Santa Fe Opera: Student Produced Operas

In addition to its program bringing Student Produced Opera into the Santa Fe Public Schools' school day, the Santa Fe Opera also works with other school districts in the state. These include a successful partnership with Rio Rancho Public Schools and residency programs in Gallup and Mountainair, where the program has been a hit since its inception in 2008. This year, despite budget cuts necessitating inventive measures, the program returns again. Visiting teaching artists will soon to take up residence at Joan and Dan Embree's and creating an original opera will start in earnest.

Guided by theater and composer artists-in-residence, children begin by drawing from their imaginations, popular literature and culture, and social or historical themes, as well as personal mythologies, for the subjects of their own operas. Once the stories are complete and set to music, the children design and build their costumes and scenery. They then are cast in roles and work sessions become "rehearsals."

Every year there are approximately 20 Student-Produced Operas in communities throughout the state of New Mexico. To date, more than 12,000 children have produced 175 operas, performing to audiences of parents, classmates, and friends totaling nearly 50,000 people. 

Ai Weiwei

Beloved artist Ai Weiwei has been disappeared by the Chinese government. Chinese elites are major art buyers and highly sensitive to the international art community. Let's build a massive appeal for top galleries and artists to stop exhibiting in China until Ai Weiwei is released:

World-famous and beloved Chinese artist Ai Weiwei has been "disappeared" by China's state security forces. Every trace of Ai's life and art has been erased from the Chinese internet, and his only hope may be a global outcry for his release.


Fearful of the pro-democracy protests sweeping the world, the government has cracked down on hundreds of free-thinking Chinese artists, intellectuals, students and citizens. But across the world, artists and art-lovers have begun to speak out in solidarity with Ai.


Chinese elites are major buyers of contemporary art, and are now planning a huge art fair in Beijing. If international galleries and artists stay away from China until Ai is freed, they'll send shockwaves through the regime. Let's build a massive global wave of support for top gallerists and artists to stop exhibiting in China until Ai Weiwei is released. We'll deliver the petition at the upcoming Venice Biennale exhibition


Dozens of galleries and artists from over 15 countries are now gearing up for the Beijing International Art Expo and other shows. We'll present our petition to all the prominent galleries and artists, and log their responses on our website, mobilizing the art world to take a strong stand on behalf of Ai and all the free-thinking citizens who have been jailed.

China sometimes seems immune to international pressure, but art-activism could work. When sports stars stayed away from South Africa they got the attention of the brutal apartheid regime, hastening Nelson Mandela's release. Together with international artists and dealers we may now be able to achieve the same effect.


Ai Weiwei's crime has been to speak out against corruption and injustice in China. He resigned on principle from the team designing the 'Bird's Nest' Olympic stadium, criticized corruption behind poorly built schools that killed children in the Sichuan earthquake, and expressed hope the democratic revolutions in the Middle East might lead to change in China. Now noone knows where he is being held or why. Let's call on artists and galleries to come together to free Ai Wei Wei.


Ai Wei Wei's parents spent 16 years in a prison labour camp for their principles. At that time China was isolated from the world, but now times have changed. Our voices count -- let's use them now for Ai and China's free-thinking artists, and the new China they're striving to create.

SOURCES

• BBC -- Chinese Artist Held for Economic Crimes
• NYTimes -- China Takes Dissident Artist Into Custody
• The Guardian -- Cultural Revolutionary
• CNN -- A Dangerous mix of art and politics
• The Atlantic -- The Art of Bubbles: How Southeby's Predicts the World Economy

morning notes #3

Under the wire today... a slightly later start and a few email digressions. This self-imposed writing assignment is teaching and reminding me about the challenges of email and time management handling it. To meet the posting deadline and keep this from being the "post that ate my day," I have to resist answering any but the most urgent mail. Email has its own way of turning into a day eating task, worse than housework (which I find much easier to ignore than email). Skimming email, however, is or should be as much a part of "morning notes" as radio and rss reader.

Today all that translates into even stronger motivation to shorten, condense, not ramble even more. Email distraction and management could, already has, become one of today's topics. In turn, this particular context is leading me to disable the online aspect  of a writing group, set up to help email management but adding to it instead. There's one IT (information technology) time management lesson: stop doing time saving things that don't. The other is that if email is too distracting, answering what could wait until later, too tempting, close the email program. That was easy. Now the other one (but not your little dog too..)

Back to morning notes...

morning notes #4

Yesterday's #3 went slightly over the wire, less than yesterday and little enough not to fudge setting. I'm not sure how much shorter it was despite "stronger motivation" of lost time and a late start ~ perhaps more compact, better organized. The radio and to a lesser extent RSS reader and mailbox based elements of chance make this a venture into the unknown. There is no way to know ahead what I will be writing about, let alone how it connects or what patterns emerge, naturally or forced into the open.

Unplanned, yesterday opened and closed on related notes sounded on different continents yet related to a local concern, even underlying blog mission. Today nothing quites matches front to back, unless present as a reminder of the past counts. From the reader and down the metablogging path, Montaigne and the blogging connection - again.

Radiotime: today's stories recall timeline life markers and where I/we were at those points. Where were you? The Last Space Shuttle closes the door on a era stretching from Sputnik and space race to the original moonwalk and Challenger.  Royal Wedding calls forth Queen Elizabeth's coronation and the last royal wedding, retold stories about Elizabeth's father, his brother and the Duchess. Story Time's The Kiss, about 9 year old arrested in 1959 for kissing a white girl on the cheek, calls forth memories of the darker side of these same remembered days, an antidote to refrains about the good old days.

Nationally, it's still the weather which makes the news more often than poetry. In recent storms across southern states, Alabama has been the hardest hit, 2/3 of casualties, extensive but random damage (typical of tornadoes) in Tuscaloosa, Birmingham. For Alabama and before NPM is gone, poet, translator, musician, essayist, novel and short story writer Langston Hughes's "Daybreak in Alabama." View on the Knopf Poetry site. 

reading the feeds...

#Mountainair Cancer Walk T-shirts

.. are still available, $10, more details on the Saturday Apr30 Cancer Walk. I think you add the specific name/s to "In Memory of..." yourself but check with Sandy or Fedelina to be sure. They will be pre-walking the route at the park this afternoon at 3pm. You can also post your questions to Sandy on the Mountainair Wo-Men in Motion Facebook wall/

morning notes #2

Unless distracted, I just may publish morning notes #2, if not on schedule, at least in the morning (if only barely)

Radio, weather first, light winds today, highs in 50s. Anyone not obsessed with the wind? Then onto the Morning Edition: declines in broadcast news coverage; movie and sports attendance down, home viewing on large screen HD up; cabinet and agency changes; durable goods orders up (but who is buying them in a jobless / wageless recovery?); royal wedding rehearsal, event expected to boost UK economy (but speculations abound in blogosphere as to whether it will be the last royal extravaganza); 25% of children in US raised by single parents, 15% in other industrialized countries;

Elephant Butte reservoir

In NM, a report on nat'l weather service and other agencies in NM meeting over problems likely to emerge from current weather conditions: high fire hazard with drought, bans and restrictions in effect for next 3 months, water flow decline to continue. Drought conditions raising cost of farming (which will raise food costs). Less water = higher costs. Contributing factors and outcomes include shortage of river water, cost of pumping ground water + water quality and strain on aquifers. Elephant Butte reservoir is down. Farmers will have to change the way and what they farm: cutting down on thirsty crops like alfalfa, going to cotton, which brings higher prices but is neither food nor forage for food.

So yesterday's water and wasteland themes continue into this day's news as does the companion topic of sustainable (and edible) agriculture.

morning notes

This is an experiment in designing a daily or at least regular 1st thing in the morning post format to get posts on schedule. As you see from posting time, the experiment fell behind schedule... not a good omen... but I'm not giving up on it yet. Tentatively designated, morning notes are the result of skimming the feed reader while listening to the radio (NPR Morning Edition on KUNM), before attacking mail if I can resist. Eclectic, interconnected without being organized: catch of the day.

Better late than never; short better (and more likely to get done) than long.


This morning on the radio: drought and heightened fire conditions close to home, flooding in the middle states with Missouri levees at capacity, anniversaries - next year the Golden Gate Bridge's 75th, Chernobyl's 25th just passing (covered more this year less because of it being silver than for Fukishima).

Ukraine's post Chernobyl urban waste land 

This is still National Poetry Month. Eliot's Waste Land, written in the aftermath and reaction to the devastation of World War I, the 'war to end all wars' seems more appropriate this year. 'April is the cruelest month... the wind under the door ... fear in a handful of dust' bring forth related but less poetic thoughts about xeriscaping and water thrifty gardening. The closing Upanishad references recall, appropriately, Oppenheimer's at White Sands. Poetics connects to the real, recalling another NPM standby,

It is difficult
to get the news from poems
  yet men die miserably every day
    for lack
of what is found there.

and from the ever overflowing feed reader,

On an article from the UK on urban agriculture as the way of the future or, considering how un-urban we are here, experimental agriculture and local food sovereignty, which makes the piece as relevant for Mountainair as it is for London. I thought of local gardening, hoping for a renaissance, the still fragile emergence of our local farmers market, other local food production endeavors and hoped for good outcomes for all of them, less for the

Dr Robert Biel is an author and academic, who works for University College London and has written about sustainable agriculture. More than that, he practices what he calls ”experimental agriculture” in his own allotment and with his students. Biel believes that we are coming to a crisis of agricultural production, and we need to have more ‘Food Sovereignty’, which he defines as greater autonomy over our own food production. 

He would like to see more local food production and less reliance on imported and fossil-fuel produced foodstuffs (a famous study by Professor David Pimentel of Cornell University, found, for example, that for every 1 calorie of meat we eat, over 8 calories of fossil fuel input – in the form of natural gas for fertiliser and oil for agricultural machines and transportation, refrigeration, etc. was needed).

On the economy: Observations of a Phillipine journalist visiting Portugal,

Whether in Portugal or in the Philippines, what is certain is that the financial crisis now spreading across the globe is indeed a reflection of the deeper crisis....I saw construction of buildings left unfinished and shops with marked down sales.

Locally, positive reports on the Shaffer hosted Easter Egg Hunt and Grill Out, Mountainair Moment effect of various 'what's the benefit for' reactions aside. Then I finally got to the MountainView Telegraph pieces on Mountainair ~ Market opening and more 'lively' discussion at the Torrance County Commission meeting about the Gun Club shooting range.  It will continue at the next meeting, tomorrow Wednesday April 27. I was looking for the Torrance County page. but it has disappeared. Some of the Market information seemed a bit misleading, wish that sending had been shared for a quick shufti.

#Mountainair Community Garden

's future plans for the rest of of 2011 and further forward will be discussed when "members" meet this morning, 10 am at Mojave Rose. Garden Manager Joan Embree posed questions about the garden's future for our consideration, previously posted on the iCreate page that also covers the community garden, albeit not with unanimous assent and approval of all garden participants, perhaps a more accurate descriptor than "members" (hence the quotation marks).

The following are my opinions, my answers - and tentative ones at that - to Joan's questions. I'm posting them here because they are mine and do not represent either the "community garden" or iCreate. Your comments welcome ~ actively solicited. I'll update  after the meeting, in comments and/or another post, perhaps adding questions conspicuous by their absence: relationship to Mountainair Farm & Garden Market and other local organizations; organizational structure; membership. Feel free to add yours as well.

Monday Musings

"Monday Musings" struck me as good name for a regular Monday post about the blogging week ahead. Hopefully minimalist because it's so late that it's not even Monday anymore. Tuesday Musings just does not have the same ring. Rather than come up with alternate alliteration ("Tuesday This Time"?), I reset the post date and time.

The new Mountainair Farm & Garden Market may not be opening this week or even the next, but it's still close close enough to be on our minds and definitely in the organizing and publicity homestretch. Posters are going up. Kristine Lauritsen is planning for the opening, email blitzes, sending out press releases and presumably posting the event on Craigs and other lists/calendars. Rebecca Lueras is lining up the music and will be at the Post Office Wednesday and Friday distributing forms, fliers and handouts and answering questions. I'm doing, you guessed it, the web and social media thing with a blog for the market web page and a Facebook page. Now we have a brand spanking new twitter account @Mountainair_Mkt too. Just too remind everyone, I added a market twitter feeds to all my community blogs so you can follow from any or all them.

Introducing: Mountain Arts on Broadway

The Manzano Mountain Art Council announces a name for the Mountainair Community Art Center, at Broadway and Ross (122 E Broadway): "Mountain Arts on Broadway."  The center will display art from local artists for sale, host workshops and classes for adults and children, hold musical events and house artists.

The center's first event will be a Grand Opening Fundraiser, "Bach & Brownies," Bach by James Yeager, provenance of brownies unknown. 

Mountain Arts on Broadway will provide a space for community art projects such as the mosaic murals program, as well as hosting art classes and workshop space for area adults, seniors, and children. The art center will also be a public space for presentations of dance, music, theater and the written word. 

Studio space will be available for professional artists to rent. Eventually MMAC hopes to showcase local, regional, and national artists' work. 

---

Ed Note: fortunate indeed that we do not have to depend 100% on the kindness of either strangers or arts council members for news, updates, invitations usw

Land, Water and Jobs in New Mexico

Although  the following article, reposted from Frontera NorteSur News via the Borderlands Discussion Network mentions neither Mountainair nor Torrance County, the topic is especially relevant in a rural ranching and agricultural community undergoing changes in traditional land use under the banner of development, sometimes less sustainable than advertised. We cannot afford to forget how closely connected and interdependent land use, water and jobs are in NM. Consider this warm-up and opening salvo for Earth Day....  

Does Mountainair have a plan for sustainable land development and water use? If so, who wrote it, when and why isn't it prominently posted and under discussion? If not, then why not? Small is no excuse for tunnel vision: excuses will neither slake thirst nor water the garden.

---

With New Mexican communities weathering droughts and mulling over water emergencies, the Albuquerque meeting couldn't have been timelier. Brought together by the Utton Transboundary Resources Center of the University of New Mexico, dozens of state and local officials, planners, business leaders and members of environmental groups gathered in the Duke City April 8 to take a step in the direction of ending the historic disconnect between land development and water usage.

Entering the second decade of the 21st century, the race for agricultural, urban, recreational and industrial uses of water in New Mexico continues to intensify, even as groundwater supplies diminish and water deficits bulge.

News from The Collector's Guide

For the big CO2 footed, determined to escape #Mountainair albeit temporarily. Tomorrow, unless still undone by the winds (yes, even inside, the barometric pressure): scour the calendar to recap local options. I don't always re-blog the Collectors Guide, rarely remember to link it and should add it the sidebar. In the meantime, take note of the subscription option at the bottom of the page.

Artists, galleries and art or arts related organizations: check out and avail yourselves free online directory service the Guide offers. If you have an entry, do check to make sure it is current and accurate. The same could be said of other online directories or link lists from NM Net to the New Mexico Tourism and points between. 

Trouble viewing? Click

New Mexico Gallery News New Mexico's Weekly Art News :: As heard on Classical 95.5 and 102.9 KHFM Brought to you by The Collector's Guide :: an F+W Media Publication Greetings! Here is a sampling of art events happening throughout New Mexico this weekend, as heard on Classical KHFM radio.

Real Food: News from NM Farmers Markets

What lovely timing indeed for the NM Farmers' Marketing Association newsletter to appear just few weeks before #Mountainair's May 5 market opening ~ and right when I'm planning a social media blitz for the occasion. Just so you don't think you are seeing double, that blitz starts with cross-posting to both Mountainair Arts and our own page for the Mountainair Farm & Garden Market. At least I resisted the temptation to triple, quadruple, quintuple, etc post... for now (just spreading them out) ...

---

Having trouble viewing this? Click here

April 2011 REAL FOOD  News from New Mexico's   Farmers' Markets   Welcome, Spring!  Spring is an exciting time of year. The days are longer. The trees are in bloom, showing their promise of summer fruit. Evenings and weekends are spent working in the garden. And, one by one, farmers' markets begin to open for a delicious new season. Depending on where in the state you live, most markets start to open for the regular season anywhere from mid-April to late July. Markets in the southern part of New Mexico, for example, tend to open a bit earlier than the cooler regions in the north. Be sure to check our website often, as we continue to update market schedules and new markets opening this year.  Find your area markets on our website.      New Mexico Winter   Farmers' Markets Markets will be opening soon for the regular season, but until then, visit these last few winter markets. Every Wednesday through June: Red Willow Winter Farmers' Market (Taos Pueblo) Thursday, April 14th: Los Alamos Winter Farmers' Market Every Saturday through May: Santa Fe Farmers' Market and the Otero County Farmers' Market in Alamogordo Click here for details!  New Officers Elected to NMFMA Board  The New Mexico Farmers' Marketing Association elected new officers and welcomed recently elected board members at its spring Board meeting in Albuquerque on March 15, 2011. Elected to the position of President is Douglas Findley, owner of Heidi's Raspberry Farm in Corrales. Findley has served as Vice President of the Board for three years, and has been a member of the Board for six years. Findley replaces Michael Reed of the South Valley who served on the Board for nine years. Robert Ardovino, manager of Sunland Park Farmers' Market was re-elected Treasurer; and Nadine Ulibarri-Keller, a Socorro farmer was elected Secretary. Newly elected Board members include: Nora Haskins, executive director and board chair of the Permaculture Guild in Santa Fe; Shirley Holden, manager of the Le Jardin Verde Urban Growers' Market in Albuquerque; Rubina Cohen, founder and president of Firefly Innovation Group in Santa Fe; and, Jedrek Lamb, manager of the Albuquerque North East Farmers' & Artisans' Market. Continuing to serve on the Board are: Cecilia Rosacker-McCord, El Rancho Nido Farm in Lemitar; Cindy Talamantes, Los Alamos & Pojoaque Farmers' Markets; and, Eric Montgomery, Las Cruces Farmers' & Crafts Market. Featured Market: Red Willow Winter Farmers' Market    "The Red Willow Co-op set out to experiment with season extension for our area and to support a year-round market. And, like any experiment, there was a lot of trial and error involved," explained Gordon Hirsch, manager of the Red Willow Farmers' Market in Taos Pueblo. With the help of a sophisticated and efficient wood-burning boiler called a garn, two large greenhouses, and a team of area youth working in the greenhouses as an after-school job, the Red Willow Center has been growing a variety of crops to supply their farmers' market with produce year-round. Despite a mechanical problem that put the greenhouses out of commission for a couple of months, the operation is back on track and producing a wide variety of greens, root vegetables, and even some peas and tomatoes that will be coming up soon. "We did well until about about mid-December thanks to our stored winter squashes, onion, garlic, and cabbage," said Hirsch. "We kept the market open despite our lack of produce with the mechanical problems, and it warmed my heart to see that the community continued to trudge through the mud and snow to come out and support us through that." Now, with the greenhouses back in operation and the crops doing well with the increased sunlight since the Winter Solstice, the market is once again bountiful. Market shoppers can expect to find a variety of products such as greens and salad mixes, carrots, radishes, turnips, Chinese cabbage, and soon, the ever-popular peas. Though the winter market is primarily supplied by the greenhouses, other vendors from the pueblo supplement the market with handmade goods such as breads, pies, soaps, tortillas, and crafts. Hirsch noted that they learned a lot during their first winter market, and now have plans for the future. "We figured out that adequate winter storage is really advantageous," said Hirsch. "Those stored winter squashes really helped get us through when we didn't have the greenhouses." He hopes that in the future, the Red Willow Center can provide a place for winter storage and drying facilities for crops produced by pueblo residents in the summer and fall. You can visit the Red Willow Co-op's indoor winter market every Wednesday from 10 am to 6 pm at 885 Starr Rd in Taos Pueblo. The market can be reached at redwillowfarmers@gmail.com. Raspberry Grower Adds a Sweet Touch to All the Seasons       Link to full story      By Denise Miller, NMFMA Executive Director, for the Albuquerque Journal  Shoppers who venture to local growers' markets during the off season can find a taste of summer awaiting their discovery. That's because of dedicated growers such as Madelyn Hastings of Duke's Raspberry Ranch in Edgewood. She grows enough raspberries during the season to keep the rest of us flush in raspberry delicacies all year. Other well-known raspberry specialists in the state include Salman Raspberry Ranch near Mora in La Cueva, San Patricio Berry Farm in southern New Mexico not far from Las Cruces and Heidi's Raspberry Farm in Corrales. You also may find smaller berry growers at markets during the peak season. "Raspberries are my favorite food, and I figured if I liked them this much, there must be other people who do, too," she says of her decision to quit teaching and start farming raspberries about a decade ago. Hastings' five-acre farm in Edgewood has 1½ acres planted in raspberries. She can't keep up with production during the season, so many berries go to the freezer for later processing. From these Hastings creates cooked raspberry jam, uncooked freezer jam, no sugar jam, raspberry barbecue sauce, raspberry vinegar and raspberry baked goods. Read the full story here, including recipes!  Spring Crop Coming Soon: Sugar Snap Peas! The ever-popular sugar snap peas are a true taste of spring. Sugar snaps, a result of crossing green garden peas with snow peas, don't require shelling, which makes them an easy snack or salad topping. They are also sweeter and crisper than garden peas. Nutritionally, sugar snaps are a good source of iron, vitamin C and fiber. They are also best enjoyed fresh, as the sugars begin to convert to starch after picking. Keep your eyes out for these tasty treats coming to a market near you. Five Ideas for Enjoying Sugar Snap Peas Snack on them raw with a dip of 1 cup plain yogurt, 1/3 cup crumbled feta, and 1/8 teaspoon freshly ground black peppercorns   In succotash, sautéed with corn kernels, scallions, and cherry tomatoes Blanched and tossed with buttered egg noodles, parsley, and garlic (blanching means to  boil very briefly then plunge into cold ice water) Roasted with olive oil and sea salt beneath the broiler until crisp-tender and lightly browned on the edges; drizzle with a few drops of toasted sesame oil before serving. Tossed warm with fresh pesto and toasted pine nuts Recipe ideas adapted from www.care2.com The New Mexico Farmers' Marketing Association (NMFMA) is committed to   supporting our state's farmers' and growers' markets. These markets are the  most important survival line for small farmers today, offering them direct  access to consumers, enabling them to make a profit and stay on their farms.  For more information, visit our website at www.FarmersMarketsNM.org.

New Mexico Farmers' Marketing Association | 320 Aztec St. | Suite B | Santa Fe | NM | 87501