Tsankawi

On June 13, I had the opportunity to go on a hike with the New Mexico Museum's Friends of Archaeology to Tsankawi. This area is a detached part of the Bandelier National Monument, and an ancestral home of the San Ildefonso Pueblo. (This was my second hike with FOE; click on the link to read about my 2008 FOA trip to the Zia Pueblo.)

Our group, led by archaeologist Chuck Hannaford and ceramicist Dean Wilson, toured the trails and settlement spaces of Tsankawi. This day trip was one of three envisioned by the Friends of Archaeology for the summer of 2009 to commemorate the founding of the Museum of New Mexico 100 years earlier. Edgar Lee Hewett, an ardent explorer and champion of the Pajarito Plateau area, of which Tsankawi forms a part, would go on to serve for 40 years as Museum Director (1909-1949). This hike also echoes the anniversary of a 1909 National Geographic article describing the beautiful remote location, with its trails and caveates. (In those days, it would have taken four arduous hours to get to the Pajarito Plateau from Santa Fe!)

Tsankawi (saikewikwaje onwikege) means “village between two canyons at the clump of sharp, round cacti” in Tewa, the language of the San Ildefonso Pueblo. Settlers had first come to the plateau during the “Coalition Period” in about 1150, and lived in small family structures of 1-20 rooms. By 1250 or so, there was a pueblo with a big plaza, and by about 1325, larger villages. The area was abandoned in the middle of the 16th century (about the time of first contact by the Spanish) with its residents moving towards Cochiti and Puye.

Archaeologist Hannaford noted three major influences on the area. First, years of volcanic eruption formed the beautiful eerie landscape. Secondly, the Ancestral Pueblo people, who lived here for 400 years, modified the land to their purposes: climbing, cultivating, building pueblos, cutting caveates (man-made caves in the soft volcanic rock), and creating petroglyph “rock art” in the caveates and on the public viewing surfaces. Finally, the coming of the scientists to Los Alamos saw further change happen--Hannaford remarked on the two vastly different realms of experience represented by the celebration of the deer dance and the splitting of the atom!


We walked up trails cut deep into the volcanic rock by years of footprints, down ladders, in and out of caveates, and through the settlement areas where room block wall bases, water capture pond outlines, and numerous pottery sherds were clearly visible. We tried to imagine that the Ancestral Pueblo people were still there to watch us.

A highlight of the day featured ceramicist Wilson on his knees among the plentiful pottery sherds, pointing out the differences between the biscuit and glazed wares, and the likelihood of particular pieces of pottery being made locally or imported from other areas. He observed that some were finished with a tempera made of anthill sand, actually bits of quartz “mined” by the ants.
We returned to our vehicles more knowledgeable about the vast Pajarito Plateau, and more conscious of the need to preserve and protect these prehistoric treasures.

Ford Ruthling House and Garden

This week I had the privilege of touring artist Ford Ruthling's house, studio, and garden with the Friends of the Folk Art Museum. Mr. Ruthling sat and chatted with folks in his courtyard, welcomed them throughout his home (including bedroom and bath--no secrets here!), answered questions from all, talked about the art he's currently working on, and encouraged us to explore his two and a half acres of gardens in a secluded area of old Santa Fe.

It's hard to know where to begin! The house is an old adobe built in 1907, and occupied by Ruthling for the past 38 years. He told us that the woman who lived there before him was a recluse who lived there for 50 years, and it was in a fairly advanced state of disrepair when he acquired it. (For example, there was only one electric fuse for the entire house!) FR did everything to the house that he wanted done, and now says there is "very little that hasn't been done to satisfy my needs." The house is L-shaped, with terraced gardens and the entrance to a conservatory occupying the third and fourth sides to make a courtyard.

The house is chock full of old folk art, collected by Ruthling since his childhood. The gardens are masses of flowers, which bloom riotously outdoors, and fill silver loving cups indoors. Various outbuildings are nestled around the grounds forming little vignettes, and surprises at the ends of pathways.

One attendee asked Ruthling what he fed his plants. "Plant food," he said. "Whatever I find at the market--I'm not fussy and they'd better not be!"

FR was born in 1933 to a poor family in Tesuque. He started collecting young, buying things inexpensively in those days, and his collection started primarily with religious art (santos and relicarios and milagros). He owns a lot of silver (including a wonderful collection of native silver and turquoise cuffs), and is also a collector of African art. He told us he was not interested in contemporary folk art--the religious art he buys is in the vicinity of 300 years old. (He acknowledged that perhaps contemporary folk art might be worth collecting someday, but he didn't want to wait 300 years!)

He also spent some showing us some pieces from the series on which he is currently working. They involve cutting a pattern out of tin, pressing it with lithographer's inks, drying for a couple of days, and then adding brush detail to complete the work. These pieces are populated by apples, hearts, cats, birds, fish, and other images. No two pieces are the same--even if the same tin pattern is used, the colors and details vary. He presses one image from the tin to test the pattern--if he doesn't like it, he can usually modify the pattern to his satisfaction. If not, the patterns go into storage (sometimes a piece can be reworked) or are destroyed.

Ruthling's work has been collected all over the US--pieces are in the Smithsonian, Dallas Museum of Fine Art, and various New Mexico museums, as well as in many galleries and private collections. In 1977 four of his paintings of New Mexico Pueblo Indian pottery became a series of U.S. Postal Service first-class stamps. He has designed wonderful posters for various iconic Santa Fe events, including the Wine and Chili Festival and the Opera season.

One piece I loved was an image he called "Two of hearts--four melons" which showed melon slices with faces at each end. "It's a card that's not in the deck, but it should be!" He showed us another piece which featured an adult bear and a couple of small bears. "Someone said this was darlin'", he said. "I hate it if anybody says 'darlin' about my work," so he took the small bears out of the remaining bear prints.

Ruthling was named a "Living Treasure" of Santa Fe in 1993--and it's no wonder!

For further reading, check out this 1996 New York Times article.

What Passes for a Cloudy Day in Lamy

This past week I drove to Lamy, New Mexico (about 30 minutes outside of Santa Fe) for lunch at the Lamy Station Café. Remember that old standard, "The Atchison, Topeka, and the Santa Fe?" Well the train never actually got to Santa Fe--the elevations around Santa Fe were deemed too daunting, so the train was run through Lamy instead, reaching there in 1880. (Eventually an 18-mile spur to Santa Fe was built, which today hosts an excursion train that runs between Santa Fe and Lamy.) The Lamy Station is still the New Mexico stop for trains to Chicago and Los Angeles.

Lamy was named for Archbishop Jean-Baptiste Lamy (1814-1888), the first bishop and archbishop of the Diocese of Santa Fe. (You may know him from Willa Cather's 1927 novel, Death Comes for the Archbishop, where he served as inspiration for the character of Bishop Latour.) In New Mexico, you pronounce the town as "Lame'-y", though the Archbishop is correctly referred to as "Lah-mee'.)

The town of Lamy includes the railroad station, a small museum, and a converted 1950s-era Pullman car that is the location of the Lamy Station Café. Excellent lunch--a distinctly un-1950s pasta with spinach and sun-dried tomatoes, and an entire dining car full of friends!

Illustration Credits

Photo of Archbishop Lamy from the Santa Fe, New Mexico Palace of the Governors Photo Archives Negative no. 9970 Photo by W. Henry Brown.

Photo of the dining car interior courtesy of the Lamy Station Café website.

Cloud photo taken from the train station looking across the tracks.

Carlton Cole Magee

My brother sent me a story today about a piece of New Mexican history I wanted to share with you.

Carl Magee was a successful Tulsa lawyer who moved to Albuquerque in 1920 for his wife's health. He bought the Albuquerque Morning Journal from a group that included Secretary of the Interior Albert B. Fall, and set about becoming a newspaper editor. According to his obituary in the New York Times, Magee:

played the newspaper "game" the way he played poker--hard and on the level. A famous crusader for freedom of the press in the Southwest, he was no reformer. He just wanted the cards unmarked and dealt from the top.

He had been a Republican when he moved to New Mexico, but became a Democrat within six months. He lambasted the Republican state machine in New Mexico, and was frequently threatened by his Republican opponents, including Secretary Fall. By 1922, he was forced to sell the paper, but used the proceeds to found Magee's Weekly, and then took over the New Mexican State Tribune.

He then used his bully pulpit to attack Secretary Fall for corruption, resulting in the uncovering of the famous Teapot Dome scandal.  Teapot Dome was an oil field on public land in Wyoming. In 1921, President Harding, by executive order, shifted control of the field from the Navy to the Department of the Interior. The following year, Interior Secretary Fall leased the field to Harry Sinclair without competitive bidding. When Fall retired in 1923, Sinclair "lent" him a large amount of interest-free money.

Again according to the Times, "Magee was one of the first to raise the question of why Harry Sinclair's special train should spend many days on the railroad siding near the expansive Three Rivers (NM) ranch home" of Secretary Fall. And, according to a 1939 Time Magazine article, "it was a Magee telegram to Senator Thomas James Walsh concerning Fall's finances that made Teapot Dome a criminal case."

The US Senate pursued an investigation of both Fall and Sinclair, resulting in eventual prison sentences for both.

Magee, meanwhile, also attacked several judges for corruption, and was brought to trial twice for libel (once for each of two judges). In the first trial, the allegedly libeled judge presided over the trial and convicted Magee--but he was pardoned by the Governor. In the second trial, the judge directed the jury to convict, but they voted to acquit. In 1925, one of these judges physically assaulted Magee in a hotel lobby. Magee shot the judge in the arm, but also killed an innocent bystander in the process. He was again acquitted in this third trial.

And, oh yes, Carl Magee invented the parking meter! You'll be able to read this and other fabulous stories of inventions in the fourth book to be authored by my brother, Rick Beyer, The Greatest Science! Stories Never Told, which should be available in a bookstore near you by October 2009.

Illustration Credits and References

Photo of Carl Magee (and his parking meter!) courtesy of the Find a Grave website.

Sources for information in this post include Magee's obituary in the New York Times on February 2, 1946, and a March 20, 1939 article in Time Magazine entitled "Fireless Firebrand".

Who Are You, Dear Readers?

In the two and a half years I've been writing this blog, I've seen a steady growth in readership and page views. During the past six months, I've averaged a little over 600 readers per month. SIte traffic in 2008 was more than twice what it was in 2007, and 2009 is showing further growth.

So where do you come from and what are you looking for here?

Well, 89% of my visitors are from the United States, but in the last thirty days I've also had multiple readers from the UK, Canada, Australia, France, and Turkey.

Of the US visitors, 27% of them live in New Mexico (probably not surprising!). 13% are in California, 7% in Texas, 5% in New York, and 4% in Massachusetts. In the last 30 days, I've had viewers from 40 states--the only states not to find me in that period were Alaska, Nevada, Wyoming, South Dakota, Louisiana, Alabama, Illinois, West Virginia, Maine, and New Hampshire.

83% of you visited for the first time in the last 30 days, while the remaining 17% were repeat viewers. (Welcome back to you!)

Many of you have this site bookmarked, or find it through links, but those of you who used search keywords to find it were looking for information on various Santa Fe topics. The top 11 keywords used in the last 30 days included:

Santa Fe blog (31)
Santa Fe 400 anniversary (29)
Acoma Pueblo (18)
Whole Foods/Wild Oats in Santa Fe (15)
Living in Santa Fe (12)
Madrid Chile Festival (12--and this is for an event that doesn't exist except in the movie Wild Hogs!)
Allan Houser (11)
College of Santa Fe (11)
Aspen Vista Trail (11)
Kevin Costner/Swing Vote movie (10)
Governor Lew Wallace (9)

So thanks for visiting, keep reading, and let me know what other Santa Fe topics you'd like to see explored here!

Illustration Credits

The photograph above is of a January seasonal display on the table in my foyer (taken by my brother).

Advocacy for College of Santa Fe

Today was "Advocacy Day" at the New Mexico state house (aka "The Roundhouse") and various groups set up tables, signage, slides, videos, press conferences, etc. in an attempt to advocate with the legislators in support of their various causes.

Students, faculty, and staff from The College of Santa Fe (CSF) were there in droves in an attempt to save their school, which has been hard hit by the economic downturn. New Mexico Highlands University (a state university) is willing to take over the school which can no longer afford to operate on its own. A bill has been submitted in the legislature to permit this to happen, and the college community has its collective fingers crossed. Without a state bailout, the school will be forced to close at the end of the current academic year.

CSF is primarily an art school--a perfect fit for an art city like Santa Fe. Degree programs in film, theatre, art, music, photography, and creative writing have enrolled enormously talented students. The students in these photos are junior and senior majors in the Performing Arts Department, dressed in costumes they wore in recent productions. It's worth noting that costume design students at the college sew all the costumes in the Performing Arts costume shop.

If you have an "in" with a New Mexico legislator, they ask you to support their cause.

Amazing Skies

My brother and his wife visited for the weekend and Rick took this fabulous shot of the mountains, light and dark skies, and an incipient rainbow. This picture was taken only a 15 minute drive away from the Santa Fe Plaza.

We crammed an entire week of tourism into one weekend--Palace of the Governors, O'Keeffe Museum, The Farmers' Market (where we briefly appeared in a promotional film for a local orchestra), Ten Thousand Waves (starlit hot tub and therapeutic massages), art tour at the state capitol ("The Roundhouse"), trail walks, a couple of terrific restaurants, and several mountain drives to get photos like this one!

Christmas Day in Puerto Vallarta

This December, for the first time since I was 17, I was out of the country for Christmas--on the beach in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. On Christmas Day I took the photographs below. Happy holidays to all my readers, and best wishes for a wonderful 2009!

View of the beach from my balcony, Christmas morning.

Christmas morning--a very quiet pool deck at the hotel.

One of the many beautiful sculptures on the Puerto Vallarta seafront walk--the Malecon.

Artists creating sand sculptures on the beach.

The Holy Family and friends, a sand sculpture on the beach.

Part of the stone arches at the Los Arcos Amphitheatre on the Malecon.

An angel beckons on the beach.

Christmas poinsettias on the grounds of my hotel.

A large creche in downtown Puerto Vallarta.

An angel mermaid pipes in the sunset.

Aspen Vista 2008

I took my walking group to hike the Aspen Vista Trail on October 9. This trail is located in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains about 13 miles from the Santa Fe Plaza--almost all the way up to the Santa Fe ski area. The Aspen Vista is a beautiful, wide trail that starts at 9800 feet elevation and continues on up. (This makes it about 10 degrees cooler than the 7000 feet elevation we all live in. We went up the trail about a mile and a half and then back down again.

The key issue in walking the Aspen Vista this time of year is timing--getting to the trail when the aspen leaves have optimal golden color (and hoping that a windstorm doesn't do early damage!). And I have to say October 9th this year was perfect! There was a lot of rain and wind the weekend after the walk, so we were glad we made it when we did.





The aspen stand that gives the trail its name grew up around 1900 after a forest fire destroyed the pine trees in the area. Now the aspens are in decline because the conifers have regrown and are beginning to dominate sections of the forest.

It's still incredibly beautiful though!

After our walk we sat in a little rest area near the trailhead, and drank our coffee and looked out over the amazing view--layers and layers of mountains disappearing into the distance.


Lots of visitors to my blog have found it looking for information on the Aspen Vista Trail. For more photos, see my posts from September 27, 2007 and October 1, 2006.

Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta 2008

Earlier this month, I had the opportunity to attend the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta for the first time. To see the mass ascent, you have to be there at dawn, so a group of us went down the night before and stayed over. (So we only had to get up at 5:30 in the morning instead of 4:30!)


We had bought passes to the "Diamond Club", upstairs at the Balloon Museum (which is shaped like a balloon lying on its side). The curve at the top of the balloon houses a windowed function room and an outdoor deck which faced onto the field where the balloons were taking off. A catered breakfast (quite good!) was served, and there were heaters on the deck to help make it not quite so chill. (Even though it was close to 80 degrees later in the day, it was still in the 40s when we started our vigil at 6:30 in the morning.)

Hundreds of balloons ascended in front of us, many passing directly overhead, and a few going down in an open area just to our left.

According to the Balloon Fiesta's official website, the event started in 1972 when Dick McKee, general manager of KOB Radio, approached Sid Cutter (a charter member of the local balloon club) about flying their “Roadrunner” balloon to help launch festivities for the station’s 50th anniversary. Dick asked: “What is the largest balloon race that’s ever been held?”
Sid replied, “Nineteen balloons in England.”
“ Can we get 19 balloons here?”
“ I don’t know why not.”

Thirteen balloons eventually turned out for the first Fiesta, and 20,000 people showed up to watch. The following year there were 138 balloons, and the event just kept growing. I heard there were 650 balloons this year, which is down slightly from 2007.

What an amazing experience!!