Kid Activities

Sunday brought warmer weather and bright sun, so we went out to Tsankawi for a walk. It was beautiful and quiet as usual. The kids loved the caves and Roy took great photos of the views and rock formations.

On Monday we had a girls day/boys day. Casey and I went to a paint your own pottery place near downtown, then had lunch, did a little shopping and finished the day off with an ice cream crepe. Jake, Roy and Evan went horseback riding in the Ortiz mountains where they got in a good ride looking at old mines, turquoise samples and great views. In the evening we all went to a Taiko drumming concert at the children's museum. None of the drummers were Japanese, but they sounded great and were very energetic. The show is a combination of drumming and dancing around the drums.

Yesterday we drove out to Bandelier, a larger and more civilized part of the national park that includes Tsankawi. Although you can't tell from the photos, several of the trails were closed due to ice and snow. After Bandelier we went to the Bradbury Science Museum in Albuquerque. The museum had a special exhibit of brain teasers as well as permanent exhibits on the history of the labs at Los Alamos, stewardship, weapons safety and security, and information on current research done at the labs. We even saw photos of our relatives who had worked at the labs during the war!

Fun in the Snow

Casey, Evan and Roy are out visiting from Florida, so our first activity on Friday was to play in the snow!

Yesterday we dropped the cats off at the mall for an adoption event then went to buy more firewood. We had tamales and burritos for lunch at Posas and went to see The Tale of Despereaux at the movies. The movie was okay, but not great. None of the cats were adopted despite our high hopes after talking to a woman with two kids in the morning who was definitely planning to adopt a cat (they chose a younger kitten from Felines and Friends). On the other hand, Casey loves playing with the cats so they are providing an important source for amusement this week.

Merry Christmas

With another foot of snow the night before Christmas eve we were assured a white Christmas! Fortunately the roads were in much better shape this time around. On Christmas eve we joined a few thousand other people walking up and down Canyon Road and Acequia Madre where galleries and homes put out thousands of farolitos, otherwise known as luminarios or luminaries. Groups of people walked along singing carols and hot cider and hot chocolate were available along the route. A school had an entire labyrinth lined with farolitos. It was a beautiful and merry way to start Christmas.

Christmas day brought sun and cold, but we built a fire in the kiva and the cats had a great time with all the paper and boxes. In the afternoon we drove down to Albuquerque to pick up Jake's brother and his two kids, ages 7 and 11. More on our recent activities to come!

Railrunning

The new commuter train service between Albuquerque and Santa Fe started this week and they offer free special weekend rides the first three weeks. We decided to take the train down to Albuquerque Saturday afternoon, have dinner with friends and catch the last train back to Santa Fe. We arrived at the Railyard and circled looking for parking among the crowds of holiday shoppers. We finally found a spot and walked over to the train depot. There were quite a few people waiting for the train. The train pulled up about ten minutes late and sat there for another 5 minutes before the doors opened to let the passengers off. Quite a few passengers stayed on the train though as they were just riding up and back. Jake and I managed to find seats across the aisle from eachother on the upper level of the train, but quite a few people had to stand or sit in the aisles.

It was remarkable how many people along the route stopped their cars to take pictures of the train and how many people stood at intersections and in backyards waving at the train.

Our respective seat companions turned out to be quite knowledgeable about trains. The guy across from Jake works for the Railrunner and the guy across from me worked for thirty years for a rail service that ran from Belen to Clovis. Jake's guy pointed out a former train wreck, old signs left from when there used to be rail service and an old cement plant that had burned and been partially reconstructed. My guy talked about railway jargon (a slow train is called a dog and if there transients are spotted on it, you tell the conductor "that dog's got fleas".). And both talked about the new rail line construction techniques and how bad signal problems can be. They now build railways with 1/4 mile long sections of rails that are brought in by train and the ties are made of cement. The RailRunner has been plagued with signal problems since its inaugural run.

When we got to Albuquerque we walked uphill on Central Avenue from the station to the University of New Mexico. There we stopped for a cup of tea and then called our friends to pick us up for dinner. They live in a more northerly part of Albuquerque and are doing a beautiful job of renovating their suburban home. Tom was in Jake's woodworking class and I got to see his table. His wife Christine is an artist who works with clay and the sculptures of faces and torsos she sculpts are really well done, full of personality.

They drove us to the Los Ranchos station and there we waited, and waited, for the last train. Several other people were also waiting. We called the Railrunner office and there was no answer. The emergency call button at the station said no one was available. So after 45 minutes we gave up, called our friends Tom and Leah to beg for shelter, and Tom and Christine drove us to their house.

Sunday morning there was no word in the paper about what happened to the train. I guess it was just delayed more than an hour. But Tom fixed us a great breakfast and we took a walk around the neighborhood before catching the 11:30 train back to Santa Fe. That train was also crowded, but we got seats together on the upper level. We were sitting across from a 4th grader from Belen who was on the train with his family. They were on the other side of the aisle down a row. He was getting bored after 2 hours on the train one way so we talked to him some. Somehow the topic of women leaders came up and he declared that the Bible says women can't be leaders. Jake asked whether he ate pork, and he said of course, so Jake pointed out that the Bible also says not to eat pork. He didn't believe that though, so even after pointing out that Germany, England, Chile and Argentina all had (currently or in the past) women leaders, he still was determined that the US couldn't have a woman leader because his mom said the bible said so. Jake was very refrained at any further disillusionment.

We finally got back to Santa Fe around 2pm after which we had to drive across town to pick up the cats (another foster parent had had to pick them up from Petco since I couldn't get back in time!). Then home to shower and change to go to a Christmas open house at a friend of Jake's from his Spanish class. Fortunately they had great food at their party that made up for a lack of lunch and served as dinner!

Christmas Tree

We got our Christmas tree yesterday! It's a pinyon tree from the mountains. Pinyons in many areas have become much more abundant than they were in the past and that has led to a lot of die-off due to a pine beetle. Ours was probably taken from an area that needed thinning. The state forests offer permits for cutting trees, but we didn't think the Focus could get into the backroad areas where you can cut trees so we got ours from someone who had already done the cutting and transport. Jake and I managed to agree on a decorating strategy after looking at ribbons for a half hour at the Hobby Lobby. We also came up with an ingenious tree holder since everyone was sold out of Christmas tree stands. The trunk is set into one of those orange Home Depot buckets filled with rocks. The orange bucket is then inside a big plastic tree pot. The real test will come on Sunday when the cats are back from Petco.

Last night we celebrated our 3rd anniversary by dining at The Compound, a restaurant on Canyon Road. It is in an old adobe house that has modern windows set into the deep walls. The food was excellent. We started with a glass of New Mexican Gruet champagne and tuna tartare flavored with preserved lemons and a tiny drop of caviar. The fall vegetable salad was a unique blend of yellow beets, tangerine pieces, radishes and fennel with a few watercress and frisee leaves. A very nice combination of textures and flavors. I had a main course of scallops in a very rich cognac cream sauce with chanterelles. The chanterelles were a little overpowered by the sauce, but it was a great way to prepare scallops as a winter dish. Jake had the salmon accompanied by risotto and apple. It was supposed to have artichoke, but neither of us could taste it. Still, the salmon was perfectly cooked. For dessert we had a delicious molten chocolate cake served with bitter orange ice cream. Here's to many more anniversaries!

Winter images

Snow in the High Desert?

A gorgeous but inconvenient snow storm blanketed the high desert yesterday and continues to mount. Pictures from our back and front doors are attached. Sorry to have been snowbound and unable to fly east to visit family for Christmas. Fortunately, our flight to NYC was cancelled so we got a full refund.

The other pictures are of the coffee table I just finished making in my "Art of Fine Woodworking" class. My first reaction to seeing the completed work was "that's all for 13 weeks of work?" But I like the figure in the wood (ash) and I sure learned a lot about how to do things right and how to work with woods other than 2x4's. One of the pictures shows in the background one of a pair of southwestern style floor lamps and one of a trio of picture frames designed and built in prior creative bursts.

The "Las Posadas" experience described in yesterday's post was one of my favorite local events both because it was so Santa Fe and because it was almost all in Spanish.

Las Posadas

Last night we participated in Las Posadas, a re-enactment of Mary and Joseph's trip to Bethlehem. This particular version combines elements of Las Pastorelas, plays that re-enact their search for an inn on the night of Jesus's birth. Starting at the front of the Palace of Governors on the Plaza, the crowd held candles and (for the few people who knew the words), sang the traditional Las Posadas song requesting shelter. But a devil on the roof (see blurry photo), taunted the crowd and drove us away. This was repeated at five different spots along the plaza with different devils calling the crowd puercos, perros and turistas. The crowd was a little quiet, maybe because not enough people understood the Spanish or maybe because it was cold out. The route was lined with farolitos (the northern NM word for luminarios). Finally, at the side entrance to the Palace of Governor's, the couple was granted admission and we all streamed into the courtyard. There volunteers handed out hot cider (none too soon!) and cookies. A band played under a big tent where we gathered to sing carols, mostly in Spanish. They handed out the words for most of the songs. The mostly non-Hispanic crowd really got together on "Feliz Navidad - I want to wish you a merry Christmas".

Today snow continues to fall and when Jake went out to run an errand this morning he turned around and came back because the roads were slick and unplowed.

Caroling

On Thursday night we attended a concert and sing-along at the St. Francis Cathedral near the plaza. The church has been undergoing renovation inside and out and inside you could see where they had cleaned the white arched cieling and colorful stencils along the archways. The Catholic churches here are not as ornate as those in Latin America, but they still have some lovely decorations. There was an interesting baptismal font in this one as well in the middle of the chuch made of black granite with a metal flat sculpture under the water.

There were 3 groups performing, a choir, the brass section of the Santa Fe Symphony and the Santa Fe Women's Ensemble. The latter had excellent singing voices and sounded wonderful. The symphony brass seemed to be lacking the rest of their instruments or something. They were somewhat muddy sounding and not always in sync with eachother. The choir was pretty good, but not outstanding. We had fun singing as an audience though. It was difficult for the conductor to get everyone to stay on pace though, so some songs were a little slow!

Afterwards we had dinner at La Boca, a Spanish tapas restaurant a couple blocks off the plaza. We had excellent grilled artichokes with goat cheese and pork sausages with a pomegranate sauce. We also had an eggplant cazuela (basically pureed eggplant) with flatbreads and duck breast with morcilla sausage diced apple. Those two were good but not outstanding. Jake's sangria was very well made!

More movie reviews

Two of the showings yesterday were a bunch of short films. The first was 11 shorts mostly written by women new to the movies. Some standouts in that group were a short about 2 older homeless men who share food, false teeth and a blanket, "George and Karl". "The Drummer" was about a drummer who has just turned 40 and is out of work when he gets a call to play at a wedding in Connecticut. He and the singer save the day when the rest of the band is late. The actress who played the singer had an amazing voice. Her name was Asmeret Ghebremichael. I don't think she has recorded any albums unfortunately. Another short I particularly liked was called "Havdalah" about an orthodox Jewish woman in New York who decides she wants to learn to ride a bike.

The second set we saw were all animated films. Who knew there were so many types of animation?! My favorite in that group was "Hose" about a garden hose that decides to explore the neighborhood. At one point it gets into a tangle with a tough old hose but manages to escape by climbing up a fire escape. "Animal Instincts" was really funny about a cow and a sheep on a farm that get into a huge fight over the sheep eating a flower in the cow's pasture. It ends with them driving a tractor over a cliff. There was also a rather touching animation called "Coyote Travels to Gringolandia" about 2 children from Guatemala that try to join their mother in the US. A woman courier (coyote) strands them near the US/Mexico border.

In the evening we saw "Em" about a woman with bipolar disorder and the man that falls in love with her. It is a very honest and moving portrayal of mental illness both from the perspective of the person who has it and the person who wants to help. The director spoke afterwards and is trying to find a distributor. The story is based on the writer's experience with a close friend who had a mental illness.

One movie we didn't see that I would like to have seen (over Jake's objections) was "Wiener Dog Takes All", a documentary about daschund racing!

Movie Reviews

Today is the last day of the Santa Fe Film Festival, so I thought I would update you on what we've seen so far! The best thing about the film festival has been that many of the film's directors, cast and crew have been in the audience and have participated in question and answer sessions following the films. It makes you feel much more connected to the movies. If you like the descriptions, put them on your Netflix list for when they eventually come out on DVD.

The first movie we went to was "Taos", filmed mostly in Taos, NM. It's about a young corporate lawyer from DC who becomes stranded in Taos on his way to Aspen where he is supposed to propose to his type A girlfriend. It's a great story line and the acting is reasonably good, especially the Indian auto-mechanic who is the sage of the movie. Some side-stories were cut out which makes those characters less well-developed, but it probably gave the movie more focus. The mayor of Taos was at the screening and views the movie as a great advertisement for the town!

On Saturday we saw 2 movies, both very serious but with some comic relief. "A Line in the Sand" was based on a play called "The Mayor's Limo" that played off-Broadway in NYC. It is about a homeless man who is arrested after pissing on the mayor's limo during a protest by the homeless over the sale of a shelter. The movie still has the feel of a play with most of the scenes in a jail/office of a police precinct. The plot revolves around the life of the homeless man and politics and police-work. The actor who played the homeless man was very convincing and it was an intense role to play. The play was written by an actor and he plays one of the police officers in the movie. He said it was based on the life of a friend of his and on having lived in the Bowery district of NY.

"2:22" is a heist drama, but with a lot of focus on the characters who take part in the heist. This one features gun battles, drug dealing and some blood, but it wasn't overly violent. The acting was superb in this movie and it's a gripping tale. It takes place in Toronto, Canada. 2:22 was written by 2 film students from a small school in Nagadoches (sp?), Texas that apparently is known for its film program. They said all the classes are taught by one professor! Anyway, they wrote the script in less than a month and directed and filmed the movie in 3 weeks or something like that. Apparently they wrote the script in part knowing what actors would be performing which parts.

3 more movies today - descriptions to follow!