1. Did I leave it under the bed
With the sandal I kicked off last summer
Dull with the dust of unintended neglect
In need of a good polish
If I can just  find the right color?

2. “Why can’t you be like everyone else?”
I don’t know. It was 1966
Recently, I found my prom photo:
Blue gown, hair sprayed straight
My date, long dead of AIDS.

3. “Your big mouth will get you in trouble.”
Shame it out of me if you can
Shake me when I’m four
Beat me for a bad dream
Tell me I don’t know what I’m talking about.

4. You’re the artist, I’m the hack
Paper the house with rejection slips – not mine!
I encouraged you, supported you, paid the bills
A convenient arrangement
It worked until it didn’t.

5. In some Santa Rosa motel room
Restaurant closed, TV disconnected, mystery finished
Setting the sum of all I know and have read
To the tune of I-40 big rigs
I dare to pick up my pen.

Sharon Niederman, 2012

Due out from the Countryman Press March 5, 2012

. . .Why do certain natural settings of mountains, groves, streams, and rocks, and certain cultural properties and built landscapes, such as shrines, churches, temples, and monuments, evoke feelings of awe, wholeness, and belonging to a sphere much larger than our everyday reality?

At sites such as Bandelier National Monument, Chaco Canyon, and Taos Mountain, at the Earth Journey stupa in El Rito, the Temple Montefiore cemetery in Las Vegas, and the Marigold Day of the Dead Parade in Albuquerque, or walking the grounds of the Upaya Zen Center in Santa Fe, or watching the Mescalero Apaches’ ceremonial Dance of the Mountain Gods, peace, connection, a sense of being blessed, of purpose, of participating in a drama beyond our own, temporarily overwhelms our petty “monkey mind” without our conjuring it or trying for it.

It matters not what our individual religious beliefs are. Such places speak to us in their own subtle, strong, and silent language if we are the least bit open. All I can say is: Welcome to New Mexico!. . .

What struck me so forcefully, from the time I first traveled through New Mexico in 1972, is the peaceful coexistence of so many different, clearly articulated spiritual paths. An early drive through the Jemez amazed me with the sight, in close proximity, in this narrow canyon, of Buddhist, Catholic, and Native American communities.  . .

This book highlights special places in New Mexico where we may retreat to repair our souls, rest from the world, seek peace in a community where the dedicated, such as the Benedictine monks at Christ in the Desert Monastery, devote their lives to offering just such a possibility to guests. One may join in the practice of prayers or meditation, or simply sit by the flowing river in silence and watch the changing light on the rock walls of the canyon. . .

http://www.sharonniederman.com/

Irma was born and raised on a homestead/ranch near Clovis, NM. She met her husband, Wayne, while they were both students at New Mexico Highlands in Las Vegas, NM, where Irma went on a music scholarship. They worked together as traders of Indian arts – pottery, weaving, silver, kachinas – and she knew more about these beautiful things, and the artists who made them, than anyone. Irma and Wayne would load up their motor home and bring their wares to museums and collectors around the country. I was fortunate to meet Irma when she was 77 years old and starting a new chapter in her life.  After Wayne passed on, she tried “retiring,” but sitting home and taking it easy was not her way. After two months of that, she got herself a new rig, a new driver, and went into business for herself, dealing only in “the best of the best.”

She became incredibly successful. The phone rang constantly at her house, and people came from Dayton, Boston, Atlanta, El Paso, Minneapolis, everywhere, really, to do business and to sit in her magic circle of warmth and generosity. If there was such a thing as a sexy 85 year-old, that was her – bright red hair, sparkling blue eyes, unstoppable sense of humor. And she still shopped at Victoria’s Secret. A yellow T-Bird with the license plate “IMATOY” sat in her driveway.

I shared dozens of cups of coffee with her at her kitchen table, where you never knew who would turn up;  and went on the road with her and saw how an “old time” trader worked. When we visited a Potowotome village across the Canadian border, she purchased all the baskets, with the result that the villagers would make more. I attended a couple of the shows she did at Harvard, and I assisted her with presentations at University of New Mexico.  We went to Chimayo to buy chile and eat at El Rancho de Chimayo. Christmas Eve at her Albuquerque home, with red chile, tamales from Santo Domingo, beans and posole was the highlight of the year, and people flew in from everywhere to experience it. On any day,  you could meet a medicine man and a museum curator in her living room.

Irma serves up a breakfast with her red-eye gravy.

Here is just a bit of Irma’s wisdom:

*”Wear it all”

*You can’t do it part-time”

“I can still get up earlier, stay up later, and work anyone under the table”

“You can’t keep a good woman down.”

Irma Bailey and Kokopelli

I want to put my arms around Life

Hold it close, squeeze it tight

Climb on it

Wrap my legs around it

Twist with it

Explode with it

I want to dance with life

Though it pushes me around the floor

Too close to the edge

Keeps me in the dark

Does not say “Thank you”

Expects to take me home

Life is not a good person

And does not care what I think

About that

Life is a narcissist

With no intention of changing

Of course he has others

But we don’t talk about that

Life is a crude lover

He doesn’t “get” me

Or pay attention

Or take time

Life does not give me what I want most

Life only gives me what he feels like giving

When he is in the mood

But, hey, Life, I know you need me

To look you in the eye, to tell your stories

We meet up at the hot springs

In Truth or Consequences

Moonrise over Turtleback Mountain

Lights the Rio Grande silver

Life takes me to his beached Airstream

Has his way with me all night long.

@ Sharon Niederman, Jan. 2, 2012

My new year commitment: I will be blogging at least every Monday. . .appreciate your visits & comments.

Farewell forever, 2011. Welcome aboard the good ship 2012.  I am wishing all my family and friends the very best health, happiness, and prosperity in the time ahead. I am glad to report I have survived the fires of Northern New Mexico with more peace, calm, patience, forgiveness, and ability to “get over it,” and, with less obsessing and need to get even. Books of old hurts have been closed and put away. And in this state of mind, there is a strengthening of the ability to intervene in negative thoughts before they spin me around.

Early 2011 was busy with promoting New Mexico’s Tasty Traditions: Recollections, Recipes and Photos, published by New Mexico Magazine. This book earned several awards, including First Place, Cookbook, National Federation of Press Women; Silver, Travel Book, Society of American Travel Writers; and Finalist, non-fiction and cookbook, New Mexico Book Awards. I was also busy putting together Signs & Shrines: Spiritual Journeys Across New Mexico, due out March 5, 2012, from The Countryman Press. The kickoff book signing will be March 29, 2012, 6 pm, Collected Works, Santa Fe.  I was fortunate to have outstanding book events at the Fiery Foods Show at Sandia Resort and at Black Cat Books in Truth or Consequences.

During the year, I worked with the Clavel family of  the five-generationTwin Creek Ranch, Harding County to produce a beautiful family history, and I researched and wrote The Hundred Year History of Santa Fe’s Scottish Rite Temple, due out in May, 2012. My current projects include a new beautiful color edition of The Santa Fe & Taos Book: A Complete Guide and a fresh updated edition of The Explorer’s Guide to New Mexico, both due out from The Countryman Press in 2013. I am also looking forward to a refreshed edition of A Quilt of Words: Women’s Diaries, Letters & Original Accounts of Life in the Southwest 1860-1960 during 2012.

In June, I was honored by the New Mexico Jewish Historical Society with their Dr. Alan Hurst Award for service, attended by my nephew, Ian Shlomo Solow-Niederman;  then, I delivered the keynote speech, “Reading Sholem Aleichem in Raton: My Life in New Mexico’s Diaspora,” at the NMJHS Annual Conference, in Albuquerque.

We have both been fortunate with our businesses: Chuck continues to grow his business of auditing small (no more than one stoplight) municipalities in New Mexico; and in addition to my ongoing work for the New Mexico Beef Council, I have added Taos School of Music to my clientele.  I especially enjoyed the week I spent at the Valles Caldera National Preserve with the first-ever Youth Ranch Management Camp working with a super-professional team from New Mexico State University. A grant from the Historic Records and Archives Board of the NM State Archives continues to support my work preserving vintage images of northeastern New Mexico history at the Arthur Johnson Memorial Library, and I expect to have a narrated slide show of this work complete in 2012.

The year started with a trip to Cottonwood Hot Springs in Buena Vista, Colorado with dear friend Irene Clurman and continued with travel to Silver City and the Gila Wilderness, Gallup Inter-Tribal Ceremonial, Taos Wool Festival, Matachines at Jemez Pueblo, several trips to the hot springs of Truth or Consequences, Eugene, Oregon for the wedding of Na’ama Tubman and Kieran, and Tuscon, Arizona to meet up with my cousin Allison Lehman and husband Billy, plus an amazing  (in so many ways) trip to Phoenix, Arizona with Erin Quinn Bodine.

On December 10, we celebrated Chuck’s 65^th birthday with a party at El Pinto in Albuquerque. Happily, Kevin, Andrea, Sarah and Eric were all able to be there.

Dear friends Carl and Becky Calvert of Taos and Mike Taylor and Joan Clark of Santa Fe have generously provided me with homes away from home, and I cannot thank them enough.  The same to Eleanor Bravo of Corrales and Kathy Matthews of Albuquerque, for their ever-welcoming hospitality.

Our darling pups, Buckley and Samantha, continue to bring us joy (and exercise) every day. As 2012 approaches, I look forward to stepping down as president of New Mexico Press Women and handing the job on to the very well qualified and talented Sari Krosinsky. I have been fortunate to work with a dedicated board, and I am grateful to each one.

As I anticipated when I moved up north, some friendships have fallen away, while others have grown and deepened. I continue my love-hate ambivalent relationship with Raton. While I am not by nature a small town gal, I appreciate the clean air, blue skies, sunsets, artists’ light, good water, closeness to nature and lack of traffic, while I miss the people, parties, shopping, movies, lunches, Jewish community and stimulus of Albuquerque.  As I have said, Raton is either a trap or the best place in the world to write a novel. I am happy to report that my novel in progress, Morpho Blue, inspired by a trip I made to Ecuador with a University of New Mexico medical team, is well underway, and it is my leading ambition to have a presentable draft ready to go in 2012.

I don’t know where this year will lead, but if your journey leads you north, please stop by for a meal or a stay in the casita. We love company.  We are blessed with good health, good work, and good friends and wish you the same.

PS – To those who, with whatever intent, reproduce this letter in all or part, thank you in advance for driving traffic to my site.

Spring is in full swing on the three-generation Copeland and Sons Hereford Ranch 18 miles north of Nara Visa in Union County, New Mexico. “The curlews always nest here. You can set your calendar by their  arrival on April 1,” says Cliff Copeland, President of the New Mexico Beef Council. The gramma and buffalo grasses are still mostly brown, but a little rain will bring the green shoots close to the ground right up, Cliff says.  “We can hear the migratory birds now, the Canada geese and sandhill cranes flying north, and the mallard ducks that nest here are arriving.”
But the best signs of spring are the healthy baby calves now arriving. Calving season from Feb.-April is one of Cliff’s favorite times of year, along with the branding season that follows. That’s  when the Copelands  and nearby ranchers “neighbor up”  the old-fashioned way to help each other get the chore done while they visit and catch up.
Part of the Copelands’ daily ritual is a morning  family visit, often by phone, between Cliff and his photographer wife Pat;  son Matt and his wife Kyra; and Cliff’s parents, Cliff Sr. and Barbara, to prioritize and divide up the responsibilities that need tending that day. “Day off is not even in our vocabulary,” Cliff observes. “This is a hard and healthy lifestyle. My Dad is 79 and he still puts in a full day’s work. He is still active in every part of the ranch.”
Cliff grew up on the ranch and never thought about being anything other than a rancher. He left home to study Animal Science at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces and returned with a knowledge of genetics. He is able to see the genetic selection process, the results of their choices, every year with the arrival of the baby calves.
“The weather has been cooperative,” he says of this year’s calving season. “It’s too dry now. We could use some rain, and that may be coming soon”

Cliff Copeland

Signs & Shrines: Spiritual Journeys Across New Mexico

SIGNS & SHRINES: SPIRITUAL JOURNEYS ACROSS NEW MEXICO takes the reader along  the ancient pilgrimage trails that crisscross this enchanted state where a rich multiplicity of cultures continues to thrive. The mysteries of sacred sites, natural wonders, power spots, feast days and festivals are explained by one of the state’s most prolific and knowledgable authors, and the book is illustrated with soulful images from her travels.  In addition to providing  cultural context that answers visitors’ questions about the history and practices found only in New Mexico, the author provides clear directions, maps and guidance on the best places to stay, dine, shop and recreate. SIGNS & SHRINES  is an innovative guide that will enrich the experience not only of spiritual seekers but of every visitor drawn to experience the marvelous Land of Enchantment.

Put on your love dress

take off your other garments

the ones that cost you most.

Wear your heart out.

Become a transvestite

for love. Dress as a heart.

Establish a municipality

with eyes you meet on the street.

Enter the election for darling.

Let kindness reign.  Put on

no airs. Be plain as feet

which can also carry you away

along the love highway.

Hello. What is your name?

I have forgotten it again. Remind me.     JSL 2.13.11

Love Fest:   Friday, February 18, 7:00-9:00 Center for Spritual Living, Santa Fe, w/ Mirabai Daniels this will be an evening of music, story, and poetry with Mirabai, Michael Kott, and Joan Logghe….divine cello, poetry of Rumi, Kabir, and yours truly.

New Mexico One Taste at a Time
By Pat Veltri, Sharon Niederman photos

Reprinted by permission of the Raton Range
Story appeared Tues., Jan. 25, 2011
It’s been said by a daily customer at Yum-Yum’s, a “mom and pop” restaurant, in Tularosa, that the brisket served there is so tender she has to take her teeth out to eat it! This is one example of the many culinary anecdotes, experiences, and traditions gathered throughout New Mexico by author, journalist, and photographer Sharon Niederman  while organizing and writing her latest book, New Mexico’s Tasty Traditions: recollections, recipes and photos.

Niederman’s tenth book is comprised of sixteen essays, each illustrated with colorful photos and each focusing on food legacies, histories, traditions, and recipes representative of New Mexico. New Mexico’s Tasty Traditions treats the reader to “an armchair tour of cafes, ranches, festivals, home kitchens and farmers markets through the eyes of a veteran food-travel writer” according to the back cover of the book. The book concludes with a special section providing readers with a ready-made schedule outlining the state’s fairs, festivals, and other food events for the coming year. 

In a recent interview at her home in Raton, which she shares with husband, Chuck Henry, and two dogs, Samantha and Buckley, Niederman explains what she had in mind while writing the book. “My goal was to go beyond red and green; in my assignments around the state and in my travels I had noticed that there were many, many different ethnic and regional specialties that made it seem like New Mexico had a much broader and deeper kind of culinary heritage than what’s usually explored – I wanted to give that picture.  The essays are really sort of my journey through New Mexico discovering, as much as I could about the mom and pops, the histories of the different regional foods, the people who prepare them, and the dishes that have come down as legacies.”

Although recipes are an integral part of each essay, New Mexico’s Tasty Traditions is not a recipe book.  As Niederman puts it, the book is “several things rolled into one.” She goes on to say, “I don’t want people to mistake it for a food book or a recipe book because recipes are just a part of it. You can put this book in your car and take a tour of New Mexico going to the festivals and fairs, and you can also cook some traditional dishes from it. To me it really tells a story that is very much the heart of New Mexico. It’s a way for us to learn more about New Mexico; it also makes a good gift for people who may not live here, but want to know more about New Mexico.”

Of special interest to readers in northeastern New Mexico will be the sections featuring Raton’s Betty Antonucci and her potica bread, the cakewalk at the Colfax County Fair and Niederman’s own family tradition of foraging for chokecherries in Cimarron Canyon. “Betty was a bridge partner of Eloise Henry, my husband’s deceased mother, and through Eloise I met many of the older generation, including Betty, who kindly shared their recipes and their time demonstrating to me things like potica bread. There are some younger women who are now keeping up with the potica tradition, but it primarily resides in the hands of the older generation;  I was fortunate to be invited into that and kind of bake along with  Betty. I did that a couple of times and learned about the tradition from her. I was always entranced with the cakewalk circle at the County Fair in Springer  where people traditionally come back to do the cake walk -  so I also had a chance to explore that.”

Niederman’s husband Chuck Henry grew up in Colfax County, at a time when people still lived off the land through hunting, fishing, and foraging for mushrooms, dandelions, and chokecherries. His parents’ generation made chokecherry wine, and his mother was always excited about making chokecherry jelly. Niederman recalls picking chokecherries for her mother-in-law in Cimarron Canyon, and going through the jelly making process with her.  “Now we very much enjoy foraging on our own and watching for wild fruit to ripen.  Last year we foraged for dandelions, and also found wild raspberries, apricots, plums, and chokecherries. We just made another batch of chokecherry jelly.”

Niederman has written one novel, Return to Abo, several books on the history of the southwest, and many travel guides. New Mexico’s Tasty Traditions is unique in that it has given Niederman the opportunity to “balance to my own satisfaction the photography with the writing.” She notes, “While this is the fourth book I’ve illustrated with my own photos, this is the first one that is done in color and so it gives me a wonderful opportunity to tell my story in the most complete fashion using both the photos and the words.  That’s what I really enjoy doing the most.”

Niederman’s book New Mexico’s Tasty Traditions may be purchased locally at All Season’s Family Restaurant, the Rat Pack, Chicorica Lane or directly from New Mexico Magazine at www.nmmagazine.com or 1-800-711-9525. Summing up her experience writing the book, Neiderman says, “It’s all been wonderful. I love visiting with people and sitting down with them and sharing their stories and their food – that is a wonderful gift. I also love photographing the moments when people are involved in sharing their food and sharing the stories around their food. I find they become very animated, very happy, and it’s a great opportunity to get wonderful pictures.”