Category: Albuquerque & New Mexico

Scarlet letter

Saturday both Albuquerque newspapers — The Albuquerque Journal and The Albuquerque Tribune — published photos of 180 people found guilty of drunken driving in local courts during June, July and August. It was quite an array.

The first thing everyone did, of course, was look to see whom they knew. Then the comparisons. There appeared to be at least one man arrested (and convicted) more than once. And sisters arrested, but on different dates.

What NewMexiKen found interesting was the blood alcohol content, which was listed for those who agreed to the test. Point-oh-six appears to be the level for conviction (at least for minors). There were some listed all the way up to .30. Funny thing was, the higher the BAC the better the mug shot. Still high I guess.

Smile you’re on candid camera (no appeal rights need apply)

Santa Fe Country Sheriff Greg Solano explains his position on red light cameras. This from a longer post revealing that the red light camera industry is — surprise — the big impetus behind these revenue producing hazards.

As I stated in an earlier blog post that goes into more detail about the safety concerns, don’t get me wrong there are a lot of good reasons to have red light cameras and I would not be as opposed to them if they were put in such a manner as to not be a revenue generating scheme. Proper procedures must be put in place to protest the citation, and the driver is photographed also to prove who was driving. We must also look at the amount of time the yellow light is on, Many cities have reduced accident just by adjusting the timing of the yellow lights. We should also look at educational programs to educate the motoring public.

See also Red Light Cameras and More on Red Light Cameras.

Roll Over Tchaikovsky

And tell Beethoven some news of your own. They do “The Nutcracker Ballet” in Albuquerque just fine, too.

Having ventured out to see and hear Nutcracker on the Rocks last weekend, tonight NewMexiKen took in the real thing presented by the New Mexico Symphony Orchestra and the New Mexico Ballet Company. Bravo!

When, just before the overture, a tiny little girl in front of me was asked if this was her first “Nutcracker,” I had to marvel because, well, it was my first “Nutcracker,” too. (Unless you count the dancing hippos in Walt Disney’s Fantasia.) And it was really wonderful; like the two boys near me (age seven or eight and nine or ten) I sat engrossed.

While it’s hard to fault James Brown or The Stones as heard in “Nutcracker on the Rocks,” a live orchestra playing Tchaikovsky’s masterful music is really beyond marvelous. I also have to laugh because in no way do I feel capable of commenting on dance, yet after two performances in one calendar week I began to notice things. The prima ballerina, Angelie Renay Melzer as the Sugar Plum Fairy tonight, taught me how it’s done. While there were many excellent dancers, and many athletic ones, she was the dancer who brought the music and the dance into one. Just sublime.

Life offers so many moments of beauty and pleasure if we just give them a chance.

Only in New Mexico

From kahunaburger via dangerousmeta! (two guys who can’t afford upper case keys for their computers, I guess) a long list of one-liners about being a New Mexican. I’d really love to steal the whole thing, but here’s just a sampler:

  • Your high school’s name was a Spanish word (La Cueva, Eldorado, Sandia, Manzano…)
  • You still call the “Flying Star” the “Double Rainbow” and it’s still the best place to get dessert in the world!
  • There is a kachina somwhere in your home or yard.
  • You believe that bags of sand with a candle in them are perfectly acceptable Christmas decorations.

And, “You iron your jeans to dress up.”

[Update: The high schools in English: The Cave, The Gilded One, Watermelon and Apple.]

Roll Over Beethoven

And tell Tchaikovsky the news. In Albuquerque they perform The Nutcracker to a different beat.

NewMexiKen had the enjoyable pleasure this evening of attending a tenth anniversary performance of Nutcracker on the Rocks, a reinvented version of the traditional Nutcracker ballet. The music of Tchaikovsky opens and closes the dance, but in between we hear — and the dancers dance to — James Brown (“I Got You”), Van Morrison (“Moondance”), The Velvet Underground (“Rock ‘n Roll”), Aretha Franklin (“Rock Steady”) Billie Holiday, The Rolling Stones (“Sympathy for the Devil”), Morphine (“You Look Like Rain”), Janis Joplin (“Move Over”) and others. There were nearly 100 individual dancers, some of them very young, all of them enthusiastic, many quite good. Keshet founding company member Sarah Elizabeth Bennett was terrific as the Rat Queen.

And it makes me proud and happy that I live in a time and place where some of the “snowflakes” danced in their wheelchairs — and that even the chairs were choreographed into the dance movements.

The performance was at the Roy E. Disney Center for the Arts at the National Hispanic Cultural Center, an Albuquerque gem. The run is over for this year, but make plans for 2007.

Keshet Dance Company is a community supported, non-profit professional dance company. Keshet is Hebrew for rainbow.

Fighting DWI with a Song

The Soul Deacons, a Santa Fe-based band, will soon get the most radio play in their six-year history— but it will only be 30 seconds at a time.

The band has recorded its version of an old R&B song, “Christmas in Jail,” and a 30-second piece of that recording is the centerpiece of the state Department of Transportation’s anti-DWI messages for the holiday season.

The Albuquerque Journal has a player with the song currently on its free, public main page.

Brrrr!

13º was the lowest it’s been at Casa NewMexiKen (yesterday early). 19º last night.

Garret says 0º this morning in Santa Fe. John Farr reported 13º below yesterday in Taos.

High desert ain’t the same as just desert, as some think. (It’s not the same as just desserts either for that matter.)

Sky’s clear, sun’s out, 35º at 11:15. Gorgeous.

Recycling December 1st

With this colder weather it’s important to save energy. Accordingly, here’s some stuff from NewMexiKen from December 1st of last year:

‘I never wanted to kill anybody, but if a man had it in his mind to kill me, I made it my business to get him first.’

Fifty years ago today. It’s 51 years now since Rosa Parks resisted.

27 years ago today. Twenty-eight since President Jimmy Carter preserved all that land in Alaska.

Allen Stewart Konigsberg was born in Brooklyn on this date in 1935. That makes Woody Allen 71 in 2006. Here’s Some words of wisdom from Woody Allen.

Bette Midler was born on this date in 1945. So she’s 61 in 2006.

It Would Be Nice to Show You a Photo

… of the snow and ice on the beautiful Sandia Mountains this morning.

But the photos taken through the windows really never come out that sharp.

And it’s 15 degrees outside. Snow and cold are for looking, not feeling.

Update: Ah, if I wait for the perfect light I will never get anything done. Here’s a few, from inside. Note the windsock on the ridge to the right of the Tram tower in one of the shots. (Click it first to enlarge the photo, silly.)

Snowy Sandias Snowy Sandias

Snowy Sandias Snowy Sandias

More

It comes back to me now about how the people of Wyoming feel about Coloradans. Wash Park Prophet has an item on a proposal to eliminate semis on I-70 west of Denver. Key part of the plan: “The cross-country stuff can go on Interstate 80 across Wyoming or Interstate 40 across New Mexico.”

It seems a local IHOP in Quincy, Mass., was asking to hold your ID while you dined. And I get ticked when the hair cutting place wants my telephone number.

A Quinnipiac University poll asked people to rate their feelings concerning 20 politicans on a scale of 0-100.
Bottom three:

18) Sen. Bill Frist – 41.5
19) Sen. Harry Reid – 41.2
20) Sen. John Kerry – 39.6

Top three:
1) Rudolph Giuliani – 64.2
2) Sen. Barack Obama 58.8
3) Sen. John McCain 57.7

Well, except for Obama, those could be NewMexiKen’s bottom five. The full list is in a comment.

Did you hear about the cannibal restaurant? Missionaries were $10. Explorers were $15. Politicians were $100. When asked why the politicians were so much more, the cannibal chef replied, “Did you ever try to clean one?”

Dance out of time

As the dancers move in the chill winter air, spectators remain hushed. They don’t clap.

That’s because this dance is not a performance; it’s a prayer. And visitors seem to know that instinctively.

All winter, visitors and friends of New Mexico’s Pueblo people have the opportunity to share the prayer by attending any one of a number of dances at the various Pueblos.

Whether celebrating at Christmas, marking a saint’s day or gathering to honor a tribe’s new government, Pueblo members have many “doings” throughout the winter.

To watch the Deer dancers come over the rise at Taos Pueblo, or to hear the drums at Ohkay Owingeh, or to see a plaza fill with dancers at Santa Clara is a holiday gift to yourself. Those memories of movement and music and feelings of stillness and peace will return to you throughout your life as bits of grace in a busy world.

The New Mexican

The article continues, including a calendar of events.

The First Thanksgiving

On April 30th four centuries ago, our ancestors, led by Don Juan de Oñate, reached the banks of El Rio Bravo (Rio Grande). The first recorded act of thanksgiving by colonizing Europeans on this continent occurred on that April day in 1598 in Nuevo Mexico, about 25 miles south of what is now El Paso, Texas. After having begun their northward trek in March of that same year, the entire caravan was gathered at this point. The 400 person expedition included soldiers, families, servants, personal belongings, and livestock . . . virtually a living village. Two thirds of the colonizers were from the Iberian Peninsula (Spain, Portugal, and the Canary Islands). There was even one Greek and a man from Flanders! The rest were Mexican Indians and mestizos (mixed bloods).

The starting point for the colonists had been in Zacatecas, Nueva España (now Mexico) and by being part of the colonizing expedition they had been promised the title of Hidalgo, men with rights and privileges equal to Spain’s nobility. Juan de Oñate was a man of wealth and prominence, the son of Cristobal Oñate, silver mine owner whose family had come to the New World from the Basque region of Spain. Titles granted to him by Viceroy Luis de Velasco were Governor and Adelantado of New Mexico. The colonists suffered hardships and deprivations as they headed north, but they were also headed toward posterity: they would participate in the first recorded act of Thanksgiving by colonizing Europeans on this continent—22 years before the English colonists similarly gave thanks on the Atlantic coast. The expedition is well recorded by Gaspar Perez de Villagrá, the Spanish poet who traveled with the group. He wrote, “We were sadly lacking in all knowledge of the stars, the winds, and other knowledge by which to guide our steps.”

On April 30, 1598, the scouts made camp along the Rio Grande and prepared to drink and eat their fill, for there they found fishes and waterfowl. Villagrá wrote,

We built a great bonfire and roasted meat and fish, and then sat down to a repast the like of which we had never enjoyed before.” Before this bountiful meal, Don Juan de Oñate personally nailed a cross to a living tree and prayed, “Open the door to these heathens, establish the church altars where the body and blood of the Son of God may be offered, open to us the way to security and peace for their preservation and ours, and give to our king and to me in his royal name, peaceful possession of these kingdoms and provinces for His blessed glory. Amen.”

Excerpted from The New Mexico Genealogical Society

Thanks to Hullaballo for the link.

Blighted Homeland

From 1944 to 1986, 3.9 million tons of uranium ore were dug and blasted from Navajo soil, nearly all of it for America’s atomic arsenal. Navajos inhaled radioactive dust, drank contaminated water and built homes using rock from the mines and mills. Many of the dangers persist to this day. This four-part series examines the legacy of uranium mining on the Navajo reservation.

Los Angeles Times

There’s a terrific slideshow accompanying each of the articles.

Gila Cliff Dwellings (New Mexico)

… was proclaimed a national monument 99 years ago today by President Theodore Roosevelt.

Gila Cliff Dwellings

Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument offers a glimpse of the homes and lives of the people of the Mogollon culture who lived in the Gila Wilderness from the 1280s through the early 1300s. The surroundings probably look today very much like they did when the cliff dwellings were inhabited.

Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument