Mabel Dodge Luhan and the Remarkable Women of Taos

News Flash: Launch of the 2012 Year of the Remarkable Women of Taos

2012-01-14T11:29:00.026-07:00

It's official! The 2012 Town of Taos Remarkable Women of Taos media launch made a big splash in this week's Taos News. Covering up and overlapping the paper was a big cover page/fold out announcing this year's theme--tied to New Mexico's Centennial of Statehood.

So what does the Remarkable Woman of Taos encompass? Earlier, Cathy Ann Connelly, Director of Public Affairs and Tourism for the Town of Taos, explained:

Each year, the Town puts together a traveler education media theme for Taos’ creative community to pinpoint the traveler who will appreciate what we offer, educate them about Taos, and attract them to visit the area that year. This year, in conjunction with the state’s centennial, we are celebrating our remarkable women and underscoring why they were drawn to Taos’ unique and wonderful attributes.

My part in this? I helped lay the groundwork by identifying, researching and writing about remarkable women, helping conduct planning meetings, and creating or assisting with the creation of events. Mabel's biographer Lois Rudnick, Karen Young (my "guidian" angel at the Mabel Dodge Luhan House) and I have two Remarkable Women of Taos events already on the books: the 90th anniversary of the Mabel Dodge Luhan House (building completion in 1922) in February, and our workshop "Meetings with Remarkable Women" scheduled for June 1 through 3, 2012. (*See note below my signature.)

You may be interested to know that the Town of Taos hired me to write 30 profiles on historic and contemporary women. The photos above represent 4 of those women: at the top weaver and Weaving Southwest gallery owner Teresa Loveless (and her grandmother, the famous weaver Rachel Brown); top left Mabel pictured with her husband Tony; bottom left Adriana Blake third-generation family member and owner/operator of Taos Ski Valley; and on the right fashion designer Patricia Michaels from Taos Pueblo.

This wonderful work has occupied my thoughts and time (average 10 hours a day, 6 days a week) since last May. The effort took me away from this blog--but rest assured, I'm back with a Cecil B. DeMille cast of characters. You'll meet them on the blog. With so many women to tell you about, I'll be posting about 3 times a month. In the meantime, to read what I've written on historic and contemporary women, visit the new Town of Taos remarkable women website

Stay tuned!

Adios for now,

Liz

* Space is limited: workshop can accommodate 60; Mabel Dodge Luhan House has 19 rooms available for double or single occupancy.

Mabel Dodge Luhan: Preview of the Year of the Remarkable Women of Taos

2012-01-05T10:21:00.000-07:00

Happy New Year! This is the year of the Dragon, I’m told. It is also the year of the Remarkable Women of Taos, and it all started with this blog. But that’s another story…

On Friday at noon on January 6^th the State of New Mexico’s inaugural event officially launches 100 years of statehood. I found this interesting because in Taos two events – one on the 5^th, the other on the 7^th – launch for me (in an unofficial way) the yearlong Centennial celebration of the Remarkable Women in Taos. As a preview to the women who will be featured and honored, I thought you might enjoy meeting the remarkable women featured in today’s and Saturday’s happenings.

Tonight SOMOS (the Society of the Muse of the Southwest) will host poetry readings Harwood Museum of Art that enhance the exhibition “The Legacy of Black Mountain College.” Mabel would have loved this! Black Mountain College echoed her 1912-1915 salon through gathering movers and shakers in a forum for the exchange of innovative ideas. Like Mabel’s salon the experimental, interdisciplinary Black Mountain College served as an incubator for the American avant garde. The institution had quite an impact: as an important precursor, it provided a prototype for many alternative colleges that exist today. From 1933 to 1956 the college attracted faculty and lecturers like Buckminster Fuller, Merce Cunningham, John Cage, Josef Albers, Robert Creeley, Charles Olson, Willem and Elaine de Kooning, and Albert Einstein. Some of the students later became America’s leading designers, poets and artists, among them painters Robert Rauschenberg and Cy Twombly.

Some Black Mountains students visited and/or settled in New Mexico. Of them two women who live in Taos will be honored tonight: Cynthia Homire and Barbara Harmon. Potter, poet and artist who attended Black Mountain College from 1950-54, Cynthia Homire’s most influential teachers were Charles Olson, Robert Creeley and Karen Karnes. She has lived and worked in Northern New Mexico since 1964, first as a potter in Santa Fe, then as a poet in Taos. What Cynthia had to say about her experience at the college gives a taste of what life was like there for her as a young woman:

Yes, I have rubbed shoulders with the pantheon, a few bellies, too. Washed the floor Merce Cunningham danced on, then went leaping through his class. Jitterbugged with Rauschenberg, pointed out morels to John Cage, was instructed by Olson in long night classes to write from my roots, dirt and all, but take time out to dig up a few Mayans in Mexico. Shared steak with William Carlos Williams (he said "I know you"). Cooked a Chinese meal for Eliot Porter and David Brower (before David took to chewing each bite thirty times before swallowing). Breakfast with Brautigan. All these things happen if you are there for them and maybe you make pots for 30 years and then maybe you write poetry.

Barbara Sayre Harmon grew up in a sophisticated artist family – her father was the noted California landscape painter Fred Grayson Sayre. Barbara Sayre first came to Taos in 1946 to study with Emil Bisttram at the Bisttram School of Art. She arrived with her future husband, Cliff Harmon. The couple studied art three summers with Bisttram, and afterwards spent time at Black Mountain College (1949-1950). Barbara and Cliff worked in other places, then returned to Taos in the 1960s. Influenced by their experience at Black Mountain, as one of their projects the Harmons built the first solar home in Taos, anticipating the leadership others in Taos would take in solar resource development. By then both had developed new painting series. Previously Barbara did artistic bookbinding. Back in Taos she turned to painting still lifes and imaginative subjects drawn from fairy tales. At an early age Arthur Rackham’s watercolor illustrations in The Wind in the Willows inspired Barbara. She began to explore the art of classical fantasy English watercolor. Now, in her mystical, dreamlike images, she tries to bring about a sense of peace and contemplation in the viewer. Barbara also writes poems that are as whimsical as her paintings.

On Saturday, January 7, Sharon Snyder will give a presentation for the Taos County historical Society based on her recently released biography on Peggy Pond Church titled At Home on the Slopes of Mountains. Peggy Pond Church, who lived in Taos from 1946 to 1956 (her brother Ashley Pond was Mabel Dodge Luhan’s doctor in Taos) has been called the First Lady of New Mexican Poetry, "a significant American voice." Sharon Snyder’s biography tells Peggy’s story, tracing her life through a great flood, through canyons and ruins, trails and tall pines on the Pajarito Plateau (the landscape surrounding present-day Los Alamos), and the loss of her home to the Manhattan Project of World War II. Born in 1903 on a ranch in the Territory of New Mexico, Peggy lived in Pajarito Canyon and at the Los Alamos Ranch School before being uprooted during the war to live the second half of her life in Taos, Berkeley, and Santa Fe. Although her poetry has many inspirations and sensitive observations of land and people, she once described it by saying, "It's the land that wants to be said." Church’s journey is revealed also in her books of poetry and prose. She wrote eight volumes of poetry during her life, and many poems are still being published in anthologies on women, nature, and the American West. Her memoir of Edith Warner, The House at Otowi Bridge has become a Southwest classic. In 1984 Peggy received the Governor's Award for Excellence and Achievement in the Arts and was also named a Living Treasure of Santa Fe. She died in 1986.

On January 13^th the Town of Taos plans to launch its media campaign for The Remarkable Women of Taos. I will post an overview of the year around that time and relate my experiences as I interviewed contemporary women and researched their historic counterparts.

Stay tuned.

Adios for now,

Liz

P. S. As part of the year's Remarkable Women of Taos events, The Mabel Dodge Luhan House has planned a workshop, "Meetings with Remarkable Women."

Thank you to photographer and filmmaker Kathleen Brennan for providing photos of Cynthia Homire and Barbara Harmon. Kathleen interviewed them for and featured them in her new documentary film Vast Spaces, Unique Vistas: The Artists of Black Mountain College and the New Mexico Connection, which airs tonight as part of this evening's poetry reading at the Harwood.

Fellow writer and compadre Sharon Snyder provided the photo of Peggy Pond Church. Thanks, Sharon.

Appreciation to Jan Smith and Dori Vinella of SOMOS for providing informative material on Cynthia Homire and Barbara Harmon.

New Year's Eve 2011: Bonfires and Mabel Dodge Luhan on Winter in Taos

2011-12-31T18:59:00.009-07:00

The holiday season in Taos opened with a snowstorm that reminded me of Mabel’s writing in her book, Winter in Taos.

The passage began with Mabel thinking how high the snow would be piled at the Lawrence ranch. She wrote “How cold and deserted it must be up there, with Frieda away for the winter.” Mabel reflected on how in the winter the days brought less activity:

We stay in the house more, and the changing light in the room, falling first on one portion of it, then on another as the day passes quietly, has a kind of experience in it, a feeling of deep living that we miss in the freedom of movement that comes when the frost is out of the ground.

Every winter Mabel had to learn anew to sink into the season instead of resisting the cold, snow and dark. Submitting to the reality of winter brought a certain kind of peace. Indoors in winter, Mabel wrote letters. She also pulled out her bag of wools and her needles and sat by the window perfectly content to knit and ponder and remember. In this pastime, she found another kind of quiet, a kind of even rhythm that was "somehow a very satisfactory activity like a dance or like the slow, sure motion of the constant star." In winter as sometimes in summer, Mabel always burned piñon in every corner fireplace. Before lighting the fires, she ritually lit cedar that acted as incense:

The silent house was perfumed with the dry cedar that is burned in it every morning; a small branch is lighted and blown out, and the smoke permeates the rooms and makes a most clean and peaceful smell.

Like Mabel, we keep fires burning in our wood stove during the coldest days of winter. Now, at the time of the last holidays before the new year dawns, however, I think of bonfires. We had one on the Solstice. This past August our youngest son, Pierre, came to visit. His mission on this trip was to help his dad build a fire pit. We inaugurated the fire pit at the Solstice with a household full of Taoseños and their families and friends. Long after our guests left, Skip and I stood outside and enjoyed watching the flames dance in the cold night air.

Our bonfire seemed substantial, but it was miniscule compared to the Christmas Eve bonfires at Taos Pueblo. For days before Christmas Eve, men from the various families trek into the forest. They seek out dead trees with plenty of pine pitch. Once cut and brought down to the huge plaza between the North and South houses, men and boys stack the wood like Lincoln logs to form squares.

Each family with a traditional house at Taos Pueblo constructs ricks near their property. These can range from one foot high piles to towers three stories high.

At sundown, just before the Christmas Eve mass at Taos Pueblo’s San Geronimo church ends, the men and boys of the families or Pueblo officials set fire to the ricks. Bonfires burn all over the plaza and light the procession and the people who attend this special celebratory evening at Taos Pueblo.

On New Year’s Eve, fireworks not bonfires, will light the night sky of Taos. May the light of peace shine on you all tonight.

Wishing you a Happy New Year!

Adios for now,

Liz

My gratitude to friends Giovanna Paponetti and Judith Bronner for supplying me with photos that illuminated this post.

Mabel Dodge Luhan and D. H. Lawrence: Writing and the Muse

2011-12-05T11:14:00.012-07:00

In a large studio in Paris, hung with paintings by Renoir, Matisse and Picasso, Gertrude Stein is doing with words what Picasso is doing with paint. She is impelling language to induce new states of consciousness, and in doing so language becomes with her a creative art rather than a mirror of history. – Mabel Dodge, Arts and Decoration, March 1913

Out of sheer rage I’ve begun my book on Thomas Hardy. It will be about anything but Thomas Hardy I am afraid—queer stuff—but not bad. – D. H. Lawrence, quoted in Out of Sheer Rage [Wrestling with D. H. Lawrence] by Geoff Dyer

My desire to investigate Mabel's writing career and my participation earlier this year in two Taos-based events, both centered on D. H. Lawrence, inspired this post. On June 11th Katherine Toy Miller spoke on "Spiritual Connections: Georgia O'Keeffe and D. H. Lawrence" as part of the Taos Public Library summer lecture series, which included a tour of the D. H. Lawrence Ranch.

In her talk Kathy addressed the spiritual and personal connections shared by the artist and the writer. Both found inspiration in nature, which drew them to depict the same locations in Taos. For example, when Lawrence first arrived in Taos in 1922 he visited, then wrote about Taos Pueblo; seven years later O'Keeffe depicted the same subject.

One morning, on his second visit to Taos in 1924, Lawrence woke at the ranch (deeded to Frieda by Mabel in exchange for the original autograph manuscript of Sons and Lovers) to see the trunk of a big pine tree that rose up like a guardian spirit. He included the tree in St. Mawr (1925), the novella he wrote during his five-month stay. O'Keeffe later memorialized the same tree on the D. H. Lawrence Ranch with a painting originally titled "Pine Tree with Stars at Brett's in New Mexico" and now known as The Lawrence Tree (1929).

Although Lawrence and O'Keeffe never crossed paths, they had the "Tony" guest house in common. And through Mabel, both were led to or discovered places they portrayed in word and paint.

This fall I had the pleasure of meeting and spending some time with radio producer Steven Rajam and author Geoff Dyer as they prepared for a BBC program on D.H. Lawrence in New Mexico. It was Steven’s first time in northern New Mexico, and over twenty years since Geoff first landed in our region. After Geoff’s first visit to Taos in the mid 1990s—part of his mission to retrace Lawrence’s footsteps by visiting all the places the author lived and wrote—he penned Out of Sheer Rage [Wrestling with D. H. Lawrence] (1996), a volume Steve Martin called the “funniest book I have ever read.” As Steven Rajam explained to me, Geoff wrote not a book about Lawrence but a book about writing around Lawrence--filled with the kind of procrastination, rationalization and writer’s block that besets most authors.

Since then I’ve thought about Lawrence and the writing he did in New Mexico, which Geoff considers his best work. For months I’ve also been pondering Mabel’s writing. In recent research conducted for the profiles I’ve been assigned to write for the Remarkable Women of Taos media campaign, I found a reference to Mabel as a gifted writer. Moved to investigate this part of her life, I delved into various sources and discovered a career for which she has received little recognition. As part of my exploration I also looked at the published and unpublished manuscripts of both authors to see how their work might have connected. My studies revealed a deeper, longer relationship around writing between Lawrence and Mabel than I had imagined. Here’s what I found out.

By 1912, Lawrence's novel The White Peacock (1911) had launched him as a writer. Likewise "Portrait of Mabel Dodge at the Villa Curonia" by Gertrude Stein established Mabel Dodge, who had returned to New York from her villa in Florence, among New York's avant garde. Until her departure for New Mexico in 1917, Mabel wrote for such leading modernist literary and art magazines as The Dial and Alfred Stieglitz's Camera Work, the leftist journal The International, and The Masses. For a brief time Mabel worked as a syndicated columnist for the New York Journal. She doled out advice on topics ranging from making quilts to setting up lending libraries for paintings. Her columns, which also conveyed her understanding of subjects of interest to her like Freudian psychology and the mind cure, appeared on the editorial pages of newspapers with some of the largest circulations in the U. S. Through her writing connections and her evenings surrounded by leading edge movers and shakers at 23 5th Avenue, Mabel became cognizant of D. H. Lawrence's modernist prose and poems, like Sons and Lovers (1912) and Love Poems and Others (1913).

After her move to Taos, Mabel read aother Lawrence work, Sea and Sardinia (1921), where he conveyed "the feel and touch and smell of places so that their reality and their essence are open to one, and one can step right into them."** Further, Lawrence's travel book made her think:

Here is the only one who can really see this Taos country and the Indians, and who can describe it so that it is as much alive between the covers of a book as it is in reality.

Mabel wrote Lawrence after reading Sea and Sardinia. She told him about Taos and the Pueblo Indians, about Tony Lujan and herself, and relayed how much she wanted him "to come and know the country before it became exploited and spoiled." Lawrence responded from Taormina, Sicily on November 5, 1921 saying that he and the q-b [queen bee, Frieda] would like to come to Taos. Mabel hastened to complete Tony's house for the Lawrences, who finally arrived in Taos on September 11, 1922, D. H.'s 37th birthday. A week later in a letter to S. S. Koteliansky, the writer described Mabel as a rich American woman who lent him and Frieda a "new and very charming adobe house which she built for us: because she wants me to write this country up."***

Writing up the country up happened within days of Lawrence's arrival. After attending a 5-day Apache ceremony near Dulce (NM) with Mabel and Tony, he penned "Indians and an Englishman," his first New Mexico essay. The piece disappointed Mabel: he hadn't captured the essence of the Indians the way she wanted him to portray them. So it thrilled her when one evening Lawrence asked her to collaborate on a book.

He said he wanted to write an American novel that would express the life, the spirit, of America, and he wanted to write it around me--my life from the time I left New York to come out to New Mexico. To take my experience, my material, my Taos, and to formulate it all into a magnificent creation.

The next day Lawrence came to Mabel's home to begin their joint venture. This beginning, seemingly full of promise, came with a foreshadowing of what would transpire. Lawrence wasn't sure how Frieda felt about their collaboration. "She won't let any other women into my books." The next day he informed Mabel: "Frieda thinks we ought to work over in our house." When they arrived there, Frieda "stamped round, sweeping noisily, and singing with a loud defiance." (This incident sparked a life-long rivalry between the two women, but that's another story.)

Although their planned novel never appeared, Lawrence managed to write "The Wilful Woman," a short story about the journey that brought Mabel to Taos. While living in the Tony house, he also wrote several prose pieces and poems. By November, due to Mabel's overbearing ways, the Lawrences sought other quarters. They lived at the abandoned ranch twenty miles north of Taos that they later owned. With interim trips to Mexico and Europe, D. H. and Frieda spent contented months there on their two next visits in 1924 and 1925.

Cover for the May 1924 issue of Laughing Horse

During this time both Lawrence and Mabel had works published nationally in The Dial and locally in the Laughing Horse, a small magazine printed in Taos by Willard "Spud" Johnson. Poet, columnist and publisher, Spud worked for a time as Mabel's secretary and became a close friend of the Lawrences. In May 1924 he featured Mabel's poem "Ballad of a Bad Girl" in the Laughing Horse. Two lines in the poem describing a "very, very angry man/With blue, blue eyes and a red, red crest" refers to Lawrence. It was written to him as a reconciliatory offering after his return to New Mexico that spring. The only known response to Mabel's overture is Lawrence's illustration that accompanied her poem. I considered this a collaboration of sorts.

Looking at later issues, I found two other Laughing Horse pieces that showed a continuing connection between Mabel and Lawrence. In 1926, after the publication of Lawrence's novel The Plumed Serpent, Spud printed Mabel's article "The Plumed Serpent," which instead of reviewing his new book provided a portrait of him. Spud published the last piece of Lawrence's in Laughing Horse in 1938, eight years after the author's death. It was the first scene from "Altitude," an unfinished play that caricatured "Mabeltown" and American attitudes.

I might have stopped my investigation there, but as I read on in Mabel's book, Lorenzo in Taos, I made a discovery. Lawrence corresponded with Mabel from the time he returned to Europe in 1925 until shortly before his death in 1930. In parts of his letters, he occasionally made reference to his writing in progress or works he had submitted for publication. What surprised me was that he also commented and offered advice on Mabel's memoirs-in-progress. In 1926 Lawrence wrote that he was returning the "Villa" [Mabel's Villa Curonia period] manuscript which seemed all right--even though "a wee bit absurd, but expressive of the phase you wish to describe." Months later he noticed that Mabel's writing had "gone out of gear" perhaps because she didn't want to "do anymore." Lawrence advised her to "Let it rest, for a while." He also cautioned Mabel: "As for publishing the Memories, I don't think it's wise, while your mother lives." and "Don't write if you're out of mood. Don't force yourself. And wait for grace."

Lawrence recognized how Mabel's autobiographical history corroborated with his own views of life in the United States. He expressed this to her in his letter of April 12, 1926:

I should say it's the most serious "confession" that ever came out of America, and perhaps the most heart-destroying revelation of the American life-process that ever has or will be produced.

The decision to write her memoirs arose from what Freudian psychoanalyst A. A. Brill, who attended Mabel's salons and served as her analyst for 20 years, deemed a Cathartic Method whereby in reliving past experiences by giving voice to them, the painful emotions associated with those experiences would be exorcized. Willing to open old wounds to achieve psychic equilibrium, Mabel issued the first volume of her "Intimate Memories" in 1933, the year of her mother's death.

Three other volumes in the Intimate Memories series followed: European Experiences (1935), Movers and Shakers (1936), and Edge of Taos Desert (1937). She also wrote Taos and Its Artists (1947, a leading overview of the painters and sculptors from the art colony founders through the modernists of the 1940s. Up through the early 1950s Mabel continued to produce the occasional newspaper and magazine article, many dedicated to the history and culture of Taos.

Before any of her autobiographical works went to press, Mabel published Lorenzo in Taos, her memories of D. H. Lawrence. Following the book's 1932 printing in the United States, the Martin Secker company issued an edition printed in London in 1933. Since then her book and Lawrence's volumes written in and about New Mexico have influenced generations of Lawrence scholars, and attracted writers like Geoff Dyer to the area.

Lorenzo in Taos was Mabel's tribute to Lawrence. He also honored her. In his April 14, 1927 letter to Mabel, Lawrence related receiving and correcting the proofs for Mornings in Mexico, a book of essays that he liked. He added: "I inscribe the book to you...since to you we really owe Taos and all that ensues from Taos."

Adios for now,

Liz

* Bill Haller, current president of the Taos-based Friends of D. H. Lawrence.
** Unless otherwise noted, quotes are from Mabel's book Lorenzo in Taos (1932).
*** Quote from D. H. Lawrence and New Mexico, edited by Keith Sagar.

I am indebted to Linda Lambert, author and one of the Friends of D. H. Lawrence for allowing me to use her photos memorializing Steven and Geoff's visit, to Nita Murphy of the Center for Southwest Research, Taos for providing access to the D. H. Lawrence and Laughing Horse materials used in this post, and to Lois Palken Rudnick, Mabel's biographer, whose book Mabel Dodge Luhan: New Woman, New Worlds is my constant companion and reference source--and, as always, to my husband and in-house editor, Skip Miller. Thank you all.

Photo post: Mabel Dodge Luhan and Autumn Glory in Taos

2011-10-26T10:43:00.000-06:00

Oh, what a glorious turning of the leaves in the Taos Valley these past several days. Two weeks ago I struck gold up at Taos Ski Valley

where the aspen glowed from greenish to bright yellow to red. These trees alight with warm colors set against the evergreen reminded me of some of Ernest L. Blumenschein's paintings and his fascination with such contrasts in nature.

Lately, I've wondered what Mabel might have thought, and as I skimmed through her books Winter in Taos, Edge of Taos Desert, and even Lorenzo in Taos, what struck me was how much time she spent outdoors, how much she observed and wrote about nature. Mabel certainly felt the rhythm of the seasons. I wondered if she felt the same uplift of the heart as I do at viewing fall colors. She did and so I thought it would be fun to illustrate her words with photos.

Here, where we live, the autumn has come upon us imperceptibly and we have not noticed its gradual approach.

A yellowish tinge comes over the big cottonwood trees so slowly we do not see it until we go away and come back, then our eyes are fresh and we suddenly see that summer is over.

The trees change color quickly now for there is frost at night and they are showing every shade of yellow against the dark mountains. The distance turns a deeper blue for all the yellow near us.

After the trees are fully turned and are like torches of fiery yellow, often with coral red tips, and others are big balls of radiant, sun-colored loveliness, they have a long quiet pause before the end.

Day after day of Indian summer passes, breathless, when the whole valley is immobile and every leaf is motionless, shining golden and still. What days! One moves in a dream through the country, scarcely able to believe one's eyes, for the wonder of it.

Again the cottonwood trees were yellow against the dark-blue sky and there was no wind—not a breath of a breeze in the rich autumnal air.

This past Sunday I drove from Santa Fe to Taos, and all along the Rio Grande clusters and families of golden-glow cottonwoods loomed over the river as it snaked along the canyon. As evening deepened the color on the trees intensified from rich goldenrod to cadmium orange, morphing finally to rosy bronze. No camera could have captured this: I have it only in my mind's eye...and you must imagine it. When I arrived at the overlook onto the Rio Grande Gorge and Taos Mountain with the valley spreading as wide as the eye could see, it seemed that globes of cottonwoods festooned the sweep like so many tethered balloons looming over the landscape.

It's gone now. It's raining and the glow is gone. But not the memory and not the thrill of seeing nature wearing her glory coat of autumn.

With hopes that this has provided you with a feast for the eyes and a different view of Mabel Dodge Luhan.

Adios for now,

Liz

Short: Mabel Dodge Luhan & the Transformative Power of Taos

2011-10-08T11:05:00.001-06:00

Whew! Visions and names of the Remarkable Women of Taos whirl in my head and inform my dreams. I'm interviewing and writing up women ranging across the age and community groups of Taos. Soon the Remarkable Women of Taos media campaign will go live, and you'll be able to read about some of the women in full, but today I'll give you a sampling of what is to come.

For this piece I am focusing on one of the questions on the interview form used to gather the stories of remarkable women, namely: "How has the landscape / environment of Taos shaped you?"

Obviously, I can't ask Mabel this question, but as Judi Jordan pointed out, mining Mabel's work can unearth some answers. Here's one example of the transformative power of Taos from The Edge of Taos Desert. Mabel first writes about the change she felt as all the trappings from her former life fell away. Leading into the following paragraph, she recalls the intimate memories of her life, then relates the effect of Taos on her:

I was offered and accepted a spiritual therapy that was cleansing, one that ... finally rewarded me with a sense of reality.

Looking at a similar question, I thought you might like to know how some contemporary Taos women responded. For artist and book illustrator Amy Cordova whose family has lived in the area for three centuries, the land holds the stories of her ancestors.

There is something sacred in realizing that my ancestors traveled my same routes, saw the same grand peak of Taos Mountain, smelled the sage after the rains, or the scent of pinon rising from a kiva fireplace on a cold winter’s night…just like I experience…now. I feel close to them through this way of thinking.

When she first arrived, glass artist Delinda VanneBrightyn immediately sensed that Taos was a special place--a place that felt ancient yet left her, like Mabel, feeling renewed, alive.

The land and sky here has shaped me for sure. It informs my art. It fills my soul. It hardens me to be strong and fit and capable. It softens me with its boundless and breathtaking beauty. It leaves me in awe of my insignificance. It inspires me to push on to be as creative as possible.

This just a glimpse of the transformative power of Taos. May these few paragraphs also provide you with a flavor of the contemporary remarkable women of Taos who will appear on the blog in the months to come.

Adios for now,
Liz

Mabel and Fabiola Cabeza de Baca: Home Making in New Mexico

2011-09-08T11:18:00.000-06:00

The history of women in the American West is like the history of air. You could certainly write history without it. You just can't have history without it.*

Rereading these introductory sentences to Home Lands : How Women Made the West, I thought about a conversation I had with Mabel’s biographer Lois Rudnick where the question arose: “What would Taos have been like without Mabel?” Part of the “Home Lands” exhibition (currently at the New Mexico History Museum) is dedicated to Mabel and her Santa Fe counterparts, poet Alice Corbin and writer Mary Austin, who represented the modern “New Women.” Through both her salons and her written essays Mabel openly flaunted convention about women in matters of love, family, and career. In the period between World Wars I and II, ideas of feminist emancipation also reached into the lives of New Mexico’s Pueblo and Hispanic populations.

One of these women, Fabiola Cabeza de Baca (referred to in the Dictionary of Literary Biography as a beloved and nearly legendary cultural heroine), served as a premier example of a native Spanish-speaking New Mexican whose life was indeed remarkable

Fabiola Cabeza de Baca in front of a New Mexico schoolhouse, photographer and date unknown. Fabiola Cabeza de Baca Gilbert Photograph Collection, no. 000-603-0002, Center for the Southwest Research, University of New Mexico.

Born in 1894 in La Liendre, New Mexico Territory, she grew up on the family ranch. Just after high school Fabiola joined a number of young Hispanics recruited to teach in New Mexico’s rural areas. She began her career in the one-room schools of Guadalupe County, and would soon number among a handful of the earliest of New Mexico’s Hispanic pioneers in education. While teaching, she intermittently attended New Mexico Normal University (now known as Highlands University) in Las Vegas, NM. She took a year off to study at Centro de Estudios Historicos in Madrid, Spain, then received her B.A. in Pedagogy from her alma mater in 1921. Fabiola spent some additional years in the classroom, then continued her education at New Mexico College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts (now New Mexico State University), graduating with an M. A. in Home Economics in 1929. That year Fabiola began working for the U.S. government, at a time when the communal land cultivated for centuries by the Hispanic farmers of northern New Mexico came under federal legal assault, when they lost traditional grazing lands to the jurisdiction of the U.S. Forest Service.

In her job as extension agent Fabiola brought new scientific ideas and the latest household technology to rural households in the remote, wide-spread villages of northern New Mexico. While teaching women the newest gardening and poultry-raising techniques and introducing modern canning kettles and pressure cookers using the latest government bulletins on food preparation, Fabiola also saw the value in and worked to preserve the people’s traditional ways. As an extension agent Fabiola spent nearly thirty years of her life on the road. A paragraph from Homelands: How Women Made the West provides an overview of the work she did during that time.

She helped hard-pressed families get access to canning equipment and sewing machines, and made information available to families not comfortable with English by speaking Spanish (and later Tewa and Towa), translating government bulletins from English into Spanish, and writing her own bilingual materials. Cabeza de Baca in turn heard stories she would treasure; collected folklore about herbal medicine, planting practices, and religious rituals; and learned much of what she would later recount about New Mexican cooking in her 1939 book Historic Cookery. She kept voluminous notes about remedies, rituals, and recipes and took palpable pleasure in cataloging local knowledge, techniques, and skills, observing the mingling of faith and science.**

“Pueblo Girls Learning to Use Pressure Cooker, 1930s,” by Frances E. and Henry Prior Clark. Braun Research Library Collection, Autry National Center; OP.160

Fabiola’s budding career as an extension agent could have ended after a train hit her car in 1932. Injuries to her leg eventually resulted in its amputation. Fabiola may have lost her leg, but not her courage or her desire to work. During her two-year convalescence, she wrote extension brochures on canning and food preparation. Back on the road, she visited thousands of homes and made notes on the cultural practices of the villages she served and collected recipes from the Anglo, Indian, and Hispanic families from her extension circuit. Fabiola’s outreach broadened when The Santa Fe Scene published a series of vignettes she had written that included recipes, and KVSF broadcast her weekly bilingual radio program on homemaking.

In the midst of her work as extension agent, in 1935 Fabiola joined together with such notable Hispanic New Mexicans as politician and suffragist Nina Otero Warren and writer Cleofas Jaramillo to found the Sociedad Folklorico de Santa Fe (Folklore Society of Santa Fe), an organization dedicated to preserving the Spanish language and Hispanic folkways in New Mexico. Observing the toll Americanization was taking on the centuries-old traditions she had grown up with, Fabiola decided to preserve this cultural history in writing. The articles she penned for The Santa Fe Scene expanded into The Good Life (1949), a book published as a tribute to the Hispanic traditions of New Mexico. Six years later her next book, We Fed Them Cactus (1954), recounted the history of four generations of her family and their transition from wealthy Spanish land grant holders to struggling ranchers under a new governmental legal system that violated their previous title to the land.

Fabiola Cabeza de Baca (far left) with the Sociedad Folklorica in 1945. Courtesy Palace of the Governors Photo Archives.

Another teaching opportunity arose when Fabiola went to Mexico as a representative of the United Nations. From 1950 to 1959 she developed home economics programs in Mexico, and set up demonstration centers among the Tarascan Indians. Later she also trained extension agents in Central and South America. Following her retirement in 1959 Fabiola continued her community work, delivered lectures, and worked as a trainer and consultant for the Peace Corps. She died in Albuquerque in 1991 at age 97.

While working on the book, Stones into Bread: The Lives and Letters of Peggy Pond Church and Corina Aurora Santistevan, Two Women of New Mexico, I discovered that in the 1940s Corina worked with Fabiola Cabeza de Baca, who procured a pressure cooker for communal utilization and demonstrated its use in Taos. It led me to wonder if Fabiola provided training for some of Mabel’s cooks.

One thing is for certain: if you are in the area, you still have time to see the “Home Lands” exhibition in Santa Fe at the New Mexico History Museum. I’m planning to see it one more time before the show closes on September 11^th. It’s a seminal, thought-provoking exhibition. If you don’t have an opportunity to see it, I heartily recommend the book. You’ll see Mabel in a different context and come to appreciate the contributions of remarkable women like Fabiola, women who made the American West home.

Adios for now,

Liz

* Home Lands : How Women Made the West by Virginia Scharff and Carolyn Brucken Los Angeles : Autry National Center of the American West, University of California Press, 2010 : 1

** Home Lands, Chapter 1 "Home on Earth: Women and Land in the Rio Arriba": 34

For more information on Fabiola Cabeza de Baca, see Tey Diana Rebolledo’s introduction to Fabiola’s book We Fed Them Cactus. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1998. (Diana gave a lecture on Fabiola this past July as part of the “Home Land” exhibition programming.) Also, Fabriola’s preface to The Good Life: New Mexico Traditions and Food (included over 80 recipes and an introduction by writer Ina Sizer Cassidy). Santa Fe: Museum of New Mexico Press, 1986.

Mabel Dodge Luhan House blog celebrates 1st anniversary in Taos and Remarkable Women

2011-08-06T17:06:00.000-06:00

Today marks the first anniversary of the “Mabel Dodge Luhan and the Remarkable Women of Taos” blog. If you go back to August 6, 2010 you’ll see that the initial posting began with a sign. It seemed appropriate to celebrate the blog’s new year with another sign from Taos: the one that indicates that you are in the vicinity of Mabel’s house. On this anniversary, let me introduce you to Mabel’s physical world.

So much in Taos happens behind adobe walls…and so much is hidden away. In the case of the Mabel Dodge Luhan House, once you reach the parking lot, you can only see the solarium topped by El Gallo, the rooster weathervane.Only after climbing up the curving wooden plank steps, does the main house come into view.

Crossing the courtyard, Mabel’s domain – or part of it (the main house is surrounded by additions built on over the years) – confronts you. Approaching the main entrance, you walk along the same cobblestone walkway under the portal or covered porch trod by former visitors like D.H. and Frieda Lawrence, Leopold Stokowski, Georgia O’Keeffe, Tennessee Williams and numerous other houseguests of Mabel’s—famous and infamous, well-known names and unfamiliar ones.

As you pass through the door with Mabel’s initials, you enter her world…and not her world. When you step into the living room, past and present collide. You are living in the present, Mabel isn’t. Yet although 2012 will mark the 50^th anniversary since her death, she continues to inspire and inform the present.

Reflecting on this first year anniversary of the blog, I realize I’m only beginning to tap into the variety, depth and breadth of subjects that interested Mabel. Restless, in need of entertainment, she loved surrounding herself with interesting people—in Italy, in New York, and in Taos. I believe that what she gleaned from her salons, what she wrote about, what she participated in before she arrived in New Mexico made her remarkable. In Taos she became more remarkable.

And now? For starters, Mabel’s blog has inspired the Town of Taos to designate 2012, New Mexico’s 100^th anniversary of statehood, as The Year of the Remarkable Women of Taos. And right at the head of it, there’s Mabel…and not Mabel.

Earlier this afternoon I spoke with Lois Rudnick, Mabel’s biographer. (We are meeting next week to brainstorm and finalize events at the Mabel Dodge Luhan House as part of The Year of the Remarkable Women of Taos celebration.) I told Lois that Mabel was pushing me, driving me. She understood only too well. We both know that Mabel is at the heart of it all. Lois has a new book on Mabel going to the publisher, and I have one almost ready on two other remarkable women of Taos that includes Mabel snippets.

Floodgates are opening around the Year of the Remarkable Women of Taos. Exhibitions and events around the theme burgeon with every passing week as we approach 2012. Daily now I add another name or five to the growing list of Taos’s remarkable women.

So on this first anniversary of the “Mabel Dodge Luhan and the Remarkable Women of Taos” blog, all I can say is “stay tuned.”

Adios for now,

Liz

Newsflash: Sizzling Summer of New Mexico Women

2011-08-03T10:36:00.000-06:00

What could be more exciting than firecrackers on the 4^th of July? For me, summer programs centered around the remarkable women of New Mexico. This past July the Taos-based group Izcalli In Nanantzin Danza Azteca, under the direction of Capitana Tanya Ocañas y Vigil, ended their feast day celebration on a Saturday afternoon with a dance in Aztec regalia. The festivities which included a velacíon or prayer vigil and a procession to the San Francisco de Asís church, honored Señor Santiago de Los Cuatro Vientos (St. James of the Four Winds). That weekend celebrations of the biblical Santiago and Santa Ana (St. James and St. Anne) at the annual Taos fiestas took place on the Plaza. The weekend began with a Fiesta mass followed by a line-up of Spanish music and dance that included groups of Taos women performers like Catalina Río Fernandez and Flamenco Nuevo Mexico, and the Audrey Davis Trio.

Earlier, in June, the final of four exhibitions opened at Santa Fe’s New Mexico History Museum. All include stories of women. Since its opening in 2009, the New Mexico History Museum has featured stories of men, women and children as part of a conscious effort to broaden the telling of history. This summer’s exhibits, according to museum director Frances Levine, focus “squarely on the contributions made by women that don’t begin and end with popular Western stereotypes.” The exhibition Home Lands: How Women Made the West, presents such well-known New Mexican artists as Pueblo potter Maria Martinez, painters Pablita Velarde and Georgia O’Keeffe, and photographer Laura Gilpin. Contemporary New Mexico artists include New Mexican santera (carver of saints) Gloria Lopez Cordova; Santa Clara Pueblo artists Tammy Garcia and Nora Naranjo Morse. To complement Home Lands, Albuquerque-based poet and playwright Joy Harjo was commissioned to create a video piece inspired by a historic narrative of slavery and interracial marriage in 19th century New Mexico.

A traditional Navajo sheep rancher in Canoncity, Begay told author Sharon Niederman in 1996, “We need to bring back our livestock. To learn to survive off that; to learn to work and farm. We must care for the community together.”

A second exhibition, Ranch Women of New Mexico, documents the lives of 11 women who have “cow-girled” or owned ranches in the state over the past 50 years. The text by Raton author Sharon Niederman and photos by Albuquerque photographer Ann Bromberg bring to life women's dynamic contributions to the environment, their multicultural families, and their economic survival in a "boots on the ground" way of life.

Daughter-in-law of legendary New Mexico rancher Linda Davis, Mary B. Davis shows what she's made of as manager of the horse breeding operation of the Crow Creek Division of the CS Ranch.

The staff at the New Mexico History Museum designed a summer program to augment these exhibitions. Coming up this month: “Homespun: Northern New Mexico Spinning and Weaving Techniques,” demonstrations by the Española Valley Fiber Arts Center, and a lecture “Through Her Eyes: An American Indian Woman’s Perspective.” Due to travels to interview some remarkable women in Wallowa County, OR, I missed Dr. Tey Diana Rebolledo’s lecture “Fabiola Cabeza de Baca and The Good Life.” A native of Las Vegas, NM, teacher and writer Fabiola Cabeza de Baca “elevated both the art and science of homemaking from the Depression forward, blending traditional practices with modern-day conveniences. Beginning in the 1950s, her expertise went global when she started home-economics programs in Central and South America for the United Nations and became a trainer for the Peace Corps.” Her story is included in the Home Lands exhibition.

My interest in Fabiola Cabeza de Baca stems from her work in the 1940s with the County Extension Service in Taos. My friend Corina Santistevan recalled her teaching local women to can both meats and vegetables with a huge pressure canner that was brought for use by the community. I will be profiling Fabiola Cabeza de Baca later this month.

Just today Judi Jordan and I talked about Mabel visiting people and places throughout the Taos Valley and in other places throughout New Mexico. Oh how Mabel would have enjoyed visiting with these interesting women!

Adios for now,

Liz

* Courtesy of Rick Romancito, Tempo editor, The Taos News

* Courtesy of the Photo Archives at the Palace of the Governors/New Mexico History Museum, DCA, Ann Bromberg Collection HP.2008.31.

Georgia (O'Keeffe) and Mabel on My Mind

2011-06-17T14:01:00.004-06:00

Last August after Karen Young and I began making plans for the 2012 Year of Remarkable Taos Women, Canadian poet and author Kate Braid contacted me. One of her favorite painters is Georgia O’Keeffe. Kate spent a week in Taos some years ago. Inspired by the landscape, history and people – and some recent research she’d conducted on Georgia, she went on to write a book of poems that “document” Georgia’s journal of an imaginary trip with Emily Carr, Canada’s iconic woman painter. Nominated for several prizes, including the Pat Lowther Award for Best Book of Poems by a Canadian Woman, Kate’s book, Inward to the Bones: Georgia O'Keeffe’s Journey with Emily Carr, won the VanCity Women's Book Prize in Vancouver, British Columbia.

One of Kate’s poems (below) inspired this blog posting. I remembered reading how two series of photographs by Georgia’s husband Alfred Stieglitz had helped develop a mystique around O’Keeffe, in particular his photographs from the 1930s. These portraits, released to the press in the 1910s and 1920s, contributed to the legend that grew up around her: descriptions of her personality ranged from aloof to enigmatic to reserved.

On reading her letters, however, I discovered a more complex personality, the real Georgia. One she penned in April 1929, a week before leaving New York for New Mexico, illustrates her reluctance to leave Stieglitz (who had suffered a severe heart attack the previous September). She wrote: “If I can keep up my courage and leave Stieglitz I plan to go West the beginning of next week for two months. It is always such a struggle for me to leave him.”

Kate Braid portrayed that aspect in this poem (from Part II, “New Mexico: Light over Water”):

28.

I pack the suitcase, trembling with excitement.
And fear. Alfred will miss me.

He is so fragile, so tragic.
His long white fingers play with my valise,
His eyes cast down in sorrow.

But I must go—
It is for my spirit, for my life.

Kate also captured O’Keeffe’s anticipation. Then experiencing an ebb in her career, a time when she considered her painting weak, she needed a change, a new world of possibilities. In 1916 Georgia had found inspiration in the west Texas landscape, in the contrasts between color, form and shape, after her move to Canyon. The New Mexico landscape, viewed briefly during a visit to Santa Fe in 1917, had also captured her imagination.

How Georgia got to Taos is a long story, but at Mabel’s invitation she and her friend and fellow painter Rebecca Strand (then married to the well-known American photographer Paul Strand) arrived there in May 1929. Mabel put them up in the Pink House, and gave Georgia her own studio to work in.

That summer in northern New Mexico changed O’Keeffe’s world forever. What happened to her comes out in letters. Just days after their arrival Rebecca wrote to Stieglitz telling him how much greater the opportunity to work was, how she and Georgia both felt active and alive in Taos away from all the distractions of the city. Sometime that summer O’Keeffe wrote her friend Henry McBride(art critic for the New York Sun)”You know I never feel at home in the East like I do out here—and finally feeling in the right place again—I feel like myself—and I like it—and I like what Mabel has dug up out of the Earth here…” At the end of her stay, O’Keeffe expressed her appreciation to Mabel (who was absent from Taos most of the summer):

I wish I could see you this morning—more than that I could tell you how important these months have been to me—Maybe you know—I am ready to go now—in every way—If you were here I could tell you quite definitely how it came about—it is some thing so perfect—so perfect for ending this and beginning a new thing—(August 1929)**

In the process of beginning the “new thing”—paintings inspired by the folk art, architecture, light and landscape of Taos—Georgia also found herself. From 1929 until her death in 1986, O’Keeffe captured the vast New Mexico sky, the canyons and cliffs around Abiquiu, and bones bleached in the desert sun. These images became her signature paintings. And it all started at Mabel’s in Taos.

For me, Kate Braid’s last poem (from Part IV, “Inward the Bones”) encapsulates O’Keeffe’s long life and painting career. It provides the perfect ending to this posting.

87.

I dream a wild wind over my bare bones,
a terrifying song through the cavities of my skull,
my hips. The thin digits of what once were
articulating fingers, trail paint.

I am reduced to light wind.
I can feel myself inside this body
like hills, like a vaulted room,
like spans or poles set
bone-deep in pearly earth

A dark shell falls away, light rising
through translucent flesh.
I am haunted by skeletons, stripped clean
of blood and dirt.
Shaken, I vibrate to the sensations
that were once this body. The wind whistles
music through these bones.

Before I sign off, I’m pleased to announce that Kate has promised to contribute something in the future about her experience writing these terrific, moving poems on O’Keeffe.

Adios for now,

Liz

* Cover photo to Inward to the Bones: Georgia O'Keeffe’s Journey with Emily Carr (2010) by Kate Braid courtesy of Caitlin Press, Half Moon Bay, British Columbia.

** Quotes from this and other letters excerpted from Georgia O’Keeffe: Art and Letters by Jack Cowart, Juan Hamilton, and Sarah Greenough. Washington : National Gallery of Art ; Boston : New York Graphic Society Books, 1987.

Newsflash : Town of Taos theme for 2012 -- "The Remarkable Women of Taos"

2011-05-17T18:28:00.000-06:00

Last fall Karen Young and I decided to offer a workshop at the Mabel Dodge Luhan House called “Meetings with Remarkable Women”, slated for next summer. Through Steve Parks, director of the Parks Gallery, we discovered that the Harwood Museum of Art had planned two exhibitions, Agnes Martin: Before the Grid and Bea Mandelman: Centennial for 2012. Subsequently, Karen and I hosted a brainstorming meeting with Steve; the Harwood’s director, Susan Longhenry; Janet Webb, owner of Webb Design; and Cathy Connelly, the Town of Taos Public Affairs & Tourism Director. As we talked, ideas grew up around historic and contemporary Taos women. We also discussed programming and promotion of the arts (Mabel would have liked this). Our conversation, and several anniversaries that coincide with New Mexico’s Centennial next year, culminated in the Town of Taos designating “The Remarkable Women of Taos” as its theme for 2012.

Mabel and Gisella Loeffler (right). Courtesy the Taos Historic Museums

Already other institutions of the Museum Association of Taos have scheduled exhibitions featuring Taos women for next year. They include Out of the Background – The Women Artists of Early Taos at the E.L. Blumenschein Home; Cultural Threads – Nellie Dunton and the Colcha Revival in New Mexico at the Hacienda de los Martinez; and Millicent Rogers & Her Circle and Unknown Was a Woman at the Millicent Rogers Museum. Steve Parks announced that in March 2012 Parks Gallery will show Melissa Zink Remembered, Paintings and Sculpture, 1975 to 2009.

An example of colcha embroidery, after 1870* Courtesy of the Millicent Rogers Museum

Just last week our core group and some museum personnel met with representatives from Taos galleries and art organizations, the publicity team from the Town of Taos, and the New Mexico Committee of the National Museum of Women in the Arts. These organizations are looking into exhibitions, lectures and other events that highlight creative women in Taos. While they design programs and events, we are inviting widespread participation drawing from the fields of education, history, agriculture and recreation in Taos. Looks like 2012 will be filled with events that will explore, discuss, and celebrate the remarkable women of Taos.

Stay tuned. Oh, and save the date – June 1-3, 2012 – for the Mabel Dodge Luhan House’s workshop, “Meetings with Remarkable Women.”

Adios for now,

Liz

* This example of Rio Grande Hispanic colcha shows a type of embroidery specific to New Mexico. The woman who created it is unknown.

Mabel Dodge Luhan, Peggy Pond Church and "Ultimatum for Man"

2011-05-03T11:38:00.001-06:00

Mabel partially inspired the subject for this posting. I had it in mind to feature a poet of New Mexico to celebrate National Poetry Month in April. While with polishing the final draft of my manuscript on two remarkable women of New Mexico*, I had occasion to revisit Mabel Dodge Luhan’s “A Poet of Los Alamos, New Mexico” that appeared in The Chicago Sun Book Week on December 1, 1946. In this book review Mabel introduced Peggy Pond Church’s new volume of poetry titled Ultimatum for Man and wrote that apart from the poets, no New Mexican writers had recorded “the most startling event [of the time]…the discovery of how to split the atom.” Of the poets, Mabel opined, Peggy Pond Church outranked all the others: “her life-pattern [was] singularly identified with the Great Event, for the environment of all her years was the scene of the magnificent discovery and the material of her latest poetry.”

Detail from the cover of Ultimatum for Man

Born in 1903, Peggy spent her formative years living on the Pajarito Plateau. She combined her love of horses and the outdoors and spent hours alone on horseback, riding through pine and juniper forests, wandering through canyons where petroglyphs appeared on the basalt walls overhead. During her summers on the Pajarito Plateau, Peggy often watched archaeologist Edgar Hewett and his students digging in Ancestral Puebloan ruins nearby. In her own explorations, Peggy discovered caves with smoke-blackened ceilings, corrugated cooking pot fragments and shards with black-on-white designs. Inspired by the Ancient Ones, she built fires in her favorite caves and roasted apples on pointed sticks.

To give a brief overview of the time she spent there as an adult, Peggy’s biographer Sharon Snyder has graciously provided the following text: **

By the time she entered Smith College, Peggy had won awards for her poetry and was achieving recognition. Although she loved college life, she was homesick for New Mexico, and when the chance came to marry a young master at the Los Alamos Ranch School, she jumped at the opportunity to return to the Pajarito Plateau. She married Fermor Spencer Church in 1924, and they raised three sons at the school. During that time Peggy published two volumes of poetry and an award-winning children’s book, The Burro of Angelitos. She was a respected member of the Santa Fe writers’ colony despite living thirty-five miles away. Her first two books, Foretaste and Familiar Journey, were among the seventeen published by the Santa Fe Writers’ Editions. Her happiness on the plateau was abruptly uprooted in 1942 when the government took over the school for the top-secret Manhattan Project. Distraught and somewhat bitter, the family moved to Taos, and in 1946 Peggy published Ultimatum for Man, a volume of poems considered by many to be her best and strongest work. The poems arose from the pain of losing her beloved home and from her pacifist beliefs that collided with the development of the atomic bomb.

Mabel reviewed several of the poems in Ultimatum for Man, interweaving them with Peggy’s story and with the historic sequence of events leading up to “the sad and frightened men who were responsible for the atomic bomb.” These men became the subjects of Peggy’s impassioned verse, “The Nuclear Physicists,” one of the most strident poems in this collection.

Given two other events in the news these past weeks – the damage to the nuclear reactor resulting from the earthquake in Japan and the 10^th anniversary of the nuclear accident at Chernobyl – it seemed appropriate to include an excerpt from the poem.

The Nuclear Physicists

These are the men who

working secretly at night and against great odds

and in what peril they knew not of their own souls

invoked for man's sake the most ancient archetype of evil

and bade this go forth and save us at Hiroshima

and again at Nagasaki.

These are the men who

now with aching voices

and with eyes that have seen too far into the world’s fate,

tell us what they have done and what we must do.

In words that conceal apocalypse they warn us

what compact with evil was signed in the name of all the

living,

and how, if we demand that Evil keep his bargain,

we must keep ours, and yield our living spirits

into the irrevocable service of destruction.

Now we, in our wilderness, must reject the last temptation:

the kingdoms of earth and all the power and the glory,

and bow before the Lord our God, and serve Him

whose still small voice, after the wind, the earthquake,

the vision of fire, still speaks to those who listen

and will the world’s good.

Peggy Pond Church. Photo courtesy of Corina Santistevan

Peggy came through this time of upheaval and went on to write the award-winning book, The House at Otowi Bridge (1960).*** The Pajarito Plateau looms large as the setting for this dual memoir of Peggy and her friend Edith Warner, who served home-cooked meals in her tearoom at Otowi Crossing to Niels Bohr, Robert Oppenheimer and other Manhattan Project scientists (who through an agreement with the U.S. government were her sole guests during this time of secrecy). Metaphorically, the bridge that crosses the Rio Grande connected the book’s past and present: the past of the San Ildefonso people, living in the shadow of ancestral Pueblo ruins on the edge of the Pajarito Plateau, with the present Los Alamos era marked forever by the creation of the atomic bomb.

Now a Southwest classic, Peggy’s book served another purpose. As Sharon Snyder has noted:“For the people of the Pajarito Plateau who had been displaced by the war, it was a book of healing.”

Leaving you with thoughts for healing ourselves and our planet.

Adios for now,

Liz

*In its final stage, the manuscript now bears the title “Stones into Bread: Peggy Pond Church and Corina Aurora Santistevan, The Lives and Letters of Two Women of New Mexico.”

**Sharon Snyder’s forthcoming biography is titled At Home on the Slopes of Mountains: A Biography of Peggy Pond Church. Sharon has kindly agreed to contribute a blog piece on Peggy in the near future.

***First published in serial form in The New Mexico Quarterly magazine (1958-59), “The House at Otowi Bridge” won a Longview Literary Award for excellence in 1959.

The Remarkable Dorothy Brett ( 1883-1977): An Introduction

2011-04-01T14:29:00.004-06:00

The inaugural blog posting (August 6, 2010) centered on the discovery of the New Mexico Historical Highway Marker on “The Three Fates” which included Mabel Dodge Luhan, Frieda Lawrence and Dorothy Brett. Since then I’ve written several postings on Mabel and introduced Frieda. Now it’s Brett’s turn. She’s helping me make the introduction, including how she came to be in Taos.

I was born in London, in what now seems to be the golden age of Queen Victoria. Mine was the usual life of a child born of parents involved in politics, royalty, and the necessary conventions.

Born in London to an aristocratic family, Dorothy Brett was raised in the restrictive manner typical of privileged children of the Victorian era. She lived a relatively secluded life, until with the help of an old family friend, Dorothy got permission from her parents to attend the Slade School of Art. She began her studies in the fall of 1910, and completed the program four years later. According to school tradition, students called each other by their surnames. From that time on, only her family referred to her as Dorothy or Doll; she was called Brett or “The Brett” by everyone else.

By her second year, Brett had a studio of her own where she sometime entertained fellow art students, including Dora Carrington. Free of her oppressive home life, Brett adopted the Bohemian life of an artist. She and Carrington bobbed their hair and wore men’s trousers. Soon, through the salon of Lady Ottoline Morrell, who like Mabel Dodge hosted some of the leading intellectual figures of her time, Brett and Carrington met George Bernard Shaw, Aldous Huxley, Virginia Wolfe and Katherine Mansfield at Lady Morrell’s Garsington estate. Through these gatherings, Brett gained exposure to a stimulating social world and to the arts through some of England’s leading visual and performing artists and writers. (Katherine Mansfield would become one of Brett’s closest friends.)

We were after new ideas and concepts that often frightened others. I’ve always said everyone has to be after something, and if others don’t like it, the devil take them.

Through the Garsington circle Brett met D. H. and Frieda Lawrence in 1915. In the years that followed, Brett became familiar with Lawrence’s proposal to create a utopian community he called Rananim. When the Lawrences returned to England following their first visit with Mabel Dodge Luhan in 1923, D. H. stated that he had found the ideal location for his Rananim – Taos, New Mexico – and actively recruited Katherine Mansfield, John Middleton Murry and others from the Garsington crowd to join him and Frieda there. In the end, only Brett joined the Lawrences on their return trip to Taos in 1924.

Upon her arrival, Brett instantly fell in love with the land and people of New Mexico. She later wrote about the “sudden dive into an entirely new life among three races,” and the transformation that took place in her life. “I began to find myself, my place and later a purpose.”

An account of Brett’s Taos years will follow, and will address questions like “How did being in Taos affect and change her life direction?” To help answer that, I’ve recently reconnected with Brett’s biographer, Pamela Evans. I asked Pam for her thoughts on what people might not know about Brett. One answer -- what an avid reader she was. Also that Brett mentored young people: “She loved the energy and curiosity of the young, and was always encouraging them to buck the system, question authority, find work they loved and then not be talked out of doing it.”

We’ll hear more on Brett from Pam, who has graciously agreed to write a guest column. I can hardly wait!

Adios for now,

Liz

Mabel Dodge Luhan's 132nd Birthday Celebration

2011-03-19T10:24:00.000-06:00

You may have seen the earlier posting about the festivities planned to celebrate Mabel Dodge Luhan's birthday. The evening event, scheduled between 6 and 8 p.m., began with a twenty-minute dialog between “Mabel”, played by Leslie Harrell Dillen* and Lois Palken Rudnick**, Mabel's biographer.

Many of you indicated you would have liked to attend this event but couldn't, so I thought you might enjoy experiencing it vicariously through photos.

On February 26, 2011 preparations for Mabel's birthday feast began early in the day.

Pamela Martinez and Chef Jane Garrett

By 5:45 p.m. the classroom filled with greetings and conversation

and just after 6:00, acting as emcee, I introduced Mabel (played by Leslie Dillen) and Mabel's biographer (played by Lois Rudnick).

Lois Rudnick (right) and Leslie Harrell Dillen (left

Warning the audience about the adult content that would follow, Lois advised parents to remove children from the room, or at least cover their ears. She then gave a lovely overview of the twists and turns of Mabel's complex life.

Mabel (Leslie) then regaled the adults (and a baby) with a reading from her article "Change of Life". Ahead of her time, Mabel penned this piece on menopause in 1938--pretty daring for the time. She opined that women's lives rather than being over, would now be more full and intense than ever. Freed from the child bearing period, the fire burned more fiercely in women at this stage, and Mabel urged them to kindle the inner flame and shed their light with its "highly vibrating influence" on their men.

After a lively and informative question and answer period, the evening's participants moved to the main house for

a booksigning of the newly released Mabel Dodge Luhan in Her Own Words

Karen Young inscribing book

and fancy hors d'oeuvres topped off with a serving of chocolate raspberry birthday cake (far right in background) in Mabel's honor.

It was a great evening, done Mabel style, and we all agreed

she would have loved it!

Adios for now,

Liz

All photos courtesy of Mabel Dodge Luhan House's photo chronicler Noreen Perrin

* Leslie Harrell Dillen is an award-winning actor and playwright who wrote and performed “The Passions of Mabel Dodge Luhan." Her plays have been produced in Massachusetts, New York, California and Washington. Leslie has also written and performed five solo shows which she presented on stages throughout the U.S and at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland and at the New York Fringe Festival. Her new play, "2 Wives in India," which runs through April 3rd, opened yesterday (Friday, March 18th) at the Santa Fe Playhouse.

** Lois Palken Rudnick chaired the American Studies Department at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, for 26 years. She has lectured locally, nationally and internationally on modern American culture. Lois retired in 2009 and now lives in Santa Fe. Besides her biography Mabel Dodge Luhan: New Women, New Worlds, she has written Utopian Vistas: The Mabel Dodge Luhan House and the American Counterculture and most recently Cady Wells and Southwestern Modernism.

News Flash: Celebrating Mabel Dodge Luhan's birthday on February 26th

2011-02-22T06:44:00.001-07:00

Invitation to a special event

at the Mabel Dodge Luhan House Classroom

Saturday, February 26^th from 6 to 8 p.m.

Actress and playwright Leslie Dillen as Mabel

The Mabel Dodge Luhan House invites the public to the first salon celebrating Mabel’s birthday, Saturday, February 26^th 6-8 p.m. at the Classroom. The evening event begins with a twenty-minute dialog between “Mabel”, played by Leslie Dillen (who wrote and performed “The Passions of Mabel Dodge Luhan”) and Lois Palken Rudnick, Mabel’s biographer (author of Utopian Vistas: The Mabel Dodge Luhan House and the American Counterculture and most recently Cady Wells and Southwestern Modernism). The audience will then be invited to participate in discussion around questions raised in the dialog.

Afterwards, everyone is invited to a booksigning of the newly published Mabel Dodge Luhan in Her Own Words and to partake of refreshments.

Proceeds from the book sale go towards preservation of the Mabel Dodge Luhan House (on both the National and State Register of Historic Places).

Call 575-751-9686 for further information.

The Heat is Back On: Coping at the Mabel Dodge Luhan House during the natural gas outage

2011-02-14T15:20:00.007-07:00

You may have heard about the recent crisis in the Taos area caused by the natural gas outage. Residents first learned of the situation on Thursday morning, February 3^rd. The first communication I received came when Town of Taos Public Relations Officer, Cathy Connelly, sent out word informing the citizens of Questa, Red River and Taos of the shutoff of natural gas forecast to last for a prolonged period of time. She and local radio hosts went into state-of-emergency media coverage until the situation was resolved. That evening an arctic cold front dropped temperatures to 25 below zero, and it stayed frigid for days.

This past Saturday when I drove to the Mabel Dodge Luhan House to learn how the staff survived the days without heat, Judi Jordan greeted me with “I think it will be days before I warm up.” Being cold and without heat both at work and at home left her drained. Judi told me that other people she talked to were exhausted by the cold.

Jessica and the hot plates that blew the fuses

Like other staff, Jessica Van Houten came prepared to work in the cold, wearing two pairs of long underwear under her snowboarding outfit. She arrived at the Mabel Dodge Friday at 4:30 a.m. to allow time for hot plates to warm up. With stoves and hot water heaters out of commission, electricity provided the remaining heat source. While the hot plates heated, Jessica began started the coffee machines and the microwave. This overloaded the circuit and blew all the fuses. No hot plates, no hot water. Ever resourceful, Jessica served intrepid guests yoghurt, cereal, applesauce, a fruit plate—and managed to provide them with hot coffee.

Staffer Diane de Fremery wrote up an event that took place later that day:

In spite of the cold, on Friday, February 4th we had the most superb Mabel moment. Approximately 20 people ventured out to come to a SOMOS reading by George Wallace, the 2011 Walt Whitman Birthplace writer-in-resident. We put the chairs around the fireplace in living room. There was no heat in the classroom, plus we had [only a handful of guests] due to the crisis situation with no heat or hot water in the big house.
It was intimate and reminiscent of days gone by when Mabel had her salons. There was also live music provided by Juilliard graduate Abbie Conant between the readings. It was a special evening.

Judy Barber, a writer from Sausalito, CA, told me about her experience. She arrived on Saturday, February 5^th, two days in advance of the start of Natalie Goldberg’s scheduled workshop. The rooms were so chilly that the staff offered to move the couch in front of the fireplace to keep her warm at night. Judy commended the Mabel Dodge’s caretaker, Jamison Nicolazzo and his girlfriend Dionne, who checked on the house every three hours during the night and brought in more firewood for her use. That evening electricity went out, and Judy spent most of the night in the dark. She felt an obligation to keep the fire burning, and awoke every two hours to feed the fire.

On Saturday I spoke with Judi Jordan, on duty over the weekend, and asked her if she would comment on her experience. She had been without heat and hot water both at work and at home. She thought of the bitter winter cold pioneer women must have endured, how they probably never got really warm. Judi wrote in her journal: “When it’s this cold, all you're trying to do is put your head down and endure.” While persevering, Judi thought of a passage from Natalie Goldberg’s Long Quiet Highway, words appropriate to her situation and that of thousands of other Taosenos:

The next morning had been very cold. There was frost on the bell. We hadn’t expected it to get that cold that early in the year. After all, we slept and sat in tents. After the two periods beginning at 5 a.m., I was signed up to be the breakfast server. Servers never wore socks or gloves. I have to bow, barefoot, with my big pot of steaming rice in front of each student, then kneel on the ground and serve them—they were all sitting on the floor on cushions—then lug up the pot and go to the next person. I was cold. Roshi was the last person to be served. I couldn’t wait to get it over with, to run out of the tent and put on my socks and gloves. As I knelt in front of Roshi, about to scoop a ladle of rice into his bowl, he sharply, clearly said to me, “Eat the cold.” I took a deep breath, slowed down, and tried to open to the weather. This man wasn’t kidding around. Don’t run away, even from the cold—digest it, he was saying. And he meant this for all my life, not just the moment I was there.*

“It’s really hard to eat the cold when the cold lasts this long,” Judi said. She added her thoughts on how this experience would teach us to be more compassionate and caring of others. It also highlighted how dependent our society has become on large corporations, and how this might teach us to become more self-reliant.

Four days later, on Monday February 8th, Taosenos finally fought back. The relighting process conducted by the gas companies had gone much too slowly, people and businesses had suffered enough. The local media got out the word that if people would call qualified plumbers, they could have the relighting work done themselves. A plumber relit the gas at the Mabel Dodge Luhan House just hours before Natalie’s group of 26 showed up for a five-day workshop. When the gas came on, Chef Jane Garrett immediately began cooking. The kitchen heated up and became the warmest, most appealing place in the house.

Wood fire warmth

Under these circumstances, it seemed appropriate to close with Mabel’s description of her kitchen:

That’s the nicest room in the house from eight to ten in the morning. All the woodwork is painted blue and the walls are whitewashed. There is a long table in the center with a blue oilcloth on it, and a big blue stove burning cedar wood.
A long row of windows facing east, lets in plenty of sunshine across the geraniums, and there is a breakfast table under the windows on the west side of the room. There is always a lovely smell of oranges and coffee, bacon and eggs and toast out there at that hour, and the men love to eat breakfast there, close to the Source, with the cheerful hum and bustle of cooking going on, the eggs sizzling on the plate, the butter melting on the crisp toast.**

I leave you with Mabel’s kitchen portrait as we continue to recover and warm up aqui en Taos (here in Taos).

Adios for now, let Valentine’s Day warm your heart,

Liz

*The quote from Long Quiet Highway appears on page 194, Bantam Books 1994 edition.

**Quote taken from Winter in Taos, Palomas de Taos 1996 edition, page 23.

Profiles: Introducing Karen Young of the Mabel Dodge Luhan House staff

2011-01-24T16:21:00.001-07:00

Today I interviewed Karen Young, my first profile on the remarkable women who staff the Mabel Dodge Luhan House. Although her main duties involve educational programming and marketing, like her co-workers, Karen’s life extends beyond the walls of the Mabel Dodge. Here’s her story:

Karen Young feeding breakfast to her alpacas

A background in anthropology and work in archeology led to Karen’s first trip to Taos in 1969. Through a private field school for high school students conducted at Southern Methodist University’s Fort Burgwin, 11 miles outside Taos, she and her archeologist husband Jon spent four seasons with students from Picuris Pueblo, California and other states conducting a month-long dig at Pot Creek site. During that time, the two became acquainted with the Kit Carson Foundation director Jack Boyer, in charge of three museums--the Kit Carson Home, the Blumenschein Home, and the Hacienda de los Martinez.

Five years later, the couple packed up the family and moved to Taos, a move made possible by Karen’s creativity. With Jack Boyer’s support, she wrote a successful National Endowment for the Humanities grant and created a job for herself and Jon developing an interpretive plan for the Blumenschein Home, the Martinez Hacienda and the Taos Morada. During this time, the Youngs lived in a part of the Blumenschein Home while they built their first home—an adobe designed by Karen.

The NEH grant funded the Young’s first year in Taos, allowing just enough time for Karen and Jon to provide the family with a roof over their heads…the interior was still under construction. Karen remembers the day they moved in -- May 8^th -- because it snowed. After the NEH funding ended, Karen and Jon scrambled to survive. Painting fences, sporadic jobs at the Katchina Lodge and the Abominable Snow Mansion, and other seasonal work kept them afloat until George and Kitty Otero, then owners of the Mabel Dodge Luhan House, asked them to help run the Global Realities program. Months later the Forest Service hired Jon as Forest Archeologist, and Karen’s Museum Studies degree landed her a job at the Millicent Rogers Museum. For the next seven years, work there as museum educator and acting director carried her through divorce, and almost through building her own pumice and adobe home.

When the Millicent Rogers Museum hired a new director, Karen suddenly found herself without a job due to cutbacks. Now single, she despaired at being unemployed and at the possibility of having to leave Taos. One day she ran into Pablo Trujillo, whose group Los Alegres had played traditional Hispanic music at the Mabel Dodge, at the post office. When Karen told him her news, he asked to see her hands. Examining them, he announced: “You’ll stay here. You have callouses.” Stay she did, finding work as director of the Northern Pueblos Institute through Northern New Mexico Community College, as co-director of the Taos Historic Museums (formerly the Kit Carson Foundation), and most recently back at the Mabel Dodge Luhan House.

Another kind of work opened up for Karen when her world took on a new dimension in the 1990s. She became interested in alpacas after meeting Phil Switzer from Estes Park, Colorado who brought some of his animals to the annual Taos Wool Festival in 1994. Right then Karen decided she would like to raise alpacas. She consulted with Phil who told her to talk to other breeders and attend alpaca association meetings. As it happened, the Alpaca Owners and Breeders Association held its annual meeting in Estes Park the following year. Karen attended the conference, went to lectures, talked to breeders and invested $5 in a raffle ticket for two machos or male alpacas. At the end of the conference, she checked to see who had won the raffle. Someone replied: “It was someone from New Mexico…name started with ‘W’.” Karen’s hopes were dashed, but only until someone else said: “Oh, the last name was Young.”

That’s how Morning Star Alpacas got its start…and that’s another story. Today Karen owns 31 alpacas. She manages to sustain them and her business through the occasional sale of an animal and the wool, and sometimes she shows her animals. Yet the alpacas help sustain Karen—caring for them keeps her active. She finds great joy in watching these calm, gentle animals from her living room window. The alpacas’ cycle of breeding, birthing, and aging echoes the change of seasons in Nature, and in Karen’s life in Taos.

Double rainbow over Karen's home

In closing, I asked Karen to answer the question "What is it about Taos that invites women to be remarkable?" Her multi-pronged answers follow: "An environment that reaches out and enfolds you; finding new strengths with each challenge met; support from all cultures." I particularly liked her last statement: "The surprise of finding you've sincerely been accepted into the community." And the community benefits from Karen's presence.

Adios for now,

Liz

Mabel Dodge Luhan and Mark Twain – Reflections on Autobiography in the New Year

2011-01-10T17:45:00.000-07:00

What a wee part of a person's life are his acts and his words! His real life is led in his head, and is known to none but himself....his acts and his words are merely the visible thin crust of his world...The mass of him is hidden -- it and its volcanic fires toss and boil, and never rest, night or day. These are his life, and they are not written, and cannot be written.... Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man -- the biography of the man himself cannot be written." -- from Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 1*

Over the holidays I immersed myself in the autobiographical works of “The Three Fates” -- Mabel, Frieda Lawrence and Dorothy Brett. I skimmed their works– including Mabel’s Winter in Taos, Frieda’s Not I But the Wind and Brett’s Lawrence and Brett -- mining them for answers to questions about the three women, and for topics for the blog. I came away wanting to know more -- their autobiographies left me unsatisfied, the writing didn't reveal nearly enough about them.

Cover of Winter in Taos, reprint, fourth printing 1996

I finally fastened onto Mabel’s four-volume autobiography, Intimate Memories, which she started in 1924. Mabel wrote of her early intent “I started out to try and show the inward picture of a person of my own period; what heredity and environment had made of her. I did not believe, and do not believe, that she was inwardly so different from a lot of others. She was a 20^th century type.” Background (published in 1933) deals with her early life in her hometown of Buffalo, New York; European Experiences (1935) covers time spent in Italy at Villa Curonia; Movers and Shakers (1936) discusses her years as hostess of an avant garde salon in New York; and Edge of Taos Desert (1937) traces her journey to Taos, and meeting and eventually marrying Antonio Luhan from Taos Pueblo.

In each volume Mabel investigates a certain period of her life, each representing a phase that contributed to her search to make herself “real.” Her therapist A. A. Brill, America’s first practicing psychotherapist and the first to translate major works by Freud into English, had suggested she write about her life as therapy. Brill viewed the practice of psychotherapy as a way of giving meaning and structure to life, and so encouraged Mabel to write as a means of self-discovery.

Lois Palken Rudnick and I have discussed the writing of biography, in light of our own work [on Mabel Dodge Luhan and Ernest L. Blumenschein, respectively]. Our conversations have centered on how no matter how many letters, pictures, diaries, interviews, clippings and archival material we delved into, what emerged in the end was a partial portrait of our subjects. I suppose that’s why Mark Twain’s statement on biographies being “but the clothes and buttons of the man” struck me. The full life Mabel lived took place in her head, and could never be written in full.

That said, my goal for this coming year is to post brief sketches on Mabel, her circle, and generations of women who followed, and to provide enough of a portrait for each of us to recognize ourselves in these women. For as Mabel herself stated, our stories are much the same -- the universal stories of the human race -- and there are life lessons to learn from everyone. Let this be part of our own self-discovery, part of becoming "real."

Happy New Year!

Adios for now,

Liz

* from "Riverboat Rambler" by Garrison Keillor. New York Times Book Review, Sunday, December 19, 2010: 7 -- Review of Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 1.

**Mabel Dodge Luhan to Hutchins Hapgood, 5 November ?, Hapgood Collection, Beinecke Library, Yale University, quoted in Intimate Memories: The Autobiography of Mabel Dodge Luhan, edited by Lois Palken Rudnick. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1999: vii).

Christmas Eve at Taos Pueblo and at the Mabel Dodge Luhan House

2010-12-24T18:07:00.043-07:00

Throughout her life in Taos, Mabel attended various Pueblo celebrations. Of all of the holiday events, Christmas Eve at Taos Pueblo is one of the most special. The Pueblo people gather pitch pine, cut it to various lengths, and stack it criss-crossed to build ricks of wood from one foot to twelve feet high. These are lit just after dusk, and the whole area between the North and South houses come alive with bonfires. The fires light the Christmas Eve procession around the Taos Pueblo plaza that follows mass at the San Geronimo church. It's magical, as a description from D.H. Lawrence conveys:

Never shall I forget the Christmas dances at Taos, twilight, snow, the darkness coming over the great wintry mountains and the lonely pueblo, then suddenly, again, like dark calling dark, the deep Indian cluster -- singing around the drum, wild and awful, suddenly rousing on the lost dusk as the procession starts. And then the bonfires leaping suddenly in spurts of high flame, columns of sudden flame forming an alley for the procession.*

Over the years my friend Judith Bronner has photographed this event (here, the plaza in front of the North House at dusk, just before the procession), and I share one of her pictures with you.


"Christmas Eve", Taos Pueblo © 2010 Judith Bronner

When guests at the Mabel Dodge Luhan House return after the Pueblo festivities, a cheery fire and steaming bowls of posole await them. This spicy hominy stew, a dish for celebrating life’s blessings, is served throughout New Mexico. It can be made either with red or green chile. The recipe here (below), made with pork and using dried red chiles, is quite traditional. However, chicken, turkey, or vegetable protein may be substituted for the pork. Enjoy.

Adios for now,
Liz

Photo courtesy of Judith Bronner. Thank you, Judith!

* Quote from "New Mexico" typescript, D.H. Lawrence Papers, AC 131-p, Angélico Chávez History Library, Museum of New Mexico, Santa Fe.

Posole Recipe:

12 dried long red chile**
3 pounds boned pork roast cut into 1" cubes
1/2 head of garlic peeled and chopped
A large pinch of Mexican oregano
1/2 large onion, chopped
1 large (industrial-size) can hominy
Salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

1.Break open the chiles and remove the seeds and veins.
2. Put the chiles to cook in a medium sized pot. Cover with fresh water and gently boil until chiles are very soft.
3. Let the mixture cool and using a favorite method, blend the chile and the water to make a paste and strain.
4. Put the cubed pork, oregano, garlic, onion and salt into a large heavy pot and cover with water. Boil meat gently for 30 minutes.
5. When the meat is soft, add the chile and hominy and cook for 15 to 20 minutes until the mixture is boiling nicely. Add oregano, and salt and pepper to taste.

To serve, ladle the posole into heavy bowls and serve with thinly sliced cabbage and radishes, quartered limes, and fresh corn tortillas.

This recipe serves 20-24 people.

**Using frozen or powdered red or green chile eliminates steps 1-3 -- the preparation and cooking time for the chile mixture.

Mabel Dodge Luhan's "Winter in Taos" -- and Solstice 2010

2010-12-20T13:55:00.000-07:00

In reading parts of Mabel’s book, Winter in Taos, it occurred to me that she arrived in Taos in December 1916 – one hundred and four years ago. My reading turned up a section by Mabel that seems appropriate to this holiday season:

Tracks in the snow at the Mabel Dodge Luhan House

It is so good to ride horseback in the snow... the snow crunches under the horses hooves, and it is bright and sparkling to make one's eyes ache; but in the shadows, it is a vivid blue....From far away, down in the valley, we can hear a motor racing, or the high-school bell, or sometimes a rooster crowing out of the usual hours; we can see the smoke curling up from the cozy houses and it is pleasant to warm one's heart by these signs -- but sometimes when we are out riding, the snow begins to fall, softly. The sun goes and all the color. There is no wind and the big flakes come down in a leisurely way, turning over and over. Then there are no sounds to be heard except those very near us. We can hear our horses still crunching in the snow, and the dogs breathing, but we cannot see them a few feet away, for a snowfall shuts out the familiar sounds of life.

Among the Christmastime festivities celebrated at the Mabel Dodge Luhan House are a Winter Solstice sit and tea ceremony held before dawn in the classroom at Juniper House. My husband Skip and I attended last year. People arrived in the dark to luminarios lighting the walkway outside and a few candles burning inside on the stage and around the corner fireplace. After an opening ceremony, we sat in the still darkness for some twenty minutes, then did walking meditation. Sitting again, we watched as the celebrant began the tea ceremony. Just as he started whipping up the first cup of powdered green tea into a fine, delicate froth, the sun rose to illuminate the fragrant steam as he poured it—a truly magical moment in time.

This solstice will be marked by a full eclipse of the moon. It seems like an auspicious time. I hope, in the midst of busy preparations for the holidays, you will join me and take a moment for stillness, and to reflect on Mabel’s words:

Yet, if one listens, there is something else one can hear in the silence, something very different from the homely noises of the distant village. Another world is opened up to one in the cessation and the stillness, another music that is hidden deep within the world, that is usually inaudible and that is impossible to describe.

May you, on the occasion of this winter solstice, welcome the return of the Light, hold it and let it warm your hearts.

Liz

Introducing Frieda Lawrence

2010-12-04T14:44:00.005-07:00

Some time ago I promised to write something about Frieda Lawrence. Since then I have discovered several archival sources that have brought new insights on Frieda—for example, she served as an associate editor for the “New Mexico Writers” page of The New Mexico Sentinel newspaper in the latter 1930s. Although I have read some works on her, I am eager to discover more writing by her. Frieda was a fascinating woman. In The Genius and the Goddess, Aldous Huxley wrote that she was “Hera and Demeter and Aphrodite gloriously rolled into one.” In admiration, Tennessee Williams called her "a valkyrie…a real woman." Intriguing, to say the least.

Frieda Lawrence, 1938 Courtesy of Jenny Vincent

In my quest to discover the real Frieda, I am following several leads, including setting up interviews with local people who knew her. In the meantime, for those of you who don’t know about her, I provide a few introductory paragraphs from an overview that Karen Young compiled before I became blog host. (Thank you, Karen.)

Frieda von Richthofen was born into an aristocratic family in Metz, Germany. In 1899 she moved to England after marrying the much older, Ernest Weekly, professor of French at the University College, Nottingham. After giving birth to three children, Frieda met the author D.H. Lawrence in March, 1912. Two months later the couple eloped to Europe.

After marrying in 1914, the Lawrences returned to England. At the outbreak of the First World War the authorities became concerned that Frieda was a spy. The couple settled at Zennor in Cornwall, but local people reported that the Lawrences were using the clothes hanging on their washing line to send coded messages to German U-boats. After searching their cottage, the authorities forced the Lawrences to leave the area.

When D. H. Lawrence was diagnosed as suffering from tuberculosis, the couple went to live in Sicily. Over the next few years they also spent time in North America, Mexico and Australia. Novels published by Lawrence during this period included Women in Love (1920), Aaron's Rod (1922), Kangaroo (1923) and The Plumed Serpent (1926). He also wrote Lady Chatterley's Lover but unable to find a publisher, he had it printed privately in Italy.

New Mexico was the place in North America where the Lawrences spent the most time. In 1919, after British authorities relinquished D.H. Lawrence’s confiscated passport, he and Frieda eventually landed in Sicily. In November 1921, while the couple was living at Fontana Vecchia (“Old Fountain”) in Taormina, D.H. received a letter from Mabel Dodge Luhan inviting him to come to Taos.

After a side trip to Ceylon and Australia, the Lawrences finally arrived in Taos on September 11^th, 1922 – on D. H.’s thirty-seventh birthday. Both were struck by the beauty of the landscape, as Lawrence would later write: “In the magnificent fierce morning of New Mexico, one sprang awake, a new part of the soul woke up suddenly and the old world gave way to the new.” *

Frieda echoed her husband’s words in her memoir, Not I, But the Wind: “A new life for us – and we began it straight away. Out from the pueblo to the east of us, a few miles away, came the feel of the Indians, so different from anything we had ever known.”

Frieda and D.H. Lawrence spent months in the Taos area in 1922-1923, 1924 and 1925. I will report on this time and the influence that northern New Mexico had on Frieda during this time of her life as soon as I complete my research.

Adios for now,

Liz

* This quote originates from D.H. Lawrence's article, "New Mexico", first published in Survey Graphic in 1928.

Mabel Dodge Luhan, Taos and the Inspiration of Place

2010-11-18T11:01:00.000-07:00

Lately I've given more thought to the "Why Taos" question, and the phrase "sense of place," a phrase I connect with D.H. Lawrence and his writing. Earlier this week Skip and I met with two remarkable women from California, Linda Lambert and Mary E. Gardner, and with Linda's remarkable husband, Morgan. We talked about the history of Taos, about D.H. Lawrence, about Taos Pueblo as background for Linda's latest historical novel. In the course of our conversation, Linda handed me "Lawrence of New Mexico," an undated typescript written by Mabel Dodge Luhan.*

Right then, right there--synchronicity at work--I received fresh, new information around Lawrence and sense of place. I share with you two paragraphs from Mabel's typescript:

Of all places where he lived I know he loved Taos best for did he not tell me so, and write it many times, too, when he was far away? How he longed to come back here, and had he been able, perhaps he would be alive today.

He called this country "pristine" and no other word describes it so well. There was a quality in the air, in the spirit of the place, that was more congenial to him than any he ever found in Europe, Asia, or Australia, and it is a strange thing that this genius loci that he loved has much the same effect upon individuals who come here that Lawrence's spirit had upon people? For it also awakens them, stimulates them, makes them more essential; it reveals their buried life, and show them up; it excites them, making them realize the color, taste, sight or sound of unspoiled natural life, almost forgotten in cities.

This seemed the perfect context for a piece written by Mort Sheinman in response to his stay this past summer at the Mabel Dodge Luhan House while taking Harvey Stein's photography workshop. When I put out a call for photos from Harvey's students, I also asked them to comment on their experience at the Mabel Dodge Luhan House, on Taos, and on what inspired them. Mort wrote a beautiful, thoughtful essay. With his permission, I am pleased to share it with you.

TAOS, MABEL AND HARVEY

Have you ever been to a restaurant, enjoyed something you thought was one of the best things you ever ate, then gone back and ordered it again, only to find it wasn’t nearly as satisfying as you remembered? I have, so when I thought about returning to Taos and to Mabel’s this summer for another of Harvey Stein’s photography workshops, it was not without some caution. I had been there for a workshop in the summer of 2008 and it was a rich and rewarding experience. So when I signed up for the 2010 version, I wondered how it would stack up against that memory.

I needn’t have been concerned. The second time around provided even deeper returns. I felt more centered, more at home, entirely at peace. It was great to be back.

I can’t really define the spirit of Taos and the feeling of being at the Mabel Dodge Luhan House, but I know this. Whatever it is that’s special about the place — and it is a special place — helps unlock my creative urges. I’m not talking just about the breathtaking landscape and that immense and ever-changing sky. In New York, where I was born, raised and continue to live, there is constant stimulation, an ever-present wave of energy created by the number of people almost literally banging into one another while seeking some piece of personal space — whether it’s space for dwelling or parking a car or simply walking on the sidewalk. If you can deal with it, it’s a high-intensity energy that often fuels creativity. Mabel’s is different. Mabel’s is not Manhattan. My skin seems to fit better out there. At Mabel’s, a great feeling of calm and spiritual well-being suffuses everything, from the way the staff takes care of business to the look of the rooms to the communal dining to the shapes and earth tones of the adobe buildings. In the most basic sense of the word, it is organic. I don’t think it’s going too far to say that one senses the presence of the great artists who are so much a part of the Mabel mystique. They are all around you, and, yes, they inspire, and, yes, they feed the creative flame.

I have been with Harvey for three workshops (one was in Mexico early in 2008) and I can see the differences in the pictures I made then and those from this summer. Perhaps more important, when I pick up a camera now, I feel different. A wise man once said, “Trust your gut.” I’m learning to do that, to have more faith in my own intuition, to risk taking new approaches, to have more confidence about my decisions. The most valuable part, of course, is that this isn’t limited to photography. These are life lessons and they have been learned from Harvey and from my fellow students, and from Mabel, and from all the great ghosts that continue to live in that very special place.

Mort's experience exemplifies how the "genius loci" of Taos continues to inspire people who come here. So too do words from writers like Mabel Dodge Luhan and D.H. Lawrence.

In my latest research, I've come across other writings by Mabel and her circle, some forgotten, some published in obscure places. This material will soon become essays and parts of profiles for future postings.

How has Taos or Mabel or D.H. Lawrence inspired you?

Adios for now. Be well. Write often.

Liz

* Mabel's typescript in the D.H. Lawrence Papers, Fray Angélico Chávez History Library, Santa Fe, New Mexico, U.S.A.

What's cookin' at the Mabel Dodge Luhan House? NEWSFLASH...just off the burner...

2010-11-01T14:41:00.001-06:00

Kitchen at the Mabel Dodge Luhan House

Two events are on the burner at the Mabel Dodge Luhan House--a cooking class with chef Jane Garrett and a new book.

If you have the time and opportunity, please join Jane Garrett this coming November 6th and 7th for a weekend exploration of "Cooking Off the Pueblo." Jane's inspiration for this event came from Pamela Martinez, a native of Taos Pueblo, who has been cooking at the Mabel Dodge for fourteen years. Together they prepared a gourmet feast menu, featuring the following dishes: Buffalo Ragout, Harvest Stew, Green Chili Corn Pudding, Roasted Seasonal Vegetables, Prune Pie, and Horno Baked Bread.

For those of you who can't attend, you may enjoy cooking vicariously using Pamela's mini book of cookie recipes (available through the Mabel Dodge Luhan House bookstore), OR if your mouth is watering by now, create your own meal using the recipe (below) for New World Stew.

And hot out of the oven, the book Mabel Dodge Luhan in Her Own Words has just been published (also available through the Mabel Dodge). This 11 x14 inch picture book, amply illustrated, includes a timeline of Mabel's life, and excerpts from her writing about the house and about Taos.

All of this talk of food and books is making me hungry. I'm off the the kitchen to ladle out some New World Stew. Then I'll put my feet up and enjoy Mabel's newest book.

Be well. Adios for now,
Liz

New World Stew

My husband Skip Miller, known as “one of the best camp cooks in the Southwest,” came up with a recipe using ingredients that originate in the Americas. (Yield approximately 12 hearty servings.)

Ingredients

2 onions, chopped

5 cloves of garlic

3 T. peanut oil (yes, it comes from the Americas)

1 pound of turkey burger

2 pounds of fire roasted green chilis

3 cups of water or broth

1 T. mountain oregano (Mexican oregano will work)

4 large potatoes

1 pound fresh or frozen corn

3 cups of cooked pinto or Anasazi beans

2 cups fresh squash

2 T. of cocoa powder

Instructions

Heat a large (gallon-size) pot. Add oil, onions and garlic. Stir until onions are wilted. Add turkey burger. Stir, break up, and cook until liquid is absorbed and turkey begins to brown. Add green chilis and water or broth, and bring to a gentle simmer.

Cut potatoes into 1 inch cubes and immerse in water. After the stock has come to a boil, add drained potatoes and oregano. Salt to taste. Just before potatoes are crisp done, add beans, corn, squash and cocoa powder. Simmer until potatoes and squash are cooked through. Add more water or broth as necessary. Salt and pepper to taste.

For more zing, add a chipotle pepper (either dry or canned) when the vegetables are added.

Ladle into a bowl and serve with tortilla chips. ENJOY!

Profile Natalie Goldberg: Slow walking and writing down the bones

2010-10-26T16:59:00.006-06:00

Photo by Noreen Perrin

I had the land of New Mexico, Taos Mountain, the Rio Grande to rely on....I had found a place that was mine. I realized no day went by there that I didn't stop, take a breath and look around. I'd never seen sky so big, so deeply blue. I'd watch the big white cumulus clouds sail over Taos Mountain and then wispy ones trail behind. I felt immense, limitless as the sky and in the same moment felt unimportant, little--and that smallness felt good, placed me properly in the dimension of life. -- Natalie Goldberg

Author, poet, painter and teacher Natalie Goldberg has taught numerous writing workshops at the Mabel Dodge Luhan House since about 1986. The quote (above) from her book Long Quiet Highway speaks to her abiding love for Taos and to how the area informed her life in her early years of writing. But how did she get here? What was her path to Taos and to writing? I hope the following pastiche will answer that.

Natalie lived in a tipi on the side of Lama Mountain when she first arrived in the early 1970s. An awakening experience she had while teaching in Albuquerque landed her at the Lama Foundation in San Cristobal, twenty miles north of Taos. The first person Natalie met was Barbara Durkee (now known as Asha von Brieson), one of the intentional commune’s founders. Her encounter with this remarkable woman and the Lama Foundation proved life-changing. First Asha encouraged her to find a practice. Natalie subsequently experienced the variety of spiritual traditions—ranging from Native American spiritualism to Judaism—offered at the Lama Foundation. Later Asha supported Natalie in another way. As head of the “hippie school” DaNahazli (Navajo for spring will come again), she hired her to teach there, giving Natalie free rein to develop classes. Through this venue Natalie began to develop the writing practice that culminated in the publication of Writing Down the Bones.

Whether you are just beginning to write or have been writing for a long time, Natalie Goldberg lets you know "there are many truths. To do writing practice means to deal ultimately with your whole life." -- from review of Writing Down the Bones : Freeing the Writer Within (expanded version, 2005) by Mary Ann Moore*

In an interview with Jenny Attiyeh**, Natalie ascribes the success of Writing Down the Bones (since its first publication in 1986, sales have numbered over 1.5 million copies and the book has been translated into 14 languages) to breaking a paradigm about writing. Natalie likens writing as a practice to the discipline practiced by committed athletes, say a runner or a tennis player. Using the method she first developed at DaNahazli and first conducted with a writing group of eight Taos women in the mid-1970s, Natalie combined writing practice with Zen. After twelve years of study with Katagiri Roshi in Minneapolis, she saw correlations between writing and the 2000-year-old Zen practice of watching the mind. For Natalie writing practice is Zen practice: there is no separation. “It’s all interconnected and interpenetrated.”

As a writing teacher, Natalie sees her job as helping people to understand the process of writing and simultaneously to understand the movements of the mind. Throughout her books on writing, Natalie advocates certain basics for timed sessions meant to get to the heart (or the bones) of writing. Some of my favorites are:

Write! Don’t think.

Keep your hand moving.

Don’t cross out.

Don’t worry about punctuation, spelling, grammar.

Feel free to write the worst junk in America.

What does writing practice do? In Thunder and Lightning, Natalie addresses this with an example. She and a friend had the blues one Sunday. To ease this condition, they tried meditating, then hiking. When neither activity relieved the doldrums, the two alternated writing for half an hour with reading their a priori work aloud to each other. It worked, as Natalie wrote: “The effort of forming words, physically connecting hand with mind and heart, and then having the freedom to read aloud transformed us.”

I push people off a cliff, get their hands moving. -- Natalie Goldberg, October 12, 2010

Deep-delving explorations of life through writing are characteristic of Natalie’s workshops. I asked her to tell me about a typical one, about what to expect. “You do a lot of writing.” Natalie teaches "a priori" or first thought writing that gets down to the bones. She fosters “a trust in your own voice, a confidence in your own experience, and a way to approach writing.” As a teacher, she is a proponent of “Shut up and write.” That’s her method in a nutshell.

Natalie’s next workshop at the Mabel Dodge Luhan House, “True Secret of Writing” (December 6-11, 2010), will be held in silence. She calls it a “Sit, Walk, Write Retreat” as it will alternate between timed writings and sitting and walking meditation. Maybe Natalie will lead a slow walk to the cemetery in Kit Carson Park to pay homage to fellow writer, Mabel Dodge Luhan.

A list of Natalie Goldberg’s books follows. I am particularly grateful to her for her interview with me this month and for Writing Down the Bones, which sustained me through my early years of writing when I most needed a teacher. I salute this remarkable woman.

Be well. Adios for now,

Liz

* Marianne Moore's review was posted on Story Circle Book Reviews on March 30, 2006. For the full review, see http://www.storycirclebookreviews.org/reviews/writingbones.shtml, accessed October 26, 2010

** Listen to Jenny Attiyeh's interview with Natalie at ThoughtCast http://www.thoughtcast.org/religion/natalie-goldberg/
For more information on Natalie Goldberg, please visit http://www.nataliegoldberg.com/

Books by Natalie Goldberg:

Chicken and In Love, 1980

Writing Down the Bones : Freeing the Writer Within, 1986

Wild Mind : Living the Writer's Life, 1990

Long Quiet Highway : Waking Up In America, 1993

Banana Rose, 1995

Living Color: A Writer Paints Her World, 1997

Thunder And Lightning : Cracking Open the Writer's Craft, 2000

Top of My Lungs: Paintings and Poems, 2003

The Great Failure : A Bartender, A Monk, and My Unlikely Path to Truth, 2004

Old Friend From Far Away : The Practice of Writing Memoir, 2008

Mabel and the remarkable Mabel Dodge Luhan House staff answer "What is the attraction of Taos?"

2010-10-11T16:14:00.001-06:00

After the blog launch this past August, "What attracts so many strong women to Taos?" was one question I asked the Mabel Dodge Luhan staff. However, before I share some of their answers, Mabel wants a word. Her thoughts on this question appeared in an article for the New Mexico Quarterly in 1951.

View of Taos Mountain from the Mabel Dodge Luhan House

Taos brings out the particularity in people. It is the most individualizing place in the world, I think. As Frank Waters says, it is the last outpost of individualism left!
There is no standardization here, no social structure. People do not live according to a single pattern....Side-by-side, people live their own lives and not the community's life. They do as they please, they say what they think, and nobody cares, for everyone is busy doing likewise. There is only one vague imperative seeming to guide them all. If they come and do not fit into the good spirit of Taos, they do not stay. They cannot. Nobody tells them to go away, they just disappear.
I do not believe I am imagining this. Taos does things to people. So many people came! Sometimes they stayed, others went away but came back; some like Georgia O'Keeffe never altogether went away....Oh, yes! Taos does things to people.

Six decades later, women have their own views, in answer to the attraction of Taos for strong women. Here's what some of the staff at the Mabel Dodge had to say:

One of the legends of Taos is that it is a hard place to live. You have to be strong to survive here. To some this is a shock and to others a challenge. Perhaps one of the secrets of Taos is it calls forth hidden strengths. -- Judi Jordan

Her aunt's stories about Taos in the 1940s and 1950s initially attracted Judi to Taos; the "sheer aching physical beauty" of the people and landscape kept her here.

Marsha Skinner spoke to Judi's "hard place to live" comment in Lyn Bleiler and Robbie Steinbach's forthcoming book, A Precarious Balance: Creative Women in Taos New Mexico: "I've been a desk clerk, a bookseller, an assistant curator, an editor, a gardener, a cleaning person, and am now a desk clerk once again." That's often what it takes to be an artist here. Marsha stated that her life is so rooted in the landscape and cultures of Taos that it is impossible for her to think of living elsewhere. Here's why:

Permission in the air to make art. Income not the measure of value. Spiritual and artistic adventures. Adventures in life-making. -- Marsha Skinner

For Bonnie McManus many of the same attributes that attracted generations of artists also appeal to her: "open acres of sage-studded land, the vast blue sky, the enduring Pueblo." She looks to the strong women who preceded her, women with a sense of adventure, a desire (like Mabel's) to be free of social constraints experienced elsewhere, conditions that allow them the freedom to become individuals, to re-invent themselves. She notes that women often become remarkable in order to survive in Taos. Like many others, to live here sometimes means holding down two or three jobs, something she's willing to do in order to stay.

It's a remarkable place! There is so much creativity here, it's catching. I'm planning to dabble in art, some painting and collage.... -- Bonnie McManus

Over the next months, I will continue to share thoughts from staff and from readers about the influence of time spent in Taos, and the reasons this region attracts so many strong, independent-minded women. Let me know your thoughts and experiences.

Be well,
Liz

Next: an interview with Natalie Goldberg, author of several books, including Writing Down the Bones and Old Friend from Far Away: The Practice of Writing Memoir.