The women behind a great man who changed New Mexico
The logic would seem irrefutable: The atomic age made modern New Mexico; Robert Oppenheimer was the man most responsible for making the atomic bomb; three women in his life helped shape the man; these women are important for us today to understand.
This logic led me to An Atomic Love Story: The Extraordinary Women in Robert Oppenheimer’s Life by Shirley Streshinsky and Patricia Klaus, which was published in September...
Weekly Poem: We Considered Ourselves
The towers on Sandia Crest transmit
through sunset in some other home, Smokey
Bear is dead like a pop song
on a distant radio I keep
toying with the dials flipping the brights in a code
here no one remembers the first fire,
distant suns or one close star...
Following dreams – to the end of the road
How far should you follow your dreams? When do dreams become obsessions? Obsessions become delusions? Delusions become tragedy?
These are the questions I pondered as I left a Saturday evening performance of a new play, Up (The Man in the Flying Chair) at the Mother Road Theater in Albuquerque...
Weekly Poem: Tonight the Moon is Mexican
and so is the wind
and so are the oleanders
the wind is bothering.
The porch light is no longer
anything but Mexican.
It’s true; tonight
is full of this miracle.
The river
is finally Mexican and...
Plants that don’t just sit there
Peter D’Amato walks among the hundreds of plants arranged in rows in the country’s—and possibly the world’s —largest collection of flesh-eating plants until he reaches a Venus flycatcher with hungrily gaping petals. He carefully lifts a live worm and lays it on the lower petal.
This is the eerie, beautiful and fascinating world of carnivorous plants. Once rarities, carnivorous plants have multiplied geometrically in recent years...
Weekly Poem: Thanksgiving Day
From the road,
the Brazos Cliffs rise up suddenly from the valley floor,
as the mountain falls away
and leaves brown, gray rock
exposed like broken bones.
I imagine being the first to trundle up the hillside in furs
with food,
and stepping up to the ridge and looking out
and down:
2,000 feet...
Art Collaboration Brings “Quantum Bridge” Mural to ABQ
Warehouse 508, 516 ARTS and The City of Albuquerque Public Art Urban Enhancement Program are celebrating the completion of a 180-foot long mural as part of a collaboration called Heart of the City. The mural was created by a team of youth apprentices from Warehouse 508 under the direction of lead guest artist Aaron Noble.
A celebration for the unveiling of the mural will be on Sunday, November 24, 2-5pm with refreshments and a chance to meet the artists...
Bullfighting and Border Crossing in Tijuana
Imagine what a surprise it was when my wife, Julie said that she wanted to go to Tijuana, Mexico. For months, she has been concerned about my monthly trips across the border (mostly Ciudad Juárez) but I have long wanted her to see what border life is like, especially in the safer environment of Tijuana.
The occasion was the visit of Julián López Escobar, “El Juli,” the world’s greatest bullfighter in my opinion and a very unique human being. Born in Madrid, Spain on October 3, 1982, his parents enrolled him in the Madrid School of Tauromachy when he was only nine years old...
Tragedy and comedy on the Albuquerque stage
It may seem paradoxical but it often happens that traveling to distant places gives you a clearer understanding of home. Having just returned to New Mexico after three months in northern California, I have acquired a new and broader perspective on some aspects of New Mexico. One of them is the unusual theater scene in the Albuquerque area.
All this is by way of commenting on two Albuquerque plays I saw last weekend...
Weekly Poem: Letters From The Dark
One friend writes from prison,
as helpless as I am
to help him.
Another friend, dead, reveals
himself through words left behind, signs
of him I never noticed
when I thought I knew him...