Butterfly on Canyon Road

Yesterday, Peggy, Ralph, and I went up to Canyon Road to explore a few art galleries and have lunch at The Compound. So many of the galleries have beautiful gardens--some in front where they are visible from the street, some in back--little hidden gems.

Patricia Carlisle Fine Art has both--a series of little gardens in the back with sculptures and fountains, and a lush fragrant garden in the front. On my way out, I stopped to admire this beautiful butterfly; as I watched, it folded itself up tight and went about half-way down into a day lily to take its fill of nectar.

The Gallery was just finishing mounting a fun display of art by Melinda Hall. Click here to see the artworks.

Bollywood and Santa Fe Together!

Photo courtesy of fan site kites-themovie.com
In late July, the Bollywood movie Kites is expected to start filming in Santa Fe. The movie features Indian star Hrithik Rosan (pronounced Rith-ik Rose-n if you want to sound Bollywood-knowledgeable) and Kangana Ranaut, as well as Latin American actress Barbara Mori. (According to preproduction rumors, Kangana plays his wife and Barbara his mistress.)

For those of you who can't get enough Hrithik, here he is an Acer TV commercial:



I do have this wonderful image of a big Hindi song and dance number on the plaza--probably too much to hope for!

Check out my other posts on Bollywood and movie-making in Santa Fe:

The 3:10 to Yuma, posted 01/27/07

Intercollegiate Bollywood Competition, posted 07/26/07

Kevin Costner's Swing Vote, posted 09/22/07

Kevin Costner Fans, posted 09/22/07

Little Lizards

One of the charming features of my yard in Santa Fe is that several little lizards live here (or at least visit frequently). They can sometimes be seen sunning themselves on a stucco wall, but more often they are darting across the yard at 90 miles an hour--clearly distressed by my presence.

That's why it was so phenomenal to find this little guy (or gal?) posing for the camera this week. I first noticed the underbelly from the inside of the screen, and was able to get my camera, get outdoors, focus, and snap a couple of photos before I scared him (her?) off.

I'm not very good at lizard identification--I first thought it might be a New Mexican whiptail, but now I'm waffling on that claim. (The whiptail is an interesting lizard because there are only females--they reproduce by essentially cloning themselves.)

Animal, Vegetable, and Mineral Report

Starting with mineral--the snow at the Santa Fe Ski Area is just about gone. When I drive down Cerrillos in the morning I can see the mountains which are snow-capped from some time in the fall (late October or so) to some time in the spring. There is just a tad still there--must be on the shady side of the mountain....

A bear was sighted on the college campus a couple of weeks ago--apparently forced to forage further down in the valley due to a long winter and late spring. Caused quite a stir!

Prairie dogs are available for viewing all over the college campus. NYC-based playwright Israel Horovitz, who comes to us each June to direct an early staged reading of a new play, has described them as "rats with cuter outfits." Lots of groups in Santa Fe protesting inhumane prairie dog treatment. There are women who feed them, and any contractor who builds in a prairie-dog-inhabited area has to plan for "relocation". A prairie dog even has a feature role in the new Indiana Jones movie! Try to imagine this happening in other cities with other varieties of rodents!

Wonderful local meat, cheese, and vegetables available at the Santa Fe Farmers' Market yesterday. Bought some grain-fed beef and pork sausage from Casa Verde Graziers, goat cheese with raspberry from South Maintain Dairy in Edgewood ("it's all about the girls") which the producer told me was "best eaten right out of the dish with a spoon--when you've 'had a day'", mixed salad greens and baby spinach, and some Taos tomatoes. Click here and here to read my previous posts on the Farmer's Market--it really is an out-of-body experience!

Planted some salvia in my garden earlier this week and it hasn't died yet. Happy summer!!

Carried Away in Santa Fe

Photo courtesy of Yahoo! Movies

I went to see the new Sex and the City movie in Santa Fe last night. I usually try to avoid going to big new releases on opening day because I like to avoid crowds, get my choice of seats, etc. But I really felt like going to the movies and there wasn't anything else I wanted to see as much, so off I went to the Regal Santa Fe Stadium 14, a lovely year-old theatre with all those great new amenities like stadium seating and really comfy cushions on the chairs. Regal was showing the movie on four screens so I figured there was a pretty good chance there'd be a space for me!

I got there early enough to get my preferred seat--one of the seats in the front row of the second section--the ones that are designed with spaces in between groups of seats for wheelchair patrons. I love those seats because you can stretch your legs out, there's no one in front of you (except when you're trying to read the credits at the end of the movie--which I ALWAYS stay for), and I think it provides the best view of the screen....

Anyway, I have to say I think this movie is going to do huge box office. I know that the reviews have been only OK (reviewers B-, patrons B according to Yahoo Entertainment) but it's really all about the experience. The theatre was full of women (and I would say that they were mostly over-40 women) with a few brave men (though more than I would have expected). When the opening music for the TV-show started at the beginning, the audience broke into spontaneous applause. When Samantha lambasted a man who interrupted her toast at an event in Carrie's honor, the audience burst into applause again. I love that kind of spontaneity and interaction at the movies! The crowd was warm, and sympathetic, and appreciative--laughing and clapping at all the right places, and being quiet (with just a touch of non-audible cry-emotion) at the places that demanded it. No snickering junior-high students laughing at all the wrong places and hooting at the frank girl-talk.

So what that it's like five episodes of the TV show strung back-to-back? Not being an HBO subscriber, I first watched Sex and the City on Netflix DVDs in back-to-back viewing sessions--six seasons in six weeks--when recovering from surgery three years ago. So it's just like old times for me!

Wesley Morris, Boston Globe reviewer, gets it: "It's like going to somebody else's house to binge on a stack of new episodes surrounded by a bunch of girlfriends you don't know. . . . The movie is just like a half-season of the series - a funny, sappy, clumsy, crude, rambunctious, argumentative, gleefully vulgar attempt to balance the fantasy of romance with the reality that the fantasy is impossible."

Jessica Reaves, Chicago Tribune reviewer, gets it too: "Social critics are wringing their hands on the sidelines, fretting. They can't understand why so many women are so captivated by the SATC world, which is, after all, a totally fantastical place in which women have financial autonomy and healthy sex drives. It's a materialistic, completely unrealistic world, the scolds tell us. Yes, of course it is. That's kind of the point. It's escapist fun. But it's also a show (and now a movie) with an enormous amount of heart, the kind of viewing that reminds you to call your best friend, just so she knows you're there if she needs you."

Manohla Dargis at the New York Times doesn't: "I wish Ms. Parker had let that bee in her bonnet go silent, because the movie that she and Mr. King have come up with is the pits. . . . vulgar, shrill, deeply shallow — and, at 2 hours and 22 turgid minutes, overlong."

And Lou Lumenick at the New York Post complains that "the men serve strictly as plot devices." Hellloooo!!! What about every other summer movie made in the past ten years that was aimed at an audience of 14-year-old boys??? It's a trip and a treat to see a blockbuster-in-making that's aimed at an over-40 female audience!!! And it's clear to me, based on the response of the decidedly non-Manhattan audience here in Santa Fe, that its appeal to its target audience is universal.

Acoma Pueblo

Enchanted Mesa

A couple of weeks ago, I had the opportunity to spend a half-day at Acoma Pueblo, which claims to be the oldest continuously occupied community in the U.S. "My ancestors have been living on this mesa since 1150," reported our tour guide. "And see that mesa over there?", he asked, pointing to so-called Enchanted Mesa a few miles away. "That's where they lived for 500 years before that, until a storm destroyed the path up to the top."

It's quite an amazing feeling to have someone telling you their family has lived within view of this spot for almost 1,400 years.

Acoma has a very organized tourism business, running buses from the visitor center located on the flatlands below the mesa, up to the top of the mesa, and then conducting a walking tour. Unlike many of the other pueblos I've visited, photos were permitted with the payment of a camera fee.

Acoma is located close to Laguna Pueblo, where I attended midnight Mass on Christmas Eve. Click here to read my post about that experience. Acoma and Laguna share a common language (Keresan) and a high school, among other things.

At the end of the tour, several of us chose to walk down a path carved into the sandstone of the 367-foot high mesa (as opposed to riding the bus back down). While I think the guide was a bit over-enthusiastic about the path (stone stairs! 10 minutes!), it gave us some incredible views that we otherwise would not have seen.

Before the modern road was cut, this path was the only way up and down. Since the Acoma community farmed in the flatlands, carried up food and water, and brought the logs for the construction of the church in from Mount Taylor, 30 miles away, this must have been a very difficult trip.

According to our guide, the church of San Esteban Rey (Saint Steven the King) was built in the 1630s, under the direction of a Spanish missionary, and the men carrying the logs were not allowed to put them down anywhere on route (including on the path up the mesa) since otherwise they would be considered defiled.

Today there are relatively few folks who live on the mesa top, though it is used for all holiday and ceremonial occasions. Some Acoma people come and spend time on the mesa in the summer (much as others of us might go to a rough cabin in the woods or mountains). Since there is no electricity, cell phone reception, or running water on the mesa, it's really like going camping. Here are some outhouses set into the side of the mesa--you have to be brave, wide-awake, and surefooted to use those in the middle of the night!
Several artists were selling their wares along the tour--I bought a pot made by Selina Sanchez, who lives in Grants, NM, and specializes in Acoma "fine line"pottery painting, using yucca brushes that may continue as few as a single strand.

O'Keeffe Country

Earlier this month, I took a drive north with a friend up to Abiquiu and beyond. We lunched at the Abiquiu Inn, and then drove to Ghost Ranch, where Georgia O'Keeffe lived and painted in the summer months for nearly 50 years, beginning in 1934. Ghost Ranch has a long and colorful history which is well and thoroughly covered by Lesley Poling-Kempes in her 2005 book Ghost Ranch. It was a dude ranch at the time O'Keeffe began her life there, and is now a Presbyterian retreat and conference center.

In the early 2000s an exhibit was developed for the O'Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, which displayed paintings of O'Keeffe's in conjunction with photographs taken from the same vantage point. In 2004, these paintings and corresponding photographs were juxtaposed in a book entitled Georgia O'Keeffe and New Mexico: A Sense of Place.

After the exhibit and the publication of the book, the Ghost Ranch was besieged with questions on how to find the locations shown in the paintings and photographs. Many of the vantage points were in areas of the property not open to tourists. But it didn't take long for the Ranch to figure out that there was a great opportunity here, and they started a twice a week ($25 a head) van tour which drives down by O'Keeffe's house on the property and shows visitors her "front yard" and "back yard" views.

It was a middling kind of day--windy and a bit cloudy, so the quality of my photographs isn't quite up to exhibit work! But I've included a few photos and a few paintings to give you an idea of the day and its significance.

The photo above is of O'Keeffe's residence at the Ranch, El Rancho de Los Burros. Of the flat-topped mountain, Pedernal, which she painted many times, and which you can see in two paintings and a photo below, she said: "It's my private mountain. God told me if I painted it often enough, I could have it."

Here are a few of the Georgia O'Keeffe Ghost Ranch paintings completed between 1937-1945:







And my photos, April 2008:

Glasnost in Santa Fe

Photo courtesy of the Green Cross International web site

On Monday night, I had the opportunity to hear Mikhail Gorbachev speak to an enthusiastic crowd of 800 at The Lensic in Santa Fe. When I first heard he was coming to town, I felt I had to attend--he was just such an important figure of the 20th century for me.

The event was a benefit for the Santa Fe Institute, and was the first stop on a US lecture tour for the former Soviet president. Ticket prices ranged from $35 for the nosebleed seats, to a $500 opportunity to mingle with Gorbachev at a dinner and reception before the speech. All tickets for the event, with the exception of a handful of $100 seats, were sold.

New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson was on hand to introduce Gorbachev, and to show a brief film on his life and work.

In 1993, Gorbachev founded Green Cross International, an organization whose mission is to to "help ensure a just, sustainable and secure future for all by fostering a value shift and cultivating a new sense of global interdependence and shared responsibility in humanity's relationship with nature".

Gorbachev stated that in the past few decades, "globalization" has largely benefitted the wealthy, and the gap between rich and poor has widened. Neither Russia nor the U.S. has fulfilled the commitments they made to poor countries, and a new generation of political leaders has "underestimated the need for cooperation". "Global glasnost" or "Planetary glasnost" was a phrase Gorbachev used several times in his speech. He decried the fact that only 1/3 of the world lived in "decent conditions", and stressed the linkage among poverty, environmental damage, and armed conflict.

For example, stresses on food and water supplies, exacerbated by environmental crisis, impact the poor the most, and have led to conflicts and riots which were then addressed by military force.

In Gorbachev's opinion, there are three keys to solve these problems: a change in priorities, global governance, and leadership through partnership. He wondered whether the world could actually turn things around because of vested interests, inertia, and a "deficit of leadership and political will." He feels that the United States has both the biggest capability to make action happen, and the biggest responsibility to do so. But as long as the US. continues its military expansion, the needed work gets neglected.

Gorbachev strongly supports the UN, and other existing world organizations such as the IMF and WTO. He also believes in the importance of regional agreements such as NAFTA and the EU. But he believes that NATO is becoming too powerful, and a UN rival, and that some of the issues NATO is charged with would be better handled by the UN Security Council. In the same vein, he denounced John McCain's proposed "League of Democracies", although he did not mention McCain by name. Democracies abhor dictatorships, yet such a league would propose that a number of "like-minded" countries would try to dictate to the rest of the world how it should behave.

Gorbachev concluded his speech (after noting that his daughter Irina's polite coughing in the front row signaled that he had been speaking too long!) with a famous quote from an address John F. Kennedy delivered at American University in June 1963:

What kind of peace do I mean? What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children--not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women, not merely peace in our time but peace for all time.

The crowd in Santa Fe was clearly receptive to the message, giving Gorbachev a standing ovation both before and after he spoke. While the simultaneous translation sometimes made it hard to hear (you had to really focus in on the English and try to tune out the buzz of Russian just below it), the speech was quite moving, and I was really glad to have had the experience. I especially liked the holistic approach of looking at security/terrorism, poverty, and the environmental crisis through a single lens.

New Mexico Quarter

Today the U.S. Mint issued the New Mexico quarter with a ceremony in "The Roundhouse", the New Mexico State Capitol Building in Santa Fe. The ceremony was due to start at 11 a.m. and I sauntered in about quarter 'til, café mocha in hand--minimal visible security, no X-ray machines, no one telling me I had to dump my coffee. Wonderful!

The ceremony was short and sweet--the New Mexico Coin Commission was introduced, Mint Director Edmund Moy spoke and presented ceremonial coins to Governor Bill Richardson and his wife, Governor Richardson made brief remarks and applied a giant coin cutout to the New Mexico outline on the U.S. map (which you can see behind the Governor in the photo), and a short historical address was delivered by State Historian Estevan Rael-Gálvez. (Unfortunately, the many assembled schoolchildren had gotten pretty loud and restless at this point, and it was hard to hear most of what he had to say.)

It's worth noting that the Coin Commission included Santa Fe sculptor Glenna Goodacre, the creator of the Vietnam Women's Memorial in Washington DC as well as the Sacagawea dollar coin. Goodacre suffered a serious head injury last year and has endured a long, slow recovery. It was great to see her back in action!

The Santa Fe All-Stars (bluegrass/country/punk according to their MySpace site) provided the musical entertainment.


Then the Governor, First Lady, Mint Director, and Coin Commission assisted in passing out quarters to all the under-18ers.
Us over-18ers got to buy rolls of freshly minted quarters for $10.

Here's a few facts for you:

500 million New Mexico quarters were made in preparation for today's release--they will never be minted again.

The quarter was called "two bits" after the Spanish dollar (or piece of eight). The dollar was often cut into four quarters, or eight bits, making a quarter "two bits".

The state quarter program has been the most popular coin issue program in U.S. history. Mint Director Moy estimates that there are 47 million collectors of the U.S. state coins.

The New Mexico quarter is the 47th state quarter issued; and the first to contain a Native American symbol. (The Zia sun symbol is featured on the coin; see my post of March 29 for more details.)

Blossoming Boughs of April

The fruit trees in my yard have blossomed this week and the skies are a beautiful blue. Happy spring!