Small Town Life: The Dark Side

Since moving to a small town on the Colorado-New Mexico border about a year-and-a-half ago, I’ve had the opportunity to explore a longtime fantasy. I’d long believed that living in a small New Mexico town was a missing part of my education – just as, about twenty years ago, I believed Santa Fe was my finishing school. What I’ve learned in Raton, NM, pop. approximately 7,500, during my brief residency is that not much has changed since Sinclair Lewis wrote Main Street, or going further back in American literature which is so rooted in small-town life, to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter. As simple eavesdropping at the post office or Grace’s Cafe (our version of the Chatterbox) will reveal any weekday morning, the American small town continues to run on gossip, complaint, and control by the few, the same few who have remained in control for decades. This control is frequently transmitted across the generations. I have been shocked by the behavior of individuals and organizations. Both the executive directors of the Chamber of Commerce and the Arts & Humanities Council have been caught with their hands deep in their respective cookie jars. No one can believe it! They are such nice people! The director of the museum board has been in that position for over twenty years. There has not been an audit in all that time, either. It is well-known that no new projects are permitted. No new projects, no new people = no new ideas. People, it is said, are living in fear because of potential retaliation against their businesses or other interests if they speak out. Fear! That is the word heard daily around town by those on the outs, or, shall we say, not on the ins.

But what is most shocking is the currency of slander that is permissible. Yes, she was seen dancing in the woods, just like in The Crucible. The McCarthy-esque attitudes Arthur Miller described, using the Salem Witchcraft Trials as his thin cover, are very much alive in small town America. People, even people of good standing in the community, make a practice of slandering others, standing up in public and making outright lies about others, for personal fun and profit. Don’t like someone? Just call her a drunk. Don’t like the positions of a city councilor? Just say he “Is so drunk he can’t hold up his head at city meetings.” Want someone else’s job? Just write a letter to the boss full of false accusations about the person whose job you want.

OK, so this level of bad behavior can happen as well in Albuquerque as well as Raton. But how come it never did?

Jane Austen Got It Right

“Give me an English village with six families,” is one of my favorite quotes attributed to English novelist Jane Austen. I put it on a sticky on my computer when I moved from Albuquerque to a small town in northeast New Mexico on the Colorado border a year ago. As a published first novelist who aspires to a second, this thought provided me with hope and inspiration. All I needed to produce fiction would be the dynamics and characters I found in the post office, at the cafe, the country club, the neighborhood. I would travel with my notebook everywhere, and life would translate itself onto the page and flow from my fingers to the keyboard. True?

Yes and no. While my new small town is indeed packed with vivid characters and their dramas, I find that living amongst it all is quite a bit different than simply observing it with authorial detatchment. I was reminded of my love for this quote while watching the dramatization of Austen’s novel, Emma, on PBS. In this classic of English literature I loved so as a young woman coming of age, and  still sets the bar for linguistic wit, Austen nails, absolutely nails, the swirl of life which continues to this day, in my quintessential Western American town with its heritage of coal mining, ranching and railroading.

In particular, I observe daily how the seductive power of gossip continues to power human relationships. Gossip in the small town is actually the chief recreational activity.  This is a fascinating subject for reflection, whether in literature or life, until one becomes the subject of  gossip. The deliberateness with which the commandment, “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor” is violated for personal gain is astounding.

If you are considering moving to a small town to escape the traffic and smog, if you are imagining a peaceful pastoral existence, do consider the daily wear and tear of coping with this proclivity of human nature that Jane describes so well. How about it small towners? Let me hear from you if this thought resonates.

Six Steps to Staying Warm on a Snowy Night

Six Steps to Staying Warm on a Cold Snowy Night

*Take a scalding hot bath with your favorite bath salts – Dead Sea salts are very good. Scrub yourself well with a loofa sponge. Dry off with fluffy big towels, and apply delicious lotion or body oil all over;

*Double flannel yourself – Put on flannel jammies and jump in between flannel sheets;

*Bring all the pets up on the bed to curl up with you. I enjoy the company of my Airedale terrier pup, Buckley, who is about the size of a small Shetland pony & stretches across the foot of the bed; and my darling black & white English Springer spaniel, Samantha, who is quite cuddly;

*Wrap a warm buckwheat pillow around your shoulders;

*Turn on the Weather Channel and see how bad it is all over the country, while here you sit, cozy as can be;

*Place your cold feet against the warm ones of your honey & hug hard.Watch the snow falling outside and be very grateful. You deserve this!

Sweet dreams!

Writing is So Like Cooking

The process of writing is really just like cooking, that is, creating good writing is the twin of good cooking. Last night, at a dinner party for six, I served what was arguably the best casserole I’ve ever made.  Upon reheating the leftovers for lunch today and savoring the flavors of my creation, this analogy struck me clearly in the following points:

1. Follow your instincts. Good advice for much of life, and particularly in the kitchen and at the computer screen. All week I’d been wondering what to serve my dinner guests. The vision of a baked pasta casserole kept haunting me. I never cook Italian; I don’t even own an Italian cookbook. Plus, two of my guests had distinctly Italian surnames, and both catered professionally for years. Nonetheless, the vision was so compelling that I could not think of another dish to prepare;

2. Use only the best ingredients. Choose your words carefully, and spare no expense on your ingredients. Saturday morning I crossed Raton Pass to shop at Nana and Nona’s, a little Italian deli in Trinidad, Colorado. I sought the advice of the proprietor and purchased the best provolone, mozarella, asiago and parmesan cheeses, garlicky, medium-hot sausage, as well as imported Italian penne pasta.

3. Simplicity rules. We happen to have a 60 year-old, hand-operated grater with switchable blades known as a Moulie. My husband loves to operate this gadget, and in about five minutes he had grated my approximately two pounds of four kinds of cheese to the desired consistencies, both for melting and sprinkling.  I sent him outside to grill the sausage and a couple of chicken breasts. I’d never made this dish before, but I knew it would be provide a hearty and heart-warming dinner;

4. Be inventive. Fearlessly, as if I knew what I was doing, I cooked and drained the pasta, mixed it with a big can of crushed tomatoes, a little tube of refrigerated “fresh Italian herbs” (love the stuff), sliced grilled sausage and chicken, about two handfuls of chopped fresh parsley, and what felt like the right amounts of the cheeses. I sprayed the biggest casserole dish I own and loaded it in. Set the oven for 35o, and while I was at it, roasted a head of garlic and poured olive oil over a couple of heads of chopped broccoli – roasted that, too;

5. Give it your best. I set the table with the best silver, crystal, and china. Then I uncorked a couple of bottles of red wine, one very cheap and one very expensive, dimmed the lights and toasted a baguette slathered with butter and roasted garlic.

6. Trust and be patient. The dinner, simple as could be, was scrumptious. The ease of bringing a dish directly from the oven to the table made for a stress-free dinner party, one where I could enjoy my guests make an actual connection through the shared enjoyment of food and wine. They were immersed in the dining experience the way writers seek to envelop readers in the printed page. Everyone ate at least two helpings; one of the Italians ate three, then whispered his compliments as he said goodnight.

7. Let it sit, then give it another try. Yes, this casserole was just as good, if not better, than last night. While I might tweak it slightly by adding another small can of tomatoes, it probably isn’t worth messing with a really good thing.

Woodie Guthrie is My Co-Pilot

There is nothing, absolutely nothing, for miles and miles along NM 39 from Abbot to Tucumcari, that is not dry and deserted. Woody Guthrie never sounded so good as I cruised the rumpled two-lane past crumbling homestead cabins and splintered windmills. I actually felt Woody, Ralph Stanley and Blind Willie McTell power my silver Nissan Murano with the yellow TOURNM license plate through the fierce winds. I stopped at Annette’s in Roy for coffee and pie. That’s where Sarah Jessica Parker and Hugh Grant had their big date in “Did You Hear About the Morgans?”

No pie, which was a good thing and a bad thing. My mouth was set for it, but I planned to violate my New Year’s resolution of no unnecessary sugar. “Unnecessary sugar” is that which is used outside of chocolate.  Yes, I was traveling with my yoga mat.

I asked Annette how long a drive it was to Tucumcari, the capital of Route 66 neon. “You’re almost there!” By that she meant I only had an hour and a half drive ahead, through this sea, no, this ocean, of bowed dry pale grasses, all the way to the cloudy, somewhat blue sky, through Logan. I could have sworn I saw Andrew Wyeth’s Christina, crawling toward a home, a home that no longer exists.

I’d never been on that road south of Mosquero. I thought my drive through Logan would complete my quest of visiting all 100 towns in New Mexico, but when I got there I saw a sign to Nara Visa. I’m pretty sure I’ve never been there.

Woody’s tunes resonated with the Big Empty. His was the music the souls that still haunt this place, in humble roadside graveyards, souls who once struggled to survive on this hard, parched land, heard. He was their voice.

It was a musical experience unlike any other.

Observing How It’s Done: Parenting a Teen Girl

Not being a parent makes me an especially keen observer of how others parent. It’s a great curiosity, like studying the behavior of a virus under a microscope, or visiting a completely foreign culture.

On a holiday visit to Boulder, I listened carefully to a friend advise her teenage daughter. The young woman’s finals were due to start the next day. She asked her mother whether she should study or go for a long bike ride with her friend. “What is in your own best interest?” the mom asked her daughter.

Wow, I thought. That is a brilliant response. The mom is not dictating to the girl, and even better, she is teaching the girl two important things: 1. Make up your own mind; 2. Learn how to do what is best for yourself. Both these lessons are a departure from the woman’s traditional role; both are necessary for the woman of the future to survive and thrive.

I recently left a teaching job in a junior college where the majority of young women were either single or expectant single mothers. Not only were they without basic writing skills, mostly illiterate in their own language (English), they were without the knowledge of how to succeed in college or the time and energy to do so. No one had ever asked them the simple question: What is in your own best interest?

Cashin’ In – Rosanne Cash at the Lensic

Last evening I had the extreme pleasure of hearing Rosanne Cash in the Lensic Theater in Santa Fe. As Saturday afternoon DJ on Raton’s KRTN-93.9 FM hosting “L’il Sharon’s Country Cafe” and admitted devotee of Grand Ol’ Opry roots music, I was thrilled to hear Miss Cash perform from her new roots release, “The List.”

More of an interpreter than a belter, she entranced the packed house with her deep and subtle emotions and her way of giving herself completely to a song. How gutsy of her to cover Patsy Cline material like “She’s Got You,” Hank Snow’s “Movin On,” and “Long Black Veil,” written by Lefty Frizzel and immortalized by her dad. Maybe she waited so long to do this because she had to know with complete assurance she could make them hers.

“The List” comes from a list her father, Johnny Cash, gave her of 100 tunes she needed to know, when she was only 18 and went on the road with him the day after high school graduation. I treasured every word of Miss Cash’s stories about how she toured with Carl Perkins and the Carter Family. She shared that her step-aunt, Helen Carter, taught her “Bury Me Under the Weeping Willow” and other Carter family legacies.

Actually, Rosanne Cash is the personification of the legacy that goes back even further than the 1927 Bristol sessions, when the Carter family and other musicians came out of the woods to make their first recordings. With the passing of Johnny and June, she seems to be stepping into the spotlight of legend herself now.

Even so, her own song, “Seven Year Ache” rocked the house in the highlight of the show. What a fabulous stage the pink curlicues of the faux-Moorish Lensic provides. Plus perfect acoustics.

It’s a long list. There ought to be more recordings to follow.

The Lowering of Higher Education

The Lowering of Higher Education
My high school English teacher, Miss Gwen Patterson, made such a strong impression on me that I still remember every detail of her appearance, down to her stout black shoes, proper gray suit, and her rolled-up silver hair that recalled the style of World War II. Though we jokingly called her Gwip behind her back, we did what she said, no matter how long it took, how painful the process, or how much we sacrificed our preferred teenage activities.

We would not have dared  to show up in class without our homework, unprepared, bad-tempered, or unwilling to raise our hands in class in response to her questions.

We certainly would not have dreamed of complaining to the principal that Miss Patterson was too tough on us, that she liked someone else in class better, or blamed our low grades on her inability to teach. Nor would we have ever, ever expected our parents to complain to the principal on our behalf.

Back before email, texting, cell phones, Facebook and Twitter, way back in the time of black-and-white TV, one bathroom shared by a family of four, and one telephone per household, we were expected to read, understand, and write intelligently about such classics as the Odyssey, Hamlet, The Great Gatsby, Heart of Darkness, the Book of Job, and much, much more.

School counted then. Learning counted then.  We were trained to think, to be original, to immerse ourselves in the words and wisdom of those wiser than ourselves, those who had endured and transmitted the values of civilization with beauty and grandeur, and to respond with the best we could dredge out of our 15 year-old minds.  No one suggested that this process was supposed to be fun, easy, comfortable, or stress-free.

Rather, we went to class every day to be challenged, to expand our minds, and to learn skills that would serve us throughout our lives as working people, family people, and citizens. We were taught that not only must we become self-sufficient, in addition, we were expected to discover our strengths and make a contribution.

Flash forward forty years. Would Miss Patterson be able to hold a teaching job today? As a former junior college teacher, I know from personal experience that unprepared students, students who fail to do the required reading then suffer the consequences of low quiz scores, students dissatisfied with their grades, or the rules of classroom deportment,  or those who have been called on their plagiarizing,  can complain to the dean and get a teacher fired.

Instead of transferring an unqualified student to a remedial class, my department head told me to “get her through with a C.” Although official department policy states that  a student who plagiarizes will fail the course, one student who plagiarized from Wikipedia was allowed to pass the course with a C, after he begged the dean for mercy. What teacher hoping to keep her job is going to refuse the dean’s request for a grade change?

If a student does not “like” a teacher (translation: the student is uncomfortable because she is being asked to apply herself, to spend more than ten minutes on an essay, or to write her own paper), that student can and will complain and actually lie about a teacher, knowing she can get away with it. “Working the system” and applying such pressure is more appealing to many students than actually doing the work required to succeed.

That students, even college-level students, cannot read or write,  is commonplace knowledge. A new government initiative throws more money at high schools to prepare students to succeed at college-level writing. Isn’t that what they were supposed to be doing in the first place?

Blame is everywhere, particularly on teachers. But are teachers, in today’s “culture of whining,” allowed to teach? Not when student evaluations are the criteria of a teacher’s success, when colleges are competing for FTE (full time equivalent) numbers, and every student is seen as a dollar sign necessary to keep the doors open and the administrators’ jobs secure. The student is now the customer, the customer is always right. What teacher dependent on a paycheck is going to rock the boat?

Now students are spoonfed, given years of remedial work, passed along, given support services, writing centers, learning centers, and federally-funded “success centers,” (though nobody is quite sure what the success center’s role is), financial aid, loans and scholarships – at enormous taxpayer expense. Nonetheless, real success must come from the same source it always has — the student’s willingness to work hard for it.

President Obama urges women on welfare to return to junior college, yet the welfare mentality of expecting a “free lunch” is so strongly ingrained that many are unable to apply themselves to the task of learning and are offended when asked to try. Add the entitled attitudes of many student athletes on scholarship, and the result is another big expense with unverifiable results.

True, many students are struggling with low self-image, poor high school training, drugs, pregnancy, out-of-wedlock families, family enmeshment, addictions, and abuse issues. The question is: Are expensive state and federally-funded learning institutions the place to remediate these social issues? Or are these junior colleges a huge taxpayer burden; actually, a more acceptable name for the extension of the welfare system?

In a time when money is so scarce, do learning institutions deserve funding without scrutiny, simply in the naive belief that they are doing good by keeping classrooms open, and by providing a place for those who, through whatever combination of personal misfortune and poor choices, have no other place to go?

Some students  will succeed, of course, and they will value the opportunity of an education and make good use of it. Some will learn a trade. Some will re-invent themselves for changing job markets. Those willing to strive for an education  will transfer to four year schools and do well. But can we do a better job of screening, rather than subsidizing the unmotivated and encouraging them in their sense of entitlement? The opposite seems to be true. Junior colleges, and four year colleges sprouting satellite campuses, encourage the unqualified to justify their existence. How is the quality of education these institutions offer being evaluated? In the employment of their graduates? In the retention of their graduates in four year schools? in getting their students off entitlement programs?

By the way, administrators supposedly responsible for the productivity of their institutions don’t receive cuts in their salaries, even when the teachers must “suck it up” and get by with less. Who is evaluating these administrators? What are their qualifications to lead?  Woe be unto the teacher who does not give her administrator top marks. Of course, no administrator would agree with this assessment.

Perhaps you remember a teacher like Miss Patterson. Or like Miss Lindsay, Mrs. Dorsey, Mr. Garth, Mr. Powell, and the many others who devoted their lives to instructing us. They modeled the discipline and determination it takes to become  strong individuals capable of navigating and sailing a straight course through the world’s rough tides. I thank them every day. But Miss Patterson would not be appreciated in today’s educational environment. She would be a dinosaur, one wrong step away from extinction.

Award-winning journalist and novelist Sharon Niederman is the author of ten books of Southwest history, travel, culture, and cuisine. Visit her website at: www.sharonniederman.com and her blogsite at: http://embracingthenorth@wordpress.com. She can be heard Saturdays on “L’il Sharon’s Country Cafe,” 2-4 pm, on KRTN-93.9 FM.

The Working from Home Diet

Working from home? Whether outsourced, too creative to show up at a cubicle every morning at the same time, semi-retired, lone eagle, bootstrapper, Generation Recession member or simply one of the millions of the new unemployed, it’s a good idea to start your day with oatmeal. Cheap, nutritious and cholesterol-lowering, eating a bowl of oatmeal is almost as good as running four miles in sub-freezing North America. You feel virtuous and good to go. Oatmeal, unlike real mashed potatoes or a chocolate milkshake, is one comfort food that is good for you. I supplement mine with ground flaxseed, dried berries, sunflower seeds, oat bran and cinnamon. All right, a dash of maple syrup. And soymilk heated in the microwave. Did I mention this must be cooked oatmeal, not instant? You must cook your oatmeal to receive full benefits of virtue and nutrition. Now heat up a cup of green tea and take your vitamins. Buy the most expensive you can. You can’t afford to get sick if you are unemployed and have no insurance. Swallow at least eight capsules  – any combination of calcium, multi-vitamin, fish oil, C, guggel ( a cholesterol-lowering tree from India), and so forth – to continue the virtuous feeling.

After putting in an hour checking email, Facebook, blogging, Twittering and so on, get to work for at least a half-hour, or an hour on a good day. No shopping! Remember, you need to make money, not spend it. By that time you will feel the need for a snack or break. It’s good to get up from your computer now & then.  If you reward yourself with another cup of coffee or tea and a small handful of revitalizing nuts, like pecan or almond, give yourself another mental pat on the back. If, on the other hand, you finished off that slice of cold pizza or Hunan eggplant or anything in the refrigerator that is in a white container crying out to be eaten,  think about postponing lunch until after 2 pm.

(to be continued)

Aging Among Friends

Cher said there was nothing good about getting older. I respectfully disagree. I’m pushing 62, and every day I count my blessings, many times a day. The increasing sense of connection with nature and friends; the ability to walk away from anxiety and betrayal and put them away because I’ve lost a few battles and learned the best healing comes from moving on; the moving beyond the shoulds and guilts and fears and needs that were so powerful they ruled my life; all this could only come from experience, and the only way to get that is to grow older.

“Everything is a trade-off,” my 94 year-old friend Irma Bailey told me.With her fire-red hair and blue eyes, her “wear-it-all” attitude on turquoise and silver, she still looks great. And her sense of humor is percolating right along. OK. So strangers’ heads don’t turn when I walk into a restaurant – well, a few might, if I’m having a good hair day and I happen to be wearing my red cowboy boots. My audience is smaller, much more select. I don’t need to work so hard to dazzle. I don’t need to perform. I am developing, with the years, trust in my woman-womb-wisdom.

Whether teaching a writing workshop, conversing with a friend who could be my daughter, or walking a mountain trail with my dogs, I feel my connection to life, my emotions, my understanding, my actions and my words are increasingly coming from my gut. This is a delicious, only recently experienced sensation I cannot will, but can be open to receiving. Perhaps it is grace. Pondering and processing, taking endless trips inside my head, trying to explain the inexplicable are activities replaced by a beautiful bellyful of insight.

I grew up on the Jersey shore. The image of aging I see is a wave. When we are young, the tide is low. Every little riffle leaves behind sand to stamp a footprint in, build a castle, shells to pick up and collect. You can walk so far out there when it’s low tide. Then comes life, a big wave that catches you and smashes you into shore. You ride the wave and you are the wave. Then the tide goes out again, leaving the water smooth and perfect for taking a good long relaxing swim, when you can move at your own pace and no longer have to fight with all your strength to stay on course.

Look around. By now we know the members of our tribe, those with whom we continue to journey.  Age is the time to slow down and savor. May we continue to share and savor every delicious moment with our dear friends.