Granny loves cowboy boots

Los Hermanos Penitentes

It’s Holy Week and I am in the midst of los penitentes—an old fraternity that still thrives in northern New Mexico. The brotherhood will hold many ceremonies and processions this week.

When this part of the world was controlled by Spain, there was no separation of church and state. The Spanish missions were run by the Franciscan order and were the centers of government. But when New Mexico was acquired by the United States and foreigner Americans began to anglicize things in the 19th century, the Hispanic people grew increasingly bitter about all the changes taking place, including the replacement of ancient Franciscan traditions with secular ones. Out of that bitterness grew a rich folk religion with los hermanos penitentes at its core, a brotherhood which scorned the new church authority and was often condemned by the Catholic Church.

The penitentes meet and hold their rituals in places called moradas. Moradas are meeting houses in secluded places. Down the road from here, beside an old hillside cemetery, are the crumbling remains of the Lumberton morada.

Closely connected to los hermanos are santeros, the artists who create religious paintings and carvings for them in the old New Mexico style. The pictures here are carvings at our church by a santero from Santa Fe.

Being poor

By Ariana
In New York City, a poor child ran the streets. This poor child's name was Anthony. He lived in Queens. The only family he had were his dad and sister. They took care of Anthony, but they had no food. Anthony and his family used to be rich and had all the food they could eat. But one day his dad got fired. The government came and took away all their goods.

By Elijah
Once there was a little boy named Peter. He was very poor. He had a box as his house. One day Peter said to himself, "Why am I here? I should be selling cans." There was a friend next to him who said, "I tried selling cans but it did not work. Everyone just said no thanks."

Peter's life was terrible. He only had this one friend. The little dude's life was poor because his family had to move to Kansas and left him on the street.

By Elena
Last summer I met a kid named Jimmy. He was 13. He used to be rich, so when was eight, he moved to Pagosa Springs, Colorado. On his 11th birthday, Jimmy's parents died of typhus. He was an only child. Now he is an orphan. Poor Jimmy wasted all his money on things he didn't need, such as candy and pop. He didn't even have a funeral for his parents! Soon he lost his memory and started taking drugs.

One day Jimmy ran away. I had to help him remember all that happened. It took a long time. I asked what happened to his money, but he didn't know. I gave him money to go to school and, boy, was he happy!

By Dulcia
He is poor because he has no job. He has a little sister named Angel. His parents died. His name is Luke. Luke and Angel live in Albuquerque. Luke and Angel miss their parents very much. Almost every one was mean to them, but there was a lady who tried to help them. She gave them what she had. Luke was nine years old. Angel was seven. The lady that was helping them died. They were so sad.

By Lester
Once there was a boy who lived in Africa. He was very poor. His community was rich, but they didn’t want to give him money. The community was stingy. The boy’s mom and dad were named Lesha and Kevin. His mom and dad were about to die. The dad was 43 and the mom was 41. They had chicken pox. They had no food and no water. He had two brothers and two sisters. The girls’ names were Lela and Sheila. They had only their grandma. Their house was tiny. It was for five people. Their beds were made out of sheepskin. Their pillows were made out of their clothes.

By Robert
There once was a boy named Patrick. He used to be rich, but then a fire burned all his money. So he had to live in an abandoned house with his brother and his mom. What does he eat? Well, he eats all the raccoons that come in the building. Since he has no dad, he is a boy without any man. His brother is an obnoxious child, but Patrick is always good for his mom. One day Patrick’s mom died of dehydration. Patrick had to take care of brother until his brother eventually got the flu and died too. Then a miracle happened. Patrick’s dad was alive! But the dad was poor too, so they lived in that abandoned building until they died.

By Andrew
There was a poor man living on the streets of New York. His name was Zach Martins. Zach was lonely living on the street. Then he found five dollars in the gutter. Instead of going and buying food, he went and did something kind of stupid. He ran as fast as he could to a gas station. With the money he had bought a scratch ticket. As he walked, he scratched off three slots. With two more to go, he scratched one slot, then the last slot. Three matching! He ran to the gas station and turned in the ticket. The clerk said, “You won $1,000,000!”

Bathing in the wild, wild west

In Lumberton, we've been eight miserable days without water. Dulce, the town down the road, not only has water, it has a laundromat with showers!

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!

Name six things you would do to make the world a better place

These are six things I would do to make the world better:
1. Bake brownies for the kids in the shelter
2. Help the world stay healthy
3. Send money to Africa to build hospitals
4. Send money to St. Francis School
5. Teach people that drugs can make you die
6. ?

These are six things I would do to make the world better:
1. I would build new schools
2. I would give poor people bags of clothes
3. I would heal the environment
4. I would make colors that are vibrant
5. I would make solar power buildings
6. I would work to end prejudice

These are six things I would do to make the world better:
1. Build houses for homeless people
2. Give food and money to the church
3. Give supplies and money to the school
4. Pick up trash and recycle the stuff
5. Teach math to other people from different places
6. Teach other people our language

These are six things I would do to make the world better:
1. Get rid of drugs
2. Have electric cars
3. Have no tax
4. Let Iraq win the war
5. Lower food and gas prices
6. Pick up trash

These are six things I would do to make the world better:
1. Be kind
2. Be nice to my sister
3. Be nice to one another
4. Follow the Ten Commandments
5. Love one another
6. Respect my mom and dad

These are six things I would do to make the world better:
1. Go visit people in jail
2. Have a cheap or free yard sale for the poor
3. Help pick cotton to make shirts for the homeless
4. Help the EPA with the endangered animals
5. Recycle all soda cans I can find
6. Use solar energy to save the environment

These are six things I would do to make the world better:
1. Get houses for the poor people
2. Let black people sit in the front of the bus
3. Put some churches in places where they don't celebrate God
4. Stop the people from doing tobacco
5. Take away all of the white people who were shooting and killing the black people and being mean
6. Take away guns forever

These are six things I would do to make the world better:
1. I would clean out all the dirty junk in the ocean
2. I would do a lot of recycling
3. I would leave fish for the sea creatures
4. I would make peace with each other
5. I would make sure there is no more whale hunting
6. I would stop Middle Eastern countries' slavery of women

These are six things I would do to make the world better:
1. Build schools
2. Don't kill
3. End drugs
4. Harvest more crops
5. Listen to people
6. Pick up trash

These are six things I would do to make the world better:
1. I want everyone to be friends
2. I want more Spanish people in the United States
3. I would clean up the trash
4. I would save energy by turning out the lights when no one is in the room
5. I would say no more drugs in the world
6. I would stop all wars

These are six things I would do to make the world better:
1. Better schools
2. Fresh water
3. Good penmanship
4. No drugs
5. No mean teachers
6. Send all the white people back to Europe

Friends

Friendship is the only cement that will
ever hold the world together.

Woodrow Wilson

The Diary of Anne Frank

by AJ:
The scariest thing that ever happened to me was when I was playing chicken at Mundo Lake at night. Scary things are happening in The Diary of Anne Frank. People got killed by other people and went to concentration camps. If I were Anne Frank, I would go to court and prove that the Nazis were being mean and unfair. If I was captured by the Nazis, I would walk into France and fight.

by Ariana:
The scariest thing that ever happened to me was when we were coming back from Lybrook. I saw a UFO at night. In The Diary of Anne Frank scary things are happening. Anne’s sister was called up to a concentration camp. People were dying. The family had to hide to live. If I were Anne Frank, I would not bug my parents. I would accept that I had to go into hiding. I would help the people around me. If I were captured by the Nazis, I would lose my life and be with God.

by Andrew:
The scariest thing that ever happened to me was when I was nine years old. We went to the Renaissance Fair. We went to the bungee jump. I went so high I almost fainted.

In The Diary of Anne Frank scary things are happening. Anne Frank has to move to hiding. She has to leave her belongings and her cat. There are people trying to put Jews in concentration camps. If I was Anne Frank, I would only eat, go to the bathroom, and be some entertainment. If I was captured by the Nazis, I would pray to the Lord.

by Simon:
The scariest thing that ever happened to me was when I was five years old. I was riding my bike in the field to go look for arrowheads. I was halfway there when, all of a sudden, dogs came running after me. I was so scared I dropped the bike and ran.

In The Diary of Anne Frank scary things are happening. First, the Nazis were after them. They they had to hide and be quiet five days of the week. If I were Anne Frank, I would listen to my parents because it was for my own good. I would think of Holland before the Nazis came. If I was captured by the Nazis, I would pray and hope I would die.

by Jay:
The scariest thing that ever happened to me was when we were coming back from Lybrook. We were telling scary stories on Long Bridge. Te Ada said Long Bridge was a haunted road. She said people saw things there. We were still telling stories when we saw the game and fish people trying to find something in the field. I was so scared.

Scary things are happening in The Diary of Anne Frank. The first thing is when they had to go into hiding. Then they had to go to the concentration camps. If I was Anne Frank, I would pack a lot of food, put clothes on, and find a hiding place. I would live there. If I was captured by the Nazis, I would try so hard to get away. I would keep warm. I would save food to eat. I would do anything to get away.

Mini-Me on the slopes

Fourth-grade boys find it comical to wrap their knees in their jackets and pretend to be Mini-Me. Below, they combine Mini-Me with snowpiles for twice the hilarity.

Thanks to Grama, we have twenty pairs of gloves for the playground fun.




Mini-me can also roll down the slide.

Pueblo Indians are not Apaches

Along the Rio Grande in northern New Mexico are several abandoned Pueblo villages.

Pictured here are the remains of the old village at the bottom of a place called Frijoles Canyon. You can get dizzy looking up at the cliff dwellings.




There are still lots of Pueblo people in New Mexico. The Pueblos were village dwellers, unlike Jicarilla Apache Indians who didn't stay in one place, but instead followed the buffalo herds with their tipis.

Touring Santa Fe

Hard to say what was the best part of our two days in Santa Fe. There was plenty of eating, drinking, and shopping with Ms. Kristin, the first-grade teacher, and Te Ada, the coach.



Santa Fe is really old—older than Jamestown and Plymouth. It was established in 1598 by the conquistador Juan de Oñate, who named it La Villa Real de la Santa Fé de San Francisco de Asís (the royal city of the Holy Faith of Saint Francis of Assisi). The picture below is from El San Miguel Misión, a 1610 church.

I saw an amazing (and a little disturbing) exhibit of a guy called Fritz Scholder at the Institute of American Indian Arts. And if that wasn't enough, I found out that Fritz was a major influence on another important Indian artist, who happens to be Te Ada's brother!