 ~Hilda Joy
We reshare this recipe from 2020 This recipe came to mind recently when a friend asked me if I remembered drinking gluhwein with her many years ago at Chicago’s annual December Christchild Market. Indeed, I do remember. I also remember enjoying salty warm pretzels and bratwurst. For several years, I made gluhwein at home and drank it out of the souvenir mug in which I first enjoyed its warmth at the frosty outdoor market, the largest in the world outside of Germany. Then one year, I dropped the mug, breaking it. Oh well, I can still enjoy the glowing warmth of gluhwein. Now in 2020, the Year of Covid-19, this wondrous fairytale market that has enchanted adults as well as children has gone virtual, like so many of the things we have perhaps taken for granted. Literally meaning ‘glowing wine,’ this German drink will give you a glow of warmth during the lengthening days leading to the Winter Solstice. Traditionally served at every outdoor Kriskindlmarkt (Christchild Market) that springs up during Advent in German and Austrian cities and towns, it also hits the spot indoors, especially in front of a roaring or glowing fire. Ingredients 1 bottle dry red wine, 750 ml and inexpensive 6 whole cloves 2 cinnamon sticks Optionally: 4 star anise pods 2 juniper berries 2 cardamom pods 1/4 cup sugar, brown or white 1 orange, sliced Directions Empty wine into a medium-sized saucepan set on medium heat. When wine is heated, add spices. Add sugar and stir until dissolved. Lower heat. Slice orange and cut each slice in half. Add slices to pot, simmering all for about 10 minutes At this point, gluhwein is ready to serve, but it could simmer for a longer period on very low heat to perfume one’s home with its sweet spicy aroma. EnJoy
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 Hebe Garcia sends in this recipe of Holiday Cheer
Coquito is a popular Christmas coconut rum nog traditionally served in Puerto Rico. This is my mother’s egg-free recipe which has an ice cream twist. Sprinkle with ground cinnamon or nutmeg and serve. Cheers! Prep Time: 10 minutes Additional Time: 8 hours Ingredients 1 (15 oz) can cream of coconut 1 (14 oz) can sweetened condensed milk 1 (12 oz) can evaporated milk 1 cup coconut-flavored rum ¼ cup water 1 scoop vanilla bean ice cream 1 tsp vanilla extract 2 cinnamon sticks 2 whole cloves 1 pinch ground cinnamon 1 pinch ground nutmeg Directions
Note: When I opened my News letter from Christ in the Desert I was immediately drawn to the essay "Chicago Christmas Carol". I'm from Chicago and my name is Carol. Shared with permission.  By Brother Chrysostom
The theme of this newsletter referenced community. While at the writers’ residency this summer I learned about flash fiction (a short story consisting of less than 1500 words). I wish to share with you a Christmas themed piece that showcases a community that I love and that shaped me, Chicago. I have learned as a monastic that it is what we bring from the communities that formed us to the monastery that creates the vibrancy of intimacy between monks. I hope the story achieves a threefold purpose: 1) sharing the fruits of a Creative Writing MFA with supporters of our Educational Appeal, 2) sharing Chicago with a wider audience, and 3) building a monastic community where art and letters complement evangelization. I hope you enjoy it. Merry Christmas. Aunt Jane is my mother’s older sister and my favorite aunt. Every early December after the first of the holiday specials--Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer, A Charlie Brown Christmas, Santa Clause is Coming to Town--airs on ABC and CBS, Aunt Jane arranges for me and her to have our Chicago Christmas. It is late Sunday morning. Mom and Dad have gone to 8:00 am Mass at Our Lady of Peace. They let me sleep in. I miss Frisky. He had to be put to sleep three days ago because the vet told us that his problems wouldn’t get any better. I am a big boy. I can understand. I am almost ten years old and I can stay at home alone while my parents go to Mass three short blocks away. When they come home, I want to stay in bed. They will get me out of bed and rush me to get ready because Aunt Jane is coming over soon. I wash up quickly, put on my brown thick cord corduroy pants, my cordovan Buster Brown shoes, t-shirt, clean white collar shirt, and a crew neck sweater with bands of light brown and black. I make sure that my afro is neat and fluffy with my pick in front of the bathroom mirror. I hear the horn of Aunt Jane’s 1970 Blue Dodge Dart outside. Quick kisses and hugs from my mother and father and a rush to grab my loden coat, knit skull cap, scarf, and mittens heralds the metallic clang of the storm door closing behind me. I bound down the steps while humming the finale of A Charlie Brown Christmas. The soles of my Buster Brown shoes make scuffed tracks in the thin layer of snow to the back door of Aunt Jane’s car. No sooner do I close the door and kiss the back of her neck, which has the chemical smell of the relaxer that her hairdresser uses, than the car is gliding down our neighborhood toward Lake Shore Drive. We are going downtown. Downtown! Snowmen, nutcrackers, and Santas populate the front yards of the neat bungalows we pass along the way. Strings of lights outline doorways and wrap around exterior ferns and trees. The lights excite me, but I know that the lights on State Street are better. Aunt Jane finds parking easily on Madison Avenue and we get out of the car and walk a block or so to St Peter’s Catholic Church. Aunt Jane works for Catholic Charities downtown and attends Mass here most mornings before starting her work day. She loves this church with its high ceilings. The Franciscans in their brown robes and knotted rope belts and sandals are happy to see us. She likes the Franciscans, too. We make it in time for Mass. There are no Christmas decorations. The outside world with lights and decorations doesn’t know that Christmas is still a week and days away. They don’t care. They are going to have Christmas before the baby Jesus even comes at Midnight Mass! I kneel down before Mass and say a prayer for Frisky. One of the Franciscan priests comes over and hugs Aunt Jane as I pray. I want to ask him if dogs go to heaven, but I don’t. After Mass we file out of church into the cold with some other people and make our way to Marshall Fields & Company. I can read street signs. We take a left down Clark Street and then up Washington Street. Aunt Jane wants to show me the Picasso in Daley Plaza. It reminds me of a dragon, but the large Christmas tree close by makes it less scary. The large jutting clocks on the corner of the Marshall Fields & Company department store look so heavy. I don’t want them to crush me. The illuminated faces on the clock have hands that mean something to me. I can tell time. It was 12:20 pm. We pass through a heavy revolving door into a Christmas palace. A large Christmas tree higher than my house stands in the middle of the store. Gold, silver, red, and blue bulbs hang off branches. There are also rocking horses, tin soldiers, teddy bears, clowns, elves, and other presents decorating the biggest Christmas tree I have ever seen. Aunt Jane holds my hand tightly and we wind through the cosmetic section, the chocolate section, and the handbag section to one of the many wooden escalators that will take us up to the Walnut Room. We pass my favorite floor, the 4th floor, that has toys. But, I don’t care. There is a long wait in line to eat lunch. My legs are getting tired, but we are finally seated at a table next to the top of the huge Christmas tree that we saw when we first came in. A model train is making its way around a track above our heads. We order hamburgers which came with special French fries that were almost like fat potato chips. I don’t like my hamburger because the bun has butter on the inside. “Herbert, eat your hamburger, the butter is supposed to make it moist,” Aunt Jane said. I eat my hamburger, but I want a McDonald’s Quarter Pounder with cheese. After lunch, Aunt Jane goes shopping in the ladies’ section which goes up several floors. I ask if I could go to the 4th floor and look at the toys. Aunt Jane agrees, but tells me to wait for her down there. I have fun looking at the space ships and castles. The large die cast toy cars are my favorite. Buried within the mound of Gund animals of different sizes is a dog that looked like Frisky. I like it. But I want a real dog. I so hope Santa would bring me the Batmobile with the launching rockets that I want. When we leave Marshall Fields & Company the large three faced clock on the corner of Randolph and State reads 3:30 pm. As the sky grows darker and the Christmas lights along State Street grow brighter, Aunt Jane and I join the procession of Christmas window gazers who joyfully file by animated windows of Christmas scenes for the next five blocks. Large department stores like Carson Pirie Scot, Sears, Montgomery Ward, Wiebolt’s, and Goldblatt’s each Christmas season deck their windows with Santas, reindeer, snowmen, and elves. Aunt Jane who is much taller than I sees it before I do. She puts her hands on the shoulders of my loden coat and leads me through the crowd closer to the corner of the store. At the last Marshall Fields & Company window before crossing Washington Street to Carson’s, there was a winter wonderland scene with children ice skating, throwing snowballs, and sledding down hills. In the corner of the snow scene is a lone boy and a dog playing catch. The boy doesn’t look like me at all, he has yellow blonde hair, but the dog looks just like Frisky! I smile at Aunt Jane and she hugs me. Hark the Herald Angels Sing is playing on a speaker at Carson Pirie Scot across the street. Snow is coming down. Aunt Jane takes my hand and leads me away from the Frisky in the window. She knows that Santa would have Max, a small wirehaired terrier puppy, under my Christmas tree soon.  One of the best things about our traditional American Thanksgiving dinner is the choice of leftovers and the creative uses to which such leftovers can be put. Thanksgiving evening, shortly after we think, “I can’t eat another thing,” we may find ourselves heading to the kitchen and opening the fridge to see what would make a quick snack. For me, that is usually a leftover biscuit split in half, dabbed with mayo, and filled with a small piece of cold turkey and topped with a spoonful of cranberry sauce.
My favorite leftover, however, is Turkey Carcass Soup. Making it also clears out the fridge a bit. Though not as rich as a traditional bone broth because the turkey bones have given up most of their goodness during the roasting process, this soup is satisfying because of the addition of fresh vegetables, frozen corn, and wild rice. It became even more filling the year I decided to make croutons from leftover stuffing. The morning after Thanksgiving, while the Turkey Carcass Soup was simmering gently on the stove, perfuming the whole house, and working up appetites for lunch, I was rearranging the fridge. “What can I do with all this leftover stuffing?” I wondered. I transferred it to a large rectangular baking dish and baked it until crisp and cut it into small squares to top the soup. Ever since, these croutons have been part of this soup recipe, which I hope you will try this Thanksgiving. A New Mexico friend—when she lived on a small farm in Michigan—threw a star-gazing party most every August during the Persied Meteor Showers. Friends from several states would arrive in campers and trucks loaded with food. One year, three turkeys were brought—my smoked turkey, a roasted turkey, and one made on site on a Weber grill. After a long, sumptuous outdoor feast and lots of oohs and aahs as we watched the meteors, several women gathered in the farm-house kitchen and began stripping the turkey carcasses of meat, and all during the night a large stock pot simmered with turkey bones and meat and lots of vegetables. The first person to waken was expected to enter the kitchen and turn on the huge coffee pot already filled with water and coffee. As I crawled out of my pup tent, I realized I was the only person there to see the sun rise. Walking up the steps to the kitchen, I was overwhelmed with the smell of turkey carcass soup. Sometimes I think I can still smell it. Yes, I know I can! Ingredients dressing (stuffing) left over from turkey dinner butter 3 tablespoons salt 1 tablespoon black pepper 2 tablespoons sage 10 cups cold water 1 large onion, diced 1/2 stalk of celery, diced and including leaves 1 handful of flat-leaf parsley leaves, chopped 6 large carrots, peeled and cut into 1/2-inch ‘sticks’ carcass of 1 roasted turkey, stripped of meat 1 cup wild rice, rinsed and drained 3 cups water 1/2 teaspoon salt the diced, left-over turkey cooked wild rice 1 cup frozen corn flat-leaf parsley, chopped baked dressing croutons Directions
EnJOY by Jessica Rath It saves energy. It uses less electricity because it doesn’t emit much heat; plus, foods are cooked much faster than in an oven. It saves calories. Deep-fried foods need several cups of oil, air frying takes just a teaspoon; sometimes a little more. It saves time. A conventional oven has to be preheated; by the time the oven is ready the meal in the air fryer is already cooked. Plus, it’s convenient because you can leave it and let it do its thing; it’s easy to clean; food cooks quickly so nutrients tend to be retained; and you can use it to reheat leftovers and thaw frozen food. Here are some recipes to get you started:
Preparation: Cut the tofu and place in a medium bowl. Crumble it, either using your fingers or a fork. Add soy sauce and other ingredients except olive oil and cheese, mix thoroughly, and let rest. Prepare the mushrooms: wipe the caps with a moist paper towel; normally, that’s all it takes to remove dust and dirt. Remove the stems and save them for soup stock or stir-fry. Using a teaspoon, gently scrape off the black gills from the mushroom caps. Make sure you don’t create nicks or cracks in the rim. Brush the caps with a bit of olive oil and set them cap-side down on a plate. Divide the stuffing mixture evenly between the mushrooms, pressing it down gently so they are full but not overflowing. Top with vegan cheese. Place the mushrooms into the basket of your air fryer. Set the temperature to 375 F and fry for 10 minutes. Increase temperature to 400 F and fry for another 3 - 5 minutes, until the cheese has browned.
Preparation: Wash the potatoes, scrub them with a vegetable brush, and pat dry. You don’t have to peel them if the skin is thin but remove any spots. Cut them into half and then into wedges about ¼” thick. Rinse in cold water to remove starch, then dry well with paper towels. Toss with olive oil, salt, and spices. Place into the airfryer in roughly one even layer. Fry at 375 F for 10 minutes. Shake them, increase temperature to 400 F, and fry for another 10 minutes.
Preparation:
Cut the tofu into ¼” cubes and place in a medium bowl. Add soy sauce and let it stand for about 10 minutes, tossing the tofu a few times so that the soy sauce soaks in evenly. Strain the tofu, reserve the soy sauce for another dish. Then coat the tofu evenly with the nutritional yeast. Place into the airfryer, one even layer, and fry at 400 F for 10 minutes. Shake once or twice in between.  Greg Lewandowski See Greg's Photography online The Ojitos trail can be found 8 miles down 151 off of 84. This is the monastery road. Be cautious on 151 there are very sharp switch backs and plenty of opportunity to slide off the road. Just at 8 miles on the left is a small parking are with some forestry boards up with info about the area. Skull bridge is also right there. On the right is the tailhead (TH). There is a pole marker near the TH. It’s a narrow trail and starts off uphill over rocky terrain. This is part of the Continental Divide Trail. It is well traveled and well maintained. There are no forks to worry about. Watch for switchbacks. As you hike up you will begin to see over your shoulder excellent views of the Chama River Valley, part of the Chama River Wilderness. I stopped frequently to take in these majestic views. The trail goes through a few clearings, some narrow uphill spots and always rocky. After about 2 miles you will go through a forested area. Quite lovely with the light through the trees as it hits the trail. After 4 miles you will have reached the top of the ridge where the trail flattens out. You will have climbed 1600 feet of elevation in 4 miles. On the top are more majestic views of the valley. I hiked another 2 miles before turning back. I found the top of the ridge to be a great spot for a backpacking trip. The morning and evening light on the red rock walls and the river would make for some great photos. I would rate this to be a moderately difficult hike. It took me about 7 hours and I covered close to 12 miles. Prep Hiking poles Sturdy hiking boots Although this is a day hike it is still a wilderness hike and I always carry appropriate equipment A search and rescue device, I use Garmin inReach. A GPS, I use the Gaia app on my iPhone. It will track me back if I get off the trail and I save the trail on my unit. I took 2L of water although I didn’t use it all I always pack a head lamp. Be safe and enjoy our wilderness area.        Young people just don’t read books anymore. This must be truth, because I hear it from plenty of old people who must know exactly what young people do with their spare time. They then proceed to walk away from me without buying any of the books I’m selling.
I cannot promise that these old people are the same old people who gape at young people who don’t own televisions. But I can promise they are the same old people who drove the young people off Facebook fifteen years ago. Granted, there are solid cases to be made for the decline of reading. Take me, for instance. Me getting published anywhere at all on a regular basis suggests heavily that no one reads anymore, regardless of age. Unless it’s the birds and gerbils whose cages get lined by my work. The US Census Bureau does not track such things, but if they did, I suspect they would find more people light fires with my work than read any single piece from start to middle. But I am just one man. I can produce only so much writing—as much as half a man, or perhaps a quarter. There are dozens more people like me out there, each of us struggling to craft the perfect cup of tea. Some of them are actually succeeding in writing back-cover copy for other people’s books well enough to get them banned. Banned, I tell you! And by people you KNOW don’t read. Now I can’t articulate exactly why it is okay to start a fire with my junk published in a newspaper, but abominable to start a fire with a book. Nor can I explain why burning a book is worse than banning, because it isn’t, other than in a matter of degrees. (Most bannings, for instance, take place at room temperature.) All I know is that if I can’t stop people from condemning books to the ol’ burn-n-ban, dammit, I want them to condemn my work too. Because that is the SUREST way to get someone to read it. Or at least to buy it—can’t burn it if you don’t got it. Frankly, I can’t figure out why I haven’t had more books banned, aside from the fact that I haven’t written very many. I am always game to “punch up,” as comedy experts say—to take a swing at The Man, the powers-that-be, particularly if I think they are unlikely to read it. Take the old people who think young people don’t ready anymore. I’m pretty certain they read only the Wall Street Journal and/or the CNN crawl, neither of which has picked me up for syndication (yet). I can “punch up” because their horses are so high, and most especially because they don’t know I exist. But I will refrain from punching anyone, old or young, up or down, because I have faith in humanity. I was recently in attendance at a party for adults, in honor of a kid’s ninth birthday. I hung out with the kid, mostly because they had Legos, but also because I made a day-long commitment when I asked what they’ve been reading. I learned—in greater detail than the original text—about their current favorite book series, which I’m pretty certain involved a kid and most definitely dragons and the kid had bullies and also sisters (which were maybe the same people) and these other people also had dragons who weren’t allowed in the apartment complex which was a problem because CLEARLY you cannot keep your dragons OUTDOORS, especially on a day like THIS, and you don’t even understand how cool the main character’s clothing is, which she makes herself with the dragon’s keen fashion sense guiding her, but the other dragons don’t appreciate the chic bent to apartment D-3, so they bond together to wipe out both the main character and her dragon, and it’s possible the lines bled between the book series and the Lego village we were touring together while enduring the synopsis, but you get the gist and also I evaded conversations about the stock market so it was a real win-win. This: this is the greatest hope I have for the future. I’m pretty certain we’re all going to die in an overheated, ever-erratic climate like that time I forgot banana bread was in the oven. But until that happens, kids and other young people will keep reading, and bookstore sales will continue to climb so long as we have trees to make books and zealots to spike book sales by banning books. I just hope some of them are mine.
Jessica Rath
You’d never guess it’s vegan. Although I enjoy watching The Great British Baking Show (you can catch the latest series on Netflix, with a new episode every Friday), I hardly ever feel tempted to try one of their bakes which often are visually stunning, but..: milk, eggs, butter, cream, etc. are almost always the basic ingredients. Often they add gelatin, lard, even suet; and savory bakes can include just about any part of various animals. Neither do I like spending lots of hours preparing different batters, doughs, glazes, stuffings, frostings, and decorations, unless there is a very special occasion. So here is an embarrassingly simple treat that doesn’t take much more than 20 minutes to prepare and is all vegan. Ingredients: • 1 prepared pie crust • 1/3 cup organic sugar • 1/3 cup cocoa powder • 3 TS cornstarch • ¼ ts salt • Dash of cayenne pepper • 2 ¼ cup soy or other plant-based milk • 1TS cocoa butter • 1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips • Vegan cool-whip for decoration (optional – available at Sprouts f.e.) Preparation: Heat the oven to 350F and bake the crust for 10 minutes, let cool. In a medium-sized saucepan, whisk all the dry ingredients together. Add the milk and whisk until there are no little lumps. Turn on the heat to medium, whisk constantly until the mixture starts to boil. Turn heat to low and keep cooking for 2 minutes, stirring constantly. Add the cocoanut butter, stir until melted, then add the chocolate chips. Turn the heat off while the chocolate chips melt, keep stirring. Pour into the crust. Cover with a piece of seran wrap to prevent a skin from forming, try to avoid air bubbles. Let it cool a bit and then move to the refrigerator and let set for at least three hours. If you have a piping bag, fill it with some vegan cool-whip and pipe some rosettes around the edges of your pie. I don’t have one, so I just used a plastic bag, cut one corner off, and squeezed some dollops out. GOAL: $1 Million endowment for each library A $51 million endowment will provide about $45,000 per year to each library. It will also fund the New Mexico State Library to provide specialized services for rural libraries and small grants for communities to establish new libraries. There is presently $13 million in the endowment.
RESOLANA Literally a place to rest and socialize in the sun, rural libraries provide resolana, a place where citizens can come together. Social connection, nurtured by libraries, promotes personal and community health and safety.
Local Problem Solving Rural libraries are well positioned to understand and address their communities' needs. They often provide the only services to people of all ages in small towns. Not Just Books Libraries are at the nexus of nearly every issue in rural New Mexico including: internet access child wellbeing poverty aging health agriculture economic development culture natural disasters community gathering space  Map Mural of the Embudo Valley, created with five local High School students SUPPORT FULL FUNDING OF THE RURAL LIBRARY ENDOWMENT RURAL LIBRARIES ARE VULNERABLE During a downturn in oil prices, the library in Elida closed. When the train no longer stopped in Vaughn, the library closed. When the Moly Mine closed in Questa, the library helped laid-off workers apply for unemployment and to find other jobs. $45,000 provided annually may have saved the Vaughn and Elida libraries when they were most needed.
SALARIES Many rural library directors throughout New Mexico earn less that $15 per hour. Their work includes collection development, grant writing, facility management, creating curriculum for and running children's programs, managing staff and volunteers, and bookkeeping. One library director in Northern NM recently managed a $580,000 Capital project in addition to her other work. She is paid $12.50 per hour. Several assistant and children's librarians throughout the state are paid minimum wage. Libraries Sustain CommunitiesInternet Access From Columbus in Southern NM where only 20% of people have internet at home, to Central NM where the Villanueva library provides the only free internet for 75 miles, to Vallecitos in Northern NM where kids depended on the library to attend school during the pandemic, libraries usually had the only free internet in small towns. Education Many libraries, including Moriarty and Estancia, have GED programs. Where schools operate only four days a week, libraries in Magdalena, Questa and Gila offer Friday programing. Forty-five kids in Magdalena signed up for a Friday coding class in the first two hours it was advertised. Many libraries offer early childhood education, STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Math) programs. The Gila library brings their STEM into the local school, sponsoring projects such as snake preservation and “Birds that visit Duck Creek.” The Embudo Valley Library offers after-school programs four days a week. They partner with tutors to help kids who are behind. The Columbus Library was school for three elementary home schooled sisters. They resided there for 6 months when the bus they lived in broke down. Child Well-being Tatum library plans to bring Missoula Children's Theatre to town. Many libraries like Santa Clara Pueblo and Embudo Valley have parents and toddlers programs. Ohkay Owingeh brings 13 head start classes weekly for story time, one done in Tewa. They sponsor after school programs for 10-20 kids daily.
Agriculture The Embudo Valley Library initiated a farmer's market, has a seed bank and supports acequias. Many rural libraries sponsor children's gardens, teaching future generations about planting and farming.  Community gathering places Rural libraries serve as community centers. They provide space for meetings of acequia commissioners, water boards and other community groups. The El Rito and Embudo Valley library have held gatherings to celebrate the lives of folks who passed away. Author readings, concerts, specialized children's' events like Zoo to You, puppet shows and Explora museum visits are common at rural libraries. Health Most rural libraries distribute covid tests. Embudo Valley and other libraries assist folks to sign up for insurance under the ACA act. The Columbus library helped a patron with a dental abscess and no transportation to find a ride to El Paso for treatment. With telehealth availability, libraries connect patients with doctors via internet. Natural Disasters During a wildfire, the Vallecitos library served as the command center for the forest service. When a subsequent flood destroyed their town water system, the library provided water filters and taught people how to use them. The Jemez Springs library was an information access point for evacuees and visitors during the Cerro Pelado Fire. The Ojo Sarco Community Center(soon to be a library) and the Embudo Valley libraries are food collection centers for the Hermit's Peak Fire evacuees. Poverty The library in Talpa provides space for food distribution. In Capitan, the library runs a second hand store and donates clothes and other items to folks in need. The Gila library gives a bag of groceries to each child weekly when they come to summer programs. Job Creation Full endowment funding will create jobs. Most rural libraries report their greatest need is staffing. Long staffed by volunteers, the Anton Chico library would love to hire a paid director, as would the Torreon library on the Navajo reservation. Tularosa would like to hire staff to run children's programs. With funding they could bring kids in the summer to the Space Museum and White Sands. Chama would hire locals to teach arts and crafts. Basic infrastructure, such as the new doors Tatum and Clayton need (but can't afford) could be done by local craftspeople.
Culture and History The Magdalena library has a history museum in a boxcar. The Columbus library has permanent art collections and rotating exhibits of local artists. Talpa and other libraries hold quilting and arts and crafts classes. Talpa published a local cookbook. The Embudo Valley Library sponsors Dixon's annual Fiestas featuriing live local music. San Ildefonso Pueblo library teaches children how to cook traditional foods. Torreon library on the Navajo reservation is transcribing oral histories for future generations. Abiquiu library sponsored teens to work with UC Berkeley archeologists in pre-historic sites.
Government and Other Services The Hatch area is home to generations of Spanish speaking agricultural workers. Their library helps people get drivers licenses, apply for citizenship and translate documents. Many libraries help citizens apply for unemployment and provide notary, fax and copy services. Columbus helps with voter registration. Criminal Justice Many libraries, such as Embudo Valley, serve as places people can perform community service to repay society for their crimes. SEVERE UNDERFUNDING Nearly half of New Mexico's rural libraries operate on less than $50,000 per year, some less than $10,000. In unincorporated villages, 501 (c)(3) libraries raise most of their budgets from private donors, grants and fundraisers. A fully funded endowment will relieve the stress of constant fundraising and allow more time to focus on programming.  Anti-donation Clause
Most public libraries in New Mexico are funded by municipalities. The 14 libraries in unincorporated villages organize as 501 (c)(3) non-profit corporations. The anti-donation clause of the New Mexico constitution was written to protect state money from being misused by large corporations like Railroads. The Local Economic Development Act, (LEDA) of 1978 allows the state to give tens of millions of dollars to corporations like Amazon, Net flix and Facebook, but the anti-donation clause forbids small non-profit libraries from using endowment funds for capital expenses. Consequently, the tiny Vallecitos library can't afford to build a wall for its bathroom, the Capitan Library can't replace inefficient windows and the Villaneuva library can't insulate and repair their roof and heating system. A constitutional amendment is required to repair this situation. The New Mexico Rural Library Initiative The New Mexico Rural Library Initiative was established to promote a statewide rural library endowment and to help support and sustain rural libraries and their communities. You can support our work with a contribution through the Santa Fe Community Foundation. Shel Neymark New Mexico Rural Library Initiative PO Box 2Embudo NM, 87531 (505) 579-4432 (505) 614-6355 (cell) shelneymark@winstream.net nmrurallibraryinitiative.org  ~ Hilda Joy
While visiting family in New Orleans, I checked out local cooking shows and really enjoyed watching a jovial and enthusiastic chef named Kevin Belton. When I returned to New Mexico, I discovered his cooking shows here on PBS. Belton does not bother to give out measurements. He just starts throwing ingredients together, and soon a dish is plated and ready to serve. He likes promoting the many food festivals that occur all year long all over Louisiana and recently taught his viewers that Oktoberfest is celebrated throughout his state, thanks to the influx of Germans in past centuries. They, of course, established beer breweries and started bakeries that to this day continue to supply NOLA’s many stores and restaurants with tasty bread. Virtually every Louisiana community celebrates Oktoberfest. Chef Belton recently presented a menu that started with large soft pretzels for dipping into mustard while drinking beer, pork schnitzels, and sauerkraut. I jotted down the ingredients for this dish but had to guess at measurements based on using one pound of sauerkraut. Here is my result, but please do use your own judgment about measurements when you “throw together” this traditional German October dish, which you may want to serve with bratwurst and potatoes. Prosit! Ingredients 2 to 4 ounces butter 1/2 pound bacon, diced black pepper 1 medium onion, sliced very thinly 1 large crisp apple, peeled and sliced thinly 1 tablespoon caraway seed 1 pound sauerkraut, rinsed and drained beer to cover, about 1 can Directions
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