Sante Fe Walkabout

Thom's friend Léon joined us in Sante Fe.  He took the Rail Runner Express commuter train from Albuquerque, about 90 minutes south.  Although he and Thom are friends from Jackson Heights, we'd never met.  He's studying communications at the University of New Mexico where he also has a podcast that examines identity-related issues.   

Léon started our tour at St. Francis Cathedral, built in the mid-nineteenth century.   The Vatican elevated it to basilica status twenty years ago.

The bas relief on the cathedral door commemorates a much earlier church on the same site, destroyed during the Pueblo revolt against the Spanish colonizers who eventually returned to run the show.  According to Léon, they still do.

St. Francis looks right at home.

It took two centuries for the first Native American to be beatified.  St. Kateri, a Mohawk woman, survived small pox, converted to Catholicism and remained a virgin until she died in 1680 at the age of 24.

The Southwestern aesthetic is even more obvious inside the colorful cathedral.

Unusually, women are featured in every Station of the Cross, a decision made by a local artist in the 1980s.   

The church also operates a school, built in the adobe style.

We passed this wood statue en route to our next stop.

Art galleries line Canyon Road, mostly selling works I didn't find as appealing as the neighborhood architecture.

You won't find an older church building in the continental United States than the San Miguel Chapel.  It dates back to 1610.

Earlier in the trip, I'd passed state capitol buildings in Montgomery, Jackson and Boise. Léon encouraged us to enter the round building.  I'm so glad we did.

The rotunda is hard to see from the outside.

Here's where the Senate deliberates.

New Mexico didn't become a state until 1912.  Yearbook-like pictures of the legislature ever since adorn the wall.  Look at all the neckties!   Latinos began appearing in greater numbers during the mid-60s but it took much longer for women to become commonplace. New Mexicans elected their first female governor, a Republican, in 2010.  She served two terms.

Work by local artists--much more to my liking--decorates the Capitol's interior and the grounds outside.  

I took both Magda and Thom to La Mesilla on separate occasions,  although truth be told I recall the pecan groves more vividly than the mesa.  If this piece had been for sale I would have purchased it.

"Black Mesa at La Mesilla" by Kate Krasin (1991)

The intricate construction of "Buffalo" (1992) by Holly Hughes--a kind of three dimensional collage--blew me away.

"Buffalo Tail" by Oreland C. Joe, Sr. (2015)

"Emergence" by Michael A. Naranjo (2000)

I've always been a fan of the Civilian Conservation Corps, but I wasn't aware the young, bare-chested participants had contributed so much to the recreational development of Elephant Butte Lake, New Mexico's biggest state park.  It's where I learned to water ski. Léon has been camping there, too, much more recently.

"CCC Worker" by Sergey Kazaryan