ALBUQUERQUE BLOGGIN'
by Stephanie Hiller
February 14
You Never Know What You'll Find in Burque
You never know what you will find in Albuquerque, known as "Burque" among those in the know, who would leave "Duke City" to the race car drivers, the poker players and the politicians perhaps, those who are or would like to be the city patriarchs. Burque is for the young, the hip, and the rest of us, the uncategorized, the more recent arrivals, drawn here by the spirits of the land, the low housing prices, or the adventure of living on one of America's last frontiers, where the wild and the wicked still have room to play.
Now that I've been here for going on six months and learned that I am on my way to becoming a Burqueno, I realize there's a lot more to say about this town than I had realized, and I wonder why I haven't been running to blog it more often but I guess I was just soaking it up and trying to become acclimated, after nearly 40 years in the North woods of the California Bay Area, to the dry, austere high mountain desert with its uninhabited spaces, its luminous turquoise blue skies, its flat topped sandstone-colored adobe buildings, and the pungent, pervasive smell of pinon and juniper that seems to seep in through any open orifice whether the air vents in the car or the draft over the apartment heater, the fire place that always seems to pull a draft even when the draft is shut, and even, believe me it's true, the water in the toilet. What an enticing fresh smell for a city to have! Maybe that's how New Mexico snares you into its magic net. It just seeps into your body through your pores and nasal passages like the spicy, invigorating scent of pinon, until one day you wake up and realize that you have been completely saturated, bone to cell, seduced by this land, that thankfully, the spirits have finished their rude and rough examination of your inner structure and, approving, have dug their dry, thorny branches into your soul. Were you planning to go back home? Sorry, you belong here now…
So off I go to catch the morning air, looking at the mountains laced with snow and thinking of a conversation I had with a man in an art gallery the other night who has lived in New Mexico for fifteen years. He said that although it seems like just another strip mall city, Burque is real New Mexico; and the mountains looming hugely along the Eastern horizon remind you that you live on the land.
That's one of the things about New Mexico, that you never can forget you are living on the land and not in some 28 story human contraption lined with cement. For me it has been the winds that assure me that despite all our human constructions, the fancy freeway loops and tall modern buildings back lit with bright green or purple or orange neon at night, this is the desert and the desert takes all. But it's the mountains that draw me forth today, the clouds clustered around the peaks. With those billowing grey and white clouds, the Sandias attain a nobility that ascends to the realm of poesy, trumping any humdrum creations on the ground. The wind is brisk -- we had buckets of rain last night and more is coming. I wrap my scarf around the collar of my jacket and trust that the movement of muscles will generate enough inner heat to counteract the nip in the air.
I head East, toward the mountains, so I can admire their moody aspect, and also because I want to see if my friend Pam's house is actually, as I suspect, reasonable walking distance from my house. I walk in the street as most people do (those who walk at all, that is) because the deep driveways add too much up and down motion for my quaky left knee. Crossing Washington, I head North to Marble, and then East again, passing one president after another -- in case you've forgotten, it's Adams, then Jefferson, then Monroe, then Madison, then Truman -- oops, have we missed something here? But that indeed is the order of the streets on the way to the great boulevard of San Mateo.
I'm trying to figure out whether or not to buy a house here, so I walk peering at the houses, mostly adobes with the occasional western ranch house or peaked Victorian sprinkled in amongst them. The adobes endow the state with their unique flavor, a style that is coming into "fashion" among the ecology set who are making straw bale houses even in California -- straw layered with mud, that is. Adobe houses were created by the Indians in South America and brought here by the Spanish, I just read, who called them "pueblos." They do resemble the old ruins of the Anasazi that you see in Canyon de Chelly in Arizona or Chaco Canyon. In Santa Fe, builders are required to conform to the adobe style; as you drive by these adobe-style developments outside the city it seems like an extended pueblo. Real adobes are made of mud bricks left to dry in the sun for a few weeks before being used in houses that are then plastered over with the wet adobe mud. The walls on the old ones are really thick, a foot or a foot and a half thick, which creates good insulation. But most of the more recent ones are actually stucco painted the color of clay. Usually the corners are rounded, which gives the houses a humble look that I find very charming, and makes them look smaller than they actually are.
This neighborhood is too expensive for me, but looking at the houses helps me picture what I want. In the CD-course I've been doing, "Your Unseen Power" with Dolores Nowicki-Ashcroft, she advises that to manifest what you want you have to visualize it in every detail. So I'm practicing. Many of the houses have large rocks in the front yard. I've been reading about rocks; according to the Native people, rocks have long stories to tell. Some rocks have a very strong emanation. I'd like to have some powerful rocks in my yard. I suppose I could go out and find one -- ask permission to take it home with me -- but I don't know how I'd lift it into my car…
Here's the kind of house I'm looking for: a small brown adobe, an older one, with those delightful Spanish style wrought iron window guards, the charming bright blue trim, the fireplace, cottonwood trees in front, a yard. Just a two bedroom, I don't need more than that, with a nice kitchen, bigger than the efficiency type I have right now. The problem is not figuring out what kind of house I want but whether I am really ready to settle here, at least for the next few years until the kids figure out where they're going to be living and the Neocons figure out whether domination of Iran is worth a nuclear war. It's so hard making plans in the context of the current insanity; it's no wonder people just hold the news in a teeny tiny corner of their brains so that they can go on with life as usual as long as it is usual, anyway. And so far, walking down a quiet residential street in America, life is still usual.
Sure enough, here's San Mateo, and my friend Pam's is just three blocks away. It certainly is walking distance. That's great. And the rug store I wanted to visit is not on this corner after all, but just down the street… But here's something: right across the street tucked in behind the Pendleton Store is Mama's Minerals. I can't resist checking it out.
There's no traffic light or stop sign at the intersection, nor even a pedestrian cross walk. I wait for a gap in the traffic and make it across the southbound side. Crossing the last three lanes I have to race out of the way of a couple of oncoming cars that don't miss a beat at the sight of me. Maybe they don't even see me! I've been wondering whether I've become invisible in my old age; at that art gallery reception in Santa Fe last weekend, I saw a woman I'd met just a few months ago and she walked right by me without batting an eye.
The shop may not have been worth risking my life for, but it certainly is a treat. Large shimmering geodes greet me near the entrance. Then there are strings and strings of brilliantly colored beads carved of turquoise, carnelian, amber, obsidian…carved wooden beads from China, painted enamels from Malaysia. All the equipment for making jewelry as well. Then there are crystals of all shapes and sizes, and a rack of nice leather pouches for carrying your precious crystal close to your heart. I'd like to get one of those… Luckily I have no money with me today so I don't have to be under the pressure of actually purchasing something, always an agonizing exercise for me. Since I have no money I can just look. The store is a rock and gem wonderland. Here are bins of unpolished rocks, here are handfuls of small ones, fountains you can construct yourself (I want to make one of those!), tools for gold mining, books for "rock hounds" about collecting. I want to do that, become a collector of gems.
If you live in New Mexico, you have to collect something. People with money collect art. They collect Navajo silver jewelry or handwoven rugs, Acoma pots, magical carved animal fetishes, Southwestern furnishings, Hispanic hammered metalwork… The place is so imbued with art that even the Laundromat I go to has Indian dreamscapes all over the walls -- cheesy ones, but still. It's not considered nerdy to hang a nice painting on your living room wall; it's the ordinary thing. There's something about that, the wealth of creativity here, that stimulates lively interest in all sorts of things. I want to learn about the native trees, the birds, cacti and xeriscape gardening, New Mexican history, hand woven rugs, Native stories and ceremonies, painting, pottery, and of course traditional healing… and I've always, always wanted to know more about crystals. Driving around to exotic spots to looks for rocks sounds like a really great way to spend a Saturday. And here's a brochure for the Albuquerque Rock and Gem club!
Well who would have guessed that there'd be a gem store so close to my house? That's the thing about Albuquerque: she doesn't flaunt her charms. You have to take the trouble to look. A few weeks ago I passed a dowdy looking Marco Polo Market; when I went in, it turned out to be run by an Afghan family. A block or so down the road was a small middle eastern restaurant that would be very easy to miss. Just two blocks from my house is a shop called the Red Square and yes, it is Russian and sells black rye bread and blinis.
Nothing remarkable about all this, I suppose. It's just that on the surface of it, you wouldn't expect to find these things in this town. What is remarkable is the equality of it all. Like the brown adobe houses, it's all unassuming, ordinary, and just plain authentic. Maybe it's the effect of this flat stretch of high desert between the Sandias and the western volcanos. It equalizes everything. The people are like that, too. They don't get all excited to meet a newcomer, and they don't fall all over themselves to welcome you. But they make room for you. You're here, they seem to say, so show us your stuff. I've had trouble finding the right words for this sense of equality I find here in Burque. Like the way that all the different cultures co-exist here, not only the Big Three -- white, Hispanic and Native -- but all the other subgroups, the Jews, the Vietnamese, the Muslims. The Chinese, for example, a small community I didn't even know existed, are having a Chinese New Year's Festival this weekend that's open to all. A 60-foot dragon, too -- I can't wait! Each group has a certain cultural pride that blends in with the mix without being diluted or absorbed, and you always feel welcome. It's not at all the flavor of Santa Fe, but that's another story -- these two towns each act like the other is not on the same planet.
I manage to cross San Mateo again without getting plowed under by one of those macho drivers… I'm not given to road rage but these guys who drive up behind you on the freeway when you're going 80 miles an hour already and flash their lights to get you to butt over so they can pass, that really annoys me. They drive like maniacs here, with a very high rate of car accidents caused by driving while intoxicated.
The wind is blowing strong and cold now. I walk home at a fast clip, proud I can move at that rate these days. It's the kind of day you could while away the hours watching the clouds change shape, if it weren't so cold. My bamboo chimes are singing their lovely song as I come home.
December 19
Channukah with the Unitarians
I was in excellent spirits when I set forth this morning to attend Sunday services at the Unitarian Church on Carlisle. The weather was balmy and bright after weeks of piercing chill; I had had a fine meditation in which I was rewarded with brilliant colors commemorating, so it seemed, my recovery several months of illness; and I had survived one of those long, dark nights of the soul that had stripped of all vestiges of identity, to finally rediscover a self requiring no tags, no glory and no roles -- a self which Gangaji has aptly described in her new book, The Diamond in Your Pocket as, simply, awareness. Whatever one has gone through, Gangaji writes, good or bad, the self has witnessed it, and the self, which is also the Self at the heart of the universe, abides. Words do not adequately convey how that feels, but once felt and truly appreciated, I do not think it can ever go away -- because, as she reiterates, it has always been there. Realizing that might even be -- dare I say it? -- enlightenment.
I was happy; I was happy that I had just transformed my weathered leather Birkinstock sandals with a coat of dark brown shoe polish and a bit of elbow grease, and I was looking forward to meeting the Unitarians. Off to church then, with polished shoes!
I do not often -- I would have once said I do not ever -- go to church, but on Friday night I had attended the little Jewish synagogue Nahalat Shalom on Rio Grande, over in the North Valley where liberal folk congregate, to celebrate the first night of Hanukah. The congregation was formed some twenty years ago by a rather remarkable rabbi, sometimes called the "barefoot rabbi," one of the first woman rabbis, Lynn Gottlieb [http://www.jwa.org/feminism/_html/JWA030.htm] whose writing has appeared on these pages. I had always wanted to meet her but alas, shortly before I moved here, she moved to Ojai, California, where she now heads Interfaith Inventions (www.interfaithinvention.org) , organizing peace camps and nonviolent trainings for people of all faiths.
My friend Pam accompanied me to shul. She was raised Episcopalian but her father's father was a devout Jew who continued to attend synagogue after his wife converted to the Episcopalian faith. Likely she was Jewish too, which would mean that Pam's father was actually Jewish though he gave it no credence. Being a member of the Episcopal Church afforded him status, and that was what mattered to him. But her grandfather's presence was so compelling, Pam said, he stirred in her a lifelong interest in Judaism. "Whenever he came to visit us, he would open his arms to call us to him with such exuberance," Pam says, and he would always tell her, "when you grow up, of course you will become a Jew like me!" Later on in life, she became the director of the Jewish Community PreSchool in Santa Rosa, California, where she learned more about Judaism than I was ever taught, full-blooded Jew that I am. Pam had been a member of Nahalat Shalom when she first came here four years ago but had not visited for the past year or so.
We both appreciated the beautifully carved new doors that had been installed at the temple only a few weeks before, hand-carved by Herschel, one of the people Pam had worked with on the garden. "Now it's a real shul," said my friend Ruth Imber. Inside, the room was festive with gleaming Hanukah decorations. And there, to our surprise, was Rabbi Lynn!
In the absence of the present rabbi, Deborah Brin, who is out sick, Rabbi Lynn stepped up to light the candles and bless the challah. Slim, with a ready smile, her long brown hair flowing around a narrow, friendly face, she is able to convey a strong feeling simply, without pontification.
The word Hanukkah means "dedication," she said. "Dedication" is a word I have been pondering lately, thanks to the teachings of Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki , which I have been listening to on tape. Dedication implies firm commitment to the highest ideal, devotion, faith, and, to me, focused, selfless activity. It's a quality I wish to embrace in my life.
Then Rabbi Lynn quoted the words of the prophet Zecariah as an expression of the teaching or message of Hanukkah. "Not by might and not by power, but by ruach/spirit alone shall people be free." (see her essay in Desert Sage, the congregation's newsletter: http://www.nahalatshalom.org/2002-11/Sage_Hanachah.html/)
This I had never heard before, and I liked its message. Of course there had also been a bloody battle, against immense odds, when Judas Maccabeas and his small band had fought off the Greek army after the colonizers had insisted the Jews worship Greek gods; civil war had ensued, with some Jews willing to acquiesce, others adamantly opposed. In the final clampdown, the Greeks had desecrated the temple, trashing the sacred shrines. (I do find that ironic, even karmic, for what had the Jews done to the goddess worshippers of Canaanafter they conquered the land ("rape and pillage, rape and pillage," my mother used to mutter) for their god Yahweh, but knock down the asherim, the sacred goddess trees.) And I'm sure it's possible to interpret "spirit" to mean the holy spirit of Yahweh who enabled the Maccabees to defeat the army; indeed that's probably the usual view. I Rabbi Lynn's interpretation better, of course. And have since learned that it is not only her interpretation, but the accepted interpretation of Jewish Renewal.
The rest of the Hanukkah story is well known. When the Jews recaptured their temple and went to relight the eternal flame, they found there was only enough oil for one night. It takes eight days to press new olive oil. Miraculously, the oil continued to burn for eight nights, until the new oil was ready. And so we celebrate the miracle of light. There are dreidl games, there are potato latkes, and on the eighth night, children receive the gift of some Hanukkah gelt (money). It had been a minor holiday. But in the Bronx where I grew up, children received gifts on each of the eight nights, for Hanukkah has been puffed up to meet the vaunted expectations of an American Christmas.
I felt very much at home, as I always do at Nahalat Shalom. Best of all was listening to Ruth Imber read Isaac Bashevis Singer's tale of "A Parakeet Named Dreidl." It is a children's story that Ruth read well. With the candles of many menorahs burning behind her, she was like the archetypal Jewish grandma, interpreting the written word with grace and style. We, her children and grandchildren, were all enchanted, wrapped up in the glow of an ancient tradition that yet lives in us. And that, too, is a kind of miracle, this endurance of something very old that yet runs through our blood.
The atmosphere at the Unitarian Church was friendly. I was curious to see what the service would be like, but I was I really looking forward to the social hour that follows.
Some of my old radical friends would make fun of me for venturing here. They think of Unitarians as the epitome as bland, white bread, shallow American liberals. But I had visited the church weeks earlier, feeling tattered and alone, and they had been most welcoming. The Church is not far from my house (whereas Nahalat Shalom is clear across town) and I was interested in the various groups they have to offer.
This morning I was late. I walked quickly across the bustling courtyard, where people who had attended the first service were chatting in the warming sunshine. The choir was already singing as I entered the chapel and took a seat in the back. Their voices were lovely and for some inexplicable reason brought tears to my eyes. Uh-oh; was I about to be reborn? I can't help it; the memory of the baby Jesus always makes me feel like the mother of a child who has died. And I cry easily these days; isolation (combined, I suppose, with age) having transformed cynicism into sentimentality -- which is, after all, its source.
The choir has also been learning spirituals. I was happy they were going to sing "Go Tell It On the Mountain," an old favorite of mine, but I was disappointed that their rendition took the guts right out of it, making it sound more like a (white) Christian hymn than an African American spiritual born out of the suffering of slavery. James Baldwin, who wrote an angry book with that title, would have been appalled.
The Reverend Christine Robinson's sermon was about the universal message of all faiths. She began talking about the differences between religions, embracing their diversity as preferable to some form of "MacChurch" where all the differences were merged into something tasteless "and not good for you." But she acknowledged that all religions had one thing in common. I expected her to say that was belief in a divine being or consciousness, but instead she spoke of the belief in other realms above and below this one in which we live. This belief in other realms is what distinguishes religion from atheism, humanism or scientism, which all hold that this world, this life, is all there is. Also spirituality allows for the validity of non-rational or a-rational experience. The whole thing was quite good, a little on the bland side, yes, and a bit intellectual but soothing in a thoughtful sort of way, and if I wasn't really learning anything new, at least I wasn't having to endure some offensive rant on hellfires and damnation.
Then there was to be a lighting of the third candle on the Menorah.
A woman got up, I don't think she is Jewish -- I had seen her name appear in connection with the children's program and other places in the literature. Certainly she talked about "the Jews" as something outside herself.
She said Hannukah was a celebration of religious freedom. She told the story of the Maccabees, of how the Greek colonial administrator Antiochus had prohibited the Jewish religion, and how the Greeks had defiled the temple, even sacrificing a pig on the altar and leaving all the blood and gore about, "and you know how the Jews feel about pigs." That was one of her little jokes, you know, to make the story more engaging. On the whole it was the telling of a story that had no deep meaning for her personally, beyond the meaning she extrapolated as an American, that is, the belief in religious freedom.
I felt very strange listening to all this, as if something had been taken from me. I have not been a practicing Jew, but I have always identified as a Jewish person, and I was in the process of exploring what that identity might mean in a religious context. But there was something about this woman -- well-intended though she be -- speaking for the Jews that hurt me.
In that moment I suddenly understood the accusation that the Native People have thrown at white people who burn sage and think it's cute to call in the four directions.
You've taken our lands, robbed us of our freedom, mined our resources, the Indians tell us, and now you want to steal the one thing we have left, have preserved over years of persecution with tremendous dedication and effort, our spiritual traditions.
Spiritual genocide, they call it.
I didn't go to the coffee hour after all. I went home. I wanted to think about whether the bond I have with the people I come from isn't a whole lot deeper than I realized.
October 10
Walkin around Duke City
Here I am in Duke City, the largest city but not the Capitol of the great state of New Mexico -- and it is quite a large state, though relatively uninhabited, with only two million people in the whole state, but said to be the fourth largest military establishment in the country. Therein may be said to be its greatness, though this high desert country has more to recommend it for those of us who seek connection to the land. This is sacred territory, and folks around here know that.
There are some 600, 000 people living here in Albuquerque.
After you try to spell that out to the lady on the telephone who wants to you're your new address, you will really understand why they like to call it Duke City here.
It's a city, but most of it looks one extended suburb -- clusters of individual houses with small yards boxed up in neighborhoods ringed by shopping centers and criss crossed by giant 6-lane roadways running south to north, east to west. Two major interstates form a cross at its center. It's a box, and that's the name of the wind pattern that makes this the ideal place to fly hot air balloons. The annual balloon festival is Albuquerque's current claim to fame.
I live not far from the center of town, known here as Nob Hill, though to a former San Franciscan, that little nob of a hill in a city that is mostly flat seems more appropriately named than the high peak called by the same name in that Bay Area city. Most of the city sits in a plane directly west of the noble and sometimes severe Sandia Mountains, that happily turn pink during sunset, hence their name, which means Watermelon in Soanish.
There's a lot of Spanish names here including some of the major avenues like Lomas, and San Mateo, the intersection near where I live, but for the most part the major streets are of states like Wyoming and Louisiana, or of Presidents like Jefferson, Washington and Monroe arranged in order of their reign. And then there's Central, not far from here -- the old Route 66 that bisects the town all the way to the Rio Grande. West of the Rio is mostly new development.
I live in a one bedroom apartment along the drive in an older fourplex, kind of an oddity on the block, which is made up mostly of adobe apartment duplexes, but originally more of an old style southern house that had been broken up in to parts.
My little part holds a rather large fireplace, with glass doors rimmed in shining brass. The whole thing is immense and takes up so much of the room that it's easy to furnish. Good thing as I didn't bring much furniture. I've got my books (too many) and tv of course, which isn't hooked up to the cable yet; a desk to hold the computers, and two comfortable chairs. The kitchen is nice and bright, with white floors that constantly need to be washed; and the best part is the glass paned back door opens wide onto a little enclosed square patio shaded by two large and exotic bushes, where I am permitted to smoke my cigarettes.
Four women live here. D, with her Texas accent and silky blond hair, is friendly, always looking for an opportunity to do you a favor. L., younger, has an adorable dog and keeps to herself. She likes to go backpacking. D. cleans houses and has a thirty year old son who lives in Amarillo. L. leaves early in the morning, before dawn; I think she must be a nurse. I haven't met the last woman, who moved in when I did, but I saw her twice, buried under a large hat and quite withdrawn.
I love the big blue sky and the winds that whip up out of nowhere. After eight years in the silent redwoods, I'm still getting used to the traffic zooming by on those two main roads down and throughout the city from 6 in the morning until about 10 or 11 at night. Constant. Sirens are intermittent though generally distant. Planes fly overhead throughout the day, some of them shockingly low. A friend suggests these are training flights for the air force base to the south, Kirtland. They are loud! Helicopters are also a frequent nuisance. The guy next door rides a scooter with a high pitched engine; you always know when he's coming in or out.
When the wind whips through here, as it did last week, you can't hear any of that. Finally, the desert rules all.
The trees are filled with birds. We are graced with two enormous cottonwoods in the front, some shrubs along the drive, and another wonderful tree in my neighbor's yard. The birds sing and hop about all day long, and if you can't hear them then you know that something's up -- like the eclipse we had on equinox.
The morning sun beams brightly into my living room and my kitchen, which gets light all afternoon as well. After dark mornings and short afternoons in my Camp Meeker cottage, you can imagine the grace this bestows on an old woman who was threatening to become a mole. Not in a hole, fortunately, but on a hilltop, or more precisely, a Knoll. It was called Nob Knoll.
Leaving that cosy nest really occasioned some screams of pain as you can imagine as I wrenched myself away from apparent security and rapidly declining resources, leaving the place where I'd raised my children and spent many happy hours with our family and friends. And a wonderful place it is too, so beautiful, the entire Bay Area. What consciousness! And what food. I really really miss the abundance and variety of foods in California. Rents may be lower here in the desert, but food, especially whole, organic food, is far more expensive.
Nevertheless, I'm bound to stay here, having felt compelled or drawn or that you will, to choose Duke City as my present home.
I like the people. The interraction of Hispanic, Indian and various American cultures, is distinct. Even though it looks like Santa Rosa, it's a city, one with a very long history. There's some kind of festival almost every weekend. The Hispanic Multicultural Center put on a five day world beat music fest just a few weeks ago. Then we had the fabulous balloon festival. Hundreds of balloons ascend into the air at once. I thought I would be able to see them from the house, but I never saw a one. Of course you can go over to the balloon grounds to watch the whole show, but I didn't feel up to it. It's the big event of the year, but every other weekend there's bound to be something like a Greek Festival or a Wine and Chile Festival. ("That doesn't sound like a good combination," said my daughter Amy, the gourmet. "It's a great combination here," I told her. Everything goes with the chilis.
Speaking of food, I've been thinking alot about it, not only missing my fine california cuisine at home. People here tell me, "Nobody cooks anymore." Boy scouts and violin lessons are more important than the family meal. Besides, mom hasn't time to cook. She and papa are working. It's a sad state of affairs, this state of family life in America. It makes me sad. I learned in a training for preschool assessment that children do not play anymore. Everyone knows that free play is the source of most of childhood learning. Kids today are watching TV, playing video games, and going off to their various appointments. The company that gave the training, Abt Associates in Cambridge, is developing a learning curriculum for preschools where children actually get a chance to play. Work stations are created that resemble Montessori redone for public consumption. The curriculum's designer sounds like a real whiz with kids, but in the typical classroom I'll wager that "stations" are just another stale arrangement that will never equal the real thing. Anyway, the goal of the program belies its playful ambitions; it's part of a national effort to identify students with learning and behavioral difficulties at an early age, in hopes of reducing the costs of special ed, which is costing schools a whole lot of money these days. No one seems able to explain why so many of our kids are learning disabled. It's hard to see how programs with such mixed motives can possibly lead to a better learning experience for our disadvantaged toddlers. If, as seems likely, these advanced curriculums that attempt to duplicate the natural learning experiences of kids who play, don't really solve the problem, kids will then we dosed with psychotropic aids to help them survive in school -- Bush's boon to the drug companies, all wrapped up in a new President's Commission on Mental Health, which intends to identify not only kids but families with mental illness and treat them. Learning difficulties seem to go with poverty, and New Mexico has plenty of that, despite the fortunes made by workers in the nuclear industry. Los Alamos county has one of the highest incomes in the country, while neighboring Espanola is one of the poorest. Money made by making bombs doesn't seem to trickle down to schools, health clinics, or other programs for the poor.
Water is in short supply in the desert, and global warming threatens more frequent and more severe droughts. We did have a lot of rain this summer, a boon, the answer to many many prayers after six years of drought and increasing consumption. Lots of people are moving here all of a sudden, to take advantage of the lower housing costs (which are rapidly rising) or to work for the military or the big IT companies which are coming here to support the military; or the growing hospital industry (there seem to be hospitals all over town). They need them. You'll never find it in the public record but radiation here is bound to be higher than many other places. Higher altitudes receive more radiation from the sun, for one thing. Nuclear production leaves behind lots of nuclear waste. Just up the hill on the other side of the mountains lies the Pajarito Plateau, home of Los Alamos, currently planning the construction of new atomic bombs by proposing to build increasing numbers of plutonium triggers, known as pits. Los Alamos has ongoing problems with contamination surrounding the actual labs, due in part to the lab's old habit of dumping depleted uranium into a ravine or arroyo through which water flows in great and rapid quantities during the brief but intense monsoon season.
Water and radiation come together nicely here now that burgeoning growth has depleted the aquifer and the city has already made the decision to stop using it and use the Rio Grande instead. Whatever is making its way downstream from the arroyos and into the Rio Grande will travel all the way to Mexico. Activists says plutonium has already been found in the upper reaches of the river.
Despite the 2500 nuclear warheads buried under the Sunport just a mile from the main highway intersection, residents here go about their business quite cheerfully. Something about the climate is good for your spirits. I can tolerate more frustrating errands driving from place to place in this huge town than I could in California. Don't know what it is. The drivers are just as crazy or maybe more so. There's something about the place that lulls you into feeling everything will be all right and if it isn't, no point in worrying about it now. It's a taste of that Latin American flavor south of the border that made its way here long before we did. Manana is the operative word in New Mexico, I am told; or as another friend put it, "Albuquerque isn't linear." When you go to the local Walgreen's, employees may be standing around joking with one another. Can't say I mind that, but I notice the aisles are usually cluttered with unpacked boxes, and the stock is not kept up the way it is in California. There's a glitter of efficiency in the Bay Area that seems absent here.
Or maybe it's the radiation. I remember reading once a long time ago that gamma radiation damages the finer tissues of the brain. The brain certainly seems to be suffering. The rise in learning disabilities and mental disorders in this country is staggering, as is the spread of addiction, particularly speed. There's plenty of speed circulating down the hill from Los Alamos. But regardless of whether or not the brain has been damaged by the radiation from overground and underground bomb tests, and spreading nuclear waste, the mechanism of denial is well oiled here. "Don't you think people get inured to it?" a local peace activist asked me. Guess so. The owner of a beauty salon told me, when asked how she felt about living with so much nuclear industry, "It provides a lot of jobs." "I'm ok with it," said an older woman who lives just east of Los Alamos.
It's not because they are idiots. It's because they just don't know. They don't know, and as another peace activist told me, a very old woman with sharp blue eyes, "They don't want to know."
It's so paradoxical to me life in this town can be as pleasant as it seems to be, and that there's so much vitality and friendliness in the people, while at the same time its industries are so invested in the means of destruction. Beyond the city's limits, the mesas stand surreal and dreamlike, testament to the eternity of time. The land reverberates with the emanations of the sacred. Eighteen sparsely settled Indian pueblos stretch for miles, bearers of the ancient memory. Each boasts at least one brightly lit casino, meccas to the power of money. At least the casinos are drawing some income to the impoverished people, but they bring new problems of alcohol and gambling addiction.
New Mexico seems like the perfect setting for the forces of patriarchal industrialization to play out their final drama.
It's a good place for a revelation to occur.