A Colorful Neighbor

This shop is just a block from us.  Should you be in need of knickknacks, trinkets or tchotchkes this is the place to go.  I seldom find anything I really need there, but it is fun to browse because of the endless variety of decorative items.

Saturday

 Back to our new local favorite for dinner.

 We each had a Carnitas Taco.  I added a Mexican Lager

 Over to the Harwood Gallery at 7th and Mountain for the current exhibition.

 One of the first things I looked at was this fine little linocut print by Li Ming Chu.

I liked all of the prints, but the Yerba Mansa sings to me from the Bosque.

San Felipe St.

Dem Bones

 In a morning visit. to. the. New Mexico Museum of Natural History much of our time was taken with a viewing of the spectacular Animal Armor exhibit.

 

A portion is devoted to showing how humans have adopted Nature's design strategy.

The animated Bisti Beast in the main hall is the prime attraction for young visitors.

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Catching Up

 I have finally gotten around to  reading The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson.  The book was published in 2010  I don't know what preoccupation preempted my attention back then to produce such an oversight.  What finally woke me up was stumbling on an interview of Wilkerson on the New Mexico PBS program,  Report from Santa Fe, first aired in 2013.

Lorene Mills interviews Isabel Wilkerson

 Wilkerson, before producing the book, had a long and much acclaimed. career in journalism which included a Pulitzer -- the first given to an African-American woman.  She conducted a thousand interviews in the fifteen years of researching and writing The Warmth of Other Sons.  In it she recounts the decades-long story of the migration of African Americans from the Jim Crow Southern states to the North and West of the U.S.

 I found Wilkerson's speaking ability in the PBS program to be totally captivating.  I don't recall listening to anyone before who was so articulate.  Her eloquence in speaking about her experience in producing the book made me immediately resolve to find a copy.  A quick search turned up a copy on AbeBooks for just $7.50, shipping included.

The story of the great migration, covering decades is a complicated one which the author makes into an enjoyable read partly by focusing on the lives of three individuals who found very different paths out of the South.  

For me, the book has got me to remembering my own developing awareness of Black History.  In fact, I recall when I was in school being skeptical about the idea that there was a need for such a categorization of History, even though I had seen a lot of evidence supporting such a need during the course of the civil rights struggles of the 1950s and '60s.

Travel and life experiences eventually showed me the way to a more critical view of how History is constructed and told (and often distorted), but even these many years later Wilkerson's book is filling in a lot of important facts and ideas for me about this country's record of dealing with civil rights and human rights.

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Nina Simone: Mississippi Goddam 

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.

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THIRD THURSDAY

August 20, 5:00-8:30 p.m.

Free night at the Museum: 

 

Mural Celebration

6:30pm

Lobby

Celebrate the completion of the Museum's newest lobby installation titled, Since 1776... by Eric J. García. Join the artist for a brief talk about the inspiration behind the work, his creative process, and the symbolism woven throughout the mural.