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A New Mexico History Museum Brochure from Japan, with Love

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Since the New Mexico History Museum opened on May 24, 2009, nearly 45 percent of all our visitors have come from outside the United States.  Out of more than 320,000 visitors in all, nearly 4,000 came from Japan. One of them was Mitsuhiro Fujimaki, a professor in the Department of International Studies at the University of Shizuoka, southwest of Mount Fuji on Suruga Bay. A longtime fan of New Mexico and a student of Native American life, Fujimaki visited with museum Director Frances Levine earlier in the year with a proposal: As a class project, his students would develop a Japanese-language brochure that would be available online and at our front desk.

How could we say no?

A few months later, he brought a half-dozen freshman students to New Mexico, and we talked with them about our focus and what Japanese visitors might be most interested in seeing while here. Funded by the Japanese Ministry of Education, the students got to work and, this week, delivered their final product–the Time Travel New Mexico website, with a downloadable History Museum brochure, all in Japanese.

“We’re so impressed what the students have done,” Levine said. “This was a true gift of their talents to the museum and its Japanese visitors.”

Fujimaki explained that the students had to employ some linguistic smarts in preparing the brochure. The direct translation of “history” in Japanese, for example, connotes something boring–“record,” or “archive.” The word “museum” translates as “storage.”  So the students opted to use “stories” and “memories,” imparting a lovely piece of poetic license.

Mindful that this is a new museum in a very old city, the students presented our main exhibition, Telling New Mexico: Stories from Then and Now as “a time machine that goes back and forth between the past and the present.”

In a report about the project, Fujimaki wrote:

“We faculty members have recognized that fieldwork is an essential component for the curriculum. And so, we have attempted to introduce an effective program for freshmen as an initiation to our curriculum.  Since the last year, we have been fortunate to receive an educational grant from the Ministry to experiment an introductory fieldwork program for freshmen.  In this program, freshmen engaged in fieldwork are exposed to various cultural experiences in foreign countries.  For example, one group goes to Turkey, while another goes to Australia.  Another group goes to Kenya, and the other Vietnam.  And through that exposure, they are supposed to acquire fundamental skills and knowledge, necessary to prepare themselves for the rest of their academic life in the major of International Studies and for their future career.

“This particular project, by which students have visited Santa Fe is called `Santa Fe Seminar.’  Students have been planning and editing a guidebook to the Santa Fe area.  In the previous year, they edited a booklet that introduces Pueblo culture and mentions the copyright problem of Indian jewelry.  After their trip to Santa Fe in the last year, they took a look at local shops at their home towns, and have recognized how many stores sell `Indian-inspired’ products, which are usually made somewhere in Asia.  So, when they distributed their booklet, they held a workshop to enlighten consumers about the problem in the area.

“In this year, students have edited the Japanese version of the New Mexico History Museum’s brochure.  After their visited at the Santa Fe area including Los Alamos, San Ildefonso, Bandelier, and so on, they have recognized how diverse and rich in culture and history in the area has been; the U.S. Southwest history is not just about its frontier era, but layered by various actors–Native Americans, Spanish settlers, “Anglos,” nuclear scientists, and so on.  So, making and editing a Japanese brochure of the NM History Museum is an ideal project for them, as they can teach their audience in such a way that their brochure can rectify the monolithic image of the American Southwest into a diversified one, which they believe can attract more visitors to the area. ”

The students’ brochure and those 4,000 visitors aren’t the museum’s only tie to Japan. Among the parts of the museum the students recommended seeing was Japanese artist Kumi Yamashita’s Fragments installation in the second-floor Gathering Space. Yamashita took photographs of everyday New Mexicans across the state, then molded their profiles onto the edges of multi-colored squares of plastic. When a light is shined on them from the side, the profiles appear in shadow.

What a Frame-Up: “Native American Portraits”

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Native American Portraits: Points of Inquiry, the new exhibition in the New Mexico History Museum’s Mezzanine Gallery, features more than 50 exquisite, original prints taken from the mid-1800s to 1035. What makes them even more arresting are the more than 50 frames surrounding each photo.

How we found them is one of the interesting little back-stories that so many museums have to tell.

The show is hung in what’s known as a “salon style” exhibition, where the groupings look more like what you might see in someone’s living room than the standard march of photos across a wall most common in museums. Given that, curator and archivist Daniel Kosharek, along with exhibition designer Caroline Lajoie, didn’t want a series of identical frames. But they lacked the funds to order up an assortment from your local frame shape.

The hunt was on.

“It started with a few finds at a garage sale,” Daniel said.

Andrew Smith, one of the co-curators of the exhibit and owner of Andrew Smith Gallery, provided three historically accurate frames for the Edward S. Curtis images. The Museum of New Mexico’s Conservation Department helped create several shadowbox-like frames to hold postcard images in a sort of suspended animation, rather than tacking them down.

“It ended with scouring the basement of a local gallery and molding-diving in the storage locker of a framing company,” Daniel said. “The end result? Well, you be the judge.”

 

A Rare Peek at Some Gems of 17th- and 18th-Century Spanish Art

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On Mother’s Day in 2014, the New Mexico History Museum plans to unveil a new exhibition, Painting the Divine: Images of Mary in the New World, featuring about 35 paintings from the museum’s Collier Collection. Most of them have been held in storage for a long time and, when they emerge, they’ll provide visitors with a glimpse of the earliest religious art created by artists in Mexico and South America. As part of the planning for the exhibition, the museum asked contract conservator Cynthia Lawrence to get up close and personal with a few of the paintings, which she did today.

Most of the staff has never seen the paintings before, and we couldn’t help taking a peek and passing it along to you.

The reason they were pulled from storage was to help us get an idea of what kind of shape the paintings are in and, from that, figure out how many we can afford to give facelifts to.  As a first step, Cynthia tested a variety of solvents on small sections of each painting to see what it would take to remove discolored varnish and years of dirt, soot and grime.

“Water is a solvent,” she said, “alcohols and petroleum distillates, and all kinds of thing with different properties are what we use.” Above is a portion of Flight from the Desert, painted by an unknown artist in Cuzco, Peru, in the 18th century. Cynthia worked on a portion of the halo area above Mary’s head with the solvents and also analyzed the chemical composition of areas where it looks as though an earlier restoration effort was made.

“The number-one goal is to preserve the paintings as close to the artist’s original intent as possible, but accepting that there are natural aging things,” Cynthia said. “We don’t want to make them look brand-new.”

At left, she experiments with a solvent on Our Lady of Bethlehem, also painted by an unknown artist in Cuzco, Peru, in the 18th century.

“Spanish colonial paintings in general tend to be in a little bit poorer condition than European paintings,” she said. “That might relate to climate but also probably because they didn’t have the same kind of trained restorers in centuries past. We tend to see not nearly as good a condition. They’ve hung in churches, which are public spaces. Sometimes well-intentioned cleaning people tried to clean them up who weren’t trained restorers.

“These particular ones I’d say are in average condition for what we’d see of this age. There are cracks in the paint. There are places where the paint has flaked away.”

Josef Diaz, the museum’s curator of Southwest and Mexican Colonial Collections, pointed to Massacre of the Innocents for an example of how European religious art began morphing into new cultures. Here’s how the painting looks in general (forgive the point-and-shoot photography and laboratory lighting):

Look at the bottom right-hand side and you can see that the painting’s unknown artist in 18th-century Peru, has cast the wheat-threshers as Native peoples instead of the Romans you see elsewhere in the painting. Here’s a close-up:

Once Painting the Divine comes together, more of those sorts of discoveries will come to light — along with, we hope, some of the more brilliant colors lying wait beneath the varnish and grime that Lawrence is providing a first assessment of.

“These pieces help put our own collection of New Mexican retablos and bultos into the larger world of Spanish colonial painting,” Josef said. “Many of them served as examples for the santeros and inspired the pieces that were later created in New Mexico.”

 

Centennial Letter Writers Tell Us of Lovely Times — and Hard Times

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New Mexicans have continued to contribute to the Centennial Letters Project, which now has a home in the window of our front lobby. When you visit, you can read letters that others have contributed and pick up some postcards to leave at your school, library or business to prompt more writers.

We like sharing bits and pieces of the letters with you on this blog, so here are a few of our more recent writers.

Sharon in Santa Fe told us about some of the great outdoor experiences she and her husband have had …

…We moved into an adobe house without electricity above Cochiti Pueblo in 1965. sadly, that area with historic Civilian Conservation Corps-built adobes and magnificent views over the Caja del Rio was burned and flooded in New Mexico’s largest wildfire last summer. We have lived in several small villages and had some exciting adventures. I have cooked on wood stoves, ironed with flat irons, pumped water, backpacked extensively in the Pecos Wilderness, raised three children, taught remedial reading, and met many fascinating people of various backgrounds. My husband Mike had an interesting career with the Forest Service, almost entirely on the Santa Fe National Forest. He fought over 200 wildfires in ten states, managed the recreation lands, marked timber sales, and his favorite, designed and built trails. He retired early and started his own business, Pecos Baldy Enterprises. He has designed and built many trails in Northern New Mexico and southern Colorado. …

We have always loved hiking. Mike designed and built the Dale Ball Trail System in the foothills. I hope it is still being used. Maybe our children will have scattered our ashes by our favorite part of the trail. …

Paul in Rio Rancho recalled some of the good times of his childhood in Hurley, New Mexico …..

… I grew up in Hurley, New Mexico, which is a copper-mining town about 15 miles southeast of Silver City. My father was William Earl Morton, and he worked for Kennecott Copper Corporation in Hurley as a refinery tapper for some 28 years. …

Growing up in Hurley was a bit “different.” It was a small town, and still is, of about 3 to 5 thousand people. What made it different growing up was that Hurley was a “company town”—totally owned and operated by Kennecott Copper Corporation, and surrounded by a barbed wire fence no less. There was a 500 ft. smokestack as part of the refinery, which became quite a local landmark. I can still hear the company whistles signaling start of shift, lunchtime, quitting time, etc. …

I can still remember playing stick ball and steal-the-bacon on the streets close to my home. It was a good town for kids, quiet with a very low crime rate. There was a swimming pool, tennis courts, clubhouse with a small bowling alley and library. The town was clean and well maintained. Being a company town, many of the houses looked the same with only a few different styles and sizes available. …

On December 1, 1055, the entire town of Hurley was sold to a developer (John W. Galbreath) and the houses sold to either the occupants or realtors seeking rental homes. My parents eventually owned their own home at 212 Aztec Street in Hurley. …

Michael in Los Alamos brought us back to the earth — and the economy — of today ….

…Last May I graduated with a Master’s degree from UNM. I have been looking for a real job ever since. Work has been hard to find, and I was forced to move back to my parents’ home. It used to be an anomaly for someone in their thirties like myself to move back into the home of their youth. Now it seems more common. Unfortunately the best work I have found of late is as an extra in a movie that is being filmed here. It is kind of funny, spending so much time and energy in getting a graduate degree only to get a job whose only qualification is the ability to grow lots of facial hair (the movie’s a Western).

Lately I have been looking for work out of state. I would love to be able to stay here, but I am not sure I can afford to do so. If I leave I will probably be drawn back again. There is so much I would miss, but I would likely come back just to smell the ponderosa trees after a summer rain. …

I hope that we have done enough to ensure that they (the ponderosas) and the rest of the amazing landscape of New Mexico remain to be enjoyed. I also hope that you will do what it takes to ensure that it remains for those that come one hundred years after you.

Smile, breath deeply, be happy, and take care of yourself.

A Mother’s Day (or Father’s Day) Gift They’ll Always Remember

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Maybe you haven’t heard: Mother’s Day is this Sunday, and Father’s Day isn’t far behind.

You can probably come up with plenty of other reasons to shower Mom and Dad with thanks—not the least of them being how well they put up with your teenage taste in music, cars and hairstyles. If you’re anything like us, you’ve already received reminders to buy flowers, choose a cologne, or order up a boxful of oranges. Nothing against those gifts (we happen to say “yes” anytime someone offers us ripe oranges), but this might be a year to think a little deeper about where our money goes and what it can accomplish.

At the New Mexico History Museum/Palace of the Governors, we rely on grants and donations to pull together educational programs for our younger visitors, to offer lectures series and other programs, and to put up new and interesting exhibitions. Since we opened in May 2009, some 350,000 people from all over the world have come through our doors to learn more about the enormous role New Mexico played in the shaping of the American West.

We’re hoping you can help us continue generating that kind of enthusiasm—and we promise you’ll get something in return.

A gift of membership in the Museum of New Mexico Foundation entitles recipients to a year’s worth of free admission to all four state museums in Santa Fe, the six monuments throughout the state, a subscription to the award-winning El Palacio magazine, plus discounts in our museum shops. Besides that, members receive regular updates about what’s going on in the museums and invitations to exhibition openings and other special events.

A variety of “friends” groups exist within the foundation’s membership, and those participants get first crack at invitations to archaeological field trips, visits to artists’ houses, bus tours of historical towns, and other activities. Besides building your brain, our museums build friendships.

Membership starts as low as $30 for students and teachers.

If you want to make a bigger splash, consider sponsoring or supporting an upcoming exhibition or a public program. (Gifts of $1,000 or more will place the name of you or a loved one on the wall of an exhibit.) You could pay for a bus to bring your children or grandchildren’s class, Scouting troop, or campmates to the New Mexico History Museum. You could sponsor a special event that brings history to life.

Gifts to the Museum of New Mexico Foundation are tax deductible. We encourage you to consider giving a gift that will last at least a year and help us continue kindling our visitors’ interest in the stories of our lives.

 

 

Learn Your History Thursday (the Governor Says So)

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It’s official: Governor Susana Martinez has declared Thursday, May 3, “New Mexico Statehood History Day.” Thursday, not so coincidentally, happens to be the day the New Mexico History Museum and the Historical Society of New Mexico kick off three days of learning about statehood.

In her proclamation, Governor Martinez said:

Whereas, the year 2012 marks the Centennial of New Mexico becoming the 47th state of the union on January 6, 1912; and

Whereas, New Mexico’s millennia of cultural traditions and centuries of recorded history, beginning with the first Spanish entrada in 1540 and continuing through Spanish Colonial, Mexican, Territorial, and statehood periods, are as rich and deep as any; and

Whereas, New Mexico’s long path to statehood, beginning with being named a territory of the United States in 1850, involved the perseverance oaf many dedicated citizens over many decades; and

Whereas, the study and understanding of our unique history provides a base for New Mexicans to better prepare for the future;

Now, therefore I, Susana Martinez, governor of the state of New Mexico, do hereby proclaim the 3rd day of May 2012 as “New Mexico Statehood History Day” throughout the state of New Mexico.

The best way to honor Statehood History Day, in our eyes, is by visiting the state History Museum. Admission is free to everyone on Thursday and you can pop into any or all of the lectures at our Centennial Symposium. On Friday and Saturday, the Historical Society holds its annual conference at the Santa Fe Convention Center, and this year, the discussions are focused on statehood. (Click on the link for details on how to register.)

Topics will range from traditional foods in Native American communities to land-grant studies, Western characters like Kit Carson and Wyatt Earp, and controversial New Mexico politicos such as Thomas Benton Catron, Bronson Cutting, and New Mexico’s first Territorial Governor (and possible U.S. spy) James S. Calhoun. The conference’s 24 sessions and nearly 70 presentations include:

  • “Juan Dominguez de Mendoza: Soldier and Frontiersman of 17th-Century New Mexico,” by historians Marc Simmons and José Antonio Esquibel.
  • “The Changing Character of New Mexico Statehood as Reflected by the Santa Fe Fiesta Celebration,” by Andrew Lovato, assistant professor of speech communications at Santa Fe Community College.
  • “Butch Cassidy in New Mexico: His Winning Ways, Dancing Feet, and Postmortem Return,” by free-lance writer Nancy Coggeshall.
  • “U.S. Army Nurses at Fort Bayard,” by Cecilia Jensen Bell, a researcher with the Fort Bayard Historical Preservation Society.
  • “La Matanza: Conserving Identity through Food in Los Lunas,” by Daniel Valverde, an anthropology student at New Mexico State University.

“The research that these scholars have accomplished is truly impressive,” said Dr. Frances Levine, director of the New Mexico History Museum. “Visitors can start their weekend history immersion by seeing the maps, paintings, photographs and artifacts that we use in our main exhibit, Telling New Mexico: Stories from Then and Now. If you’re not already a fan of history, the symposium and conference will make you one.”

Founded in 1859, the Historical Society of New Mexico is the oldest historical society in the West. Its collections were incorporated into the original Museum of New Mexico, created in 1909 in the Palace of the Governors, and today represent an important part of the New Mexico History Museum’s holdings. The society’s photographs, documents and books, collected from 1885 on, became the core of the museum’s Fray Angélico Chávez History Library and the Photo Archives at the Palace of the Governors. The Society began its annual conferences in 1974, and also publishes award-winning papers and news of history around the state in La Crónica de Nuevo México.

Image above: Dignitaries join U.S. President William H. Taft as he signs New Mexico into statehood in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, 1912. Photo by Harris and Ewing. Palace of the Governors Photo Archives 89760.

Can’t Beat This: Free Admission and a Free Centennial Symposium

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In honor of New Mexico’s 100th birthday, the New Mexico History Museum invites you and your family to enjoy free admission all day Thursday, May 3, when you can also attend all or parts of a daylong Centennial symposium. The symposium, co-hosted by the Historical Society of New Mexico begins at 10:30 am in the auditorium and concludes at 4 pm. The Historical Society picks up the reins Friday and Saturday with its 2012 Centennial Conference at the Santa Fe Convention Center. (Click on the hotlink for information on admission, as well as the conference program.)

The History Museum’s symposium schedule:

10:30 am: Welcome and introductions by Dr. Frances Levine, director of the New Mexico History Museum; and Dr. Richard Melzer, professor of history at the UNM-Valencia campus.

10:45 am: Keynote address, “New Mexico Statehood, an Earlier Pereption,” by Dr. Robert Larson, professor emeritus of history at the University of Northern Colorado and author of the classic book New Mexico’s Quest for Statehood, 1846-1912.

11:30 am:“The Rough Road to Statehood,” by Dr. David Van Holtby, research scholar at the Center for Regional Studies, UNM, and retired associate director and editor-in-chief of UNM Press. He is the author of the forthcoming book, Forth-seventh Star: New MExico’s Struggle for Statehood, 1894-1912.

12:15 pm: Break (lunch on your own).

1:30 pm: “The Quest for Law and Order and New Mexico’s Struggle for Statehood,” by Robert Torrez, independent scholar and former New Mexico state historian. He is the author of more than 100 articles and books on New Mexico history, including the award-winning Rio Arriba, A Nexico County.

2:15 pm: “New Mexico Icons,” by Henrietta Martinez Christmas, noted New Mexico historian and genealogist who has written more than 100 articles and books on New Mexico history, focusing on the history of New Mexico families.

3 pm: Break.

3:30 pm: Open discussion with Dr. Melzer and other presenters.

The event is supported by a grant from the New Mexico Humanities Council. Free admission has been generously donated by the History Museum and the Museum of New Mexico Board of Regents.

Image above: A 1912 parade float in Santa Fe. Palace of the Governors Photo Archives 118354.

The One Thing President Taft Got Right: New Mexico Statehood

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Noel Pugach, a professor emeritus of history at the University of New Mexico, delivered this week’s Centennial Brainpower & Brownbags Lecture in which he explored the story of the man who managed to give New Mexico what it had sought for more than 60 years: statehood. But beyond making New Mexico (and Arizona) a state, President William Howard Taft left a legacy that can best be represented by a shrug of the shoulders.

“Taft had a distinguished career before and after his presidency, yet most historians rate him as an average president–even mediocre,” Pugach said.

(That’s Taft at left, joined by dignitaries as he signs New Mexico into statehood in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, 1912. Photo by Harris and Ewing. Palace of the Governors Photo Archives 89760.)

Theodore Roosevelt preceded Taft and helped him win election in 1908; Woodrow Wilson succeeded him four years later. “He was unfortunately sandwiched between two dynamic men who left their marks on history,” Pugach said. “That’s hard to beat, and here you come in the middle. Taft suffers by comparison.”

He also suffers by having been a poor administrator, owning a political tin ear and displaying a knack for choosing the conservative sides of issues in a country that was then moving left. Not to mention that he ate compulsively to cope with whatever inner demons drove him, ending up at something like 340 pounds while in the White House where, yes, he got stuck in a bath tub. More than once. Laugh if you must, but do take a moment to consider what mental and physical agony he must have suffered. (That said, he was an avid golfer and a darned good dancer.)

When Taft took office, some conservative Republicans remained stuck on the idea that a New Mexico-Arizona combo state was the only way to go, despite Teddy’s best efforts to dampen their zeal. Taft did some of his own cajoling and negotiating to quell that plan, then had to engage in some last-minute horse-trading that weakened his ideas for regulating the railways in return for granting New Mexico statehood.

(At left: Noel Pugach with History Museum Director Frances Levine.)

The Cincinnati native had graduated from Yale where he not only scored good grades but had enough social acumen to win an invitation into the secret Skull & Bones Society. He earned a law degree and embarked on a political career of appointed positions–an important distinction, Pugach said, given Taft’s later inability to succeed at the mano a mano of electoral politics. After he served admirably as chief civil administrator in the Philippines, Roosevelt made him his Secretary of War (despite a lack of military experience) and, though he dreamed of being a Supreme Court justice, Teddy and Taft’s wife, Helen, pressured him to run for the presidency against Democrat William Jennings Bryan. He won handily and eventually amassed a record as a better trust-buster than Roosevelt (though Teddy would get the glory).

He didn’t like Washington and spent so much time traveling that he got a reputation of being out of touch.

“He was a lousy politician,” Pugach said. “He had terrible political instincts. He spoke too candidly. He was inept at horse trading. The press called him `The Blunderer.'”

On the upside: “He was a man who was very bright. He had good intentions. He cared for his country. But by and large, he was unsuccessful in his presidency. This is the man who finally brought us statehood.”

By 1912, when Republicans nominated Taft for a second term, Roosevelt had lost so much faith in him that he formed the “Bull Moose” Progressive Party, thereby splitting the GOP vote and handing victory to Wilson. Taft went happily back to Yale, where he served as a law professor until President Harding gave him his dream job, Chief Justice of the United States.

Of his performance in that job, Pugach said, Taft’s record was … “average.”

Yippie-yi-yo: Wrangling Cowboy Artifacts for a New Exhibition

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The legwork is underway to create a 2013 exhibit about one of New Mexico’s favorite subjects: Cowboys. (And, yes, cowgirls.) Guest curators Louise Stiver and Byron Price are sifting through a wealth of material to decide which aspects of cowboy life will be highlighted and how we’ll tell those stories. In the museum’s collections vault, we already have an array of cowboy-related materials, and the Palace of the Governors Photo Archives could make the Marlboro Man weep with the amount of historical photography it holds on ranch life.

Even so, we couldn’t say no to the offer of a clutch of cowboy-related materials from John Egan and the Egan family, who operated Rancho Encantado in Tesuque from 1967 through 1995. Betty Egan, a Cleveland woman who loved Western novels, had a yearning to live in the wide open spaces, and Slim Green told her about Rancho del Monte, a dude ranch owned by Bill and Barbara Hooton. Trivia keepers will want to know this about Rancho del Monte: Barbara Hooton collaborated with Patrick Dennis, the author of Auntie Mame, to create a 1956 novel of city slickers running a dude ranch, which became (briefly) the TV sitcom Guestward Ho!

(Even deeper trivia: The pilot for the TV show, produced by Desilu, starred Vivian Vance, aka Ethel Mertz, but the powers-that-be decided that viewers couldn’t see poor Miss Vance as anything but Ethel. Too bad for Vivian, given that she earned her first acting chops in Albuquerque and would have had a homecoming of sorts with the show.)

The items included in the Egan family’s generous donation have yet to go through our accessioning process, which includes being voted on by the Museums of New Mexico Board of Regents, but we couldn’t resist sharing a glimpse of them with you.

In fact, some of the wise-guys in our office couldn’t resist setting up an exquisite Slim Green saddle as the new desk chair for our director, Frances Levine (at left).

Slim Green is a story unto himself:  Born in 1916 in Oklahoma and soon relocated by his family to Texas in a covered wagon, he showed cowboy know-how from a young age, quickly learning the difference between a good saddle and a bad one. He couldn’t afford the former, so apprenticed himself to Pop Bettis, a renowned saddlemaker in Lubbock.  As his skills advanced, his saddles became hand-tooled works of art that fit every rider’s particular needs.  Cowboys, movie stars and governors have chosen Green’s saddles, and he’s considered a master traditional artist by numerous arts organizations.

Among the other items partially filling up Levine’s office: a Slim Green belt made for John Egan (Betty’s son, and the ranch’s general manager for 18 years); a pair of chaps; spurs; bridles; business ads; two bottles of Rancho Encantado wine; two cattle brands owned by Betty Egan; and photographs from the ranch’s heyday, when it attracted the likes of Robert Redford, Kirk Douglas, Johnny Cash, June Carter, Whoopi Goldberg, Jason Robards, and Frank Capra.

Besides running the Rancho Encantado, Betty Egan financed the construction of the Tesuque Fire Department and was the first female fire chief in the nation.

Rancho Encantado today is the Encantado resort.

As we work on this early stage of the exhibit, set to open in February 2013, we’ve been gratified by the generosity of people like the Egans and the enthusiasm of so many people to share their stories. We promise this: A root-tootin’ good time will be had by all.

 

Learning from Fifth-Graders: The Centennial Letters Project

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We recently received a lovely stack of hand-written letters from fifth-grade students at Piñon Elementary School in Santa Fe. Their teacher had read about our Centennial Letters Project and the effort to collect the thoughts of New Mexicans on this 100th anniversary of statehood — our gift to the historians who will one day document our bicentennial.

Wrote their teacher:”We have had fun trying to imaging what schools will be like in 100 years. We hope there won’t be budget problems and overcrowding in the classrooms like we have now. My hope for the future is that we will all be using clean, renewable energy, that all children will have enough to eat and live in safe homes.  … I know that by being a teacher, I am reaching out to the future and touching lives, hopefully in positive ways. My students learn daily how to resolve conflicts peacefully along with their math, reading, science, and history. I think you (the New Mexicans of 2112) will have very unusual technology from what we use today, but I think 10 and 11 year olds will be very much the same.”

We couldn’t resist sharing some of those 10 and 11 year olds’ thoughts with you. As you’ll see, their young lives are not always easy, but their optimistic outlooks are heartening.

Wrote one: … I live in a cream and tan colored trailer. There are three bedrooms, two bathrooms, one bar, one living room, and one kitchen. … I have a small play room outside. Mostly old people and gangsters live in my neighborhood. There are some kids but they don’t come outside. The park is old and destroyed, so no one can play there. We have lots of goatheads or stickers. …

Another told us of her future hopes and described her absolutely favorite place to eat: … I want to be a fashion designer or an actress. I also really want to become Miss America and Miss Universe. My favorite place to eat at is Golden Corral. They have all sorts of food there. It is a huge buffet that has everything! From Italian to Chinese to steak and mini-hamburgers. Golden Corral even has a huge chocolate fountain. …

One boy spoke of his roots in another nation, one that in 2012 is enduring difficult times that we all hope are resolved by 2112: I am a child of immigrant parents. Life in Mexico is very, very, very, very, very difficult because you don’t live in good conditions. There aren’t a lot of jobs. You can work and barely get paid well. …

On the upside, one girl described life as a fifth-grader in such enthusiastic terms that she kind of makes us want to go back to elementary school: I go to PINON school. I like it there because you learn a lot like Math, Reading, and Spelling. I like homework because you never stop learning, even when you are out of school. I have loved all of my teachers since kindergarten to fifth grade. … I think fifth grade is a great experience. I have to say fifth grade is like being in a place made out of rainbows, and every color in the rainbow means peace. You learn and never stop learning. You can be a smart person thanks to fifth grade.

Want to add your thoughts to our growing stack of letters? Jot down a little or a lot and send them (yes, via snail mail, we’re a history museum, we like old-fashioned things) to this address: