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.