UFOs in Dulce

This week the History Channel reported on the long held belief that UFOs have visited the area of Dulce and Lumberton. (The show was awful--an hour of fast camera work and sound effects.) Today there is a conference in town on the same subject, at which one of the speakers will be Edmund Gomez, who teaches at New Mexico State University and is an uncle of two of my students. He'll report on unexplained cattle mutilations that took place on the Gomez ranch in the 1970s and 80s. I got to meet him yesterday and see his evidence.

Although I am a big doubter about such things, the Gomezes are decent, credible, and sane people. It was disturbing to hear how their lives were affected, both financially and emotionally, by the weird and frightening things that took place on their ranch over a long period of time.

(Click on the letter to see it better.)

Meet my hero

In 1935, Wilhelmina Phone, a five-year old Jicarilla Apache girl, was sent to a sanatorium with tuberculosis, the latest disease brought by white settlers. The Bureau of Indian Affairs ran the place, but no one understood Apache, the only language Wilhelmina spoke.

She returned to live with her parents when she recovered. “We lived in tents in the traditional way. We lived up north in the summer and moved south in October. We raised sheep and cattle,” she said.

With only an elementary education, Wilhelmina decided to go back to school. “It took four years of night school, but I got my GED in 1970,” she said. Later she took an anthropology class at Adams State College in Alamosa, Colorado. Then she took other classes at UNM, at Ft. Lewis College in Durango, and at San Juan College in Farmington.

In 2006, Wilhelmina Phone's dictionary of the Jicarilla language was published. Since Jicarilla was never a written language, the dictionary is an amazing feat. It took her more than thirty years. The accomplishment earned her an honorary doctorate from the University of New Mexico.

Doctor Phone in my classroom. To her left is Andulia Davis, a member of the St. Francis School Board and a good friend. (Duli's husband Charlie was my substitute teacher once.) To her right is Bud Meyer, principal of St. Francis.

Thank God it happens only once a year

St. Patrick himself showed up in Lumberton on March 17th for the dancing, the parade, and the endless birthday parties.

Ms. Hogan not only shares my birthday and teaches at St. Francis School, she also had a grandmother named Margaret O'Connor.

hermanitas espirituales
Katie Hogan, my birthday sister.

For my sister, Paula

Ariana's recitation of May My Soul Pass Through Old Ireland.

Here's that we may always have ...

So there was this guy called Tijerina

It’s embarrassing to acknowledge how clueless I was about this part of the world before I came here. My understanding was something like this:

• American Revolution
• Lewis and Clark
• Wagon trains
• Founding of San Francisco, Seattle, and other places with decent restaurants

So now I find out that, in addition to the Indian thing, there’s this Spanish thing. It’s about land grants and property ownership. And there was this guy called Rey Tijerina. In the 60s, he started reminding people that when New Mexico became part of the U.S., its poor little farmers and shepherds were supposed to be able to keep their land. The U.S. made that promise in the treaty it signed with Mexico when it acquired New Mexico in 1848.

In 1963, Rey started an organization called la alianza federal de las mercedes (the Federal Land-Grant Alliance) to stop the U.S. Forest Service from shaving off more and more of that treaty land. In 1967, when la alianza took over the Tierra Amarilla courthouse (just down the road from Lumberton) to make a citizens' arrest, things spiraled out of control. Shots were fired. A sheriff and a jailer were hit, other policemen were beaten, and a journalist was locked up. The National Guard arrived soon with 200 tanks and other vehicles and 400 soldiers.

Reies Tijerina was arrested. He represented himself at his trial, served his time, was released, and is still alive. The New York Times wrote about him in 2006, saying, "He could easily be dismissed as absolutely crazy, but if you sit with him and give him an opening he will convert you."

Still life

The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance,
The wise grows it under his feet.

James Oppenheim

Lessons from Iz

In Social Studies, we are studying the Pacific West this month. California, Oregon, Washington, and Alaska get big yawns. Now Hawaiʻi ... that's another story.

Israel Kamakawo'ole has said:

Our children deserve to know
What went down a hundred years ago
You can pay the man, you can take the land
But you can't take the truth away! E Ola
Living in a sovereign land

Bombing boats in the arroyo

Our little Amargo Creek is nearly as mighty as the Mississippi with the spring melt off.

Hey, for some wholesome playground fun, let's sink the trash that sails by with satisfying thuds of giant rocks!