Americana the Beautiful - One state and wacky festival at a time

Learning, exploring, adventuring, writing, photographing… Amazing. Babysitting my laundry, having six gallons of hot water for a shower, not knowing where to find good Chinese for the, err, required monthly consumption… Less than amazing. You’re Traveling, Get Over It! Indeed, I’m traveling. And it’s wonderful. But that glee minimizes, not eliminate, realities. These are some […]

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If there’s a perfectly good canyon–with a stream–why would Native American people choose to live in caves carved into a cliff? If there are perfectly good caves, why would people choose to go to the effort of building homes in the canyon? Since the Ancestral Pueblo people of mid-New Mexico had both kinds of dwellings […]

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Sure, sure, everyone gets dry skin in the winter. But not only is my skin depleted, my throat is so parched from sleeping that I feel like I swallowed a desert, and my nasal passages are in such discomfort it’s shocking that they recover in only 20 minutes. How do I find myself in this […]

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When I made the reservation for the turquoise mine tour, the guy said to wear sturdy shoes and bring a hat. Makes sense, we’re going underground; it could be dirty or cold or both. At check-in I asked his wife which kind of hat to bring: warm with pom pom or baseball cap. She said […]

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Turns out folk art exists everywhere. In my limited thinking, it’s a Southern thing comprised of jugs with faces and painted tin. But lo and behold, it includes tapestries and hats, figurines (often related to Jesus), saddles, weapons, amulets, even toys. Santa Fe, NM hosts the Museum of International Folk Art. I was not prepared […]

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