Morning Coffee

 Coffee at Santa Cecilia on Romero Street.  I nearly always find an open table in the tiny indoor space, but there is also a spacious back patio.

On The Road Again

 We visited the Albuquerque Museum on Wednesday and saw there was a new Visiting Artist installation in the Main Lobby by Eric J. García entitled Since 1776 .

 

An Albuquerque native, García is an Assistant Professor of Painting & Drawing at the University of New Mexico.  He is well known for his massive murals of political cartoons.  This one features U.S. Democracy in peril, with Liberty's right hand chained to the foundation myths and the torch-holding left encircled by razor wire. 

 We enjoyed a brief chat with the Curator of Digital Collections, Jill Hartke, who had set up a table with samples from the photo collection featuring celebrities who have visited the city over the years.  A handout gave a good description of the Collection's holdings which encompasses 200,000 items, along with an account of the sophisticated gear and procedures used to preserve the photos and slides at optimal low temperatures.  The handout also included a link for the Albuquerque Emuseum which I had not seen before.

We did a quick walk-through of the big Route 66 Centennial exhibition.  I'm feeling more charitable toward it than on my first visit.  A lot of effort was made to collect and display the historic items. 

For Margaret the show again called up a torrent of fond memories of a cross-country trip with her parents and two older brothers from Boston to the West Coast.  She turned five on the road. and was ecstatic when she found that her parents had secreted her birthday presents in the car.

Shrooms

 Several of Albuquerque's Branch Libraries have art walls on which local artists are able to display their work. The New Mexico Film Photographers group members have exhibited in a couple. The Los Griegos Branch has particularly nice light.

I happened to be in the Griegos library on the morning when this unique 12-foot-wide fabric tapestry was installed. The subject and the medium seemed particularly well matched.

 I would need a much bigger house to accommodate that 12-foot piece, but off to the right of the tapestry was a charming little assemblage with a dried mushroom in a shadow box frame which I do have a space for.

Free Reads

 I look forward at the beginning of. each month to the new issue of The New York Review of Books.  I access the publication online through our local library's Overdrive collection of books and magazines.  A fortuitous benefit of that accessibility is that I can make use of my old color-screen Kindle Fire tablet which Amazon has crippled to prohibit direct downloads.  The library poses no such restriction, and I can even use it to borrow books with an easy work-around.

To borrow books using the old Kindle I first access the library site on my computer which allows me to borrow a book without restriction.  With the Safari browser on my Kindle Fire I then go to my library account page, select "Loans" and choose the available option to read the book online. 

I read The New Yorker the same way each week, but these days seldom find articles of interest to me.  The Review, however, always has at least a couple book reviews that are  beautifully written.  

The first article this month by Michael Greenberg, Whose Party, succinctly explores the dilemma of the Democratic Party establishment in coming to grips with the explosive growth of its progressive wing, populated mostly by adherents of the Democratic Socialists of America.  The take-down of long-time insider James Carville's scowling complaint about progressives is beautiful.

Further on in the same issue Alma Guillermoprieto brilliantly reviews several books about the life and career of everyone's favorite Mexican artist, Frida Kahlo, in Fridas for Everyone.

Frida - Self Portrait

Mañana De Nuevo

Yesterday for lunch.  Today for dinner.  This new place is too convenient at just two blocks from the house.

 Today was two Carnitas Tacos (slow cooked pork shoulder, guacamole, pineapple, cilantro),  plus a can of Modelo Negra.

New In the Plaza Vieja

Making The Team

New Mexico's Democratic Party Central Committee conducted a four-day electronic election to finally choose Stephanie Garcia Richard as Deb Haaland's running mate; she took 53% of the vote. Pope Jr. got 46%, showing a significant - if not commanding - strength of the Democratic Socialists who backed the State Senator. 

Insider reports on the progress of the selection process were notably sparse.  Joe Monahan has not yet offered any analysis. 

Santa Fe New Mexican