Month: August 2013

Our mission in Santa Fe: see, taste, absorb. Sunday was a beautiful day. There was a good breeze and clouds by noon that broke the heat spell (100 degrees).  I visited the Loretto church with the spiral staircase that couldn’t be built the way it is… and lasts 100 years later, beautiful and strong. We took a tram tour and visited Canyon Road (all the galleries) and museum hill (Native American museums), then we went to the Loretto Mission and Spa for lunch.  I expected exhorbitant prices, but we drank Monk’s Ale made up in the Monastery and had $15 brunches. Not too bad.  I then went on to The Museum of Indian Women in the Arts and an exhibit of the paintings of Helen Hardin, the middle woman in a family of women artists. Helen’s mother is Pablita Velarde, the first Indian woman to professionally paint for a living. Helen received her mother’s talent and took it to the moon and Helen’s daughter is now preserving the legacy with a gallery and painting career of her own.  They are blessed, beautiful, accomplished women who had to sacrifice to use their talents, but OH how amazing is their work.  We are so conscious of using the term Native American and in Santa Fe, they are called Indian.  We see a lot of wonderful colorful art and dress and jewelry here. I have visited museums, galleries and churches and will do 3 more today (Monday) but again, I’m ahead of myself! After the museum, Chuck and I strolled once again through the Plaza and the last day of the Arts and Crafts Fair then drove up Canyon road to stop occasionally and photograph painted doors and adobe walls and amazing galleries! I saw a sign for Fine Judaic Art and we pulled "down" a hill to a beautiful little museum. The artist is Sara M. Novenson and she has written and illustrated Women of the Bible and the Psalms.  She showed me her work. For example she illustrates the Song of Songs, or Bible story or Psalm and surrounds the painting with script (in Hebrew).  I took her card and information and told her I would like to keep in touch as I too am working on the Psalms and would love to incorporate her work  somehow (vision, illustrations).  I always try to be aware of "angels" who guide me… You never know – her sign was really small and I totally missed it when we drove by on the tour… I was supposed to spot her sign at 5pm as she was closing up. I was supposed to find her. We then climbed back up out of that tiny parking lot (we are in a very big van and it can be cumbersome but gets us around…) We then continued up to find Museum hill to find the Storytelling at the Wheelwright Museum. Well the museum was closed at 5pm but I knew I saw the Storytelling information someplace. So I said, "Let’s just go sit on that bench and you read and I’ll draw for a while" (we had about 1 1/2 hour to "kill"). There are 4 museums up there on the top of a hill – all closed at 5pm.  We sat, and I drew while Chuck read, and then 2 cars pulled in!  A family who came to picnic before the story telling!  Great! Then the wind started blowing and giant black clouds threatened … actually the black clouds and lightening stayed over the mountains. Cars began to arrive and we became a part of America as little children played ball, families settled on blankets, and the Peabodys pulled out chairs and shared wine with a veteran. Chat chat chat and then the story teller started with a story about the Cayote and the Skunk. He went on to tell the legend of an Indian boy whose mother lost him, but the cayote carried him to the deer to be raised.  All the stories had obedient children and the changing of hearts to the good.  Wonderful stories! We then realized we couldn’t find our way back down to the hotel and so used our trusty GPS to get us there. Arrived safe. Today is cool out due to the storms. We’ll visit the Georgia O’Keeffe museum near the Plaza, 2 churches (Guadaloupe and San Miguel – both about 400 years old), and maybe a small Italian restaurant, or some small restaurant about 3pm.  Then at 6pm Music on the Plaza in the bandstand begins. Repeat last night: get out the chairs, jackets and blanket, wine. Ummmmmm. Santa Fe: have I told you lately that I love you?

Dear readers! What a lovely two days we have had here in the West.  First let me tell you about Carlsbad Caverns.  If you haven’t been, or if you are grandparents (Donna and Lee) take the kids, grandkids and head west. I strongly recommend the caverns in Sonora and then Carlsbad Caverns, both a far distance from most of my east coast friends and family, but so impressive.  And to top off a visit to Carlsbad’s King’s Palace and "The Big Room" among others, you get Bats!  During the summer about 1/2 million bats live at Carlsbad in one cave.  So after an impressive cave tour and then an educational talk by the park ranger, 300 people trooped into an outdoor amphitheater and everyone turned off all electrical devices and we became really quiet. Even the babies and small children waited….. and then! out came bats. Now we have done this on our lake with friends Ron and Cindy. So when the bats were coming out in groups of 20s and I was squealing (silently!) Chuck whispered,"Cindy’s is better." I think it’s because we get wine at Cindy’s while we wait…. And there aren’t 300 people all around. And we don’t have to drive 1/2 hour down the mountain at 9pm… that night we drove on to Artesia, New Mexico and then this morning drove into Santa Fe over desert mesas. Wow is that drive boring!!!! I guess tumbleweed isn’t for me. We got a hotel for 3 nights in Santa Fe for a very reasonable rate and went to the Downtown Plaza where we visited an Arts and Crafts festival and I went to Mass in the San Francisco Cathedral on the plaza. The Cathedral is named for Saint Francis of Assissi.  After Mass we had drinks and snacks and then came back to the room to blog and drink wine and snack.  Tomorrow is a busy day of churches and museums. Chuck loves that!!!!!  Be well dear friends and have a wonderful weekend!  God bless you!

It’s a long story that generated the title of this piece… I’ll start with when I packed to go to my Mom’s I left a giant pile of stuff on the dining room table for Chuck to pack in the van. Clothes and shoes for northern climates, paints, brushes, books. I only took a small bag to my Mom’s.  The paints are for afternoons spent gazing at skies and mountains, flowers and sunsets, trying to “capture God’s Grandeur” with color. Chuck found a wonderful hard sided “brief case” that I put many selected and beloved paints in so when I open it, I can see all the browns and greens, yellows and pinks, reds, tans, Paine’s gray etc… many rich and varied paint colors collected over the years, gifts from Sarah, Debby’s gift cards to Michael’s, trips with Karla and Mark to “Cheap Joes…” Rich and wonderful colors packed with a few brushes and some note stock paper for painting greeting cards.  Wednesday morning we went to the Observatory and then I settled down on the porch at the Hotel Limpia to paint the mountain view with the Old Texas Inn and some flowering trees in the foreground.  Chuck settled in next to me with a book. Then someone said, “I’m hungry” and I packed the brief case, a bag of waters, cups and paper towels, my phone and drinking water, the easel and watercolor pad and other stuff carried out there. Put it all down to unlock the room door, washed the paint brush, and went to lunch.  Returned to take all the stuff back out to the porch, brush, pad, easel, bag of waters…. Brief case with paint? No… not there.  I haunted the corridors of the little hotel, the porch, the tables and stacks of antique suit cases stacked in corners. Gone. In someone’s trunk headed for Albuquerque or Columbus I guess. Housekeeping didn’t see it and no one turned it in at the desk.  It’s hard to paint with a brush and water.  Mark carries a box the size of a chewing gum wrapper and three colors and he tried to get me to do the same. “Mix your colors,” Mark sagely said.  … I was really sad, but realized I’m supposed to be writing the book I proposed last July 19. So I got out one of the two Bibles I have with me and read and wrote that evening. The next morning (yesterday – Thursday) we drove 4 miles to a Nature preserve and gardens and as Chuck paid our admission, I browsed the 50% off table and found a lovely hand painted journal called Drawn to Nature Through the Journals of Clare Walker Leslie. She is a teacher, artist, and journalist. I was drawn to the cover filled with water color drawings of a bird singing and skies over a farm, a city, and mountains.  Can’t lose for 50% off.  We walked through the desert gardens, chatted with a couple with 2 big lab/other fluffy dog mixes and arrived back at the visitor center needing to sit in the rockers in the breeze and read.  I whipped out my new book and read… “My greatest wish is that your eyes may always be watching nature… ‘Mother Earth, Protect Her, She is Us.’ See. You might say you have no nature around you where you live… Take five minutes. Look up, and enjoy!”   I was a little freaked out as I just wrote something very similar to that when talking about singing the Psalms about God’s glory – “look up and sing!”  Is this lady whose book just fell into my hands from the bottom of a stack of books in a nature center in Fort Davis Texas a soul sister??? Chuck meanwhile looked over and saw me gazing raptly at the mountain in the distance, flowering bush in the foreground, lots of scrub in between, he said, “You need to be painting.” “I have no paints.” “We’ll get some.” A Dollar Store just opened in town. Grand Opening yesterday. We moved from the garden center to the Dollar Store and purchased water colors. Well, if water colors are good enough for 3 people (Mark, Sarah and Janet) who have been trying to get me to use them, and for my new soul sister, Clare Walker Leslie, then I guess they’re good enough for me.  My first painting looks like a 3 year old did it, but I’m going to read the book and occasionally “copy” my new friend to try to learn a wonderful technique, water color painting.   See? Long story!  And once again my brain is all wrinkled up trying to understand if my loss of all that stuff is God’s gift as he tries to get me to try something less burdensome? Something new?  Look up! And enjoy.   We’re up this morning, having moved to the Harvard Hotel just to try the competition (and loved it) and we’re off for Carlsbad Caverns. It’s Friday and we’re on the road again.  Love to you and God bless you and help you to see the gifts he is giving us!