When Cillian Murphy and Matt Damon crossed the New Mexico desert in Oppenheimer, they did it by Dragon.  That’s the nickname of a locomotive — part of the Sky Railway co-owned by Game of Thrones mastermind George R.R. Martin and New Mexico entrepreneur Bill Banowsky — that thrust Murphy’s Robert J. Oppenheimer and Damon’s Colonel Leslie Groves to their destinies and became one of the key Oppenheimer locations.
​
It was one of countless resources that Christopher Nolan’s Oscar-magnet origin story of the atomic bomb found on location in New Mexico, dubbed the Land of Enchantment. Enchanting is exactly what the state proved to be for a production that took advantage of its sweep and history, giving the historical biopic the immediacy of a speeding train. 

“We’re blessed out here these days. Production after production after production — it’s a great place to be,” says David Manzanares, who helped find key locations for Oppenheimer. He spoke to us phone by phone recently from another New Mexico set, for a project he couldn’t disclose just yet. 

Oppenheimer is largely the story of how Groves and Oppenheimer developed the A-bomb in total secrecy. But these days, New Mexico is where filmmakers go to build hit movies and shows — with at least a little secrecy. A wide array of locations are at their disposal, from twinned natural wonders to anonymous offices to trains named for mythical beasts. 
​
Our own research bears out filmmakers’ sense of awe: On our latest list of the Best Places to Live and Work as a Moviemaker, Santa Fe is at the top of smaller cities, and Albuquerque is second among big cities.

Manzanares remembers the day in 2021 when his friend Todd Christensen, the former head of the New Mexico Film Office, first reached out to him about a 1940s-set New Mexico project. Christensen couldn’t reveal much more than that — “we respect each other’s NDAs,” jokes Manzanares — but he soon thought of a perfect place. 

It turned out to be one of the most stunning Oppenheimer locations.

New Mexico, Manzanares explains, is in his blood. Growing up, he always thought of himself as simply Spanish. But when his son Maximiño came home from college, asking about his background, they began to investigate their Indigenous roots, and found that their connection to the land was “as old as the dust.”

“This is where they’ll bury me,” says Manzanares, who has also worked on New Mexico locations for films including Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, The Magnificent Seven, and Hostiles. “It’s a really cool feeling to have — a sense of connection.”

One crucial section of Oppenheimer required an empty, panoramic shot of the future site of Los Alamos, where the physicist and his team would build the bomb. But on the same day, Manzanares recalls, the filmmakers also needed to film the completed town, against a nearly identical backdrop.

Manzanares suggested locations in Ghost Ranch, near Abiquiu, where he grew up, about an hour away from Santa Fe. He is the field producer for Ghost Ranch, which until Oppenheimer was perhaps best known as the home and frequent subject of painter Georgia O’Keeffe. 

Ghost Ranch features breathtaking vistas, streams, plains, and monolithic cliffs, with nearby mesas, red rocks and Abiquiu Lake.The film took advantage of the area’s natural beauty for scenes of horseback-riding and camping — as well as its Los Alamos set. 

Buildings that appear in the film are now available for other productions, and can be toured, by appointment, by the general public.

For the scenes where Oppenheimer is grilled in a small, shabby office of the Atomic Energy Commission, the film needed the opposite of wide-open spaces. The production found a nice, crowded office in downtown Santa Fe’s PERA Building — named for the Public Employee Retirement Association. 

In the film, the drab office masks the ruthless trap set by Oppenheimer’s jealous nemesis, Lewis Strauss — played by Robert Downey Jr. But in reality, the walls of the PERA Building hid from the general public a soon-to-be Best Picture winner populated by Nolan and some of the most famous actors in the world.

Soon, the trucks and trailers in a nearby parking lot drew the attention of people who inundated Santa Fe Film Commissioner Jennifer LaBar-Tapia with questions. 

When MovieMaker first named Santa Fe as the No. 1 small town on our list of the Best Places to Live and Work as a Moviemaker — a position it has held for two years running — we called LaBar-Tapia “part sheriff, part cheer captain, and all rock star.” 

She’s also a pretty good detective, it turns out, when it comes to sussing out imposters.
“I was starting to get calls from people that claimed they were from our local newspaper,” she says. “And of course, I can’t say what’s happening.” 
She knew they weren’t really reporters, she says, because they were calling her office line — and real local reporters have her cell number. 

​She’s also a pretty good detective, it turns out, when it comes to sussing out imposters.
“I was starting to get calls from people that claimed they were from our local newspaper,” she says. “And of course, I can’t say what’s happening.” 
​
She knew they weren’t really reporters, she says, because they were calling her office line — and real local reporters have her cell number. 

When it comes time for a project to announce its presence in New Mexico, it’s up to the state film office — aka Film New Mexico — to handle the formal announcements. There have been a lot in the last 15 years — from Breaking Bad to Better Call Saul to the Coen brothers’ The Ballad of Buster Scruggs to the Tom Hanks Western News of the World.

Boldfaced names don’t just visit — several live in Santa Fe, where they appreciate the scenery, the 300 days of sunshine each year, the thriving art scene, and the distance from Hollywood. It is a refuge for many, including Robert Redford, Gene Hackman, and George R.R. Martin.
​
But only one of the three bought a train.

For years, the Santa Fe Southern Railway, which runs 18 miles from Lamy to Santa Fe, had up-and-down financial fortunes. But some of its greatest moments were captured on film. 

It was featured in the 2008 Ed Harris Western Appaloosa, as well as one of the most impressive episodes of Breaking Bad, “Dead Freight,” which features a train heist of methylamine.  
In 2019, Bill Banowsky and Martin joined together with other investors to purchase the train line. They had become friends because Banowsky owns businesses in the Santa Fe Railyard, including an 11-screen movie theater, while Martin owns a single-screen theater in the rail yard.

“This was a dying railroad that was about to go out of business,” Banowsky recalls. “They approached me and they approached George about the idea of us stepping in to save the railroad.”
Banowsky was hesitant at first. But Martin, he recalls, “just lit up, like a kid — and was all about having a railroad.”
He recalls Martin saying: “This railroad that we’re buying comes with two locomotives. We’ll paint one like the head of a wolf and one like the head of a dragon. And we’ll have fire coming out of the dragon’s mouth and the wolf will howl!” 

The railroad gives even more authenticity to Oppenheimer: Lamy, a stop between Los Angeles and Chicago, was the actual arrival point for scientists coming to work at Los Alamos in the 1940s. Additionally, the sequences shot on board the train cars literally propel the dramatic exchanges between Oppenheimer and Groves.
“The trains were actually moving, and so the background that you see is the New Mexico background adjacent to our tracks,” says Banowsky. “It’s all the train moving in real time.”
And like the film’s Los Alamos set at Ghost Ranch, the trains are now open to the public. 

Banowsky and Martin rebranded their venture as the Sky Railway, refurbished the cars, hired an artist to paint them, and developed events including music performances and a Murder on the Orient Express-style experience.The once-struggling railroad has now had a financial turnaround, he happily reports. 
“It’s a live entertainment venue on rails that has become a very popular tourist stop,” Banowsky says.
Main image: 

“Dark Silhouettes” screens in statewide competition Saturday, September 14
NNMC
​ 
ESPAÑOLA, N.M. — "Dark Silhouettes,” a film produced by Northern New Mexico College (NNMC) Film & Digital Media Arts students Natalia Tealer, Lukas LeDoux and Nicholas Taylor, has been selected for the New Mexico Student Filmmakers Showcase. The showcase, which features film screenings and an awards ceremony, takes place from 11 a.m. – 3 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 14, 2024, at the National Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque, N.M. The event is free to the public.
 
The New Mexico Student Filmmakers Showcase is sponsored by the New Mexico Film Foundation, San Juan Community College and Eastern New Mexico University. “Dark Silhouettes” will be competing against films from college film programs around the state. Northern students have won awards in this competition three times in recent years.
 
"Dark Silhouettes,” comes out of film professor David Lindblom's Voice and Documentary Filmmaking class, where students closely examined three films: "italianamerican" by Martin Scorsese, "Little Boy" by Danny Lyon and "Meshes of the Afternoon” by Maya Deren." For a final project, students produced a short film using techniques, devices and production values similar to those in the films.
 
The New Mexico Student Filmmakers Showcase is a statewide film screening event that celebrates and showcases the amazing talents of New Mexico's college and university film programs. Submissions from around the state are judged over the summer. The showcase is a festival, networking event and awards celebration all in one. The event is free to the public, but RSVPs are recommended.
 
###
 
Cutline:
 
From left: Lukas LeDoux, Nicholas Taylor and Natalia Tealer produced "Dark Silhouettes,” which has been selected for the New Mexico Student Filmmakers Showcase.
 
About Northern:
 
Northern New Mexico College has served the rural communities of Northern New Mexico for over a century. Since opening in 1909 as the Spanish American Normal School in El Rito, NM, the College has provided affordable access to quality academic programs that meet the changing educational, economic and cultural needs of the region.
 
Northern is an open-admissions institution offering the most affordable bachelor’s programs in the Southwest. Now one of the state’s four regional comprehensive institutions, with its main campus in Española, Northern offers more than 50 bachelor’s, associate, and certificate programs in arts & human sciences, film & digital media, STEM programs, business, education, liberal arts, and nursing. The College has reintroduced technical trades in partnership with two local unions and five public school districts through its new co-located Branch Community College, the first of its kind in the state’s history.  Northern is accredited by the Higher Learning Commission (HLC) and has earned prestigious program specific accreditations for its engineering, nursing, education, and business programs. Learn more at https://nnmc.edu/.
 _______________
 
Arin McKenna, M.F.A.
Staff Writer/Reporter
Communications & Marketing
AD 128
505.747.2193
[email protected] 

Northern New Mexico College
921 Paseo de Oñate
Española, NM 87532
www.nnmc.edu
​

By Zach Hively

Long may they stand.
​
Piñon trees are more patient than I am. Famously, they produce cones and nuts in cycles—every three to seven years, the internet tells me, which tracks with my undoubtedly flawed observations on my near-daily walks.

So, my delight simmered over when, earlier, this summer, I saw the cones starting to form in the ’hood.

I waited. I knew the birds would get theirs. I knew the ground needed its share. But I wanted some too.

I finally, finally, let my fingers dive in. They got sticky with pine sap that I couldn’t wipe on my clothes, could only rub in sand. I plucked a half dozen nuts from one young tree, just to taste, just to delight.

Imagine the feeling of cracking open your first wild-plucked piñon nut in years, and biting into the nothing inside.

What could I do but laugh? You can’t reasonably expect anything from a piñon tree except that it keep on standing longer than any human ever has—and even this, painfully, isn’t certain anymore.

In honor of the piñon shells, here’s a poem from the vault for the trees. (This poem is untitled, as are all the poems in Owl Poems [2022, Casa Urraca Press]).​

I might outlive the piñon forests
in these mountains, in my desert.
We are not meant to live longer
than whole swaths of trees.
Long enough to believe we always
have more time, enough of it to kill
some just to get through it, too much
to comprehend what it’s worth.
 
My older dog can admire a pine stick
for an hour, which I spend begging
for him to stay four, five more years.
I cannot spoon him and swoon at his sleeping
without hearing the hole, like a flooding well,
he’ll leave with me when he’s gone.
And he will be—gone.
He knows it, and he chews a branch.
 
I know it, and I distract myself
trying to get a signal. Five more years
—a miracle for him, while I might yet outlive
the piñon forests in these mountains,
in our desert. Someday, I will want
to die, to leave my own hole, to answer
the owl, earn her trust, find myself
outlived by the trees we have left.

​​By Zach Hively

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, because it spares me coming up with an original thought: I was an English major for a reason, and that reason is power tools.
​
Now don’t get me wrong—I like power tools. Largely the power part. It’s the tool part that steered me toward analyzing literature.

Without further preamble, I hereby announce my new YouTube channel: Zach Fixes Things (Specifically the Things in His Own Home).

Let’s begin with fixing my windows. Every single window in my house has come off its track to one degree or another, making them impossible to open and/or close properly, or at all. So look up here, my dearest millions of viewers, up inside the window track. The manufacturer placed these little metal clips here, that you can pop out like this in order to easily remove the window from the frame. But either these clips are junk, or the previous residents grew so frustrated with the windows coming off the tracks that they attacked these clips with the battery end of their power tools. Watch me carefully, and you’ll see my subtle solution. I roll up these towels—I do this by hand, but you are welcome to use your drill to save yourself time and splinters—and then I stuff the towels in the window … like this … to block the drafts during winter. If my house gets too hot in summer, you can probably brute-force open one or two of these windows. If you break them, you can buy me new ones. And if you actually succeed in opening a window, but the window won’t close again, you can just buy me a bigger towel for Christmas.

Now let’s turn our attention to the slow-draining shower. We here at Zach Fixes Things (Specifically Things in His Own Home) recommend against using harsh chemicals, because power tools are more fun. This slow drain could be blocked by accumulated hair, or hard-water deposits, or my dog’s missing chew toy. There is no way to know without a snake camera, and no way to get a snake camera until that YouTube ad revenue starts rolling in.

So let’s turn to the one tool every man should have in his arsenal, no matter what he majored in, or whether or not he is a man at all: a Sawzall.

Remove the drain cap and stick the longest Sawzall blade you can find down the drain and let ’er rip. As you can see, after a few moments, the water now drains effortlessly. Where is it all going? Tune in next week and we’ll find out. For now, hit that subscribe button so the algorithm will keep you coming back forever.

Oh, and please, whatever you see here on Zach Fixes, do not try it at home. Come try it at my home instead.

Zach’s Substack is free. The free stuff today will remain free tomorrow. Someday, he might offer additional stuff. Zach+, as it were. You can tell Zach that you value his work by pledging a future paid subscription to additional stuff. You won't be charged unless he enables payments, and he’ll give a heads-up beforehand.

​Pledge your support

By Peter Nagle

​​As I noted last month, historically, stock markets tend to be volatile in September and October, which is to say they can be fairly negative. Then in November/ December there is often a year end rally. No idea if that will happen this year. It’s been pretty positive so far in 2024 so maybe we will defy history.  

What I do know is that, given where we were 3 years ago (the Pandemic), we have a very favorable economic climate now. For the 3 months ending on 8/31 consumer spending is up 4%, which is remarkable. Consumer Spending is 70% of our economy. Personal income statistics are also up. The jobs report comes out today, Friday, and that will have an impact, positive or negative, on markets depending on the number of jobs created. (“Notes” are written several days in advance of Jobs publication).

Inflation continues to decline. It’s at about 2.5% now, very close to the 2% Fed goal. Of course, inflation was over 9% at one point and the impact of that is still being felt. Just look at the price of pies at Bode’s - over 20 bucks! They’re hard to resist though! 

Interest rates will be lowered starting this month, and that will probably continue in Nov. and Dec. This is really great news for things like mortgage rates, which are coming down too. The so-called “soft landing” scenario of our economy is playing out very well so far. 

Then, of course, we have the Election on Nov 5th - that ought to be interesting! Personally I just hope we know who our new President will be, without question, on Nov 6th. Or shortly thereafter. Given the personalities involved, that’s not a given. 
 
What all this says is that if we do get weakness in markets in the next 2 months or so, it might be smart to buy your favorite equity investments on this weakness.


In any case, there are a lot of variables floating around out there this year, more than usual. Buckle your seat belts and come along for the ride!
 
(Peter J Nagle is a Financial Advisor with over 40 years experience. Any questions or comments can be directed to: [email protected].)

By Jessica Rath

​​These days, smartphones come with powerful cameras. The more expensive ones come with up to 50 megapixels, separate zoom, wide-angle, and main cameras, and one phone even has a Leica lens. Plus, the built-in software does a lot of adjustments on the fly, so you’ll get a decent photo quite easily. Maybe that’s why the opinion persists that it doesn’t take much to come up with a great photo – I bet, even Ansel Adams heard this.
 
Well, Greg Lewandowski, Mario Manzo, and Matt Schulze, well known to readers of the Abiquiú News, have a different story to tell. They were kind enough to talk to me, and I learned an awful lot! They will be exhibiting their work at the Abiquiú Inn, with an Opening Reception on September 7, from 4 to 6 pm. Mark your calendars.
 
Isn’t it interesting? Greg is from Detroit, Mario is from Dayton, and Matt is from Hamburg/Germany, but all three met here in northern New Mexico, became friends, and quite often join up to explore the beautiful area surrounding us.
 
Here is some interesting background about the three artists and their work. They’re listed alphabetically.

“A lot of the images I do come out as if they were black and white images, which I always liked. Sometimes there's some color in the image, and that depends a lot on what's going on with the light and the atmosphere”, Greg explained. “Depending on the time of day, you can get some color. There are some wonderful photography programs, it’s like a digital dark room, where I can make all kinds of adjustments to contrast, brightness, color adjustment, and so on. So I like doing that, it's part of the whole process”. 
​
“My camera has a 720 nanometer filter. There are three or four different infrared filters you can put on your camera, and I lean more towards one that doesn't have a lot of color but has really sparkling black and white”.
 
There are a few of Greg’s infrared photos at the exhibition, but without a more detailed explanation people might think they’re too weird, he fears.
“Once people know that this is indeed an infrared photograph, they would see it differently. Then it will look interesting.  I thought, well, I just put them up and see what happens. There are very few infrared photographers that I know, and I don't know anybody else in this area”. ​

​Mario, who is 76,  originally  came from Dayton, Ohio, and moved to New Mexico in 1997 to work at Los Alamos Labs. He retired in 2012 and currently lives near Ojo Caliente, where he built his home. His passion for photography already started during his high school years and has become an important part of his retired life. He jokes that his cameras take him for a walk and guide him to wildlife, wildflowers, birds, butterflies, and other creatures.
​
But he has another interesting hobby: he flies paragliders. Just listening to him made me dizzy!  He told me about an astounding flight last Friday, in the Taos area. He was  about 14,000 feet up in the air!  And he takes pictures while way up there.

​“The next step is to illuminate the foreground. For that I use a flashlight”, Matt continues, “The foreground needs its own exposure settings. I never shine the light onto my foreground from the same position as the camera. I walk around my subject, taking several photos of the light shining from different angles to bring out the texture in my subject. I trigger my camera with a remote. And when I put them into Photoshop, I can blend them together perfectly because the camera never moved”.

Well, I’m impressed: for one final picture, Matt can spend hours, maybe days on a location, shoot lots of pictures, and then spend a couple of hours with Photoshop to put it all together. This must take a lot of patience, I guess. The many layers definitely give a sense of luminous depth that regular photos don’t have.

Matt told me more about this process: “Often, I see things like an old dilapidated car or some old farming equipment or an old ruin somewhere, and I go in the daytime to take a scouting shot of it. Next, I photograph it at night and when I start to light it out. It takes on a whole different quality”.
​
“I do a lot of daytime pictures, but certain objects look pretty ordinary and boring in the day. But you take them at night, and you start putting lights on them, and they start looking very, very interesting”.

“Last year we saw  an old farm, we drove by there on the way from somewhere else, and there was snow on the ground. We took some scouting shots in the daytime. There was an old barn, and there was some old farm equipment.
We went back there in  June, found out who owned the property and got permission to enter. I created a few fabulous shots at that old farm. There was one shot which is my favorite, it's of an old seed spreader. It almost looks like a musical instrument, farmers tow it behind a tractor, and it rolls out seeds.  It was really old”.
Look at the gorgeous shot above!

“These night images are really about the objects in the foreground and it is my intention to convey the feeling of mystery I get at night. The stars participate to fill out the black void that would otherwise occupy the top of the image”.
 
If you want to see more of his work, please visit Matt's Flickr Photo Album: there are luminous night skies, old buildings, cars, and train stations, hoodoos at Bisti Wilderness, and other gorgeous photos.
 
Matt and Greg often go on photography trips together. They met at the Community College in Santa Fe, when they both took a class there – about photography, of course. Mario sometimes joins as well.

I was so impressed when I talked to them, each one with a unique and unusual technique. Infrared photography. Taking pictures while paragliding. Astrophotography.  Once again, Abuquiú unites stellar artists from different parts of the U,S., even from a different continent. A warm Thank You to Greg, Mario, and Matt for granting me these interesting interviews. Don’t miss your chance to meet them in person at the Abiquiú Inn on September 7!

Cultivating Growth over Expansion
My thoughts about the Tres Semillas Land Sale
By Andrew Furse

“‘To always be doing something, to move, to change—this is what enjoys prestige, as against stability, which is often synonymous with inaction.’”
Luc Boltanski and Eve Chaipello

If the land is sold without any safeguards, our new-town square would be lost. 
Any money obtained from the sale, no matter how large a sum, would be trivial. 
 
Any reinvestment with that money may draw a veil over the missing piece but a hole will have opened up and that veil won’t support us for very long.
 
Most will remember what used to be and what was lost
and any reinvestment that takes control over what has grown slowly and collectively over all these years, will be rushed.
 
Busine$$ is notorious for that. 
 
And in whatever enterprise takes over, whatever new enterprise forms…
you may find poems, but no poetry. 
 
If the land is sold and safeguards aren’t in place to curb the impulses of capital investment, never mind the spiritual vacancy caused by the sale, you can expect the worst. 
 
The Northern Youth Project, Abiquiu Farmers Market, and the Frosty Cow have been on this land for years, chosen because they align with the mission of Tres Semillas. Which is to provide economic opportunity in the Abiquiu, New Mexico area.

• Tres Semillas have relied on NYP and the Farmers Market to qualify as a tax-exempt entity and claim a property tax exemption.
• Tres Semillas have relied on the Farmers Market and NYP to tend the land and maintain or improve its market value. 
• Tres Semillas have relied on these organizations to raise their own funds and create a successful charitable profile.

 
The Northern Youth Project and the Farmers Market have legitimized this organization, maintained their water rights, cleaned the acequia, policed their parking lot for the post office, pruned trees and mowed the lawn to provide a space that is welcoming and safe for all. 
 
They have relied on these entities to create the fiction that Tres Semillas is a functioning charity.
 
”Over time we realized that we were running a public park or an industrial park without the money or staff to do that.  And we had taken our eye off the ball.  It was time to reboot….” 
 
-Bernadette Gallegos. 
 
Since the creation of Tres Semillas Foundation seventeen years ago, Bernadette and Steve Gallegos have been in leadership positions on the board the entire time. 
 
Should they continue to serve on the board?
And what new direction will Tres Semillas “reboot” toward?

“Those who have written letters want us to give away our primary asset which we would otherwise use to pursue Tres Semillas’s goals.  We see no reason to give away a corporate asset.”   
 
-Peter Solmssen, Tres Semillas director

Peter has described the land as a “primary asset,” “a corporate asset.” Peter sees this as a corporate matter. The land is a pot of money for Tres Semillas.
 
The Tres Semillas Foundation has had seventeen years to pursue their charter.  That's seventeen years of reports, minutes and meetings, elections, project proposals, reports and experiments. Seventeen years in which they took their “eye off the ball” according to Bernadette Gallegos.  & four years in which they raised zero dollars.   ZERO.
 
And if the land is sold, what will they use that money for?
Something they have not yet decided or disclosed.
 
If after 17 years and in light of their recent admission that “eyes had been taken off of the ball”, what qualifies ANY of these individuals to continue with Tres Semillas?

“I’m not sure what adding new directors would accomplish.  Richard and Joseph resigned, leaving the four of us directors, which is plenty of directors for this tiny corporation.” 
-Peter Solmssen
 
Why should Tres Semillas elect more board members?

One reason would be to diversify perspectives which will help steer the organization away from making bad decisions.

Another reason to elect more board members would be to annul the optics of the current membership of Tres Semillas. 
 
It's well known that the board is made up of 2 married couples.  4 director’s in total.

To some, this is concerning.
 
But this isn’t against any law, and this information is disclosed on the registration statement filed with the attorney general.  But to always talk of, "what's in the best interest of Tres Semillas" or "we need to do what's in the best interest of Tres Semillas" makes some think that a genuine attempt at that is being made. 
 
Yearly elections, and minutes made available for the public encourages transparency and disclosure.  Elections are to be had yearly at the annual meeting “held the first Saturday of December.”
 
Diversify your board, stop the sale and if you don’t have the energy to continue, transfer the land to an organization that can.
 
Since moving toward this sale a crisis has been created, but in that wake is opportunity.   We have people from the pueblo that want to join the board.  People that have led organizations in fundraising that want to join the board.  We have people with imagination and vision and a stake in "the best interest of Tres Semillas" that want to join the board.

Dear Peter, Sarah, Berna and Steve:
 
We come together as a community to address you in your capacity as members of the board of Tres Semillas. We write to express our thoughts about the impact of your decisions on the Abiquiú community. We call upon you to reverse the sale of 4 County Road 187, to appoint new board members to Tres Semillas and to step down as board members.

• The current occupants of this land play a key role in the life of our community. The Farmer’s Market is our place to get local fruits and veggies, our de facto supermarket that lets us stay local and shop local. The Market provides access to healthy and fresh nutrition for economically marginalized members of the community by participating in the USDA SNAP Program, formally known as Food Stamps. The Market is also the central marketplace that supports local growers on their journey toward economic development. It is an incubator of innovation, a place that launches small business market vendors, a place for people to try their hand in local market economics. Market vendors see what works by engaging with a dynamic public. The vendor community gets and gives mentoring for members, as seasoned vendors that provide guidance to young vendors just starting out. The Market also serves as the central square of the town, creating a very important sense of community, a gathering place for neighbors and fellow community members to meet in a central place and connect as a collective group.

• The Northern Youth Project has provided economic development and leadership opportunities to young people in Abiquiu for 15 years! For many teens, NYP is their first job application, first interview, and first stepping stone to future jobs or college opportunities. NYP offers paid internships to teens to learn more about art and agriculture as potential career options. NYP is a truly grassroots organization, relying on the support of hundreds of volunteers, including Karl Bode, the original owner of this land. NYP teens have improved the land to benefit Tres Semillas and boost the value of the land–they have participated in the annual limpia, cleaning the Acequia del Pueblo de Abiquiu with other parciantes. They have installed irrigation systems, and planted seeds and trees. Like the Farmers Market, they have also created a sense of community, a sanctuary space for youth to learn and thrive in a safe environment.

• The Frosty Cow is a long-standing tradition, an institution in our community that sits at the center of Abiquiú. Like NYP, this business promotes the economic development of our young people, paying for their training to get a food handler’s permit and showing them how to run a business. Like the Farmer’s Market, the Frosty Cow is part of the town square, serving as the place that refreshes us and keeps us cool.

• The land at 4 County Road 187 is uniquely well-situated for the Northern Youth Project and Farmer’s Market. NYP needs irrigated land and land that gives teens and their families easy access. The Farmer’s Market needs enough space for vendors to show their produce and adequate parking for a significant fraction of the community to be able to attend. While these non-profit organizations and the Frosty Cow have succeeded and are part of the heart of our community, neither are in a position to purchase the land at a cost of $610,000. These organizations will not be able to replicate their role as part of the beating heart of the community in other less central and less ideal locations.

• Tres Semillas’ chief legacy has been to be a key player in the emergence of these organizations as part of Tres Semillas' economic development mission. In this regard, Tres Semillas has succeeded at the mission that it set for itself in its application to the IRS: supporting economic development by developing markets, supplying skills training and creating the “cohesion” that will “entice others to become part of the communal process.” Although Tres Semillas has considered or tried many different other types of programming relating to economic development, none of those have succeeded as well as the activities that Tres Semillas has undertaken to support the organizations that are currently on the land.

• The community stands ready to take the reins of this community legacy to usher the land into its next chapter. We are thankful to you, the current board, even as your connection to the community has changed. Two of you are cherished former neighbors who have recently moved away from our community. The remaining board members are in the process of leaving the community. For all four members, your connection to the long-term future of the community, to its youth and  its sense of community, to its long-term economic well-being, is not as strong as it once was. The time has come to pass the reins of the organization to others who remain invested in the community’s long-term future. As recent events on the national stage have made clear, sometimes the most important decision leaders can make is knowing when the time has come to step down.

• Acknowledging the important legacy of Tres Semillas activities to date, and with deepest respect and gratitude for the role that current board members have played, in strongest terms, we call on Tres Semillas to allow current members of the community who are deeply invested in the area’s future to take the reins from here, to decide the future of 4 County Road 187.  We call on Tres Semillas to reverse the decision to sell and to appoint all new board members for the Tres Semillas board.

• Alternatively, we call on Tres Semillas to transfer the land to Luciente with guidance to Luciente about the precise nature of the economic development objectives that the board wishes to pursue. At the very least, we call on Tres Semillas to add new board members from existing members of the community, enabling them to participate in decisions that will affect the community long after you are gone.

Show your support for stopping the sale and keeping the land for the community by clicking the button below to sign the online petition.  

Note: If you signed the petition at the 08/27/24 farmers market, please do not sign the online petition.  Join the 98 others that have signed.
Thank You
 

Tenors in cowboy hats, y'all.
​By Zach Hively

Every now and again, you get the calming reassurance you need that, in this big ol’ world of ours, filled with billions of people, I really DO have main character energy.

Or, as I’ve decided those of us in the opera business will now call it, title role energy.

Because this is how it normally goes for us writers: we sit at home, and we jot down our little pieces, and sometimes one or both of our parents actually reads one of them. And then someone asks us why we even bother because AI will surely put us out of a job, and then we laugh, because THIS is when someone finally decides to call what we do a “job.”
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But this is not how it goes for me.

For me, it goes like this: I write a piece about attending the Santa Fe Opera, which is the opera house with the most title role energy in Santa Fe. I send it into the world, and then I forget about it, because it does not do to dwell on past triumphs. But then, the Santa Fe Opera shows greater technical aptitude than your standard nonprofit organization, because they clearly know how to use Google or literally any other internet reading tool to find stories written about itself. (We’ve all Googled ourselves. Don’t pretend otherwise.)

The Opera’s representatives contacted me via my editor, which is the very sentence every aspiring writer dreams of saying to justify not going to business school. They lured me back to the Opera with press tickets and perhaps a whisp of a hint of a chance of a promise of another glass of prosecco, in exchange for contemplating another story for SEO optimization purposes.
The last time I went, I saw an unforgettable classic opera, Don something or other. This time, the opera was unforgettable because no one had yet had a chance to remember it. It doesn’t get any newer than a world-debut production, and I can now forever tell other people’s children that I was there when the operagoing public saw The Righteous for its sixth showing, by which time the cast and orchestra really seemed to have worked out any possible kinks but not yet grown complacent enough to improvise.

The opera in general, and the Santa Fe Opera in specific, is known for sparing no expense. Except this time, it spared some key expenses, likely to fund all these press tickets they’re dishing out.
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At times, as in the opening scenes of The Righteous, the production did away with set design almost entirely. They opened up the back of the stage to reveal the stunning natural landscape outside Santa Fe, New Mexico, which stood in for the stunning natural landscape of the unspecified Southwestern state in which the opera takes place. This innovation reveals the creative savvy required in selecting these operas for production, because if this one had been set (as so many operas are) in Ohio, the crew would have blown most of its budget bulldozing the mountains behind the opera house.

Now I don’t know if other creative choices were based in any way on how many opera resources had to be earmarked for the prosecco for authors and their guests. Perhaps including non-stereotypical elements in the production saves dough at the opera warehouse. I don’t even know what a soprano is, or which of the Three Tenors I might have seen, let alone how staging decisions work.

But I do know that this opera subverted what I, now a professional opera writer, expect from an opera. For starters, I did not know that an opera’s chronology was allowed to overlap with my own lifetime. The Righteous is set from 1979 to 1991, following the career of an enthusiastic young preacher who gets pressured into running for governor; in the words I scribbled in my notebook in the dark, which I can barely read, it looks like one character remarks, “Like any good politician, he says he doesn’t want to run.”

David, the minister, would have been the title role if this opera had been named Righteous David, which it was not. Yet he still carries big-time title role energy.

He turns out to be like any other Typical Man; he breaks the heart of his best friend Jonathan, he cheats on his wife Michele with his parishioner Sheila, and he does, with these qualifications, become governor.

At a more typical opera, I would have relied on subtitles to decipher these plot points, as well as the emotions in the performers’ voices evoking the nuances of character development. But this—this opera was in English, which proved to me that anyone, with any lack of high culture in their background, can go to the opera and understand from the get-go that they can’t decipher opera singers no matter what language they use.

That’s not entirely fair. There were some times I could absolutely understand what the performers were singing, because in these times I could read the subtitles faster than they could sing. And they used words in ways I did not expect operas were allowed to use them. One line, as I wrote it in the dark, said: “He can’t tell his own ass from a manhole cover.”

If ever a teacher wishes to get high school students interested in the opera, I might suggest studying dialogue like this.

The themes in the opera were really what defied my expectations, though; it touched on matters that felt much more relevant and in tune with today than the things I tend to think belong in operas, things such as horned Viking women and another one of those Three Tenors.

This opera, for example, had late 1970s wood paneling and brickwork in its on-stage church offices, a look that had not yet been renovated into oblivion by the time I was entering my first office buildings in the real world. It had functioning TVs. It had discussions of oil being the future of our economy, emotional revelations of domestic abuse, throughlines of the interwoven “separation” of church and state, characters struggling to express sexual non-conformity, racism shaping public policy, and men in cowboy hats.
The Righteous didn’t have a lot of clear resolutions to these very real, very contemporary issues. But it made me ask more questions. Questions about why this story set in the 1980s matters today. Questions about what actually belongs in the theater. Questions about how we can break out of traditional operatic roles and tropes to see a greater swath of humanity interpreted and presented on stage.
I wonder now—and why not—if absolutely anything is fair game at the opera. I mean, they let ME in the door, me and all my undeniable title role energy. This might be the great power and gift of operas like The Righteous: if I belong at the opera, everyone else deserves to see themselves and their concerns represented, too.
Stay tuned for the next time Opera Man returns to the opera, presuming the opera hasn’t

​By Trip Jennings, New Mexico In Depth
​This story was originally published by New Mexico In Depth

This column was written for El Rito Media, which owns newspapers in Española, Artesia, Alamogordo, Carlsbad and Ruidoso.

“Don’t believe half of what you see and none of what you hear.”

Those lyrics come near the end of the sixth song, Last Great American Whale, on Lou Reed’s 1989 classic album, New York.
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I was reminded of these lyrics recently as I observed several friends on both sides of this year’s presidential election reposting photoshopped or Artificial Intelligence-distorted images and misleading or false memes. 

Accompanying the images usually were accusatory or angry words. 
I’m not advocating for anyone to abide by Reed’s command to disbelieve half of what they see and none of what they hear so much as reminding myself and everyone else to take a second, or better, however long you need, before believing anything you see or hear in this age of rage posting and AI. 

Especially over the next few months as the United States picks a chief executive.

We live in a world where our need for certainty or to score points to win inconsequential political spats — especially given the urgency surrounding this year’s presidential election — undermines the arduous, sometimes unsatisfying search for the truth. 

Perhaps, even more importantly, instantaneous posting or reposting frays at relationships and the communal bonds that are necessary for any healthy society. 

It’s no secret that stopping and thinking is much more difficult than reacting. 

The great satirist Jonathan Swift recognized this particular human weakness nearly three centuries ago when information moved at a much slower pace, measured in days, weeks or months. 

“Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it, so that when men come to be undeceived, it is too late; the jest is over, and the tale hath had its effect:”

It was ancient wisdom by the time Swift got around to making his observation. The great stoic Roman philosopher Seneca, who lived nearly 2,000 years ago, counseled that it was better to walk around the block before reacting while angry. 

These days, gossip, lies and falsehoods fly nearly instantly, much faster than when Swift or Seneca were alive.  Combine that reality with another well-known hack of human psychology — if you repeat something enough, even a lie, a substantial portion of people who see or hear it will believe it’s true without questioning how they know it to be true — and you’ve got a ready-made recipe for disaster.  (Political campaigners and marketers have exploited this hack for more than a century to sell people candidates, party platforms and consumer goods.) 

Together, these hacks of human psychology make it all the more challenging to be the thoughtful, deliberate person the founding generation hoped for as they set up the institutions we’ve inherited more than two centuries later. 

While I do not hold myself up as a model of discernment, I have spent decades as a journalist and one skillset a reporter has to learn is how to assess the value of the information he or she comes into contact with. 

Here is some advice I’ve found helpful over the years:
First, there’s the humorous but valuable instruction “If your mother says she loves you, check it out.”

This is not a disparagement of mothers everywhere so much as a reminder to journalists to always document what they are told. The same goes for people on the internet or social media. Just because a site says something, that doesn’t make it true. Especially if you happen to believe what they’re saying. 

It’s always helpful to question your assumptions, particularly about how the world works. Intellectual humility is a powerful invitation to learn. It’s one of the most difficult things journalists are asked to do, but good journalists do it, with varying degrees of success. 

Next, check the source of the information you are passing along. You can do this by searching to see if it’s been verified by reputable media sources. (I mostly rely on newspapers for my information, but I realize not everyone can afford several digital newspaper subscriptions. A simple search, however, often can reveal the source of the information and whether the information has been vetted and is good or whether it’s unverified and merely opinion or worse, misinformation or disinformation.) 

If you track down the information to a particular website, check it to see if it has an about us page. If it doesn’t have one, that always makes me leery.  Because you don’t know who or what interests are behind it. If it does have an about us page, check it out to see where the outlet’s funding or capital comes from and who their staff are and what their backgrounds are. 

One additional tidbit: Just because an outlet is identified as conservative or liberal doesn’t mean the news it produces comes with a conservative or liberal slant. Usually, an outlet — and I mostly am talking about newspapers here — is viewed as liberal or conservative because their editorial pages lean liberal or conservative, not necessarily the newsroom, which produces the newspaper’s reported stories. At well-run newspapers, the wall separating an editorial page and its newsroom is robust. Newspapers without a robust wall are more suspect, in my opinion, than ones with robust walls. For example, there are newspapers whose editorial pages do not reflect my understanding of how the world works, but their newsrooms produce extraordinarily well-reported stories, and I trust their process. In other words, I trust their reporting process. One way to check to see how robust the wall between the editorial page and the newsroom is, is to see how often reported stories clash with the conclusions of the paper’s editorials, or at least present a picture that is more complicated than an editorial’s slant. 

I hope this helps a little. The next few months are not going to be easy for any of us.