvy3wZr6wPgCK4BGAYYCw/s400/fa014_01.gif" /></a> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">This “First Storyteller” is now part of the Alexander Girard Collection in the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Seeing Cordero’s success, other artists started making storyteller dolls, each with its own unique style incorporating their creator’s beliefs based on their heritage. Today, the term storyteller refers to any open-mouthed human or animal surrounded by children, animals, or both, that listen to the stories.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">And, in response to the desire of us non-Native Americans to have some sort of Indian folk art to display or wear, new representations of the subject emerged including bracelets (esp. among the Navajo), and necklaces such as our aspiring Antiques Roadshow item – which Marsha purchased at a silent auction held by the Friends of Archaeology (FoA) at its annual luncheon/fundraiser.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i class="">The Museum of New Mexico Foundation (MNMF)<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></i><i class="">was<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></i><i class="">founded in 1962 as a vehicle for providing private support for the<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></i><i class="">state run<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></i><i class="">Office of Archaeological Studies, New Mexico Historic Sites and the four<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></i><i class="">state<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></i><i class="">museums in Santa Fe (Art, International Folk Art, History, Indian Art) –<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></i><i class="">and<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></i><i class="">is home to special “Friends” groups which dedicate themselves to fundraising and advocacy, as well as presenting lectures, trips, classes and exhibit-opening receptions. The necklace was donated by another FoA, but there was no accompanying information – nor was the donor identified.</i></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">As we have with several other folk art “finds” that we have acquired since moving to Santa Fe we brought our purchase to the Museum of Indian Arts & Culture’s monthly “Let's Take A Look with MIAC Curators.” The figures in the necklace are barely one inch tall. Aided by a strong magnifying glass, and insider knowledge of possible names to look for, the artifact analysts were able decipher the minuscule signature and attribute the artist. Like Marsha’s Thunderbird necklace, this piece is also from Santo Domingo (“Kewa”) Pueblo.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Long before people wrote books and saved documents to a computer, the legends, myths and cultural values of a society were passed down orally from generation to generation by its storytellers – revered and almost mystical tribal figures. The tales they held in their minds were sacred – a means of preserving the thoughts and experiences of an entire culture.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">But storytellers do not talk about themselves. You need someone outside that group to tell their story. Narrators who may communicate in a different manner, such as painting or pottery. And they in turn...</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">******</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Santa Fe Indian School (SFIS) was established by The Federal Government in 1890 to educate Native American children from tribes throughout the Southwestern United States. It was one of one hundred fifty such institutions (five in New Mexico) whose purpose was to assimilate the Native American children into the wider United States culture and economy by eliminating their traditional ways of life and replacing them with those of mainstream America. The students were stripped of all traces of what their culture was, such as their long hair, their clothing, and their native language. “Wretched students snatched from their culture to die of homesickness.” (Miriam Sagan)</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">In the 1920s, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Hubert Work, authorized an investigation into the conditions at these Indian Boarding Schools. The resulting Meriam Report highlighted the failures of the system – and a shift in Federal Native American policy began when President Franklin D. Roosevelt established the Indian New Deal, with its centerpiece Indian Reorganization Act of 1934.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">In 1975, the All Indian Pueblo Council (AIPC) was formed in New Mexico – the first Indian organization to utilize the existing laws to establish an education system for their children. With the passing of the SFIS Act in 2001, the school took complete control of its educational curriculum, and ownership of the land under a trust held by the nineteen Pueblo Governors of New Mexico. In 2008 SFIS razed eighteen of the original buildings, with the courts ruling that the Pueblo’s sovereignty overruled the State’s Historic Preservation Acts. Today the institution serves 700 Native American students in grades 7 – 12. The undersized SFIS boys basketball team – playing the up-tempo, aggressive defense, quick shooting style known as “Rez Ball” – made the finals in the 2019 New Mexico Class 3A state tournament, finishing as the reserve champion. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">SFIS however was not Santa Fe’s only “Indian School.” Established in 1894 and financed by Katharine Drexel, a wealthy Philadelphia heiress later canonized a saint, Saint Catherine’s Industrial Indian School was the first in a nationwide system of what we would today call NGO schools for the education of Native Americans and African Americans. More on “Saint Kate’s” in a future posting.</span></span></div>
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Jimhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08407095418542335994noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19442576.post-74080898602709274062020-06-16T16:23:00.000-04:002020-06-16T16:27:21.449-04:00Not a bad day in Santa Fe<div class="" style="-moz-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">“What better way to open a festive concert against the backdrop of the New Mexican night sky than with a poetic reflection on the beauty of music by night?” asks the program notes for “Renee Fleming with the Santa Fe Opera Orchestra."</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Perhaps with a raging thunder storm accompanied by a driving rain windblown into the unprotected sections of the Santa Fe Opera Theatre causing the temporary evacuation of the occupants of those seats as well as the instrumentalists warming up on stage. Followed by a concert-long lightning show – and a chorus of nearby thunder with a scaled down version of the earlier storm to accompany Ms. Fleming’s closing pieces, which she sung calmly while her shoulder-length blonde hair, and sea-foam colored gown ruffled in the sirocco of the late night monsoon.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">But first we started our Saturday by unintentionally alpine scrambling (for the first time ever) up a basalt rock cliff within which lies one of the largest collections of Native rock art (“glyphs”) in the American West. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">It was the kind of day that Santa Fe tourism loves to highlight – outdoor recreation in the morning, arts & culture in the evening.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Our a.m. scramble took place at the La Cieneguilla Petroglyph Site during “a moderate hike on rough terrain” conducted by a local “walking collaborative.”<br class="" /> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">According to the Atlas Obscura website, “a 1991 archeological survey [of the site] recorded over 4,400 images within less than a mile. Bird figures are a common motif, accounting for almost a third of the glyphs. Some of the panels are thought to go back to the Archaic Period (that’s around 8000 to 2000 BCE), and there are some modern glyphs (that’s archeology-speak for graffiti) as well, but most of the images are Pueblo and date to between the 13th and 17th century.” The site also contains a portion of El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro, the 17th through 19th century trade route from Mexico City to Santa Fe.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">A gathering of forty or so assembled in the site’s parking area – including a half dozen wearing the organizing group’s tee shirts, and one woman originally from Tolland, CT some of whose home-state family members are running the Heirloom Market & Cafe at Comstock Ferre in our old home town of Wethersfield. Small world.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">After a brief intro during which we were told to expect a short walk on a flat dirt trail followed by a “quick scamper” to the mesa the group (some like us unwitting) set off. We had also been instructed that this was “not a race.” And it wasn’t – until we reached the end of the pathway and began to ascend the rocky cliff upon which it turned out the glyphs resided. The way forward was not marked. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Within the first minute at least half of the group swept by us – return visitors, experienced scramblers, those too young to know better, and a few with mountain goat somewhere in their family lineage. The rest of us kept our eyes down searching for openings between the stones wherein we could put our feet and objects to pull ourselves up with and/or hang onto as we crept along. And stopping to figure out where out next move was – since the power climbers among us were no longer in sight and the tee-shirted volunteers who had hung back with our group also seemed to not have a sense of our route to the top.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">At some point we realized that we were in the midst of the artwork and began to intentionally pause to admire that which some of us had come there to see. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Eventually with some physical help from the volunteers and each other, we reached the summit having covered the rocky one mile distance in about fifty minutes.<br class="" /> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Although Cieneguilla is not translatable in any of the online tools we looked at, a cienega is a swamp or wetland – and the truth of that name could be readily seen in the landscape that was presented to us from the mesa top. Because of its readily available water, the land was also the site of at least a dozen small Native Pueblos during the time when the petroglyphs were created, in addition to serving as the route for a portion of El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro – some of which we walked upon as we crossed the flat-topped hill before taking a much easier and quicker route back to our car.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Fortunately we are familiar with southwestern Native American rock art having seen and studied it as part of an Elderhostel (now Road Scholar) program in Big Bend National Park in West Texas – as well as having hiked several times in Petroglyph National Monument, a volcanic basalt escarpment that stretches seventeen (largely flat) miles along Albuquerque, New Mexico's West Mesa. (We would recommend the ABQ site to any visitors to NM with an interest in viewing the ancient rock carvings without having to constantly worry about maintaining their balance.) </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">So when it quickly became apparent that this trek, while not a race, was more about the hiking than the glyph-viewing (there was no art work at the summit) we pointed our eyes down and carried on because (a) we started on it and damn it we were going to finish; and (b) we had to escape injury in order to be in good enough condition for Santa Fe Opera’s presentation of Renee Fleming performing “Letters from Georgia [Okeeffe],” which we were attending that evening with Santa Fe friends F and D.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">We are not big opera lovers. Since moving out here we have seen “The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs” and “Doctor Atomic” at SF Opera – both in English, both short, both atonal (aka non musical), both of which we enjoyed, and both probably not “real” operas. But we do like Renee Fleming having seen her singing “Danny Boy” at the funeral of Senator John McCain as well as on other televised events.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">We know much more about, and enjoy the paintings of Georgia Okeeffe. So when Santa Fe Opera announced its 2019 one-night performance of the famous female opera singer performing lyrics taken from the letters of the unorthodox and independent-minded painter, it took no longer than one of us saying “we’re going” to decide to get tickets. We asked authentic opera fans F & D to join us – and opted for close to the best seats in the house. Which it turned out went (in descending order) to the mega-donors, really big donors, big donors, subscribers, and the rest of us.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">So, with our bodies intact – and following a relaxing dinner with our companions at a favorite <a class="" href="https://www.jinjabistro.com/">Pan-Asian restaurant</a> after which we were presented with a full-sky rainbow, which D suggested might have “ended at Shirley McClain’s house” – we arrived at the opera about forty minutes before the 8:00 performance. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">The arch of colors was still on display to the southeast, but closer to the performance venue the sky was darkening and the sound of thunder was approaching. So we decided to forgo the spectacular view of the Española valley landscape from the elevated site, opt for safety, and settle into our seats.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Good thing!</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Some of the architectural features of Santa Fe Opera Theatre that make the building as spectacular as its physical setting and its productions are a partial opening of the roof towards the middle of the orchestra section with permanent open sides in the same area – and a sliding door at the rear of the stage that often is left open until after sunset. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">The design provides spectacular Westward views for the entire audience– as well as giving some centrally located attendees a view of the night sky. Our spot in the seat picking pecking order placed us on the center main floor behind the orchestra section, under the overhang and well within the shelter of the side walls.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-k30-_4zjhoM/XukqHCBQUUI/AAAAAAAACBA/aQ4FOOIYjdYdeFzWaV1KIrkPr4h6H0Q3ACK4BGAYYCw/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2019-08-13%2Bat%2B1.21.33%2BPM.png" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="188" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-k30-_4zjhoM/XukqHCBQUUI/AAAAAAAACBA/aQ4FOOIYjdYdeFzWaV1KIrkPr4h6H0Q3ACK4BGAYYCw/s320/Screen%2BShot%2B2019-08-13%2Bat%2B1.21.33%2BPM.png" width="320" /></a></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">The monsoon that arrived at 7:40 took advantage of all the entry points.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">The auditorium was about two-thirds filled when the storm struck. Spectators who were outside hurried in. Those already at their seats in the orchestra section opened umbrellas, which were immediately disassembled by the gusting wind that was pushing a sideways wall of rain into the venue. The orchestra, which had been tuning up, grabbed their instruments (if they could) and abandoned the stage. And lightning crackled in the background as thunder boomed overhead.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Then, just as quickly, it stopped. All but the high voltage light show, which continued to illuminate the sky throughout the one hour forty-five minute performance consisting of “Serenade to Music” by Ralph Vaughn Williams sung by the Santa Fe Opera Apprentice Singer Ensemble; and five “Letters from Georgia” by Kevin Puts, and “Vier letzte Lieder” (“Four Last Songs”) by Richard Strauss both performed by Ms. Fleming.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">To our untrained ears it was very enjoyable musical evening (even though only seventy-five percent in English) that was enhanced even more by the background pyrotechnics. (<a class="" href="https://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/rain-can-t-dampen-diva-s-performance-at-santa-fe/article_0fa0fa13-b605-58bb-ae3b-192e4ba30287.html">Here</a> is what the local opera critic thought.)</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Fortunately the second storm ended before we made our way to our car.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Not falling off the cliff and breaking our legs while alpine scrambling through 13th and 17th century Native American pictographs. Not being struck by lightning while listening to one of opera’s living legends interpret in song the written words of one of art’s all-time greats. Not a bad day in Santa Fe.</span></span></div>
Jimhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08407095418542335994noreply@blogger.com0