Category: New Mexico

Keeping it in the family

Last night, The Good Man took me to see a play called “Perla” staged by Teatro Vision at the Mexican Heritage Plaza in San Jose.

The play was written by Leonard Madrid, a native New Mexican, and is set on the front porch of a home in Portales, NM. (funny, there in the theater, they didn’t capture that certain “wind off the feed lot” that I always associate with Portales.)

The story surrounds a pair of sisters who were raised by their very protective aunt after their father, a noted Norteño singer, ran off, and their mother died (both of sorrow and of cancer). The younger sister, Perla, goes on a quest in dreams and reality to find her lost father. However, finding him proves to be less fulfilling than she’d hoped.

Supporting a New Mexican playwright was my first objective. As an added bonus, I was pleasantly surprised by the beauty of the Mexican Heritage Plaza, and the efforts the cast went to in order to capture their characters.

One of the main cast members is married to a man from New Mexico, so she used her mom-in-law for guidance.

They also had a New Mexico woman as dramaturge. Yeah, ok, I had to look up that word. It’s the person who helps set the time and place for the cast so they can build their characters. So the New Mexican dramaturge had the job to help the cast and crew understand New Mexico.

Mostly, they did a pretty good job. There were a couple anachronisms, but in general, they caught the flavor and culture of my home state.

I *might* be a bit protective about my home…you know, just a little. So of course I had an eagle eye out on everything.

As we went on a preview night, the cast hadn’t fully relaxed into their lines, but it was a wonderful story and well told by the actors. It felt like the director may have over edited the script a bit, as there were leaps in time that didn’t flow smoothly, but mostly, it was a sad tale that ends with redemption.

My favorite part was a young girl who led Perla around in dreamscape, much like the Coyote Angel from The Milagro Beanfield War.

As there is the National Association of Latino Arts and Culture (NALAC) Conference happening this week in San Jose, there were a lot of people from all over visiting San Jose who also came to see the show. It was fun to hear the New Mexico people in the audience finding each other.

“I’m from Taos, and my friend is from Silver City,” I heard a few rows back. And I smiled. My people.

The only sad part of the night for me was when one of the employees of the theater told me that on opening night this weekend, they are making sopapillas.

I gasped when he said that! I am going to miss the sopapillas?!?!

Then he replied, “yeah, that seems to be the reaction of all the people from New Mexico. I had no idea that sopapillas were such a big deal.”

Oh silly non-New Mexican yet very kind man…sopapillas are like a religion, second only to the cult of green chile!

Plot devices that no longer work

So, in the middle of the night last night, while I was *not* sleeping, I got to thinking about, well, phone booths.

And how there aren’t any around anymore.

Phone booths were such a key element to the plot lines of a LOT of books and movies.

For example, where would Superman be if not for the phone booth!

Where does mild mannered Clark Kent put on his blue tights these days?

Probably the bathroom at a Starbucks, but that’s not the point.

The point is, there are no phone booths on every city street corner anymore. Where are you supposed to take that random and creepy phone call? Where are you supposed to wait for the kidnappers to give you your next clue? How do you have an angry confrontation with a guido over how long you are on the phone? You don’t. Not anymore.

The movie “Crazy Heart” had a scene with a phone booth. It was by the side of a desolate road in New Mexico (playing the part of Arizona). It felt odd even in the context of the movie. It was in a weird location and had no wires leading to or from it.

It just didn’t work. The era of the phone booth is dead.

How many of our great stories told over the years involved a phone booth?

Or for that matter, payphones in general?

It’s just not the same.

The lonely cowboy with a stack of dimes trying to get his lady on the line, rain pouring outside the glass phone booth, operator intoning “fifty cents please” in a nasaly voice. That’s literature!

Cowboy flips open his mobile device and curses the low signal strength just doesn’t have the same je ne sais quoi, ya know?

And so then I thought about another lost plot device. The lockers in bus stations, train stations and airports. (ok, I already lamented their loss here, but I’m going there again.)

You know, the bad guy stashes the loot to cool it off, inserts a quarter, takes the key and no one is the wiser? Until the bad guy is bumped off and ANOTHER bad guy takes the key and tries to figure out where it goes so he can get the stash?

Oh yeah. That’s good suspense!

The movie “Desperately Seeking Susan” centered around the Rosanna Arquette character getting Madonna’s locker key that held her valise and that really cool jacket. Remember?

Yeah, we really don’t have those anymore, the quarter to rent a locker places. A few gyms have ’em and a local nature preserve has a few near the walking trails, but mostly people leave their stuff in their car or carry a backpack anymore.

Another good plot device, dead.

Oh, and how about meeting people at the gate at the airport!?!

How many great, dramatic scenes involve someone stepping off a plane and a loved one, bad guy, limo guy, complete stranger, detective, etc. is there waiting?

It’s just not quite as dramatic to have the waiting happen down at baggage claim where you hope you find the right person.

Or heck, really going back, how about waiting out on the tarmac while the starlet decends the metal stairs. Nope.

I won’t EVEN start down the road of the loss of manual transmission cars (I covered it here), but do you think Steve McQueen’s hot little green fast back Mustang in “Bullitt” was an automatic? Oh no, I don’t think so.

I know, I know. I’m being a fuddy duddy and time must always march on. But as a writer, I lament the loss of ANY good device to keep a story moving along….

New Additions to Our Family

So, out of nowhere about a month ago, I decided I wanted to get a new pet.

I’ve no idea where this impulse came from. It just did. Considering that we can’t have any more fuzzy pets in the rental place where we live, it became clear that I had to go small.

Like fish sized.

Hmm. Trouble is, the only fish I’ve ever owned in my life was a goldfish from the New Mexico State Fair.

That one lived quite a while, by the by.

So this quest required some research. I looked for a fish that was easy to get set up and easy to care for. The answer was simple, a betta.

I spent hours going through the pages on bettatalk.com and I learned a lot. I made lists. I fretted. I thought about it a lot. And then yesterday, the waiting was over.

The Good Man and I went to the pet store.

And we came home with not one but two new fish friends!

Without further ado, may I introduce you to:

Margaret The Fish

Margaret The Fish

She is actually The Good Man’s fish. When we set out on our journey, we were just going to get one fish. But once we got to the store, The Good Man was so charmed by this inquisitive little girl, she had to come home with us.

I’m charmed by her too, actually.

So heck, easy solution. We decided to get two fishes and let them live in their own tanks side-by-side.

It’s a good solution.

Margaret is a pretty little fish and she’s happy to have interaction and already recognizes us. She’s not eating a whole lot yet so we’re hoping she’s still just a little shocky from the move and will be feeling right soon.

So now that you’ve met Margaret…please meet:

Frank The Fish

Frank The Fish

So named because of his vibrant blue eyes. He has all of the looks and none of the charm of Sinatra.

As you can see in his photo, Frank is a bit of a stalker. He stares at Margaret.

A lot.

In a creepy mouth breathing way.

He’d totally send her inappropriate messages on Facebook if he was a human. Instead he just stares. A lot.

Margaret mostly ignores him.

So we’ve got them set up in their respective tanks and they are doing (*coff-coff*) swimmingly.

As for the existing member of our pet family….

Well, the word indignant comes to mind.

The feline is sort of not amused by these new items taking our attention.

Thankfully, she doesn’t try to attack them. She just watches, shrugs, and walks away.

I suppose all will settle down in the house soon.

And The Good Man and I are learning a lot about how to care for these new friends.

I never thought I’d be a fish person, but here I am, all enamored of my fish.

Tis a crazy, wonderful, mixed up life.

Happy Awkward Easter!

Because you didn’t ask, I decided to provide a blast from the past.

Easter, April 8, 1976 from our backyard in Albuquerque:

I’m only sorry I had to drag my siblings into this.

I’m the shortest one. You know, the one with a deathgrip on my Easter basket.

Man, I loved that dress. It had a sash and everything.

We’d been to Easter Mass that morning.

Mom had sung “Jeeeesus Chriiiiist is riiiiiisen todaaaaaay!” loudly along with the congregation and the church organ (man, she loved that song. Something about all the allelujahs.)

Ham was in the oven and the backyard Easter egg hunt was soon to begin.

I always did love Easter. A new dress. New white sandals. A basket full of candy. Yeah baby!

Anyhow, Happy Easter to all who celebrate it!

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Oh, also, because no one asked, on the next page of that same photo album….

Here’s what the 1976 Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta looked like:

We all have to remember in our own way

A tree stands in the median on I-25, north of Las Cruces, not quite to Radium Springs.

It’s a scrubby little tree, maybe a mesquite or a juniper. You know, the kind of hardy tree you see out there in the New Mexico desert. Something tenacious.

This particular tree stands out because it’s festooned with tinsel and garland.

It’s been that way for several years. I’ve seen it, driven past it several times, actually.

The first time I saw it, the time of year wasn’t much past Christmas, so I figured it was a leftover holiday decoration.

But when I saw it again a few years later, I realized it wasn’t just leftover holiday decorations, but something more serious. I knew it was a roadside shrine often found in our fair New Mexico.

The roadside shrine is a memorial located where someone has lost their life out there on the roads. It’s a pretty common sight in New Mexico.

It’s a tradition I grew up with and so it’s never occurred to me to question it. I find outside the borders of my homestate, it’s questioned. A lot.

Questions of taste and decency, actually. Whether it’s appropriate, or not, to put one’s grief so garishly on display.

See, I think we in our American culture have really weird and uptight ideas about death and dying. Ok, it’s probably because I grew up in the cultures of New Mexico that I feel that way.

But I’ve always really appreciated the Hispanic and Latino cultures celebrating and remembering their loved ones who have moved on. I appreciate the ability to show grief openly without remorse or embarrassment.

Dia de los Muertos offrendas and roadside shrines are simply the outward display of deeply held cultural beliefs. Beliefs such as that the dead have moved on to another world, but a world that is not so far away from our own.

A woman is comforted, perhaps, by knowing that her child, while not in her arms, is not that far away. While she remembers with a keening loss the child who was taken away, she can still bake bread and place sweets on an offrenda, and it helps her cope.

A mourning wife can drive to the spot where her husband met his end, and remember him. She refreshes the shiny bits of paper, and can feel her husband not so far away.

I think this is healthy, personally, and I don’t find it to be weird. I find it to be beautiful.

Those roadside shrines are called descansos. They aren’t just tacky plastic crosses and brightly shining tinsel. For the family that constructed the shrine, they are an essential part of the grieving process.

The garlanded tree located in I-25 highway median is a descanso to honor the memory of a child.

The shrine in the photo at the end of this post honors two kids who rolled their ATV by the irrigation banks on the Bosque in Los Lunas.

When someone you truly love dies, the grief never goes away. It tends to ebb and flow, welling up sometimes, overwhelming. Other times, the volume is turned down and you can almost, but not quite, forget.

I think we all have to find our own way of grieving.

No one can say who is right or wrong.

Source: Las Cruces Sun News