State Fair

Art, food, music, and animals - yesterday afternoon we went to the New Mexico State Fair, held in downtown Albuquerque. As with all fairs it featured a midway and lots of cheesy stuff to buy. I always find it interesting to see what the new popular novelties are - this year it seemed to be Dr. Seuss style hats in bright colors and patterns and wax or paper roses. Beyond the standard fair food of bbq, turkey legs, and fried stuff, there were tacos, Indian fry bread and churros. I actually had some really good fish tacos made by a stand whose home base is in Santa Fe. It's called California Pastrami, and their pastrami sandwiches are also great!

They have different buildings for the different exhibits. We stuck mainly with art passing through the Indian Arts, Hispanic Arts, Fine Arts and Creative Arts buildings. In all the buildings except Creative Arts all the art is actually for sale. Added incentive for artists to enter the competitions?

In the evening we headed indoors for the rodeo and a country music concert by Luke Bryan. The rodeo moved right along and at the end featured a wonderful tribute to the rodeo horses. The lights dimmed and the announcer said he wanted to introduce a family who had been participating in the rodeo for at least 4 generations. Out came the great-grandmother, a 30 year old white horse who pranced beautifully around the ring. She was followed by her daughter and granddaughter, also white horses, and finally great-grandaughter, a dark brown foal. 3 of the generations are or have been bucking broncos in the rodeo. Maybe it was all propaganda for the rodeo industry, but it was very moving.

Luke Bryan - what a hunk! Good singer too. Turns out he co-wrote the turnip greens song - one of my current favorites in my very limited knowledge of country music.

Baking, Plants and Movies

You make think from previous posts that all we do is travel, but we have been keeping busy at home too! We are both taking classes at the local community college. I'm taking Basic Pastries (see photo of lemon meringue tart) three mornings a week and a class on Characteristics of Wood one evening a week. Jake is taking Spanish and a Woodworking class twice a week.

Jake also made is debut in the movies yesterday! He was called to be a "background artist" (an extra to those of us not in the industry) for the movie "Crazy Heart" featuring Maggie Gyllenthal, Robert Duval and Jeff Bridges. Jake plays a businessman on a lunch break at a mall in Houston. Jeff Bridges, playing a cowboy, has stopped at a bar in the mall with his young son. The son wanders off and Jeff and Maggie go looking for the kid. The movie is being filmed in New Mexico (good thing given the hurricane damage in Houston!). So, on Friday a casting agent calls Jake to see if he'll be available for 8 hours on Saturday. Jake says yes, and at 9:30 pm he finds out that the next day's filming is actually in Albuquerque and he has to be there at 6am! He and the other extras are bussed from a parking lot in Albuquerque to a little suburban mall and spend the next - 16 hours! - in the basement of the mall filming several scenes. I got occassional updates from him as the day and night wore on. They do feed the extras, but otherwise there is a lot of waiting around for new takes and scenes to be set up. He said he enjoyed talking with the other 60 or so extras that were there. So, look for Jake walking by in the background in the mall scenes when the movie comes out!

Meanwhile, I was volunteering at the Santa Fe Botanic Garden's 2nd annual plant sale! (See photos). The plant sale relies on donations of plants from local nurseries and members, so it is much different from the Adkins Arboretum sale. But there was still the pre-sale plant grooming, labeling. and plant organization. In addition to plants they had a "garden artifacts" sale area where gardening related items, books, and beautiful handmade wreaths were being sold. The wreaths were grapevine wreaths decorated with dried flowers. They also had a wreath making demonstration table and a worm composting demonstration table. By the end of the day, all but about 3 tables were empty and the remaining plants were donated to a local school that was going to be holding a plant drive for their school garden and agriculture/horticulture program.

Oh yeah, and we are both doing some work we are paid for as well. I'm on the second week of teaching my online class in Ecological Restoration and have 2 articles due for the Arboretum at the end of the month, and Jake is cranking out a teaching manual for one of his textbooks.

Fiesta weekend

Following Zozobra, or starting with Zozobra, was the Fiesta de Santa Fe, a huge party held annually since 1712. We attended the children's pet parade, which featured children with pets, without pets, and plenty of adults too. Pictured here are baby zozobra (too cute to burn) and several entries with pets. Although most of the pets were dogs, there were a couple crates of chickens, 2 goats, 1 cat, 1 ferret and a couple rabbits.

Sunday afternoon was the Historical/Hysterical parade, but we didn't see much historical or hysterical about it. There were a lot of school sports teams, political candidates (all democratic) and local businesses. Pictured are some of the historical horses, one hysterical donkey, and the peace bus.

Besides parades, there were several religious processions, great music, and the usual craft and food booths. The nice thing about this event was that it was really a party for everyone who lives in the area as opposed to tourists and wealthy art patrons.

Zozobra

Last night was the burning of Old Man Gloom, known as Zozobra. Zozobra was the creation of an artist in 1924 and it has now morphed into a huge celebration with Zozobra grown into the world's largest marionette at 41 feet tall. He is placed at the top of a hill above a baseball field and the baseball field is packed with 25,000 people of all ages. Zozobra is filled with people's thoughts of gloom and after the proclamation that he is gloom personified, the crowd yells to "Burn Him!!!" The lights suddenly go out and the crowd is illuminated only by glow sticks, flashing headgear (devils horns and rabbit ears, don't know why those two!) and cell phones. Suspense builds as dancers in white wielding flaming torches dance on the hillside. Fireworks flare up behind Zozobra and a band plays music with lots of electric guitar riffs. Zozobra begins to scream and moan waving his huge arms slowly and shaking his head. Finally his hands erupt in sparks and flames leap onto his side. His head erupts in sparks and flames and he is quickly consumed in a tower of flames until he collapses into a burning pile of scaffolding.

Surely there can be no gloom after that performance! To see a video of the burning visit http://www.kob.com/ (probably only available for a day or two) or homemade videos at http://utube.smashits.com/videos/bydate/zozobra-2008.html (probably more to appear today). Jake's camera died after one daytime photo unfortunately!

Colorado

For Labor Day weekend we headed north to Colorado. The car passed 100,000 miles on this trip! First stop was lunch at Great Sand Dunes National Park. Sands accumulating between the Sangre de Cristo and San Juan mountains form enormous dunes, the largest in North America. We attempted to climb to the top, but when we made it to what we thought was the top, there were just more higher dunes beyond. Still, the view looking back was great.

We spent Friday night in Colorado Springs with Jake's friends Mike, Maureen and kids Noah and Maggie. Mike greeted us with cocktails and Maureen with wonderful home-cooked food. The kids made brief appearances between disappearing with a large group of neighborhood kids playing kick-the-can. No "nature-deficit disorder" in this neighborhood! In their surburban wooded yard they have seen mountain lion and bear and Jake and I watched two large deer and a baby rabbit roaming the front yard. We went to Garden of the Gods Saturday morning, a park with interesting rock formations. It is a very civilized park with paved paths, but the scenery is really beautiful. Afterwards we went to the town of Manitou Springs, formerly famous for its waters. While waiting for a table we all played in the neighboring arcade which had some of the oldest arcade games I've seen. They had some that still accepted a penny or 10 cents. Noah was quite taken with the penny arcade clown that could be made to dance by pushing buttons - I think because he was fascinated that that was all it could do (compared to modern arcade games!), and because it was funny.

We spent Saturday night in Denver with a former colleague of Jake and his wife. They took us to a great restaurant called Potager that uses in season ingredients and local foods. The next morning we walked past Jake's former homes near Washington Park and North Cherry Creek, a trendy neighborhood with lots of shops and restaurants. It seemed to be getting more chain stores though and Jake was disappointed that a branch of the Tattered Cover bookstore had been replaced by a furniture store.

On Sunday we continued north to Ft. Collins where my friends Helen and Feike live with their daughter Margot and Helen's mom. Helen's mom had gotten some great produce at the farmer's market that Feike grilled and Helen had made a great peach pie for dessert. In the morning we took a stroll to a park just a few blocks from their house in the foothills. There are some great rocks there too and grassy plains with Liatris and other flowers in bloom.

Monday was a long and boring drive home via the interstate, alleviated by a good lunch at a Mexican restaurant in downtown Castle Rock, CO. I25 through northern NM had different scenery with huge expanses of rolling grasslands dotted with cattle.