Sidetracked Charley

Return of the Yei   For an all too brief summer we had hope. We dared to plan arts events. And as we put in place the preparation for another Angel Fire Studio Tour we became aware it had been two years since we had done any of this. But we soldiered on with hope.  We dared to buy supplies and work on inventory to sell, dusted off the display cabinets and laid in supplies of N95 masks so we could keep ourselves and our customers safe incase the Delta Variant could not be contained within the boundaries of neighboring states. But since residents of those states escape the heat to come to the mountains so could the dreaded Darwin Covid. As it came time to pay the big bucks for brochures and advertising we caved. We could see the handwriting on the wall of the Governor's office. She might be playing nice because she was running for re-election but she considers art and art business non-essential. We cancelled the studio tour but not the studios. We opted to go underground as it w...

When I first moved back to New Mexico I lived in the small town of Questa. It was on a state highway from Taos to Colorado but if tourists stopped it was just for lunch at the Seville Restaurant or gas at one of three stations. It had no visible means of support beyond the Moly mine, some small town ranchers, and a barely under the radar drug trade. When I had lived in New Mexico before it was mostly in Albuquerque which was on Route 66, which became interstate 40. It had two bases, a major federal laboratory, and the University of New Mexico. And sure, some tourists. But they were under the radar like Questa's drug trade. In short I was totally unprepared for Angel Fire, New Mexico, especially since I had not moved to that town but a small rural backwater five miles south. I was looking to hide out in Black Lake. Silly girl. Income depended to some degree on Angel Fire. I taught skiing there. In Black Lake I made Mardi Gras masks which I shipped around the country at the A...