nukes and fire don't mix

We've got a bunch of wildfires going on around here. On June 18th I had a party to celebrate my one year anniversary in Santa Fe. That afternoon on my way to buy ice, I saw a huge smoke plume in the mountains. This was the start of the Pacheco fire, 2 miles from the Santa Fe ski area. It was, and is, a serious fire, only 15% contained at this point. The road up the mountain has been closed at mile marker 9, and smoke has filled the air. The fire destroyed power lines and threatens the watershed.

I took a photo of the smoke plume on Saturday, a week after it had started. This was taken from the riverwalk that we walk on several times a day. Of course there's no water in the river but that's another story.

Sunday a fire broke out not far from Los Alamos and spread with lightning speed, tripling in size in one night. This fire is called the Las Conchas fire which apparently started on private land, and the size and scale of it are frightening. It's currently over 90 square miles, almost twice as large as a terrible fire that destroyed many homes and forest land in 2000, the Cerro Grande fire. That fire burned 47,000 acres at the Bandelier National Monument, and destroyed 100 buildings including some at the lab complex. The forest still hasn't recovered from that fire, which started with a controlled burn that quickly got out of control.

The town of Los Alamos has been evacuated- 12,000 people. And the nuclear lab in Los Alamos is less than a mile from the fire's edge. So far they've been able to keep the fire from spreading to the labs and burning toxins that are stored there. It's a big story, carried by media all over the world. Just enter Los Alamos fire into google or twitter and see what I mean. These photos are from The Atlantic:

The sunsets we've been having with all this smoke in the air have been both eerie and beautiful. Fortunately for us down here in SF, the smoke and fire are spreading north, but we've still got bad air quality. Today I went to the gym to run instead of doing it outside.

A friend who listens to Amy Goodman (I do sometimes, but find it so depressing) said that today a guy who serves as a watchdog of sorts for the lab was on the show, and he said that if New Mexico seceded from the US, that it would represent the third largest nuclear power in the world. That's how much we've got in nukes around here. Of course, LANL is where the bomb was invented. They still employ thousands of people, toiling away at various ways of hitting atoms together to do stuff, good and bad I suppose, depending on your POV. They developed the metal for Nambe objects there. I don't know what else goes on. It's very very mysterious.

I worry most about the 4th of July coming up. We have fields behind our houses where kids like to set off fireworks, and this year that could be disastrous. Not sure what to do about it. Our esteemed governor says she doesn't have the authority to make fireworks illegal- this has to be a legislative act, and the legislature meets for about three days in May I think.

An unanswerable question

I'm in a show opening this weekend here in Santa Fe called Mining the Unconscious. Here is the digital invitation.

This was the result of an open call to artists who are working with the idea of the unconscious and is supposed to have something to do with Jung's Red Book, which is an amazing piece of work. There is a new reproduction of it (the original is sort of a sketchbook he created) and it's way expensive, otherwise I'd buy one. The link takes you to Amazon to buy it if you want. It also has some images from it. I decided to enter my burned Freud book pages, since they are his Interpretation of Dreams, and these were accepted for the show.

They've decided to have some panel discussions on the show themes and they asked me to moderate one called "Why do Artists Make Art?" Why DO artists make art? It's a crazy question. I wonder if people really wonder about it. Because artists sure don't. I was telling a friend about the panel and he said artists sell art to buy beer. But not all artists sell their work. In fact I read that only 20% of the people who call themselves artists (this must be on a census or something) make their living from it. I think even that is a high estimate.

I'll have to do some research on theories. I used to live next to a psychoanalyst who had a lot of artist patients and who had written books on this. He said that artists are mastering form to work through past traumas. I do know that for me, just making stuff makes me feel better, even if it doesn't work. And another artist once told me his son was just like him, always "making stuff." So I think my former neighbor has a point, it's about mastering form, but maybe it's about control in general and the feeling of accomplishment when you end up with something fine and interesting.

I may have to post the question on Facebook to see if I get some answers.

procrastination

I closed up the blog for a while. Reason was, I got a little mired in indecision. And also, I created a blog for my class, and I could barely keep up with that, as my students would attest.

And then there was the matter of my website, which hadn't been redesigned in four years. When I did it back in 2007, I hardly knew what I was doing and I designed it in the clunkiest way imaginable. It drove me crazy to see all those files from divided up slices in Photoshop. No wonder it loaded fairly slowly. So I intended to redo it and the months went by. Basically, over a year went by. Finally I got the newest version of Dreamweaver two weeks ago and set to work.

In the interim, Dreamweaver and web design in general had become far more complex. I won't go into the specifics, but a shortened version is, I didn't understand what "box model" meant. I really struggled with trying to figure it out from reading and experimenting but I finally went out and bought Dreamweaver CS5 for Dummies. I don't love those books but at least it got me to the point that I understood the concepts. And so now, after many many hours, it's finished. And linked to this here blog, so I'll be leaning toward the arty from here on in, though I still am so surprised and amused by life in Santa Fe that I'm sure I'll continue my outsider status for a while.

I got my studio organized, thanks to getting a shed built outside to put the garage type stuff in. Here are two photos:

 

The light is from two solar tubes that I had put in before I moved, during the renovation. It's nice and bright in there. It's really quite pleasant. Even Maya seems fairly comfortable, after hoovering the floor first. I have to constantly check for pushpins or other sharp objects so she doesn't get them.

Now I'll be heading to Miami for a few days, but when I get back, with the website finished (hoorah) I can get back to work on my NY Times series (see back wall) and my Frieze series.

It's Memorial Day. Think kindly of our men and women in far off wars and hope they come back safely to their loved ones.

Trees of gold

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Of all the beautiful seasons here in Santa Fe, autumn is the most beautiful. Colors seem to distill and increase in saturation- strong contrasts of yellow and dark green, softer palettes of lavender, gold, sage, sienna. Fall colors in New England are beautiful, too- the reds and oranges of the sugar maples reflected in lakes. But fall here is breathtaking. From down here where I live, I can see the wide swatches of aspens in the mountains. At sunset especially, they glow. But to really be surrounded by them, you need to drive up towards the ski area, about 15 miles above the plaza. It's about another 2500 feet up, but it feels like more. The road is long, with switchbacks that take you up and up. I hadn't been up there for many years, not since I used to come up and paint up there, just as many people were doing today. That was maybe 15 years ago. Now the altitude and the windy road are a bit much for me, and happily, my friend Tina offered to drive us up there.

I learned today that the reason there are so many aspens in the sangre de christo's is because of a monumental forest fire that occurred around the turn of the century (the last one.) It burned down the fir trees, and the aspens, loving sun as they do, were the first to come back. Eventually, the firs could take over again. Meanwhile, this is one of the largest groves of aspens in the country. Also, aspens are connected by roots underground, so they keep spreading. I had some in my backyard, but they weren't watered and they died. One "orpan" grew in my next door neighbor's yard. They don't really love it down this far, but they will grow if you baby them.

Photos can't capture what they look like. The small coin-shaped leaves flutter in the slightest breeze. So when you're up there you see this shimmering golden sight. Even Christopher Hitchens might call it God's country.

Gringo excursion

Normally I don't like to go to artists' studio tours. This might be selfish of me, since I am an artist after all- but I find it awkward sometimes to walk into someone's studio and not see anything of interest, and then I feel obligated to talk to the person and say nice things that I don't really feel. I want all people who make stuff to feel good about what they make, and well, especially here in this neck of the woods, where there are scads of people following their bliss and taking ceramics and printmaking and book arts and glass blowing and on and on, there is just a lot of not very good stuff out there. So I don't go on studio tours except when asked specifically, as I was yesterday, by my friend Lisa (seen in photo.)

We went up to Pecos, about 20 minutes north of Santa Fe, a small town, very cute, surrounded by lovely landscape. The ride up there was beautiful as you go into forested hilly country and then into a valley. Lisa has a painter friend named Richard Sober who lives there, so we went there first. He had a lot of small landscape oils on masonite all around the studio, which was his large garage and which made me wish I had more room in mine. But then, he's in Pecos. Which, by the way, is pronounced PEH-kohs. Not PAY-kohs. If you pronounce it the second way, you are obviously a gringo to be sneered at. I liked Richard's little paintings. They reminded me of how I used to paint when I was doing landscapes. I ended up buying a small gouache that was framed, and I can't believe I spent the money because God knows I need every cent to try to finish furnishing this house, but I felt like it was a "pay it forward" kind of thing because I did sell one piece in the NY show at McKenzie Fine Art.

We went to one other studio but it was kind of -eh- so we went to lunch. We drove into what I suppose you'd call the center of town. There was a general store and a restaurant, Frankie's Casanova. There was no traffic light. It was a four way stop. Now, back when I went to Marfa, Texas in 2000, it was a really small town, but they had one traffic light. Probably more now. I'm anxious to go back there.

We ate an enchilada casserole at the waiter's suggestion. We split it and it was delish, just enough and very fresh tasting. They were closing soon (it was about 1:30) so we scooted out to check out the general store for tzotchkes espanol, but the store had groceries and liquor and useful things. There were two young girls having a little bake sale in the portico in front. We chatted with them a little. Lisa said it must be nice to live somewhere that is so pretty, and the girls had blank expressions of mild tolerance. We bought a delicious coconut chocolate square for one dollar and wished we had more.

The not so missing manual

I had heard that I needed a copy of the "Annual Manual" that the Santa Fe Reporter publishes every year. Subtitled "The Locals' Guide to Living in Santa Fe." Happily, they put that apostrophe in the right place. Can't stop reading things with a professor's critical eye.

I learned a lot reading this today. I learned for instance that the average first frost is on October 10, and the average last frost is on May 1. That's a pretty long winter. Average snowfall is 32 inches, average rainfall 14 inches. I think we had about a third of that last night in a spectacular storm which washed away a lot of my street.

There are a lot of interesting display ads. Ecodiversity.org has educational videos about everything "from beekeeping to using algae for food and fuel." More gardening in the desert, ads for waterwise plant greenhouses, and hydroponic indoor gardens. Ads for clay wall installation, bioshield healthy living products, and of course stone. Under the Health & Wellness section (ampersand used) are ads for a dentist who has a picture of a seated buddha, and the text "Not Dental Chair. Seat of Knowledge." Mercury free dentistry, Rubenfeld Synergy training (what on earth is that?) Herbal Medicine, natural skin care products ("Never put anything on your skin that you wouldn't put in your mouth.") There are 20 public elementary schools, four middle schools, six charter schools, three high schools. Numerous prep and Indian schools. A school called "The Gentle Nudge School" and one called "Academy for the Love of Learning."

In the Media section, 16 publications produced here, newspapers and magazines included. Twenty-six different websites having to do with Santa Fe, including blogs. I will be checking some of these out but most of them seem to be whining about what doesn't work in government here. What else is new. Two women are running for governor to succeed Bill Richardson. Neither one looks too appealing to me.

Sports, transportation, museums, restaurants, places to do and get things, all are in the Annual Manual.

water

June is the hottest month here. That's what they say. July and August you get the monsoons, but June, just sun, sun, sun. It's been hot, 90-ish some days, like today. In New York 90 is brutal. Here, it's dry heat, but it's still pretty brutal. I heard on the radio the humidity is 5%. It reminded me, oh yeah, we're in the desert. Quite a change to adjust to. It makes sense to do things early in the morning- midday is very quiet. And people get up early here.

I have a swamp cooler and I turn it on usually around 3 or 4 o'clock when the day is as hot as today, which is a thing on the roof that works by pumping water through a fan in some way and blowing it into the house. It's pretty effective, actually. I have to turn it off after a few hours when it gets too cold. Nights are cool and I leave the windows open and hope that I'm not woken up by barking dogs or neighbors getting up at the crack of dawn. Like this morning, there was thumping and conversation at 6:30 AM. I didn't go back to sleep. I thought about how hard it is for me to get up at 6:30 for school- but this morning the sun was streaming in and it hardly seemed early.

Water is the answer to almost anything. When I'm feeling tired or dizzy, I drink water. Staying hydrated. That's the key. When I first got here someone told me to drink and drink and drink. It helped, because I didn't get the usual altitude headache, or at least, not too bad a headache. But I still get lightheaded. You don't realize how parched you are or how hot you are, because you're not really sweating. But you are parched, and you are hot, and the sun is relentless, and so you have to keep drinking water.

When I first got here three weeks ago, there was water in the river and it was beautiful. Now it's dry again and I wish I had taken a photo. It snowed a lot this winter, all the way into April and even early May, so there was a lot of water run-off. They've just about finished the river walkway and I've been running on it in the mornings.

Lots of art world luminaries in town this weekend for the opening of the SITE Santa Fe Biennial. This year the whole show is animation, but they didn't want to call it a show of animation because that sounded like something you'd see on Saturday morning TV. I'll post more about it when I have a chance to spend some time in there. I've been volunteering and last night my job was to keep people from touching the scrims hung throughout the space which hold the screens. It was a cocktail party for the big givers, so no one touched the scrims. I did direct a few people to the restrooms.

I'm pretty sure I saw Shirley MacLaine there.