Friday byts & bytes

Chamber Meeting, Tuesday February 13, has been rescheduled for the Shaffer, lunch provided for members, resvp to Dorothy Cole or e-mail mcc@mountainairchamber.com if you intend to to join the chamber and want to attend this important meeting that signals a new (& possibly overdue) direction for the Mountainair Chamber of Commerce.

This Saturday is SHARE pick-up day. Groceries arrive around 8:30 am. Come help box groceries and pick up flyer/form for next month's order. SHARE Program: cooperative food purchasing and community network. Sponsored by Grace Ministries, Mountainair. Call for ordering information and dates, and delivery dates and times. 847-0114, 847-9750. E-mail Shirley Jones at shobomntnr@aol.com but be sure to write "SHARE ordering" or something equally identifying in the subject line.

Around town... Valentine's decorations in the windows and gifty items on the shelves. Meds & More has in quite a selection of traditional Valentine's Day items. Treasures of the Gypsy has yet another memorable piece of display art underway. The Shaffer's Valentine's Wine Tasting is off the schedule, but the restaurant could be open by then....

There will be a Senior Citizens Valentine's Banquet, at the Baptist Church at noon (no late & wild nights out for us geezers) on February 12. RSVP by Feb 1: call Patsy at the church at 847-2394 and leave message, or call either Alma 847-2722 at or Carolyn at 847-2728

Not Valentine's Day or even remotely romantic... Uncle Walter's has (among other items too numerous to list here) 200,000 shoelaces - perfect for crafts - make offer. Kenneth Aguilar, Uncle's avatar in this dimension, is back in the used biz - furniture and other items, on display in the space formerly occupied by the Kowboy Kafe.

The first Cibola show of 2007 March Mudness - March 3 - April 29. I wonder if they will call it something else in April or would having a March show in April be just another example of being on Mountainair Time? How could my free-ranging curiosity not but wonder & wander - not just about shoelace crafts and mud art but also about how one might use shoelaces in mud art. (Yo Cibolistas - get thee to Uncle Walter's forthwith and snag some shoelacess!) Yes indeed, lo & behold, there is such a thing as mud art. I googled it on a whim & came up with enough to for its very own post - more anon. Authentic mud painting, however, is a Louisiana thing though - as I shoulda known...

Oak Alley, mud painting by Henry Neubig

Art Tour & MMAC update - the tour is just May 19 - 1 day only. Both co-chairs have experience & their own studios, speaking well for the 2007 tour's prospects as well for sane studio & other policies. Meeting this past Sunday set dates for events & meeting & appointed co-chairs & even some committee members for Arts Tour & Sunflower. Intriguing sunflower quilt doings afoot too... stay tuned for updates...

Sunflower Digital ATC

A note to art surfers, co-chair Celeste Simon's page, Mixed Media Arts, is dead & gone, gone to the great web page graveyard in the ether. However, Celeste is now one of the "Cibola Group" and presumably, will have space on the Cibola page, although not yet. The Cibola page tends to the grievously out of date - to wit still listing The (nonexistent) Art Center of Mountainair site but not listing blogelicious us on its "community" page! I'm not quite sure just when Cibola morphed from Artists Cooperative into Gallery Group or what that even means but it has. It's like when people you know get married and change their names... you still think of them as going by the original name but periodically make an effort to use the new name...

Empty Wallet Theatre director Spring Horton reports that the troupe's winter production of The Wizard of Oz was a hit, good turnout, popular with audience and players. There will be a spring play, tentatively scheduled for a May performance, tentatively at the campground auditorium. (Hey, Arts Tour - jump on this one like white on rice) Auditions will start the second week of February. Please remember that a community theater involves more than actors - costumes, scenery, carpentry, painting, publicists, gofers & other general schleppers

Not directly Mountainair news but Judy Mowris sent link to Lobo article about the closing of Irysh Mac's, her daughter's coffee shop (why Irysh & not Yrish or even Yrysh?)

Daily Lobo, Jan 2006

We also have a poetry report & TGIT poem from poetry correspondent Dale Harris + other poetry notes... but all for a separate poetry post as this one is running long side.