Monthly Archives: February 2019

Ephemera

State ments

Leave a comment

I love to see a personalized car, and to find out where a person considers home. (I was always baffled by a friend who had lived here for 40 years, which was well over half their life, refer to another state as “home”).

So sometimes one chooses a rather abstract image of their favorite place, like the invisible Michigan mitten, surrounded by the Great Lakes to show their affinity.

This person also chose a somewhat abstract image, it’s the symbol from the Wyoming license plate of a cowboy on a bucking bronco (a male horse).

This sticker features just the outline of the state of Texas, and of course it’s on a pickup truck with a huge tool box (no gun rack, though).

This one has the logo and colors of the major college in the state, perhaps this person is an alumni, or perhaps they just follow the sports team.

Our state flag often appears as a symbol mixed with one’s favorite obsessions. Here is the Colorado alien (from the movie ‘Alien’), ready to attack any humans that stray across it’s path.

The elk perhaps indicates that this person is a hunter (elk is unfortunately delicious) or maybe it’s a sign that they just enjoy the outdoors and the native wildlife.

This person identifies with Denver, the wonky curved building is a symbol of the city, with stylized mountains forming a backdrop. (So what are they doing in this town?)

This person likes Colorado like they like their cat, but their love is for New Mexico (and I certainly share some of this love too).

New Mexico

Road trip

Leave a comment

Well I had the opportunity to take a quick road trip, so of course I grabbed it. I tend to be very tense driving and after hours on the road it is hard to unclench my hands from the steering wheel. So I am always glad to tag along when someone else is doing the driving. And where would I go? To New Mexico, my favorite and most frequent place to visit.

It’s 149 miles to the New Mexico border. Once one drives over Raton Pass (elevation 7834 feet) one has a splendid view of the open plains. Unlike many photos that I take where I have to hide the fact that there are scads of people just out of view, there really are no people to be seen. This is part of the empty quarter of the state. This view shows part of Capulin National Park, one of the first landmarks one sees as one enters the state from the north.

There it is, my most photographed landmark of northern NM. I confess that I do get excited every time I see it. Whenever I am there, I am on vacation, so I associate the area with rest and relaxation. If I actually lived there I am sure that I would get tired of all the driving one has to do for shopping, doctors, etc. It really is just a wide spot in the road.

And if one crossed the road, one would be at the original site of the village. The large mesa is Jarosa Mesa (no idea where the name comes from), and the smaller one is Santa Clara Mesa (named after a saint for some reason).

This is the view from M’s uncle’s place. All that stuff lying about is over at the neighbor’s, I think he does a little bit of construction work (or at least he used to). M’s uncle also has plenty of the flotsam of life floating about his yard. It is funny that with all this open space their homes are so close together. Once again it wasn’t hard to crop any people out of the picture, there are under 400 souls in the entire village. I shall miss stopping by if the village gets any smaller, but I will always love the view.

Doings, Town

Church suppers

1 Comment

I could count on one hand (and have fingers left over) the number times we went out to eat at a restaurant when I was a child. But the one place where we did go was to church suppers. And so I retain a fondness for this sort of event. Unlike chef-driven restaurants, the food has a certain humble and sincere appeal. Driven by both a fund-raising need, and the desire to please and share, I am happy to be part of the experience.

Pteri went with me to this event, a full fledged church festival, complete with booze, booths of items for sale and dancing. It was a celebration of one’s (not mine though) Greek heritage, so on the menu this day was delicious gyros prepared by members of the congregation and a local restaurant.

This was a fund-raiser for a church school prepared by a parent’s group. This day they were serving my favorite, carne adovada (pork marinated in red chile, then slow cooked and shredded) tacos with refried beans and rice. It doesn’t really look that lovely, but it was quite tasty. They hadn’t counted on the demand for beer however, as it was a rather hot day, and they ran out. 🙁

KODAK Digital Still Camera

This was a different sort of church dinner, prepared by some men from the sister Spanish language church of this congregation. The guys had dug a pit, lined it with rocks, lit a fire to heat up the rocks, then buried the food on the hot rocks to cook it. They had made tamales, potatoes, chicken and pork. This was what they thought of as a perfect church supper back home. As the parent church did not condone alcohol, the men surreptitiously passed a bottle around.

This church food came from an Orthodox church out on the prairie, 7 miles from a small town (which is really far from anywhere). The area was settled by Czech farmers, and although most of them have moved away, lots of old-timers come back for a chance to eat this food. Kielbasa, haluska (some sort of noodle, onion and bacon dish), pierogi (potato and cheese dumplings), cabbage rolls, and borscht (plus some things I don’t know the name of) were on the menu.

And this was what was served at the most recent church supper I attended, with food cooked up by a local family-run restaurant and served by a parent’s group. This restaurant has been in business since 1959, which makes it quite an ancient establishment in this town. And served in a plastic cup was an excellent vintage wine.

It is interesting that all of these meals were based on immigrant/ethnic foodstuffs. All of these varied churches are looking to make a little money (sometimes very little), and provide a place for the community to break bread together. What could be a better excuse to get together?