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NMPW 2011 Scholarship Guidelines
12/14/2011

New Mexico Press Women will award two $750 Doris Gregory Memorial scholarships to students (male or female) majoring in print journalism, broadcasting, photojournalism, public relations or advertising. »»

2011 New Mexico Press Women Communication Contest
12/14/2011

Entries must be postmarked by Jan. 11, 2011 Cost: $20.00 per entry for members, $30 nonmembers

Please send entries according to »»

Children’s book entries sought for N.M. women writers contest
12/14/2011

An outstanding New Mexican writer will be honored for her work in children’s literature next spring when her book receives the prestigious Zia Award.

New Mexican women writers »»

NFPW Conference Blog
12/14/2011

Follow the National Federation of Press Women Conference this week on NMPW President Sharon Niederman’s blog (with photos): Embracing the North.

History of NMPW Release Oct. 2
12/14/2011

Please join us for a book launch reception:

Saturday, Oct. 2, 2-4 p.m. Downtown Flying Star Mucho Room 8th & Silver SW Albuquerque, N.M. Refreshments will »»

Round 3 on Drivers License Debate Coming
12/13/2011

By Matthew Reichbach Governor Susana Martinez promised today to bring back the controversial and time-consuming issue of repealing a law that permits undocumented immigrants to receive New Mexico drivers licenses. Significantly, both the pro- and anti-repeal sides on this question claim that their respective positions better protect the public’s safety. Martinez, and proponents of the [...]

Get Your Hater-ade at Chick-fil-A
12/13/2011

So what’s the deal with national fast food chain, Chick-fil-A? Sarah Kennedy has the story.

Protests and dissent as EIB looks at rolling back environmental protections
12/13/2011

By Matthew Reichbach As the Environmental Improvement Board looks at rolling back environmental rules instituted under former Governor Bill Richardson, protesters from the Occupy Movement and environmental groups have made their voices heard opposing the changes. The existing environmental rules that the Martinez-appointed board is considering repealing relate to carbon dioxide emissions. Industry groups including [...]

State Fair’s Casino Deal Raises Pay-to-Play Concerns (VIDEO)
12/13/2011

Neighborhood and community groups are still in a state of shock over last week’s unscheduled vote by the State Fair Commission to approve a 25-year lease arrangement calling for construction of a new $20 million casino smack in the middle of Albuquerque. But it’s what Governor Susana Martinez wanted and so that’s that. Somehow it [...]

Crying Wolf: NM’s Secretary of State and Voter Fraud (VIDEO)
12/13/2011

Secretary of State Dianna Duran kicked of the year with great media fanfare by making some very serious fraud allegations involving as many as 64,000 New Mexico voters. A short time later, she sounded the alarm once again by taking the extraordinary step of bypassing county election officials altogether and instead turning over the voter [...]

Student Loan Debt Crisis: What’s your story? (VIDEO)
12/13/2011

This week Sarah Kennedy (channeling Suze Orman) tackles the huge problem of student loan debt:

Sarah’s Week: Bank Transfer Day in NM, Student Debt Crisis and more! (VIDEO)
12/13/2011

Sarah Kennedy had quite a week all right. She catches us up on how Bank Transfer Day went down in New Mexico (It was a winner!) and does a bit on the crushing impact of student loan debt (Help is on the way!). But most importantly, she answers the burning question, “What’s behind Sarah Kennedy [...]

HEY! Play fair! (VIDEO)
12/13/2011

Sarah Kennedy is back with a new video and this time she’s responding a comment about last week’s edition. So here you go. Welcome to Candy Land — a place of not-so-equal opportunity for those of us in the 99%.

(Un)Occupy Albuquerque gets “limited” permit from UNM
12/13/2011

By Matthew Reichbach (Un)Occupy Albuquerque will be allowed to continue demonstrating at Yale Park for the next week — on a limited basis. The University of New Mexico granted a “limited” permit that gives protesters fewer hours of access to the park than before they were evicted from the park last Tuesday. UNM announced that [...]

Santa Fe Municipal Airport
12/08/2011

When I first moved to Santa Fe, a couple of commercial flights were available from Santa Fe to Denver, but those were eventually discontinued. In June 2009, American Eagle instituted three flights a day--one to Los Angeles and two to Dallas. When a third flight to/from Dallas was added in February of this year, it became possible for eastbound passengers to make connections to and from Dallas, and I decided to give it a try.


The Santa Fe Municipal Airport is a charming step back in time. It was designed by noted Santa Fe architect John Gaw Meem, and constructed in 1957, in the southwest corner of the city. Its interior is full of southwestern accents.


It has one counter, one security line, one restaurant (The Airport Grille), one waiting room, and one gate. Parking involves writing a check for $3 a day for the duration of your trip and sticking it in an envelope in a box inside the terminal. "The Eagle has landed" heralds the arrival of the plane, and the gate agent greets arriving customers with a cheerful "Welcome to Santa Fe!"


Unfortunately, my travel experience was less than optimal due to weather-related interruptions at both ends (which caused me to miss my connection in Dallas and rerouted our return flight to Albuquerque due to wind, snow, and ice at the SF airport). But I am giving it another chance in May. It's so convenient--a 15 minute drive and no shuttle buses to the terminal required!


Photo Credits

The photograph of the terminal interior comes from the Veritas et Venustas blog by architect, urbanist, and author John Massengale. All other photos by Catherine Hurst.

Our recent class featured four different kinds of chiles rellenos (stuffed chiles): cream cheese stuffed jalapeños in escabeche, New Mexican tempura rellenos, ancho chile rellenos, and chiles en nogada.

The last was my favorite. It featured a stuffing that included ground pork, garlic and onion, tomato puree, apples, peaches, plantains, dried apricots, raisins, and almonds. And as if that weren't enough, it was accompanied by a sauce made from pecans, almonds, queso fresco (or feta cheese), half and half, and sherry. The chiles were stuffed, lightly battered, fried, dipped in sauce, and topped with pomegranate seeds. Scrumptious!


Our chef for the day was Danny Cohen, ably assisted by Noe Cano.

And "class" is really not the right word for this experience--it's really a demonstration. The chef (who also teaches culinary classes at Santa Fe Community College) kept up an engaging patter while he cooked, and we could all see what he was doing in the reflection of the overhead mirror.

We students drank coffee and wine, took notes, and ate--a very easy assigment!

I even learned a couple of new cooking facts/tips. For example, fresh jalapeños become chipotles when dried, and poblanos become anchos. And Chef Danny prefers the use of grapeseed oil for cooking (as opposed to canola oil), with olive oil only used to finish.

They do also offer hands-on classes, restaurant walks featuring private chef meetings and tastings in some of the best restaurants in Santa Fe, an onsite market for Southwestern foods and cooking tools, and one or two day team building seminars centered around the experience of cooking and eating together.

I highly recommend the Santa Fe School of Cooking, in spite of the steep price-tag ($70 and up for most classes). Visit in February and enjoy a "bonus" class!

Photo Credits

All photos in this post were taken by my friend and fellow student Linda McIlroy.

Generally accepted bartending lore assigns the origin of the drink to a time period near the end of World War I. The place was either London or Paris, and the inventor was an American Army captain who was driven to and from his local watering hole in the sidecar of a motorcycle. The drink was first mentioned in a bartender's guide in 1922, and 1934 was the first recorded recipe with a sugared rim (my preferred presentation).

Elizabeth Bowen, in The Death of the Heart (published in 1938), offers the cocktail to one of her characters:

Indoors, among the mirrors and pillars, they found Mr. Bursely and Daphne, cozy over a drink. Reproaches and rather snooty laughs were exchanged, then Mr. Bursely, summoning the waiter, did what was right by everyone. Clara and Portia were given orangeade, with hygienic straws twisted up in paper; Daphne had another bronx, Evelyn a side-car. The men drank whisky. . .

The cocktail was popular through the sixties, but faded in the seventies and eighties. Karen Kijewski, in her mystery novel Katwalk, published in 1989, laments their demise:

"Hey, Kat." I turned. "What's in a sidecar?"
"Huh? Oh. Brandy, Triple Sec, sweet and sour and lime--with a sugar rim and a cherry. Nobody drinks them anymore."
He grinned and waved and I waved back, at him and at the memories.

But by the 90s, cocktails in general were coming back in style; an article in the Boston Globe in 1994 describes the scene at a local lounge:

At the bar, the young couple put down their drinks--he with a cubana (sugar syrup, lime juice, aproct brandy, rum), she with a sidecar (Cointreau, lemon juice, brandy)--and step out on the floor to tango.

Another Globe article, six years later, is titled: "Sidecar cocktail rides again." A 2004 Boston Herald headline boasts that the "Sidecar takes back seat to no other cocktail."


And the cocktail was sufficiently mainstream to appear in a NY Times crossword in 2007.

I have been faithful to the sidecar since 1966, and in a future post I'll talk a bit about my history with the drink.

In the meantime, you can watch this video of Rachel Maddow shaking up a sidecar in a New York bar.

Gruene, Texas. Located midway between Austin and San Antonio, it features a whole community of 19th century residences and businesses, which owe their survival to the Depression.

But before that, Henry Gruene built a home for himself and one for his foreman, a cotton gin, a "mercantile", and a dance hall/saloon. Business thrived in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but after a major boll weevil attack and the sorrows of the Depression, the town was largely abandoned. As a result, 1970s restoration efforts had a treasure trove of original architecture to work with, and today the town evokes its origins in several streets of quaint shops, antique stores, and the original dance hall--Gruene Hall. (Unlike the rest of town, the dance hall/saloon never closed!)

On a recent trip to San Antonio, we detoured to Gruene to listen to Santa Fe musician Bill Hearne in the dance hall, meet an Austin friend for lunch, and tour the town. One of the things I really enjoyed was the wordplay in the naming of the shops, restaurants, etc. Though the original German name would have been pronounced "Groon'eh", the locals pronounce it "Green"--and that's how you have to read the signs in this post.

The IAIA's location is ideal for furthering its mission--in Santa Fe, which is the second largest art market in the U.S., and near the 19 native pueblos of New Mexico. In addition, the size and setting of the campus allowed it to be constructed in a way that references and respects native traditions (directions, solstices, etc.), and it is home to native plants and wildlife. On-campus housing includes residences for traditional-age students, as well as family housing units for older students. A new daycare center is expected to open soon.


All facilities are full of native art, and our tour included views of studios and galleries, and art that included painting, metalwork, jewelry, glass, beading, and leatherwork.

This painting by an IAIA student, a Native American version of the Last Supper, was hanging in the Administration building.

This spinning wheel in the IAIA library is by Apache artist Bob Haozous, son of Allan Houser (whom I've written about in an earlier blog).

One of the highlights of our trip was the welcome our group received in the student learning support center, where we were treated to a snack of hot blue corn meal (in a form somewhere between oatmeal and hot drink); a note on the blackboard in the student lounge area indicated that it was a "blue corn morning". Thus warmed and fortified, we were able to venture back out into the cold to complete our tour of this impressive facility.

Here are some clouds from last night with a cold front moving in--real silver linings!

1607 - Juan Martínez de Montoya testified before Acting Governor Cristobal Oñate that he had established the plaza of La Villa de Santa Fe.

1609 - Spanish Viceroy Luis de Velasco signed an order to make Santa Fe the capital of New Mexico on March 30. He also named Pedro de Peralta as Governor.

1610 - The new Governor arrived in Santa Fe to assume his office, and to let the residents know of their new status.

Santa Fe thus lays claim to being the oldest capital city in the U.S.--and it's been a capital under three governments (Spain, Mexico, and the U.S.).

Unfortunately, the weather was rainy off and on all weekend, but all events took place. At the Saturday night concert I attended it rained primarily before the performances began--and the dancers, singers, and musicians were all on a covered stage. Still, a lovely small-town evening! Photographs of performers throughout this post include Black Eagle (Grammy-winning Jemez Pueblo drummers and dancers), Blackfire (Navajo band), singer Lila Downs (whom I actually first saw perform in Massachusetts, at the Somerville Theatre), and the 13 women of the El Paso mariachi group Mariachi Femenil Flores Mexicanas.

Other performances (no photos) were by Ozomatli and "The King of New Mexico Music" Tobias Rene.

I'm currently reading a book about Victorian America (part of my 1905 research) and came across some interesting statistics about gunfights. From 1870-1874, New Mexico had the third largest number of gunfights in the U.S. (states and territories), behind Kansas and Texas. In the next five years, New Mexico was second only to Texas--with 23 gunfights in New Mexico in 1878 alone. In 1880-1884, New Mexico earned the dubious distinction of being #1 in the gunfighting derby.

The 1878-1881 period in NM was known for the Lincoln County War in 1878, and the Dodge City Gang which terrorized Las Vegas from 1879-1880. Several gunfighters from the gang headed out of town to Tombstone, Arizona after a vigilante party of townspeople was formed, though some returned to NM in the next few years. Billy the Kid, present for the Lincoln County War, was killed in Fort Sumner, NM by Sheriff Pat Garrett in 1881.

The number of gunfights in the US forms a neat bell curve--starting with 13 in the period from 1854-1859, peaking at 106 in 1875-1879, and dropping off to 9 by 1910-1914.

In 1908, for example, there were only four gunfights in the US--though two were in New Mexico. One of the remaining two was the fight between Bolivian soldiers and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. (This was counted as a US gunfight since two of the protagonists were Americans.)

Still, I guess it's all in what you count as a gunfight. An 18-year-old boy was shot to death by a 16-year-old in the parking lot of the Santa Fe Place mall this week--a fight over a girl apparently. So it's not quite over yet.

Illustration Credits and References

Statistsics on gunfighting appeared in Almanacs of American Life: Victorian America 1876-1913 by Crandall Shifflett (1996); the author credits Encyclopedia of Western Gunfighters by Bill O'Neal (1979) for this data.

Other information from the Legends of America website.

Photograph of Billy the Kid's death marker courtesy of chucksville.org

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