Why I Live Here

by JHF on March 8, 2010 · 6 comments

in Featured Posts, Spirit

Looking south from the banks of the Rio Grande near Pilar, New Mexico

I could say “Natives,” but that doesn’t quite capture it. It’s more about spirituality, and respect for same, which simply doesn’t exist in most of the other places I’ve lived.

Last Friday night there was a very sad accident on Cerrillos Road in Santa Fe. At around 9:00 p.m., a 34-year-old driver (possibly drunk and carrying a suspended license) crashed at what must have been very high speed into the back of a car carrying four members of a Navajo family from Naschitti, north of Gallup. The impact was so violent that three cars in front of the vehicle that was struck were also involved. Killed in the crash were two sisters, 17 and 20 years old, who had just come from playing in a Class AAA girls state basketball tournament. Their parents are both in serious but stable condition in the hospital.

But this is what happened yesterday: Santa Fe police blocked off the southbound lanes of busy Cerrillos Road at 3:30 p.m. for a whole hour, so that a 66-year-old Navajo medicine man from the family’s home community could conduct a healing ceremony, asking for “physical and spiritual healing of those who were injured, those who helped the injured, and those who were left behind to grieve.” There were 50 people present from Naschitti and 20 cars parked right in the middle of the road. The mayor of Santa Fe was present, and the police chaplain assisted in the service.

From this morning’s Santa Fe New Mexican:

Nez prayed in Navajo and used an eagle feather dipped in water to bless members of the gathering… The medicine man, with the gathering following him as a cold rain began to fall, then proceeded to the exact spots on Cerrillos Road where the two sisters were struck, and more prayers and blessings were offered.

Friends and relatives placed roses in the median dirt, and planted other flowers and laid balloons along the west side of Cerrillos in remembrance of the sister.

There are five surviving siblings, all of whom had played for the team at one time or another. Another sister on the current team had injured her ankle and didn’t go to the game!

It’s not often that an article in the morning paper makes me cry, but this one did.

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Almost Spring

March 8, 2010 Weather

We had the windows and front door open for a long time late Sunday afternoon, airing the place out. That worked out pretty well, since the wood stove was still cranking. Below is a view of what would be the front steps, if we had any.

I’m posting this at just a little before 3:00 a.m. [...]

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Anthem for a Sunday Morning

March 7, 2010 Music

Time for a change around here: enough with the bleeding screeds (therapeutic though they may be), we need some ACTION! Punch the “play” thingie and crank it up…

Note to Blip.fm enthusiasts: Blip appears to have deleted the embed feature, but I’m using a javascript bookmarklet available here that pulls up the same functionality, at least [...]

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Apple Store Video

March 6, 2010 Video

An atmospheric location piece. We’ll just let this one speak for itself. (And who are those people in the window?)

Share/Save

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Art Guilt V: True Grit

March 5, 2010 Personal
This image denotes selected living planet mystery tales...

It wasn’t supposed to be a ten-year rolling crisis, but a Great Adventure, making the most of our lives, and I just wasn’t up to it. Hamstrung by shock and guilt, I couldn’t replace the things we lost. Becoming personally fulfilled by relocation wasn’t ever going to happen, anyway, but something else did, and one thing leads to another.

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Birdman of Albuquerque (Video)

March 4, 2010 Video

I met this fellow outside a Trader Joe’s in Albuquerque. It almost defies description, but he had at least three birds (two parrots and a parakeet) and two or three dogs on this rig. Actually, one of the animals may be a cat–I couldn’t quite see from my vantage point. Pretty damn mind-boggling, no matter [...]

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Cat Break [Updated]

March 1, 2010 Animals

This may show up on FotoFeed eventually, but I thought everyone deserved a look at Callie the New Mexico Wonder Cat right now!

UPDATE: Must remember not to leave comments on political blogs when I’m angry at my mother, so to speak. Or the old man. Yes, I know. I only visit three or four regularly [...]

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Pissing in the Road Report

March 1, 2010 New Mexico

Then I walked out to the middle of the road, taking in the moonlit vista. There were low, misty clouds over Picuris Peak extending southwest toward the Jemez Mountains, and more low clouds to the east. I could see for miles in the indigo-tinted night and couldn’t believe I wasn’t cold.

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Taos for Wimp-Simp Dummy Losers, or Thank You Jesus for the Nails

February 28, 2010 Taos
Thumbnail image for Taos for Wimp-Simp Dummy Losers, or Thank You Jesus for the Nails

No, El Senor has bigger plans, for me, I think. He wants me to DISSOLVE THE BOUNDARY BETWEEN WHAT I WANT AND WHAT THERE IS, the dirty karma-swilling Bastard. No doubt one can take that either way, but probably it’s both, and a helluva lot better than never trying at all.

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The Brain of a Thief

February 27, 2010 Taos
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In this case, that’s something of an oxymoron, but read on!
My 1987 Ford pickup truck (F-150) was parked at the top of our impassable driveway (MUD!), on the side of the all-but-impassable road that hasn’t been graded in over four years. The truck pretty much lives up there for half of the year, because that’s [...]

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The Moon Is in Leo, Shut up and Have a Drink

February 26, 2010 Safe as Bunny Milk

“You’re mad,” she said before eating, “but it’s good mad, so that’s all right.”
Extremely decent of her, don’t you think? This is worth its weight in purest gold. You can’t pay someone to treat you like that, because they don’t exist. She has to know you, to wit:
I just got to have tequila for supper [...]

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I Have a Goddamn Dream

February 26, 2010 Ram the Jet
This image denotes selected living planet mystery tales...

In our many travels, at least the ones we used to make before moving to the Land of Entrapment (which I do dearly love) and trying to live on nothing, we passed through wide swaths of Middle America that seemed in many ways like paradise. Not only were there long stretches of rolling prairie and quiet dirt roads (graded!) where one could hear the meadowlarks, but a huge blue sky hung over it all, and there were houses to be bought for less than a fancy bicycle in hip towns like Austin or Santa Fe.

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