Santa Fe & liftoff... Jan 29th

Well, supposedly this is my last communicato for a couple weeks. I'm leaving to go up to the Black Mesa tomorrow.  I'll be staying with a woman named Marie who has been asking for a supporter to come stay with her and tend to her sheep so that she can focus on writing a paper of sorts about how the Navajo make decisions.  The organizer who set me up with this situation said that Marie's sheep are a pretty slow herd, which is probably a good thing since I've never herded before.  I just have to watch out for the babies who dart out of the gate.  Yes, it is lambing season, so it's possible that the mama sheep will have babies on my watch.  So I got some instructions on that...

Today I tried out one of my new coats (I actually got 2 last week because I was stressing about the whole freezing-my-ass-off thing).  Today I went up to Santa Fe and walked around a bit.  Wudia know, it was a blizzard all morning and the high for the day was 28.  It was actually good training for me, so I walked around a couple blocks, seeing how it felt.  I think if I wear all 3 layers of my longjohn-type things (my jeggings count in this- mock me, I dont care), plus snow pants, plus my crazywarm hat, and scarf covering my whole face except where the sunglasses will be, and possibly 2 layers of coats over multi-layers of sweaters, I'll be fine.  Luckily I think my boots will do well.  Gaaaaah

Yeah, so today I walked around a bunch. The first place I went to was Shidoni Arts, which is a foundry with a 8-acre sculpture garden filled with bronze sculpture and a couple smaller inside galleries. I'm surprised I made it, actually. My GPS wasn't sure how to navigate those roads, which were also covered in ice while the snow swirled all around.  But I made it.  The sculpture is amazing. Just beautiful. Bronze is a material I would absolutely love to explore, but probably won't because it's pretty pricey to "explore". So I oggled over these pieces.

And after I walked through the inside galleries, I walked into the room with the secretary, and didn't emerge from there for an hour and a half.  Her name was Jacqueline and after we somehow realized that we have relatively similar paths in life (except she's about 30 years ahead of me), she just really opened right up and just let me have the full life story.  I don't say that in an annoyed sense at all, because she seems like a really beautifully-hearted woman honestly trying to figure out her next steps in her living situation and her paper sculpture arts. Like I said, we ended up having a lot in common. At one point, she teared up at the idea of re-connecting with her son's dad who lives in California. It made me wonder where all my friends and I will be in 30 years.  She seemed like one of us, but older, and what she kept convincing herself throughout our conversation was to go live with the people who love her most- her community she left 3 years ago in order to fulfill a personal goal of hers.  She was very excited to hear about my trip and laughed at my jokes about community and about being alone.  She gave me paper-making connections on the east coast and looked through my website, asking questions and all. I walked out of there a bit overwhelmed.  That was really intense.  And geez... will I, at 60, be a secretary at a gallery because I can't sell my art?  That's very likely.  Will I, at 57, finally build a house that is off the grid, and live in it stubbornly until my loneliness gets to me? That's also somewhat likely.  I got in my car and plugged in the address to a coffee shop. I was in need of some quiet time.

I think someone slapped a sticker on my forehead today that said "please please talk to me about whatever is on your mind".  And I kinda loved it.  At Station Coffee House, the girl sitting at the table next to me was also staring out the window into the horizontally-blowing blizzard that swept the trainyard we were gazing across.  She turned to me, announced her opinion about the weather and launched into a long story about her relationship with her boss, who she was supposed to help move into his new house in a few hours in this snow.  Over the next hour of sipping my lavender-chamomile tea and eating my awesome breakfast burrito, we spoke occasionally as if we were old friends about random things.

I mention these things because I'm not normally the person who is super chatty to random people, or who random people normally chat with.  But today, everywhere I went, someone had a story for me. I was glad.

The highlight of my Santa Fe trip was the Museum of International Folk Art. It was AMAZING. I could have easily spent all day, if not 2 or 3 days studying all the galleries they had going on.

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One of the exhibits was a huge warehouse-sized room filled with these intricate displays from different cultures.  

This is a detail shot from the display above. 

These displays are huge. The larger ones were probably 15'x15'!

this is a detail from the display below.

This display combined different culture's sculptural depictions of heaven & hell.  I noticed that the european sculptures were only "heaven" sculptures and tried to think of why, but couldn't figure out why europeans differ from other cultures in this sense. Has it been so taboo to depict hellish figures? Maybe Soaring Whale (KJ) would know.

This one caught my eye because of the simplicity of the figurines, but the expressive posturing that really gripped my emotions when I saw it.  Just to the right of this was a whole little graveyard with a Day of the Dead parade going through it.  The whole size of this display was about 12" wide, 4" tall, and 7" deep.

A classic Punch & Judy display.

close up.

I thought the woman on the right had a great pose. And the woman on the left had a great face.
These were dolls about 8" tall.

Too late to see the sun, but this is the adobe building style that is so prevalent here.

Two other cool things about this museum that I'll point out. First, they had a whole gallery dedicated to telling the story about how chocolate has been made & used throughout time, with a video all about it.  That was cool, but didn't touch on the human-rights aspect of the cocoa-pickers, which I think should always be included in that story.  But it was a cool display nonetheless. (by the way, I can't believe nonetheless is all one word in spellcheck and in the english language) And yes, I ate part of my chocolate bar that is hidden in my car and being eaten slowly.

The other cool thing was that they had a smaller display called "Gallery of the Conscious" or something, which was an interactive gallery talking about HIV/AIDS.  It was pretty geared toward children and awareness, but was well done. There was one section that had tiny little picket signs and a sign that said "What would you write on your sign about AIDS awareness?" and lots of little signs lined up like a parade with things written on them like "My skin color is human" and "Respect Yourself" and "Fear is not the answer", as well as other things written in other languages. I get pumped about creative learning experiences, which the whole room was.

jack rabbit... Jan 28

Oh yeah, and yesterday amongst the volcanic rocks, a 2 ft tall jack rabbit bounded past us, winding through the rocks and bushes up the hill, and then disappeared. The wildest hare I have ever witnessed, it's body was tense with spry muscles.  I have never seen ears that big or standing that tall, pointed in the precise direction it needed to catch its information from.  Flopsy bunny's got nothin on the jack rabbit. Except maybe cuteness.  Jack rabbits are definitely wild animals, built to survive in high desert landscapes, not be fed an overabundance of cabbage and carrots inside a 3-ft wide cage its whole life. Cute for sure, but my goodness, I'd worry if this lil' guy ever tried to hop outside unprotected.  Domestication... it is a strange habit we've formed.

catching up part 2... Jan 27

And then today I was caught by surprise by a really lovely day. I had arranged to go to a church in town with my old friend, Belt, who moved to Albuquerque with his wife 2 yrs ago.  She was working, so Belt & I went to a this church and then later decided that we'd be OK if neither of us went back to it ever again.  Oh well.  All the people we met seemed very nice, but the service wasn't something either of us could get into. But anyways, we went out to lunch afterwards to a Albuquerque-must-go called Frontier:

Frontier's John Wayne room. (except you cant see all the John Wayne paintings in this pic)

Belt then proceeded to tour me around Albuquerque through his eyes.  We went through the Southern Valley (poorer neighborhoods, but where the Catholic Worker called Lovarchy is and Richard Rohr's meditation center as well as Belt's compound he used to live at, a few vineyards and alpaca "farms") and then went through the Northern Valley (where all the rich people live and Los Pablanos Ranch is). We also stopped at Belt's favorite food market, where the tortillas are made so fresh that they are still warm in the bag on the shelf.  That's this place:

There were these great sculptures all through the store. So great, right?

And a whole isle filled with pinadas.  They had really traditional coned pinadas as well, which brought back some homeschooling memories for me...

This is a small portion of Belt's extravagant house. The house was originally built in the 1920's as a tiny house and was added onto about every few years, so it is just a maze of a beautiful house. 

These are Western Cottonwood Trees, which are everywhere here. I love the rough bark and structure of their branches. 

We "just HAD to" stop here and get a baguette and a cookie.

This is the inside of the above store. The atmosphere was really welcoming, staff was helpful & nice. 

Bummed I dont have more pics of this place. Check it out here if you're really curious. Its just a beautiful ranch where a great CSA is, and lots of lavender grows there and they hold cooking classes, etc there. 

AND THENNNNNNN

After my extravagant and wonderful tour of Albuquerque by Belt, my aunt & uncle, who I am staying with here, took me to a new site of petroglyphs that they hadn't ever been to before. And it was awesome.

read this to understand the petroglyphs here.

This is what the landscape of the side of the hill looked like. The path we took was 1.5 miles and followed the bottom of this ridge. The rocks are volcanic rocks.  We could see 4 or 5 inactive volcanos from where we were standing. I hadn't realized how close in proximity we were to them. A few miles.

And we started seeing carvings into the rocks.

You should know that I have a LOT more photos of petroglyphs. 

We couldn't believe how many petroglyphs were all in this one nook of the hillside. We noticed that the sun would hit this alcove beautifully in the morning and wondered if it was a regular meeting spot.

We climbed up to the top for the view. This is looking over Albuquerque with the Sandia Mountains in the back.

Along the way, we talked a lot about cultural appropriation, as this topic has been on my mind a lot over the past few months.  It started when my native friend from Canada sent me a link to some articles about decolonization written by native folks she knows. So I read the first article and had to stop and think a lot. Here's the into page and link in you're interested. In the field of visual artists, we often have graphics or ideas being shared amongst different groups of people, and so it is very important to not steal ideas or reuse them in ways that we don't have permission to.  This doesn't just cover copyrighted imagery but also includes other artists' work, iconography, symbols, patterns, etc.  And when it comes to native patterns, symbols and icons, it can be really offensive to the Native people to use their culturally specific images for our own decorative imagery. Most likely the non-Native designer using the graphic won't know its meaning or where/how it should be used. My Uncle tried to compare it with the American Flag or the Cross, but even though those images are sacred to many people, we slap them on every tote bag and sweatshirt we can without tons of thought, and we also try to evangelize the ideas behind those images so much that we would be excited to see somewhere wearing it.  So then he suggested that appropriating native imagery is like copyrights. Like, you can't just slap Mickey Mouse onto a sweatshirt without paying Disney for it, and then Disney has a hundred rules about how the image can be used, where, and for how long.  So, why do we think we can do that with native imagery? Possibly because it's not legally copyrighted?  Is the law the thing we follow instead of courtesy and respect?  In this world, that's true for most of us.  So it is important for us to think for ourselves instead of following corporate-think without a blink.  It's also important for us to realize that just because we know how to sing a couple Jonathan Miracle songs doesn't mean we know how to use their images, etc.  We talked for a while about this topic. At the end of it, I felt like I needed to continue the conversation with a few other folks.  And possibly re-name my cat, PowWow, to something like Jennifer.

...I would never do that.

So after all that, we went to this great New Mexican restaurant:

I got a burrito with a kind of pulled-pork meat in red sauce (i forget the name of that, but its all over New Mexico) with red and green chili. It was hot hot hot and delicious.  We all got margaritas as well and became the loudest corner of the restaurant until we left. Sometimes that happens.  

On a side note, I'm becoming a tad nervous about the Black Mesa trip again since I'm having a hard time getting in contact with the lady I'm supposed to be staying with up there... Made a few calls today. Hopefully this whole thing doesn't fall through. That would be a bummmmmmer.

Sleepy time now.

catching up part 1... Jan 27

The last few days were kinda dull and then today was packed. Friday was a chill day with Gram. Did a little work around the house, re-packed, napped, napped some more... It was lovely.  She suggested that I take pictures of the house to "show all my friends", so this is Gram's house:

Gram in her kitchen. She hates her picture being taken.  Sneaky sneaky.

Uh... this is the solarium at her house. It's my favorite thing.
However, I think a mosaic on the floor of a sun would add to the aesthetic.  I mean... duh.

This is the view of the foothills from the corner. My second favorite thing.

Oh this is back when Squirrel & I were driving across Colorado.

Squirrel emphasizing how incredibly flat the landscape is. It was like this for HOURS.

I was pumped because on my strange bucket list, I've always secretly wanted to be stopped at an intersection that looked like the one below. Just NOTHING anywhere except for one gas station on one of the corners of the intersection and 4 stop signs. It was like the MOVIES.

this is a picture from the internet that is similar to the intersection we crossed, minus the gas station and lots of snow instead of grass.

more rando colorado pics:

I don't remember where this is from. Isn't it pretty?

This is on the hike that Squirrel, Reds and I took. This is where the sun came out.

This is looking down from the side of Lookout Mtn onto a frozen river.

New Mexico

Driving to New Mexico, on route i-25 for 443 miles, looking at this and listening to Bonny Prince Billy.

Driving into Albuquerque, the Sandia Mountain range is always beautiful with the cloud covering & shadows.

Steep Slopes... Jan 24

Walked up the foothills behind Gram's house today. They call them foothills out here, but if I ever saw something like this on the east coast, I'd call it a small mountain.  I want to get my lungs used to breathing this thin air.  So far so good.  It's beautiful here- was in the mid-60's all day, but an intense wind on the hill probably brought it down a bit.  Sorry, Philadelphia, I know you are suffering in the freezing cold right now. ....SUCKERS!!!  No, just kidding. I am prepping for that kind of weather coming on next week, so I'll be right there with ya.

Oh look its me sitting on a hillside. How interesting.
On a side note, it is SO dry up here. Geez. My hair's never been straighter, which is actually good because I forgot my brush in Georgia and haven't needed one since. Not a tangle on my head.  I know you care about the state of my hair, which is why I share these things.

Oh look its a beautiful cloud formation that pictures don't really grasp in its fullness.

Oh look its rocks and landscapes that are different from the east coast.

Oh look its a herd of white-tailed deer grazing on the hillside. 

This herd reminded me of some of the wildlife that I've seen throughout my trip. So on my walk, I listed out some of the (live) wildlife that I've seen in the past 3 weeks:

•Falcons (on the way up and down to Mesa Verde, both times they were successfully hunting)

•Ravens (in a whole pack, or murder, on the side of the road on the way to Athens, Georgia, eating something)

•Crows (everywhere)

•Gofers (on these foothills of Boulder)

•Deer (in picture above)

•Armadillo (my first armadillo sighting and it was dead on the side of the road near Gulf Shores, AL- I was really sad)

•Sandpipers and Seagulls (on the beach)

•Mountain Goat (perched on a tiny rock cliff in the Rockies)

•Northern Mockingbird (I think that's what it is, but a black bird with a big white stripe on its wing like this- saw them in Texas, New Mexico, and Colorado)

•Turkey Vultures (lined up on ranch fences in western Texas)

•Alligators (hibernating in the swamps of Louisiana) 

•Blue Heron (swooping through the Okonee Forest of Georgia and the swamps of LA)

•Children (running around everywhere)

•Squirrels (I list that, but its a boring wildlife list item)

•Chipmunks (slightly more interesting; saw them in Okonee Forest)

And I'm sure I'm missing lots of other things, but these were the ones that stuck out to me.  The list does not include the cattle, domesticated goats, sheep, dogs or cats. Plenty of those to go around.

One more day with Gram, then bouncing down to Albuquerque. Gram and I had a good conversation about my trip last night, though. She brought up that when I first started talking about the trip, I was going to apply for jobs in Albuquerque and LA and try to live out here for a few months, or even a couple years.  I think as last year wore on, though, my leaving Philly turned from "get-the-hell-outa-here" to "i'm-going-on-an-adventure-and-am-coming-back-home".  There's a part of my pride that wants to stay away from Philly for a long time just to make some sort of statement to myself or whoever.  But there's another part of me that, at this point, is struggling to find a point to staying away for longer than my 3-month trip. Philly's been home for 12 long years and besides certain jerkface boys, I really love everyone else in Phily, and I'm pretty connected with the city, the land, the fight against fracking our Delaware river basin, building our community, supporting my friends, family, etc etc etc. Maybe Philly and I can reconnect and walk hand-in-hand for a little longer.

Smelling this decaying bird... Jan 23

I sat down by the lake to read the first 4 chapters of Mark. That was my to-do list. I sat under a tree, making sure, before I sat down, that the square foot of grass that I would be sitting on didn't have poop or anything gross on it.  Settling in, I got one chapter done when I started smelling something foul. Figuring that one of the animals had recently defecated nearby, I didn't budge from my spot, serenely thinking "this is all part of nature."

About halfway through Chapter 2, the rain started. One of my favorite things to do in the rain is to get in my car and listen to the metallic pin-pin-pin of the drops hitting the roof. But there was no metal around, no concrete, no buildings, no cars, no bicycles, no windows, no screen doors, no roofs. Just the lake, the tree above me, and the grass.

Softer than a whisper was the rain. Earth quietly watering itself around me. There is God in this place.

And then I smelled it again. This time, with my nose out of the book, I looked around. And thats when I saw that only 3 feet to my right was a dead decaying bird. A small one. I would guess a robin or a finch, but it was so far decayed that I could only recognize its birdness by a few feathers sticking straight up.

Of course, I thought, the place I settle into and experience God, death is right next to me, stinking up my space.

The rain beat this dead bird hard. The raindrops were not gently dropping on this little carcass, but hurling down quickly and with quite a bit of force!

I watched, against my right mind, as the rain hit and hit and hit this body and eventually revealed one of its ribs of its chest. The rain was speeding this decaying process more quickly than I anticipated.

A death occurred here, however slowly or quickly, however predicted or sudden. And now no life lies in these wings. A heart here is just a matter to return to the earth. Slowly, nature moves on, taking the physical memory of this flight and feeding it back to the dust it rose from.

But the rain.

The cleansing, harsh rain. Movement does not let a thing rest. And this time, it... it... beat the death out of the dead.

Reading & Mending... Jan 22

I'm on the mend in Boulder.  Spending a week with Gram is great.  Its the first time since the beginning of the trip that I can drink coffee again (my cold was not allowing me to), so I busted out my pound if Leotah's Place coffee that I squirreled away in my car and am sipping it while I do all my reading here.

So I'm finishing up the reading the epic history of the Navajo-Hopi-USA fight over mineral/land/water rights on the reservation. This argument goes back a couple hundreds years and has just been relentless.  The Natives have been relocated, lied to, manipulated, pushed around, and fenced in tighter and tighter throughout the whole thing. And there is in-fighting amongst the Natives as well as the US Gov't in reference to what decisions to make, etc. Messy. One of the themes in this history that just irks me the most is how the US Gov't assumes that the Natives would gladly take on the ideals and lifestyle of the US white-man culture and drop their own culture without much thought.  In the reading so far, there doesn't seem to be much respect for preserving their lifeways that they've had for thousands of years.  An old story, for sure. But neverendingly frustrating to hear about.

The other book I've picked up is The Rich and The Rest of Us; A Poverty Manifesto by Cornel West and Travis Smiley. I just started it. I am reading it for the institute at Ched's in February. At the institute, we are going to be talking about many verses in Luke that talk about the rich and the poor. So far it looks like Lk 7:36-8:3, 10:25-37, 12:13-21, 12:22-34, 13:10-17, 14:1-6, 14:7-14, 14:15-24, 18:1-6, 11:5-8, 16:1-14, 16:19-31, 18:35-43, 19:1-10, and 18:11-27.  These will be some of the jumping off points for our week of study, reflection and discussion.

On a different note, I shimmied over to the Goodwill this morning and got a heavier coat for when I am sherherding.  The one I had just wasn't going to cut it. I also got this perfect pair of snowpants, which I'm super pumped about. Over the last few years, I've been a bit limited in my snow-filled activities because of my lack of snow pants, so, Boosh! Nevermore.  Just you wait, snow- Ima jump in you so hard!

the only pose i could think of when in snow pants...

Then, when I walked out of Goodwill, I looked to my left and saw this.  Man, this is why I love Colorado.

Mountains to the left of me, plains to the right, wish I was stuck in the middle with you.
uh.... don't tell anyone i just wrote that...

"Denver"... Jan 20

Our stop in Denver ended up being fantastic. Reds, our host, is such a sweet one.

On Saturday, I went to my doctor appointment, and I got the medications I need to kill this cough. The doctor was a little strange. He farted in the middle of my appointment.  One of those silent-but-deadly ones and wow. If you have never been in a tiny doctors office filled with fart smell, I strongly encourage you to bolt out of the office as soon as it happens to you.  I did not, trying to be polite, trying not to start coughing again, and in a bit of shock that he wasn't saying anything about it or opening the door and I totally regret that decision. The second half of my appointment was brutal.  The office was not a wholistic medical practice and aromatherapy was not on my list of to-do's for the day. I left as soon as I could, filled my perscriptions, and moved on with my life.

Squirrel, Reds and I decided to take a "natural walk" next instead of a hike because of the altitude and my cough.  We walked around Lookout Mountain for a couple hours, hoping to see the big horn rams that supposedly frequent that area.  We didn't see much wildlife, but did walk past a couple of old car crashes, which was morbidly fascinating. A road wrapped the mountain about 300-400 feet above us and only in the past couple decades did a guardrail get put it, so there are these old car wrecks from the 60's through the 80's of cars that had flown off that road and tumbled down the mountainside, and then left there.  "Look out Mountain" suddenly had a different ring to it.  The wrecks were amazing to look at, but I couldn't take pictures- it felt disrespectful for some reason.

After the "walk", we ended up driving around Boulder and landed at the Boulder Dushanbe Teahouse. It is a place I have frequented with my Gram because of her involvement with the Sister City Program. Boulder's "sister city" is Dushanbe, Tajikistan.  The two cities decided to gift one another with buildings that are common in their own city (or something like that). Boulder gave Dushanbe an Internet Cafe/Library and Dushanbe gave Boulder this amazing teahouse. My Gram has been very involved with the building-trade in the past and I hear updates about it every time I visit her. Every inch of it is covered in handcrafted detailing, painting, and sculpture.  The tea menu is pages long, and the food is so good. We sat at the bar and had a little tea party, tea cookies included.

I did not take this picture. But this is the tea house.

After we sipped tea and talked to each other in really bad British accents (because British people drink tea... in Tajikistan... right?), we hopped in the car and cranked the country music because we were headed next to the Rodeo!  Except that we got to the fair where the rodeo was and the people ahead of us in line bought the last tickets. Those jerks!  So we walked around the cattle show, petting zoo, and watched some of the jumping show before allergies kicked in for Reds and we had to leave. 

This is the set-up for the jumping show.

A full, fun day, we went home and crashed. Today I dropped Squirrel off at the airport and headed into Boulder. I have some time to kill, so I thought I'd write a bit.

Walking around the cattle show, we saw a lot of sheep, which reminded me that when I stay at the Black Mesa, the main thing that they need help with is shepherding their sheep and goats, so that's what I'll be doing for the most part of my 10-day stay.  I've never shepherded before, never really been around sheep too much (although I know I'm not allergic.. whew!), never stayed 8+ hours outside in 7,000 foot elevation... yeah this will be little new for me.