Wisconsin Journal

Number 17

11 January 1998



Winter is back in Madison. The Arctic air mass that is causing all

the ice storms in Canada and the northeast US made it down here

on Thursday. About 5 inches of snow, and the temperature at our

house last night was about -1. It's a toasty 10 right now, so I

think I'll go switch from a sweater to a T-shirt.



I pick up our Santa Fe trip on Christmas morning. It was snowing

"glitter" when we woke up. When the sun would break through onto

the fallen snow, it looked too perfect to be real, so we figured

it was artificial snow that the Santa Fe merchants had ordered.

While I can remember some Christmases where there was snow (or ice)

on the ground, I can't remember snow on Christmas day itself. It

was sometime in the 80's that Santa Fe last had snow on Christmas

Day.



[The only planned event for Christmas Day was midday dinner at the

Anasazi restaurant downtown. It was a fixed course dinner.

  Appetizers we had:

    Chesnut chili soup

    Goose empanadas

    Oysters w/ salsa

  Main courses:

    Salmon in cashew crust

    Smoked leg of lamb

    Buffalo tenderloin with chipotle-cheddar mashed potatoes

  There was an assortment of desserts, including something in a chocolate

    shell and a mince tart. Sorry--didn't have the menu at that point.

  Kaye and tried some New Mexican champagne with dessert, which was okay.]



The rest of the week was quite sunny with little wind, and it was

comfortable to be outside during the day, even though the temperatures

would dip back into the teens at night. The day after Christmas, we

had planned to drive up to Taos, but weren't sure how the roads would

be, so we headed off to Las Vegas (NM) instead. On the way out, I

stopped off with the kids to see the Museum of International Folk Art

again. We then joined up with Kaye at the Wheelwright Museum of

the American Indian, a private museum nearby. This museum was

founded by Bostonian Mary Cabot Wheelwright and Navajo medicine man

Hasteen Klah back in 1937, to preserve the Navajo religion. At that

point there was serious concern that the Navajo culture would become

extinct, and the museum concentrated on collecting Navajo songs, sand

painting, medicine man pouches and other artifacts with religious

connections. Shortly after its founding, it was renamed the Museum

of Navajo Ceremonial Art. However, once it became clear that the Navajo

people were not going to die out, it broadened its collection to

include art of all southwestern Indians, and gave some holy relics, such

as the pouches, back to the Navajo tribes. I think the renaming as the

Wheelwright is fairly recent. The main hall is built in the form of

a Navajo hogan, using logs for the roof. There's not a huge amount of

the collection on display, but it is interesting in that the art on

display is from all periods, including very recent pieces.



>From the museums, I planned to follow Old Pecos Trail to the Interstate

leading to Las Vegas, but instead, because of an ambiguous map ended

up following the Old Santa Fe trail until it turned to gravel. Since

we weren't sure how far we could actually get on it, and houses were

becoming sparse at that point, we decided to backtrack to the main

road. We stopped at German restaurant (Renata's )in Glorieta for lunch,

just to get a little change of pace from chilis and tortillas. The

restaurant didn't have any running water, because their pump had frozen,

but they were able to cart it in from a nearby house and serve lunch anyway.



Glorieta is near Glorieta Pass, the sight of the most significant

Civil War battle in the southwest. Confederate troups had pushed

up the Rio Grande valley from Texas, hoping to capture Fort Union

along the Santa Fe trail, and thus control the trail. They succeeded

in capturing Albuquerque and Santa Fe. The tide turned at Glorieta

Pass, where the Union army was able to set fire to the Confederate

supply train, after which the Confederate forces soon abandoned their

positions in New Mexico. (An interesting sidelight of this episode is

that the Confederate flag briefly flew over the Palace of the Governors

in Santa Fe, the fourth flag to do so. Technically, they were probably

the fifth different government to hold it, but the Pueblos didn't fly

a flag during their occupation.)



Our next stop on this outing was the Pecos National Historical Park.

It is the site of the ruins of a large Pueblo village and of a Spanish

mission. The North Pueblo probably already existed in the 1400s as

a continuous quadrangle of over 600 rooms, 4-5 stories high. Ground

floor rooms had no doors, but were entered by going up a ladder to

the roof, then down through a hole in the ceiling via another ladder.

The first Spanish visitors in 1540 found 2000 people there, and reported

that you could walk around the entire quadrangle without descending

to ground level. The Franciscans founded a mission at Pecos Pueblo

in 1598, and completed the first church in 1625. (It amazes me

to realize all this was going on as the Pilgrims were just gaining

a foothold on the east coast.) That church was burned during the

Pueblo uprising in 1680, but a new church was completed in 1717. Since

the new church was built on the site of the old, you can see foundations

of both still today. The South Pueblo is nearer the church site, and

some archaeologists believe it was occupied by Indians who were more

allied with the Spaniards. Pueblo population diminished after the

1770s, because of drought, pressure from the Comanches from the plains

and other settlements taking over the trading role that Pecos

used to have. Also, all the Spanish priests were expelled from Mexico

in 1826, which meant that there was no longer a direct flow of funds

from Spain into the mission. In 1836, the last 17 residents of Pecos

walked to Jemez Pueblo, all the way on the other (west) side of the

Sangre di Cristo mountains, which are part of the Rockies.



The North Pueblo has been completely excavated, though you can't actually

go in amongst the ruins. There is a restored kiva nearby that you can

go down into. A kiva is a ceremonial room, and derives from the pit

houses the Pueblo used to live in. They typically have a fire pit,

an airshaft to feed the fire, a deflector to protect the fire from

drafts, and a sipapu--a symbolic hole in the ground that represents

the Pueblo emergence from the underworld in the beginning. They have

anchors in the floor and on the ceiling to support the vertical looms

that would be used for weaving ceremonial sashes. There are

multiple kiva societies within a pueblo, each with its own kiva. The

Pecos Pueblo has over 20, including one that was dug in the cloisters

of the church during Pueblo occupation. You can climb down into that

one as well. We could walk through the ruins of the church and associated

mission buildings, probably because they were built with ground-level

doors and walkways. The South Pueblo is only about 1/3 excavated.



We continued up to Las Vegas, which probably looks now much like

Santa Fe did around the turn of the century, before the latter was

"adobified". Victorian houses and Italianate commercial buildings.

Las Vegas has two town centers. The plaza is the older area, and

is where the Santa Fe Trail actually crossed through town, I gather.

The other center is about a mile away, but grew up near the railroad.

We didn't stay long, as most of the shops were taking a day off after

Christmas. On our way back to Sante Fe we enjoyed a wonderful sunset,

with the sky turning deep pink in all directions at some point.

We realized that Georgia O'Keefe's paintings of dusk don't exagerate

the colors.



[After we got back, Kaye and I headed out for dinner at Santacafe,

whose chef combines Asian and southwestern influences.

   Shrimp & chimayo bisque

   Shrimp and spinach dumplings with sesame sauce

   Pork tenderloin in prosciutto w/ cranberry compote and spiced mashed

     sweet potatoes

   Duck breast and duck confit with a cassoulet of southwestern beans

   Tangerine sorbet with cranberry coulis

   Warm chocolate cake with black cherries and toasted almond ice cream.

This was one of the restaurants where we made reservations before we

even left Madison--I don't think we could have gotten in before 10:30

otherwise.]



The next day, Kaye had a class at the Santa Fe School of Cooking, so I

headed off towards Los Alamos with the kids. We stopped along the way at

Bandolier National Monument to see the Frijoles Canyon ruins. Frijoles

Canyon is a great setting for habitation. There is a year-round creek

that runs through it. The south side of the canyon features sheer cliffs

made of tuff, which is compressed volcanic ash. Tuff erodes and carves

easily, so it is relatively easy to create dwellings there. The canyon is

wide enough that this side gets sunlight at a low angle for most of the

day in winter. The floor of the valley is relatively flat, for farming.

The north side of the valley is wooded, which provided game and a cool

place to hang out in the summer.



The area was probably occupied from around 1200-1500. In addition

to the cliff dwellings, there was a free-standing pueblo village,

called Tyuonyi, that had about four hundred rooms on two stories.

In contrast to Pecos, which is rectangular, Tyuonyi has a mainly circular

layout, with the main entrance facing away from the winter winds.

The trail took us up to the cliff dwellings. We saw a natural cave with

evidence of use as a dwelling (ceiling colored black from smoke).

Most first-story dwellings were partially carved into the rock, then built

out in front with talus (rock debris from the cliff) and mud. This

half-in/half-out construction reminded me of the troglodyte dwellings

along the Loire Valley in France. There were also some rooms competely

carved into the rock, however, and you could climb up ladders and and get

inside some of them. While there are pit kivas at the site, there

is also evidence that some of the caves and cliff structures were

kivas as well, based on motifs painted inside, and the standard

layout of fire pit, air shaft, sipapu and loom anchors. One of the cave

kivas had been reconstructed and we could go inside.



It was while watching Luke descend from the cave kiva that I figured out

something that had been puzzling me. All the ladders I had seen, both

going into kivas and up to caves, had one side higher than the other:



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Our ladders aren't made like this because we usually climb part way

up them from the bottom. Pueblo ladders are constructed as such because

you climb down them starting at the top as often as you climb up them

from the bottom. This arrangement makes them quite easy to descend, as

Luke figured out without even thinking about it. Imagine this ladder

leaning up to the mouth of a cave, with its first rung maybe a little

below the level of the cave floor. (I've drawn the ladder as seen

from the outside of the cave.) From inside the cave, you walk up to it,

and place your left hand on the left rail, turn around slightly, and put

your left foot on the first rung. You can then easily swing your right leg

*over* the right rail and onto a rung, and now you,re in position to climb

down. Anyone who has ever tried to get on a ladder from a roof will realize

how much sense this makes.



We continued along the canyon wall to the ruins of the Long House,

which was more or less 800 ft. of pueblo condos. This continuous

structure had rooms extending up the cliff face up to four stories

in places. You can easily see where the rooms were, because of the

holes in the cliff face for the vigas--wood beams that held up the

roofs. Long House is partially protected by an overhanging cliff,

and in some places the plaster and designs that covered the interior

of the rooms has been preserved. There are also numerous petroglyphs

running along the cliffs just above the roofline of the top level---

for recreation, you could just go up on the roof and carve. Some

of the petroglyphs have painting by them; in one case, what looks

like the stencil of the artists hand. Just above the Long House is

a cave that bats started using in 1986 as a summer home. A surfeit

of guano has necessitated a detour in the trail at that point.



There is also a ceremonial cave about a 1/2 mile away, but it was

closed because of the snow. Just as well---I heard that there's a

climb of 140 ft., including four ladders, to reach it, and that

acrophobes generally don't like it. I was left with feigning

disappointment to the kids, and explaining how I had planned to

go up the ladders blindfolded, with my shoelaces tied together and

using my teeth instead of my hands. Next time, I guess.



An interesting bit of recent history about the site is Frey Lodge.

George and Evelyn Frey built a guest lodge in the canyon in 1925.

(It now serves as a gift shop and housing and offices for park staff.)

When the lodge was built, there was no road into the canyon, so

guests (and any outside supplies) had to come down a mile-and-a-half,

steep trail from the canyon rim. The Freys raised fruit, vegetables,

cattle and chickens in the valley. They also managed to get a cast-iron

cookstove, a piano and a Dodge pickup (in pieces) down the trail.

The truck must have been a bitch. Imagine--any time you want to get

it serviced, you have to take it apart, cart it up the trail, put

it back together, take it to the mechanic, take it apart again,

drag it down the trail, and re-assemble it.



>From Bandelier we headed up to the Bradbury Science Museum in Los Alamos,

passing by various facilities of Los Alamos National Labs on the way.

(The science museum is named for the second director of the labs, not

the science fiction writer.) I didn't see everything in as much detail

as I wanted, as the kids were flagging. I spent most of my time in

the exhibit on the history of the Manhattan project. (The name came

from the Manhattan Engineering District (headquarters: 5th Avenue, NYC)

of the Army Corps of Engineers.) There was a good film on the siting,

construction and activities of the lab during the project. The site was

suggested by Robert Oppenheimer, the civilian leader of the project, who

liked the outdoors and knew the area. The federal government appropriated

the only structure in the area, the Los Alamos Ranch School, in 1942

and started construction in 1943. All personnel and materials were

cleared through an office in Santa Fe, at 109 S. Palace drive, a few

doors off the plaza. A picture of the plaza at that time showed donkeys

bearing firewood tied up at the Palace of the Governors. As part of

the secrecy, drivers' licenses were issued with numbers instead of

names, and if you were born at the lab, your birth certificate listed

a PO box as your place of birth. (Must have been real uncomfortable in

there.) There was also some material about the uranium and plutonium

processing facilities set up in Tennessee and Richland, Washington,

to supply the Manhattan project.



I took some time to explain to Sarah about critical mass, and how it

was acheived in Little Man and Fat Boy, the bombs used in Hiroshima and

Nagasaki. I spent a little time looking at the instruments used in

underground nuclear tests (which have short but exciting lifetimes), and

then spent the rest of my time on an exhibit about the different

generations of computing at the lab. During the project itself, about the

best they had were mechanical calculators and electromechanical tabulators.

I saw a piece of the "FERMIAC", which appeared to be some kind of

mechanical analog device meant to solve a particular problem in

bomb design. The first real computers at the labs were the MANIAC I

and II (tubes), which were soon supplanted by IBM 701 and 704 (transistors,

if I remember correctly), and then the CDC 7600 (ICs). They had

a Cray I (vector processor) on display (minus cooling equipment), opened

up so you could see the 61 miles of point-to-point wiring it used.

There was a nice bookstore/science shop next door, and I found a

couple books with extensive references to Aaron Novick (David's

father) and his collaboration with Leo Szilard. (I believe they first

met at U. of Chicago before the Manhattan Project was consolidated

in NM, but their joint work was actually on molecular biology, after

the war.)



We headed home, saw another wonderful sunset, and went to a Mexican

restaurant nearby that the locals frequent. The menu was typical of

what I was used to at most non-fast-food Mexican restaurants, with

a couple of exceptions. Sopaipillas came with most meals, which

are little bread squares that puff up when cooked. The other thing

(which you get everywhere) is posole, which is field corn that

has been soaked in lime (i.e., hominy) cooked with herbs and a little

pork or ham, usually. Traditional New Mexican cooking didn't use

rice, and posole takes its place, giving a complete set of amino

acids when eaten with beans. (Digression--liming corn also provides

a source of niacin, which is missing from untreated corn, but

present in other grains. When corn was brought over to Europe, it

became the main source of meal for the poor in many areas. For example,

in Italy, it supplanted chestnut flour as the main staple. However,

the lack of niacin wasn't known, and large segments of the population

suffered from pellagra (caused by niacin deficiency) which has

skin disorders and dementia among its symptoms.) After dinner,

Kaye went to a movie with the kids, while I walked home. I noticed

a farolito burning on a grave in a cemetary that I passed.



Our last day in Santa Fe we finally did get up to Taos. Kit Carson

spent the last part of his life there, though we didn't see the

museum dedicated to him on this trip. The high point of the day for

Sarah was the Taos Bookstore, which had a very friendly shop cat.

We walked around the plaza, where I noticed an outfitters store with

a Green Bay shrine in one of its windows. The centerpiece was a

Packers wastebasket, so it wasn't like a major shrine or anything,

but I felt it was a sincere display, nonetheless.



[Had brunch in Tapas de Taos. Mexican Hot Chocolate (with cinnamon),

egg enchilada, chilaquiles (eggs, chopped tortillas, cheese and chiles).

Kaye had that last one--I wish I had ordered it. I found out on

this trip that, at least in NM, enchiladas are traditionally made

by making kind of a layer cake of tortillas alternated with filling.

It typically feeds several people, and is served in wedges. The

book I was looking at referred to rolled enchiladas somewhat

disparagingly as "restaurant enchiladas". The enchilada I had at

Tapas de Taos was the traditional variety.]



>From the town of Taos, we drove up to the Taos Pueblo, one of the

oldest pueblos that is still occupied and said to be the one that

most retains the look it had when the Spanish arrived. (They claim

to be the city in the US with the longest continuous occupation--over

1000 years--but I saw another pueblo claiming the same distinction.)

Taos Pueblo has an old part, built roughly in a square, spanning

a creek, and modern structures outside that area.  No running water

or electicity is allowed in the old part, though bottled gas is okay,

which is used for lighting and heating. The rooms are stacked up

to five stories in places. Lots of hive-shaped baking oven scattered

around, and you could buy bread made in them. I bought some traditional

sugar cinnamon Christmas cookies for Sarah, and a local dog instantly

made friends with her, looking for a handout. ("Pueblo Christmas cookie"

isn't a contradiction---90% of the tribe is Catholic, and a Catholic

church occupies one corner of the old part.) There have been some

small structural changes over the years. Ground floor rooms now have

front doors, rather than entryways in the roofs. Windows have glass.

The few homes we went into (being run as gift shops) had hard floors

as well. We didn't stay real long, as the wind was real brisk and we

were getting real cold.



Random bit of info--Aldo Leopold (conservationist, "Sand County Diary")

is another Wisconsonite who spent some time in Santa Fe.



Our last full day in NM we spent in Albuquerque. Our first stop was

the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center, which is a joint effort of the

19 pueblos in New Mexico. Part of it is a museum, which covers the

history and culture of the Pueblo Indians. The best part is a series

of cases that shows styles of crafts made in the different pueblos

(except we didn't see a case for the Santo Domingo Pueblo, who are

perhaps the excellent jewelry makers.). Some of the cases showed the steps

in making various items, and others traced family lineages of potters.

Upstairs is a very well stocked gift shop that occupies about as much

space as the museum, and has whole rooms devoted to pottery, jewelry,

weaving, etc. Sarah bought an inlaid silver pendant, and Kaye bought

two Pueblo baskets, made out of willow. Pueblo baskets are not real

common, as pottery has been the material of choice for containers.

I think only one pueblo has people who still make them.



[Had lunch in the restaurant at the cultural center, which has

real reasonable prices. I had something that was kind of a

marinated pork taco, except it used Indian fry bread instead

of tortillas. Also had posole one last time, which Kaye heard

characterized as "underwater popcorn" at her cooking class.]



We next headed to the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science.

(Unfortunately, since it was Monday, several of the other museums

we were interested in were closed.) Most of the museum is laid out

in chronological order, and the exhibits progress from the birth of

the universe, to the formation of the solar system, through the

evolution of life up through New Mexico's last Ice Age, about 12,000

years ago. I liked the display that showed the times during the Cretaceous

when Albuquerque was ocean-front property, and the fossil casts of

dinosaur skin. There was also an exhbit on gemstones, and there is

a lab where you can watch technicians carefully scraping away the matrix

around dinosaur bones brought in from the field. The kids and I took

time out to see a movie on rain forests. Towards the end of the film,

it was showing research on rain-forest canopies, and I realized I

recognized the person in the picture. It was Nalini Nadkarni, a

professor at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, who I work with

on scientific databases. (Judy C.---be sure to pass this along.)

She was ascending a tree on ropes, and then collecting a bromeliad

that was in bloom. (Bromeliads are more or less pineapples that live

in trees.) In the museum store, Sarah persuaded her mom to buy her

a mouse puppet, which provided a companion for some stuffed mice

Luke bought in Santa Fe, and an excellent way to harass the rest of

the family back in the hotel room.



The natural history museum is right at the edge of Albuquerque's old town,

so we spent a little time walking around the plaza there. Found a

really interesting bead shop, that had hundreds of kinds of small

carved animal fetishes, and beads made from native stones and minerals.



And that about wraps it up. Had dinner at an okay seafood restaurant

that happened to be close to the hotel, caught our plane out early

the next morning, and got back to Madison that afternoon, after a

bit of extra delay in Chicago.



Adios,

Dave