ABQ LOG: 4 - 8 February

[jesse_the_k]

4 Sunday: Thrifting Joy

MyGuy, who is the King of Thrifting, escorts me to a Savers, and demonstrates his magic skills by locating two heavy cotton jackets, a cashmere/cotton scarf, a merino wool scarf, an excellent sunhat in just the shape I’ve been seeking, and a pair of just-broken-in but not-worn Sanita¹ clogs in my size. Under $50 for the lot.

5 Monday: Joyful Views

Swim at Highland Pool. Still friendly people, and the water’s warmer.

I stopped by Walmart for bandages and I left my wallet behind at the checkout desk. It’s gone forever. The good news is I didn’t lose my credit card, there wasn’t much cash in it, and the rest is relatively easy to recreate.

Many Things to Love About the Sandia Tramway

We took the Sandia Tramway² up into the ~10,000 feet (~3200 meter) Sandia Mountains that form the city’s eastern border. We boarded 10 minutes before sunset, so I witnessed just why neon blue and neon coral are part of the Southwestern design scheme. The psychedelic sky continues to astound until 40 minutes past actual sunset.

The tram car is bedroom-sized, around 12 x 16 feet. I roll right on, and then around 15 people joined me. There’s a carpeted bench that two people could sit on, but the rest stood for the astounding 15-minute “flight” up to the top. I faced away from the sunset, the better to see the three canyons we passed over, at a height of around 1000 feet. The Tramway is the closest I’ve come to wilderness in 30 years, and the granite peaks with exuberantly wind-eroded limestone towers are stunning. From the city, the mountains look desert gray and brown, but from the tram, I can see that it’s heavily forested.

After the Tram arrived at the peak, I sat on an observation deck, entranced by the sky (after rolling down what might be the world’s longest ramp). It was 35° colder up there, but alas for the skiers, there’s been drought since October so nothing to play on.

It was an expensive trip, and worth every penny.³

6 Tuesday More Mercantilism

I went bead-shopping with my walker

• one expensive place going out of business, and it deserves to.
• one fabulous place–The Beaded IRIS–has a lovely collection of vintage beads as well as lots of JN seeds.
• amazing food at An Hy Quan⁴, an innovative vegan/vegetarian place. Huge portions, low prices, great service, novel tastes.

7 Wednesday

• Swam at Highland. I’m “recognized” for the second time by someone who’s confused me with another wheelchair user.
• Lazing around reading & eating.

8 Thursday

• Got a foldable straw sunhat that stays on in 10mph breezes without a cord.
• We visited the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center for almost 2 hours (with my walker) and it was worth the crash the next day.

Many Things to Love About the IPCC

The museum is owned and run by the 19 Pueblos of New Mexico. The beautiful building invokes every element of Pueblo architecture: the roundhouse, the kiva, the colors of the dessert and sage and sunset. We began our visit with a delicious meal–I had corn tortilla sliders: beet falafel, pulled pork, marinated chicken, plus stir-fried sugar snap peas.

Then we saw the "Helen Hardin: Spirit Lines" collection. When she was born, children of Pueblo women and non-Pueblo men weren’t accepted as Pueblo, although Pueblo men's kids with non-Pueblo women were considered acceptable.This didn’t stop her from exploring Pueblo themes in her art–oils, statues, and 27 precise, evocative copper etchings in the last years of her life. The details and colors in these prints were exquisite.

We finished up with the permanent exhibition: “We Are of This Place: the Pueblo Story.” Not only was the content enlightening, beautiful, and novel, the presentation was the best I’ve ever seen in a museum. There was art on the walls, explanatory labels in large print I could read from 5 feet away, beautifully crafted functional objects displayed in a variety of enclosures, video of dancing, audio of storytelling, big foam blocks imprinted with pueblo-styled windows/doors (for kids to play with). After we’d wandered around for an hour, one of the curators stopped by and provided some Pueblo history (because the Pueblos are all about the oral tradition):

• The people of Chaco Canyon created vibrant cities in the desert. They divided labor, farmed, channeled rain water for drinking and irrigation, and generally were doing the civilized thing⁵
• When the Spaniards arrived at the turn of the 15th C, they recognized the Pueblo people as “fully human,” because they had cities. This meant they didn’t slaughter the Pueblos out-of-hand (as they had done for many other indigenous people they encountered) but instead forced them to convert to Catholicism, since the Pueblos had souls worth saving.
• Pueblo sovereignty has been continous since their beginnings. The three nations that came to their lands– Spaniards, Mexicans, US–specifically promised self-rule. The Pueblos were subjected to the attempted extinction of language and culture orchestrated by the US government in Indian boarding schools, but their languages are still spoken. People still live in their ancestral homes.
• Like the people in Le Guin’s Four Ways to Forgiveness, the Pueblo are willing to embrace useful stuff from the modern world: the restaurant and museum are paperless; touch screens abound in the exhibits.

Indian Pueblo Cultural Center
https://www.indianpueblo.org/

About the building
http://www.flintco.com/projects/v/1612/indian-pueblo-cultural-center

Videos of exhibits, dances, music
https://www.youtube.com/user/IndianPueblo/featured

---

1. I’ve always wanted to try Scandinavian-style clogs but the break-in period daunted me ↩︎

2. http://www.sandiapeak.com/index.php%3Fpage=history-technology ↩︎

3. Extra treat: it was designed, financed, and built by a couple of guys from Rockford IL ↩︎

4. http://www.anhyrestaurant.com/ ↩︎

5. civilize from Latin civilis “relating to a citizen, relating to public life, befitting a citizen; popular, affable, courteous.” ↩︎

Comments

[sonia]

Wow the Tramway and IPCC sound amazing!

I was reading a bit too fast and read "Huge portions, low prices, great service, novel tastes" as being about the bead store. An image to smile about!

I've been thinking about how I use "civilized" to mean pleasant, well-run, and that I probably want to drop that usage.

[jesse_the_k]

Let's go shopping at that bead store. I hope they have well-polished, neatly-arranged, well-labelled lunch available as well. :,)

[sasha_feather]

Sounds like a wonderful place.

[jesse_the_k]

Definitely worth the trip!

[julian]

I was in ABQ for about 2 days, last year, and went up the Peak. Gorgeous freakin' place.

Since we have friends there, I will salt away the IPCC for future use.

(Glad the wallet wasn't *too* onerous. But, I oof in sympathy anyway.)

[jesse_the_k]

Thanks. I'm oofing every day now, but it's mainly cursing my lousy memory. Which doesn't help me remember things any more clearly.

It was truly a Peak experience!

[luzula]

I read IPCC as Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change at first. : P

But anyway, that sounds like a very cool exhibit!

[jesse_the_k]

Of course you did.

It was a wonderful counterpoint to the White supremacist versions of history on offer in Mississippi.