Category: 2018

You know how when you find that perfect spot for something? When you don’t think it’s actually going to fit – but you try it anyway and it does. It slides right in there and it’s just so tidy and handy, organized and contained, and you wonder why you never thought to put it in that perfect spot before?

And then – you never see it again?

I spent 4 days in San Diego bumming macintosh power cords off my relatives because I “forgot” mine. Luckily, my smart and talented relatives are mac people (of course). Obviously they are smarter and more talented than me, because I had no power cord.

I hadn’t actually forgotten it. I more like lost it. Except I didn’t just randomly lose track of it, laying around somewhere. I remember very clearly, putting it very carefully, in that perfect spot!

I’m home now, and I still can’t find it. Someday I will find it – when I no longer have this macintosh and my new one takes a different type of plug. Meanwhile, I have my power cord somewhere – safe and secure in its perfect spot.

Guess I’ve gotten so used to writing “acting manager” for the past 6 months that I’m going to still be doing that for awhile (for those of you who noticed my typo, now fixed, in the last blog). Since you all just read this when it sends your phone an email, you never see my later edits. You don’t know what you’re missing! (Not much, don’t worry.)

I flew to San Diego today to see family, which is wonderful, but I’m all tired out.

I am now the manager of the Compliance Reporting Group of the Air Quality Bureau, New Mexico Environment Department (after being acting manager for 6 of the 7 months I’ve been with New Mexico state).

I currently have two excellent employees and I’m going to be hiring 4 more – I hope that goes well!

Last weekend I spent all day at the art galleries in Santa Fe with my friend. Then I took this picture.

and this one.

And now you can tell what it is:

On Friday at work we had a full day of cultural training. A Navajo man came and taught us about New Mexico history and the current cultural ramifications that we encounter as state employees.

Almost 50% of New Mexicans are Spanish. I am not using the American terms of “Hispanic” or “Latino/Latina” because many of our locals do not like either of those terms. In the rest of the country, those terms often imply recent immigrants whose culture is completely different than our locals, many of whom can trace their family’s arrival to this region to the 1500’s and 1600’s. This land was ruled first by Native Americans, then Spain, then Mexico, and now the US.

The Spanish here in New Mexico, unlike other parts of our country, are not oppressed minorities, they are not recent immigrants struggling to assimilate; they are our locals, they are our elected leaders, they are our educated professionals, they are our wealthy families and our poor families, and they are my coworkers.

About 10% of New Mexicans are Native Americans. Some were forced to resettle here from other parts of this country, others have been here, in what we now call New Mexico, for many centuries.

It’s unclear how many natives were here when large numbers of Spanish started migrating north into this land, but it is clear that huge native populations were wiped out. A lot of the death was due to epidemics, which the natives had not developed resistance to. There is some evidence that at times the Spanish may have attempted to deliberately increase the spread those epidemics, although there were also attempts made by the Spanish to stem the epidemics – probably because many Spanish took natives as slaves, and didn’t want their slaves to die.

There were atrocities on all sides, protracted warfare, kidnapping, and brutality, over several centuries. Yes, there were intermarriages, but there was also enormous amounts of rape. The cultural warfare continued all the way into the 1900’s, with broken treaties, natives’ land being illegally stolen, and children being forcibly sent to boarding schools to “civilize” and beat the “Indian” out of them. We have people here who are alive today who remember these events.

I am sure my own ancestors must have been both the victims and perpetrators of atrocities over the centuries. But we didn’t retain those memories, probably because those events happened somewhere on the other side of the world. I think those historical memories stay most strongly tied to the place where they happened.

The Spanish and the Native Americans have been here for centuries. They know the villages where these things happened. These villages still exist. Some of these villages have gone from having a Native American name, to a Spanish name, and back again to a Native American name. The locals and the natives know and remember and still bear the last names of their ancestors. We see and recognize these names in each other today. It does not help that some of the natives now bear the last names of their former Spanish masters.

I learned how the “doings” (religious rites) of the Native Americans contrast sharply with the local Spanish/Catholic festivals like Día de Muertos (Day of the Dead) and how hard it is for our natives when our locals have those decorations up in the workplace.

Into all this I come ignorantly, enjoying the sense of place of this unique region, the spicy food, the earthy architecture, the hot sharp smell of piñon pine and peppers, the bright colors, the flowing languages, the names of the streets that sound like poetry. The beauty of the desert and the warmth of the culture is what makes it truly a “Land of Enchantment”. We come here ignorantly; we fall in love with the feel of it all.

And now in more recent history, odd, added wrinkles. Santa Fe is the third largest art market in the country after NY and LA, beating out San Francisco and Chicago; this little town with a population of only 80,000, selling paintings and sculptures worth hundreds of thousands each.

And we are the home, the creators, of the nuclear bomb. Scientists from all over the world were sent here – and continue to be sent here. The culture of science and war is added to the mix.

The spring winds blow harshly and fiercely at 50 mph; dirt, dirt, blowing dirt, dirt in my nose and dirt in my eyes and dirt in my lungs. Wind howling across the top of this exposed hill we are calling home, this home that does not feel like an adequate shelter, does not feel like it is protecting me, this vulnerable house perched on a hill in the screaming winds.

I miss California, where the soft, moist air nurtures the spring flowers. California, where I would awake to the sound of birds and the feel of the damp dew on the grass, and the bright light green of the freshly leafed trees. California, where you always know that the dark blue strip of ocean is right there in the distance, even when you can’t quite see it.

And so I sit in a politely tense auditorium, wind and sand hammering the building, and listen as my local coworkers and a Navajo leader talk about respect and compassion, trauma, abuse and genocide.

Two days later I sit in a gorgeous, historic local church, where the congregation prays, reads, and sings in Spanish about a quarter of the service, in deference to the fact that it was once a Spanish church, even though now we are mostly English-only speakers, who have moved here recently from places like California and Minnesota. We set aside our awkwardness and gamely struggle to sound out the unfamiliar words and phrases. La Palabra viva de Dios. Demos gracias a Dios.

And then today:

Chilokaka is my keeper. I have food for my belly, skins for my back, a warm lodge, and love. He lets me rest in the valleys of the long grass, beside the clear running water. When it is my time to walk to the south to join my brothers and sisters in the land of souls, I will walk upright in courage because Grandfather Creator is with me. His eagle flies over me and brother wolf walks by my side to protect me and calm my spirit. Grandfather, you have sent me game while my enemies look on and are amazed. You have placed eagle feathers in my hair and smoked me with cedar. My lodge is full of laughter and love. Your good things and your kindness will be with me through all the rising and setting suns, through all the winters and summers of my life, and I will stand in the center of Chilokaka’s universe for all time. (Psalm 23, Modern Choctaw English version by Matt Lewis.)

And I sat and I cried because I have known that poem since childhood, but I never understood it until now. “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.” Even though the word “death” is right there in that line, I never understood that the writer was talking about dying. He was talking about facing his own death. I never knew it; I didn’t get it until I read, “When it is my time to walk to the south to join my brothers and sisters in the land of souls, I will walk upright in courage…”