Out And About

It's The Season in Santa Fe -- it's The Season pretty much everywhere in New Mexico where tourists flock -- and we try to avoid the crowds as much as possible. Well, it's nice that folks want to come to this rugged corner of the country to see and do rugged or fancy tourist things and all, but the transition from relatively calm and tranquil to super-charged hyper-tourism is sudden -- happening within moments over Memorial Day weekend -- and it is guaranteed to discombobulate.

Ms. Ché and I have been up in Santa Fe and Taos repeatedly this Season, though, and we'll be going several more times before The Season ends, crowds or no crowds. I'm grateful in some ways that I can do it, since I'd been too ill to even think of it within the last few months. Now my various conditions seem to be controlled with medications, and I can get around well enough and for long enough to actually enjoy being out and about.

This weekend we took a group of Cherokee from Albuquerque to the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts in Santa Fe to tour the exhibit on Lloyd Kiva New, the co-founder of the Institute of American Indian Arts -- where Ms Ché has been a student for a year now. The tour was led by Aysen New, Lloyd New's widow, a remarkable woman and presence in her own right, who has maintained her late husband's legacy with wit and wisdom and whose tenacity has ensured he will not be forgotten.

There are three museum exhibits currently on view in Santa Fe which detail the life and legacy of Lloyd Kiva New. The Museum of Indian Arts and Culture, the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, and the New Mexico Museum of Art are all simultaneously hosting Lloyd Kiva New exhibits through the summer and into the fall. In addition, there is an exhibit at the Institute of American Indian Arts -- the institution he co-founded -- and one of the galleries on the Santa Fe Plaza is offering a number of items created in Lloyd Kiva New's studio in Scottsdale, or created from materials and fabrics he made, for sale to collectors.

There is also a book, "The Sound of Drums," widely available at these exhibits. The book is an edited version of Lloyd New's memoirs which he composed and wrote late in his life. It's beautifully written in an almost magical realist style, by a man who clearly loved his work and lived his life to the full.

Another book, "Celebrating Difference" is also available, though not quite as widely, which uses an interview and essay technique to document the history and legacy of the Institute of American Indian Arts through 2012, the year of this volume's publication.

Next weekend, we'll provide another perspective on Lloyd Kiva New from one of his associates who knew and worked with him in Scottsdale and later came to Santa Fe as an educational consultant and worked with him throughout his tenure at IAIA and afterwards.

I'll report on that in another post later on.

It's been a long time since I've done anything like this. There was a time when we would routinely host receptions, seminars, workshops and what have you as part of our work in theater and the arts in California, but we pretty much gave that up when our theater company closed in 1996. We went off and did other things -- to make money in a word. Theater and the arts are not really money making propositions -- except for the very few at the top, and for them, prominence is precarious. We were able to make enough doing other things to retire in relative comfort, and now that we've settled in to retirement, Ms. Ché and I are both becoming more and more involved as donors, collectors, scholars and participants, in the local/regional arts communities. It's the way these things were no doubt meant to be.

Because of Ms Ché's Native American heritage -- specifically Cherokee -- we've focused most of our attention on Native American creative arts since we moved to New Mexico, but it's not our only interest and focus. Indeed, later this month and then again in October, we intend to focus on one of the major motors for New Mexico's early prominence in the arts, Mabel Dodge Luhan.

Ms. Ché attended a writer's workshop conducted by Jimmy Santiago Baca at her house, Los Gallos, in Taos two years ago. Ever since, she's been taken with Mabel and the stories of her life and work in New Mexico. Her house in Taos has also become a warm and welcoming destination for us. We took Ms Ché's cousin and her husband there on our brief day-trip to Taos when they came to visit just before the Memorial Day tourist inundations. Because it is an important site to us, we felt it was a worthwhile site for them to see and experience as well.

In May an exhibit on Mabel's life, work and cultural influence opened at the Harwood Museum in Taos. The exhibit was co-curated by Ma-Lin Wilson-Powell and Dr. Lois Rudnik, Mabel's chief biographer for many years. We haven't had the opportunity and time to see it yet, but plan to participate in some of the activities surrounding it later this month -- may even get up to D. H. Lawrence's ranch.

When the exhibit moves to the Albuquerque Museum in October, we will no doubt be involved in some of its activities as well. There are plays and even an opera connected with the exhibit, so we have an interest (!).

So our summer and fall schedules are filling up. Ms Ché is returning to IAIA as a student in August. She received the Fall 2016 Truman Capote Literary Scholarship, so it's likely she'll be... busy (in a good way) with her literary work and will likely be promoting the creative writing program at IAIA as well.

She and I are also involved in the development of a new performing arts facility on the IAIA campus. But that's a whole other story for another time.

Meanwhile, the increasingly dreary business of the American Political Classes struggles on. What a deplorable mess -- also another story for another time.

NOTE: Will add links as time allows. UPDATE: Links have been added!

Mario Martinez -- Indian Art, Indian Artist

Mario Martinez has a current exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Native Art in Santa Fe. Some of the works in the video above are included in the exhibit.

Painting in an abstract style appeals to Mario Martinez (Pascua Yaqui, b. 1953) in part because it allows him to express Yaqui cultural traditions, knowledge, and spirituality without explicitly revealing them. In "Yaqui Flashback II" (1991), he incorporates decorative fabrics used in Yaqui ceremonial regalia. While he frequently depicts what he considers "essential" forms found in nature, more recent works such as "Brooklyn" (2004) also refer to the urban landscape of his current home.

Martinez's work is featured in "Vantage Point: The Contemporary Native Art Collection," on view through August 7, 2011 at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C.

Indian through and through, eh?

Big Do in Santa Fe and Albuquerque on Climate Change

Sante Fe People's Climate March

Get directions to this event

• Saturday, September 20, 12:00 PM Santa Fe Plaza
  

  Downtown Santa Fe

  Santa Fe, NM
  
  
  
  
  
  A large and diverse Coalition of groups are holding events in Albuquerque and Santa Fe calling on our local officials, President Obama and the governments of the United Nations to take more significant action to curb carbon pollution by implementing the highest possible climate pollution standards on power plants and make real investments in clean energy.

RSVP:

Name

E-mail address

ZIP/Postal Code  

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People's Climate Pilgrimage

Get directions to this event

• Saturday, September 20, 9:00 AM Immaculate Conception Church
  

  619 Copper Ave NW

  Albuquerque, NM 87102
   

EVENTS IN ALBUQUERQUE AND SANTA FE PARALLEL PEOPLE'S CLIMATE MARCH IN NEW YORK CITY

RSVP:

Name

E-mail address

ZIP/Postal Code  

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We'll be in Santa Fe tomorrow for an all-day seminar on Indian arts and culture in the Modern World (ahem) which will no doubt integrate the issue of climate change and provide insight into Native American points of view and responses.

Also, too: http://peoplesclimate.org/global/

Disruption the Movie: http://vimeo.com/watchdisruption/movie

This is a test, this is only a test

"Pasatiempo" is one of the overabundance of local arts publications that we sometimes find overwhelming. 

This issue includes articles on Ol'Max Evans, a local character (oh, is he a writer, too?) we've come to know at least to a modest degree, whose company we enjoy, and whose writing we've long admired. The article features Ol' Max's story called "One Eyed Sky" -- which to my way of looking at it is as perfect a long-short story as anyone has ever written. Ol' Max probably agrees, though he would say it's only the most perfect he's ever written. All right.

Then featured on the cover and included in an article inside is the work of Harry Fonseca, an artist from California who we knew and who was one of the inspirations of our eventual move to New Mexico -- though not to Santa Fe. Oh please.

We love going to Santa Fe and attending whatever or doing whatever we need to do there, but to live there? No. It's a pleasant enough place as long as you don't have to get too far into its subcultures and the various competing interests shall we say. I think our first introduction to Santa Fe was among those interests and we thought then, as we think now, it is best for them to go their own way.

I've embedded this issue of "Pasatiempo" from last August as a test to see whether it will work or not and to have easy access to it later. If a reader enjoys it, too, great!

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Note: Forgot to mention Nagel Jackson, who is mentioned in an article regarding the resurrection of "Shakespeare Santa Fe." We worked with Nagel on a number of plays including Shakespeare productions back in the day, 40-some-odd years ago now. So. Things keep circling around, don't they?

Postscript on Previous Posts Regarding the New Mexico Museum of Art and the Stories It Tells

An Early Photo of the New Mexico Museum of Art, c. 1917

The image above was featured on the cover of the January, 1918 issue of Art and Archeology Magazine, and it's one of the first widely distributed pictures of the New Mexico Museum of Art, a building which appears to be nearly identical today.

Recent picture of NMMOA (from WikiMedia)

Part of the ethos of Santa Fe Style seems to be to preserve things "as they are" forever, which is a curious ethos when you think about it, especially in this land of mud and wind and endless sunshine. The Museum is consciously built in Santa Fe's New/Old Style. It's not built of adobe but of burnt brick and concrete with a cement stucco coating.  It's a near duplication of the New Mexico Pavilion at the Panama Pacific Exhibition of 1915 in San Diego, California, which in turn was styled after the Acoma Pueblo Mission Church originally built in the 1600's -- with a few other elements thrown in for variety. (Specifically, the second floor balcony on the facade of the St. Francis Auditorium is taken from features found on a number of other Pueblo mission churches.)

Acoma Mission Church, c. 1914

New Mexico Building, Panama Pacific Exhibition, San Diego, 1915

The New Mexico Building in San Diego's Balboa Park still exists (as the Balboa Park Club), though it has been expanded and remodeled over the years.

Re: Catching Up -- The Dynasty of Women: Pablita Velarde, Helen Hardin and Margarete Bagshaw

Art made by Indians has been around in New Mexico for thousands of years -- as is currently documented at the New Mexico Museum of Art in Santa Fe. Unfortunately, the Indian stuff from the long-ago is somewhat limited to pottery, some weaving and some spear points and arrow heads from ancient times. There is much more -- much, much more -- that might be shown, such a the mural paintings that have shown up in many now abandoned and ruined Pueblo locations, sculpture, rock art and petroglyphs, and so on. Maybe some of it could only be shown in photographs, but still...

The Pueblo murals are a revelation. The only ones that can be seen publicly are at Kuaua -- the so-called Coronado Monument -- in Bernalillo. The square kiva the murals were found in has been restored and the murals have been somewhat freely interpreted and repainted recently. In the museum at the site, fragments of the originals are on display, however, and it's quite possible to imagine what they looked like when they were painted. There were something like seventeen layers of painted plaster on the walls of the kiva, and other square kivas also showed signs of wall painting, but I'm  led to believe nothing was recoverable from the others.

Been Catching Up...

We're off to another IAIA event in Santa Fe and there will be more arts'n'culture stuff coming next week.

In the meantime, I've been catching up on some of the details about events in the Outer World, specifically more about the various strains on the Government and this Omidyar character and the world of the Silicon Valley Billionaires' Club that he belongs to. It's not much of a pretty picture. I knew this about that place and its highest priced hooligans (now, now) from times gone by; criminy, my first contact with them was in the '80's, and I sometimes still get a shudder from it.

These guys were fully hooked up and in bed with the Dreaded Government from the get. Make no mistake about it. And surveillance was a big part of their portfolio.

But anyway, I'm catching up on a lot of stuff, and as the weather chills I'm more and more interested in following some of my other Bliss, so erratic postings may be routine for some time to come.

OT: The Gustave Baumann House in Santa Fe

Well, this is interesting. The Gustave Baumann house in Santa Fe is (or was) listed for sale (I just discovered the listing. I suspect was on the market for a while, but according to some sources, it's not on the market currently.)  For almost as long as I've been looking at New Mexico real estate listings, the homes of many of the painters and artists who made their way to Santa Fe in the early part of the 20th century have been coming on the market, sometimes for fabulous prices. Gustave Baumann was one of the seminal figures in the Santa Fe art colony, primarily working as a print-maker, and his home was a veritable tiny fantasmagoria of his own invention.

Carlos Vierra's home on the Old Pecos Trail was one of the first, if not the first, significant artist home built in Santa Fe. It is one I long admired, a substantial, neo-Pueblo style place on a large lot. When it was built in 1918-1919, it was way out of town, and it's still not exactly in town, though the town has crept out around it like kudzu.



It was listed at the height of the real estate market at something like $2,600,000, which at the time seemed a bit steep, but given the size of the property and the historical significance of the house, it was at least conceivable that someone would pay that. But they didn't. The house sat on the market for two, maybe close to three years, without a sale. The price dropped to $1,900,00, then to $1,600,000. Finally, it did sell, though I don't know what the price was. I'll bet it was in that neighborhood, and it's probably a corporate executive stay these days. We pass by it every time we go to Santa Fe, and it seems quite un-homey these days, but I haven't any real idea what's become of it, and the truth is, except for some outbuildings and part of the upper floor, you can't really see it from the street because of the screening pine trees planted outside the wall around the property. At least it wasn't torn down or turned into a bed and breakfast or a shop like so many have been.

(Speaking of, since I think part of the Shuster compound is now a bed and breakfast): Will Shuster's place also went on the market a while ago, for fabulous money, and I scarfed some of the pictures from the listing for future reference when we continued the renovations of our own house. I liked the details on the stairs and the flattened punched Mobil Oil cans used to decorate the kitchen cabinets in the guest house, but now I can't find the pictures. I think they were on the hard drive of one of the computers that died back in the day. The hard drives of our various dead computers are currently stashed in several rooms of the house, and we need to consolidate them. So many things are still in boxes. We'll get to it. Eventually.

The Gustave Baumann house was built in 1923, and it doesn't follow the standard set by the Carlos Vierra house begun in 1918, not at all, and its distinctiveness may be one reason it is considered such a treasure today. The curving adobe shapes and masses of the Vierra house essentially became the model for the widespread neo-Pueblo Santa Fe Style in house design. It became routine, even mass produced, in Santa Fe and Albuquerque and elsewhere in New Mexico until well into the 1950's. It was only later that the severely straight-lined and cubical massing characterized by the Baumann house became stylish, and interestingly, it is now commonplace in new housing developments. You almost never see the Vierra style in new construction any more -- partly, no doubt. because even the ricos can't afford it.

Though the Baumann house feels much like other Santa Fe artist's residences, it also, perhaps strangely, evokes the standard little suburban semi-Spanish bungalow from the era of its construction. Its sharp lines even convey an Art Deco sensibility, something you see very little of in Santa Fe.

It is a very small house. Two bedrooms, one bath, a large living room (that once had a stage for puppet performances), a small kitchen, an even tinier dining room, and a remarkable skylit octagonal gallery/entrance hall, where Baumann used to display his works for sale.

His studio is in a corner of the property. There is a garage and a shed, space for gardens, and that's essentially it. The property is a "compound" in the sense the word is used in Santa Fe, but it's quite wee compared to most, and the diminutiveness of the whole is part of its charm.

Baumann decorated much of the house with his own artistic fancies, from the distinctive front gate to the gilded "Koshare" emblem poking up from the roof of the gallery skylight. He did much of the wood carving decorating the house, if not all of it, and he designed and built most of the doors and gates. He actually designed the house himself, but he had it rendered by an architect friend of his, and had it built by the architect's brother.

The Historic Santa Fe Foundation purchased the house in 2008 and set about conserving and restoring it, with plans -- I thought -- to use it as a house museum and meeting place. What happened to those plans, I don't know, but I do know they were trying to accomplish a rather extensive conservation and restoration task during the worst period of the economic free-fall, and they had a difficult time raising money for the project.

But they did produce a number of videos documenting the project, and they are well worth watching -- for those interested in this sort of historic detail...

When I saw the listing for the house, at $1,100,000, I figured they'd given up on it. The price they were asking was breathtaking. Even in Santa Fe, where significant properties will bring that price and more, it seemed steep for the Baumann place. We are still in a real estate market slump after all, and the renovations and restoration of the Baumann house and studio, I understand, have not been completed. In addition, I believe that any purchaser must agree to preserve and protect the house and studio in close to the style and condition it had during Baumann's lifetime, with heavy restrictions on what can and cannot be done to and with the property. This is not the place for a typical owner.

The house is built largely of adobe, and when it was purchased by the Foundation, there were large cracks on many of the walls due to uneven settling of the foundations. Repairing -- and repainting -- the cracks was among the first orders of business in the restoration, and I thought the way they did it was interesting, and extraordinarily complex.

Yes, well. Our house, too, is built mostly of adobe, and when we bought it, it was in sad, and in places, crumbling shape. There were pretty large cracks in the walls, and there were places where the plaster had fallen away from the interior walls completely, exposing the adobe bricks. The stone foundation, we found, was essentially set on top of hard packed surface soil, not dug into the ground (at least so far as we can tell), and so it has settled quite unevenly, meaning that some of the floors slope noticeably, and the walls continue to crack. Our floors are wide pine boards in part of the house and what appear to be narrow maple (or some other hardwood, not oak) boards in another wing. So far as we can tell, there is no subfloor beneath the wide boards; they are directly on the floor joists. The narrow boards, however, appear to be on a subfloor. But gaps between floor and walls can lead to surprising drafts.

I'm sure there are plenty of such quirks at the Baumann place as well. People who are used to more rigorous and modern building standards would probably be put off by such things as air and roof leaks and slopes and cracks and so on that you're liable to find in an old adobe house, let alone the simple lack of electrical outlets and the somewhat primitive plumbing facilities. "How could people live this way?!" runs the refrain. Well, they did. Somehow they managed.

What we deal with more than anything else it seems, are the air leaks in our house. The windows leak cold air -- despite the fact that they are energy-efficient replacements. The weatherstripping on the doors is leaky. And when the wind blows, there are air leaks and drafts around the perimeters of the rooms in the adobe part of the house, as if there is a gap between the floorboards and the walls. Oh. Well, of course there is. It's the nature of the construction.  In the winter, part of my task it to find out where cold air is coming in and block the drafts. It's an ongoing task because when one draft is blocked another appears.

I wouldn't doubt that there are similar issues in the Baumann house, and I'm sure they're just as aggravating if not more so. How can people live this way?

You're always doing maintenance things in an old adobe house, as I'm sure the Baumanns were during their 40 years' living in their little cubical house on Camino de las Animas in Santa Fe. Not only do you do constant little, and occasional big, maintenance things in an adobe house, you learn what you can let go, too, and not worry too much about -- which I'm still getting a handle on. In a way, you have to listen to the place and understand that it is a living part of the earth. Learn not to be so concerned with its appearance and become more concerned with its spirit. The house will tell you what it needs.

In 2009, a historic property report (pdf) was prepared for the Gustave Baumann house which details a lot of the property's historic importance as well as its many artistic features and quirks at the time of its restoration. Together with the videos prepared by the Historic Santa Fe Foundation and the real estate listing, it gives a surprisingly realistic picture of what life was like in Santa Fe during the early and some of the later years of the Santa Fe artists' colony -- before the colony became an industry.

I've been pondering how something initially so simple, even naive, became the economic dynamo that it is today -- and whether that is such a good thing.
 

It Was Snowing Up In Santa Fe...

while we were attending a colloquy and Q & A yesterday between some of Santa Fe's better known writers -- Michael McGarrity, Douglas Preston, and Forrest Fenn. It was at  Dorothy and Mary's Place -- Collected Works. I've developed a habit since moving to New Mexico of describing practically everywhere we go -- at least if we know the owners or proprietors -- as "So and So's Place" rather than using the commercial name or official location. If we don't know the owners/proprietors, it's a different story.

It snowed the last time we were in Santa Fe on Christmas Eve for the Canyon Road Farolito Walk, too. We realized we had not been in Santa Fe since then, somewhat surprising since we've been to Albuquerque seemingly every week or even several times a week. And as everyone knows, no one goes to Albuquerque unless they have to; one goes to Santa Fe because one wants to.

When we were driving up toward the Sangre de Cristos yesterday, the sky was mostly cloudy, but right over the Santa Fe National Forest -- and perhaps in town, too -- we could see clouds dropping precipitation which I took to be snow. From our distance, though, I couldn't be sure. When we got to town, the air was still pretty warm, but there was a chill breeze blowing, and by the time we sat down for the chit-chat, snow was falling outside the window and late-comers had to brush fresh, fat flakes off their shoulders.

Heh, "latecomers." Jeeze, the place was packed. Some of the cowpunchers were sporting their six-shooters, chaps, and handlebar mustaches the way they do, as if they were the real thing instead of characters in a movie -- or more probably a music video or TV commercial. I would think they'd turn out for Max Evans (who I rather like a lot...) But there they were for McGarrity -- who introduced himself as named "New Mexico's Most Popular Writer -- while Tony Hillerman was still alive!"  He's obviously been angling for the Hillerman Chair since well before the Old Git died, and no one seems to begrudge him when it comes down to it -- except maybe Ann though that's another story, but I'm more into Rudolfo Anaya if I have to pick among the local codger-writers.

I've mentioned it before: New Mexico is filled with art. But it's also full of writers, chock a block. In fact, next weekend, there is supposed to be a literary event right here in our little corner of creation, featuring some two dozen local/regional writers. Yeek. Of course, it's primarily to sell books, but still, even an event as large as that -- out here in the middle of nowhere no less -- just scratches the surface. And I'm sure a lot of books will be sold. As I've said, people in New Mexico have home libraries -- and they actually read, too. Yes, they do.

Forrest Fenn is a character more than he is a writer, though I am lusting after one of his books, The Secrets of San Lazaro Pueblo, and I am determined to add it to my collection. Well, when I win the lottery. Or find his Treasure. Oh, the treasure hunt for Forrest Fenn's jewel box! That was the actual topic of discussion and what drew the enthusiasts -- as opposed to family and friends of the writers -- to attend the event. We went because of McGarrity and Preston more than Fenn (knew them previously), though the whole treasure hunt subculture and Fenn's book about the treasure in gold and gems he hid somewhere "north of Santa Fe" is one of the regional charms. The Fenn character -- Crusty Old Collector and Trader in Beautiful Things From Long Ago, Indun Stuff In Particular -- is one of the standard local types since the days of the Old Santa Fe Trail, and I think it is probably a permanent cultural thing. You cannot "do" Santa Fe without encountering the Traders. Fenn has been at it for many a long year, and though I think he's retired now, he still has a formidable collection of Beautiful Things and apparently will part with some of his items for the right price.

What did he say during the chat? "Having enough money is better than having a lot of it." That drew a round of applause. Though I'm not exactly sure what under the circumstances he meant. This man is a multimillionaire many times over, as were some of the others in attendance. The wealth of some of the inhabitants of Santa Fe is mind-boggling. This includes some writers and artists. But for most, no matter what their calling, it's a hard and often dreary slog just to survive. The struggle -- "the thrill of the chase" if you will -- is supposed to be good for the soul, in the Catholic sense of suffering I guess, and for many, it is about the struggle not about the end reward. But I wondered who Fenn was communicating with when he mentioned "enough."

We are talking about a man who has hidden a treasure estimated to be worth millions somewhere "north of Santa Fe" after all, a treasure many thousands of enthusiasts are eagerly seeking. There was a question yesterday about avarice and its consequences for some of the treasure-seekers. And  Fenn was asked if he was concerned at all about it. The answer was "No." I wasn't sure he grasped the nature of the question, or that he could grasp it. Not that he's necessarily unaware, just that in his mind, it has nothing to do with him. He, after all, isn't driven by greed and possessions; it's only dumb luck he's survived at all and gotten where he is. Avarice? Consequences? It probably doesn't enter his mind. All he's after, he says, is getting kids out from what he calls the Game Room and exploring the mountains, learning about Nature, appreciating the Earth and What's Real. The Hunt for The Treasure is reward in itself. Besides, the kind of people he says he wants to find it have a pickup truck, live hard scrabble in West Texas with their 12 kids... and they really need it.

Someone asked, "What would you think if some billionaire hired a crew to go out searching and they found the treasure? Wouldn't that lead you to think maybe someone who didn't fit your ideal treasure finder was more likely to find it all along?"

He said, "Well, they wouldn't have a pick up, would they?"

Maybe he can't even imagine it...

Cranes! (Again....)

We had to go into town (Albuquerque again) the other afternoon and there was some time to kill after taking care of our errands, so we stopped by Old Town for a bit. As we were headed back to the Red Van, we passed a gallery showing mostly local and regional plein air paintings. We decided to go in to take a look around and walked out with a rather nice painting of Sandhill cranes at the Bosque, painted by Placitas artist Linda Heath.

When we headed back to our place, there were an uncounted number of cranes on the ground at the ranch nearby where we'd seen them before, only this time, the cranes and the cattle had traded places and the cattle were closer to the road than the birds. As we passed by, a small part of the flock rose into the air and flew low to the east.

Some time later, not more than a few minutes, as we were feeding the feral cats at our place,  we could see formations of cranes in the air low to the north. It seemed they were coming not just from the ranch up the road but from farther north as well, wave after wave of them, not unlike the exhilarating sight of them coming in for the night at the Bosque. 

Cranes by the hundreds passed over our place. It was almost as if they were using it as a landmark. Some formations turned east as they flew by, others continued on south in a straight line. When we were at the Bosque del Apache (maybe 80 miles south as the crane flies) in the evening during the Festival, cranes were arriving from both the north and the east, and we were wondering where they were coming from. We know now that at least some of the flock routinely comes up as far north as our place and even farther north during the day, but where the cranes on the east go or come from, we aren't sure.

As the cranes were flying and honking and calling to one another overhead, we could hear -- but not see -- someone on the ground honking and calling along with them. Was he mocking? Hard to say. The sight of these huge birds by the hundreds gliding so apparently effortlessly in the air can take your breath away. It's hard -- no, it's impossible -- to ignore. It's no wonder some people want to call and honk in unison with them, even if they are mocking the sounds the birds make.

Linda Heath's painting of cranes at the Bosque now hangs in the bedroom on the opposite side of the dresser from the mysterious painting of a solitary man walking by a log house in the moonlight and the snow -- a painting by an artist whose name we don't even know. That one has been one of our favorites for years.

Collecting art that calls out to us is one of our indulgences. We have acquired a good deal of Native art -- mostly pottery and jewelry -- over the years, and yesterday we purchased a necklace of turquoise and garnet and crystal from a very chatty and quite delightful Native (Tewa) jeweler from the Santo Domingo Pueblo on the Old Town Plaza. We realize we're very lucky to be able to do this, to be able to make these kinds of purchases basically on impulse. But we've also long felt an obligation that -- if we are able to do so financially -- we should be supporting (mostly) local artists by purchasing their works.

And so we do...

Missed Zozobra Again!

We've been coming to New Mexico going on 30 years now and have had a second home here for almost seven years. For many reasons we've always "missed" The Burning of Zozobra in Santa Fe, either because we had to leave before the event, or -- as is the case this year -- other things made it inadvisable or impossible to go. I decided not to go this year, for example, because I didn't want to go alone, and there was a specific night-time task I had to do at the house last night (still wrangling skunks, you see.)

Nevertheless, I wished "farewell to cares" -- which is the whole point of The Burning of Zozobra in any case -- and will have my own little ritual fireworks this evening, if all goes well.

Everyone in New Mexico has heard of Zozobra, but it seems that few outside the state have, and among those who have heard of it, there is a kind of inappropriate conflation with Burning Man in the Nevada desert wilderness. Burning Man is simply not the same thing.

I won't go into an elaborate history of The Burning of Zozobra, but just let it be said that it is a decades old ritual, beginning in 1924 in Will Shuster's backyard in Santa Fe; it is primarily a family-oriented local ritual connected with La Fiesta de Santa Fe, which has been going on annually since 1712.

It is about letting go.

Some people are too fearful to do that...

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More of the show:

http://youtu.be/wYwH8cVNypI

The Journal of a Mud House, a continuation --3

[Illustration from "The Journal of a Mud House" by Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant, Harper's Magazine, March, 1922]

The Edge of Santa Fe, hm? It still looks something like that -- the Edge is just farther out than it was in 1922 or whenever that picture was taken. The houses are probably fancier, though not necessarily (depending on which Edge you're looking at), and the area will probably be criss-crossed with telephone and electric lines. Other than that? Not a whole lot has changed.

I'm not sure exactly where this picture was taken, but while her house in Tesuque was being renovated -- or at least made habitable -- Sergeant and her "pardner" (as she was referred to by José who did much of the work on the Tesuque house) Gertrude lived in what sounds like a furnished casita on the Camino del Monte Sol, which runs more or less north and south from Canyon Road to the Old Santa Fe Trail. It is full of historic compounds, some of them dating back to the 18th Century, many of them very luxurious now. The picture above may have been taken from or just above Sergeant's digs in Santa Fe.

I remember the first time I was in Santa Fe, 1982, it was opening of Opera season, and there were many parties going on, all of them seemingly at guarded adobe walled compounds, armed guards no less in some cases. The compounds generally consisted of a main house and one or more guest houses, scattered at random over the property -- of perhaps an acre or so -- where very luxurious people lived (sometimes only in the summer) and entertained their guests. And this was "in town."

Many of these luxurious Opera lovers owned exquisite art and artifacts, much of it, of course, Native American, but certainly not all. There was plenty of contemporary work by artists who lived and worked in the area, there were paintings by some of Los Cinco Pintores and others from the early days of the Taos and Santa Fe artists colonies, and there was more than a smattering of Impressionist landscapes from as far away as such exotic locales as California and France.

When an artist friend moved out to New Mexico from California around 1990 he settled first in Albuquerque because he said he couldn't take the pretensions of the Santa Fe art patrons -- to say nothing of their petty obsessions and rivalries and feuds. Well. Yes. Where do you think you are?

He was eventually convinced to resettle in Santa Fe when some of his patrons found him appropriate digs -- a really nice though rather cramped compound not far from the Plaza -- where he could entertain the way he wanted to, which was very open, unguarded, and absolutely (well, maybe not absolutely) without pretension. He was a Native American artist (but of completely, and sometimes hilariously, mongrel ancestry) and he grew up living very simply. Even when he became Famous, he always stayed grounded in simplicity. He found, I think, the underlying simplicity of Santa Fe living, much as many artists before him had done and many still do, and he could watch -- and even play with -- the pretensions of the High-Style Art Lovers who proliferate in New Mexico to this day.

I've mentioned that Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant was part of the Taos Artists Colony which was spreading toward Santa Fe (actually, it had started from Santa Fe) when she was working on her little Mud House in Tesuque. But Santa Fe was then, as it had been for hundreds of years, a working town, not an Art Haven at all, and though it was the Capital of Nuevo Mexico under the Spanish and the Mexicans, and then under the Americans Capital of the Territory and later the State of New Mexico, its political status had little impact on most of the people who lived and worked there. In those days, Tesuque, which is now a suburban enclave for the very fancy indeed, including some of those (like the Stedmans) who regularized and popularized and continue the Santa Fe Style in the 1920's and '30's and now, when Sergeant was re-doing her Mud House, it was as it had long been a ranching outpost, a Spanish village and an Indian Pueblo. All of that heritage is still there, but it is overlain now with much of what Sergeant and others from Back East brought with them: a deep admiration for arts and letters and an abiding sense of Place, as in: This is the Place.

I've also mentioned that people in New Mexico have private libraries (we certainly do!) and they read. Many write, too. In addition to the plethora of visual artists, performing artists, and would-be artists, Santa Fe, Taos and other parts of New Mexico boast all kinds of literary artists. The stories that this place has to tell! Well, the tales, anyway.

I think "true fiction" was invented here in New Mexico. I could be wrong of course. Much of Elizabeth Sergeant's story rings absolutely true, for example, and then parts of it don't. You just don't know. And the locals are well-known for, shall we say, "embroidery." Why not? There's no real harm done, and the record can always be corrected later. If need be.

In Sergeant's day, Santa Fe was a working town as it had been for hundreds of years, and as it still is in parts. The Santa Fe Trail, of course, terminated at the Santa Fe Plaza, and it was along the Santa Fe Trail that "America" and this distant, exotic land communicated with one another commercially and socially. Prior to the American Conquest, it was a somewhat limited communication, as the Spanish and later Mexican authorities were not particularly kindly disposed to Anglo penetration, but after the Conquest, there was a huge increase in traffic and penetration from the East. Well, "huge." Comparatively speaking.

New Mexico was still very much a backwater until the railroad came, and that wasn't until the 1880's; the Santa Fe itself never did get to Santa Fe, stopping 18 miles short at Lamy on the excuse that it was just too difficult to lay track to the ancient capital. But a spur was eventually built, the trains started arriving, and Modernity arrived. With Modernity came the Artists.

Ever since, the two have wrapped tightly around one another to create the contemporary spirit of New Mexico. It is deeply and permanently ground in the Past -- a Past which is ever-present. The Pueblos and their peoples are still here -- though the ones nearest me were abandoned centuries ago, their residents simply moved over the mountains. Their descendants still live in the Rio Grande Pueblos or the ones further West; or they live in the towns and cities round about or elsewhere in the country or the world. Wherever they live, they carry the spirit of the place they're from with them.

Literature based in New Mexico has had a profound impact on America's sense of the West, more so perhaps than any other Western genre, including that of my own California. In fact, California and New Mexico have long been linked through their shared remote-Spanish culture. But there are other linkages too, including the one of Perpetual Promise. Though linked, the Spirit of the two Places is not the same.

D. H. Lawrence and Frieda came out here in the early '20's and stayed with Mabel Dodge Luhan up in Taos for a season, then set out for a more remote location at what is now the D. H. Lawrence Ranch., a National Historic Site. Aldous Huxley came to call -- after all, these Anglos stick together, especially if they're British! Huxley was profoundly influenced by his sojourn in the remoteness of New Mexico, as can be easily seen in his contrasting perspectives of the Future in "Brave New World." I think he was struck, as so many are, by the sense of permanence of the Pueblos compared to the harried, hurried impermanence of "civilization."

More than anything, Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant seemed to be struck by the people she met here, people she'd been "told about" -- in the characteristic superior/inferior context of the day, but what she found was quite different than what she was told to expect from the Natives. That's the way it goes.

What you find, if you are open to it, is not what you imagine, not what you expect. It's not perfect, far from it. People still come from Back East trying their damnedest to make "perfection" here, but my question is always "why?" Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant found she didn't have to push for "perfection" in New Mexico. The reality and the Spirit of the Place was perfectly good enough.

But then, what do you want perfection for?



[Click image to embiggen text]

There you are then.

Up in Santa Fe

Or "Fanta Se" as it's sometimes referred to.

Yes, well, it is The City Different, and it is 400 years old, so y'all can just sit your bad selfs down and have some cocoa -- with a twist.

Went up to Santa Fe yesterday to do some visiting and check out some sights. The ruined chapel in the pic above, for example, is on Cerro Gordo. I'd heard it was there, but I've never seen it. No wonder. It's at the top of a hill, and unless you're looking hard, you're not going to see it as you're driving the narrow winding street. You better not be looking hard! Tough enough navigating Santa Fe with your eyes on the road!

I've posted before about how New Mexico is dotted with ruins. They are literally everywhere. One day, I'll have to document all the ruins and abandoned structures right around our house -- which was an abandoned ruin when we bought it.

So yesterday, I wanted to find, and did find, this really exquisite ruined chapel on Cerro Gordo. It's up a flight of stone steps from the road, quite a climb really, but sadly, there is a rough barricade posted with No Tresspassing signs before you can actually get to the chapel itself. And beyond that first rough barricade, there is another one in case you didn't get the message the first time. Nevertheless, there were plenty of signs of use -- at least up to the barricades -- by passers-by and perhaps pilgrims, who knows. There's a little shrine down by the road where people have left their offerings -- some of them very interesting, like a clam shell that looks like it's from the Pacific -- and all along the stone steps up to the chapel, people had placed farolitos/luminarias in paper bags weighted with sand. Up by the first barricade, there were dozens of them, so this is really a sacred place, even if you can't get all the way to the chapel. It was clear that just being on the path was holy.

Isn't that something? We often forget holiness even in the simplest things. In New Mexico, though, you can't do that for long. There is a deep and pervasive spiritual presence and belief here, a deep seated religiosity that even the most rigid atheist will -- eventually -- succumb to.

One of the rooms of our house is labeled "The Jesus Room" because it has a nicho filled with religious totems and objects of all kinds where we sometimes light a candle or two and always keep soft illumination on the portraits of saints and madonnas and Jesus Christos assembled there. We also have a Santo case in another room where there are many ceramic sculptures of saints -- and sinners too. We have candles there as well, but so far haven't lit them. Then there is the shelf where we keep the sacred memories of close companions, Betty's ashes, and many tokens of her and that cat Mao who was with us for so very long.

It's what you do here. We've only been to Santuario de Chimayo one time, and it was a very moving experience. It was not full of tourists or pilgrims that day, just a handful of folks come to worship or to inspect the shrine, so we had some time with the priest, Father Roca, who essentially founded the pilgrimage site. He was a remarkable gentleman, as are so many of the priests and religious figures in this region. One well remembers "Death Comes for the Archbishop," Willa Cather's 1927 novel based on Archbishop Lamy's efforts to correct the local version of Catholic devotions. Bless his heart. Well, of course, his chief legacy -- among so many things -- is the Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis in Santa Fe, that very gracious stone church at the head of San Francisco Street that is practically symbolic of the city.

So, I visited the chapel, visited with some folks I haven't seen for a while, and wound up late in the afternoon taking a stroll around the Plaza, the heart of Santa Fe now as it has been for centuries. And centuries. But the Plaza was somewhat sad. It is still the heart of Santa Fe, to be sure, but the surroundings have been kicked hard by the shitty economy. A couple of galleries I looked forward to visiting again were gone altogether. There were too many vacant store-fronts. Those that remained seemed almost dreary and forlorn. The Plaza itself was finely maintained, but around it? Not so much. Even the Plaza Cafe, one of Santa Fe's favorite gustatory destinations for generations, was closed. "For Remodeling" they said. "Remodeling?" Why? I don't know. I don't have an answer. They do what they do. So. I hope it reopens soon, better than ever.

I do like gallery hopping in Santa Fe, but the near absence of them on the Plaza was dispiriting. We have acquired a lot of paintings over the years, and I always love to see what galleries and artists are showing. There are still plenty of galleries in Santa Fe, so it's not like there is any lack of Art, but still... It wasn't the same.

It was as if the heart of the city were gasping for breath.

Or something like that.

Anyway, it was getting late, so I headed back south on that absolutely gorgeous and nearly empty highway to our place, thinking about just how deeply rooted beliefs are here, and how strong the spirit is. It's something very special about New Mexico, something I may have recognized without knowing it when I first encountered this Land of Enchantment decades ago, and part of what has kept me coming back and trying to settle in for so long. I say "trying" because we still haven't broken with California, going back and forth, forth and back.

But I'm perpetually glad to be here.

Santa Fe Diversion; Then Anti-Obama Fever Rises

Photo of a "typical Santa Fe sunset" (yeah, sure) taken in August, 2006. In fact, this sort of sunset view is far more common in New Mexico than you might think. It's not every day, but it is fairly frequent. Some folks go out on the hillsides to watch, and they applaud the show. The only other place I encountered that phenomenon was in Florida.


Went up to Santa Fe yesterday, up to the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture on Museum Hill. It was only the second time I'd been to this museum, and it was as captivating as before. The only problem with the museums in Santa Fe, or in New Mexico in general (in my experience) is their overabundance of material to display. As it was, I was hours in the museum yesterday, going through some of the same exhibits I'd seen before, and I could have spent hours more. On that note, I've been to the New Mexico History Museum over behind the Palace of the Governors one time, spent hours there, only got through Sala Uno, the first of a plethora of "rooms" of New Mexican history. And I didn't complete all the exhibits in that one "room." Frustrating. Even spending the whole day wouldn't be enough time to see, let alone appreciate it all.

The core exhibit at the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture is called "Here, Now & Always" and it deals with the continuity of Native American presence, culture, and arts in the Southwest and its transformations over time. Sounds dry as dust and boring, but it's not. Every other exhibit in the museum complements this core, and the visitor comes away almost overwhelmed with the living story of the Indian Peoples of the Southwest whether they thought they knew it already or not.

If they're like me, they'll go back for more.

The Harry Fonseca exhibit is poignant for me. I knew Harry in California, and it was his decision to move to New Mexico that helped me to seriously consider doing so myself. The works on exhibit are actually few, but they are extraordinarily moving to me for what they represent of Harry's extensive output (what a thing to call an artist's body of work!) and for the deeper meaning he was constantly aiming for -- and which he felt he often missed. The people who selected these works for exhibition chose what would best summarize Harry's artistic sense and sensibility, who he was as a human being, and how he approached his muse and his struggle. He was a remarkable man with an often hilarious vision and a brilliant talent. He is missed.


============

Meanwhile, anti-Obama fever is rising.

More drama.