New Mexico Books

Seema's Show is an engaging, informative, and easy-to-read biography of a strong, complex woman whose life has so far spanned 100 years. Sara Halprin moves seamlessly back and forth as an interviewer/chronicler and a friend. Halprin artfully frames each chapter in Seema's rich life in a way that is both enlightening and entertaining. Through Halprin's keen eye, we come to learn what life was like for a female photographer and activist during the 20th century. Halprin's work as therapist lends an intimate understanding of human behavior, and her experience in film-making provides a richness and depth not seen in most biographies. If you're asking yourself, "Who's Seema Weatherwax?" then this is the book for you. Halprin won't let you down.

Sara Halprin has given us a book deftly navigating between biograpy, memoir and oral history. Her subject, Seema Weatherwax, celebrated her 100th year last summer. Halprin introduces us to a woman's woman, an accomplished photographer who exhibited her photographs at her first public showing when she turned 95. While her artistry with a camera was present from an early age, it was honed while working as Ansel Adams' master printer at Yosemite. It shows in the photographs she took while visiting the dust bowl labor camps with her husband author, Jack Weatherwax and their friend Woody Guthrie in the late 30s's. Her compassion for the subjects of her photographs represent her lifelong effort to seek a more just society. And for her this was always a matter of connecting people with people -- her way of going beyond ideology, especially that of the Communist Party. For Seema, the connection between art and working for social justice is a seamless one. At 100 she continues that work and I highly recommend Halprin's book introducing us to this remarkable woman, an elder and mentor for our times.

I loved the stories- they crossed the cultural divide with adaptations of stories most of us heard as children.

The Governor of Spanish New Mexico is a troubled, lonely man, caught between his Spanish subjects, the increasingly restless Pueblo peoples, the Apache marauders, and a fanatical Catholic church that is becoming ever more repressive. One day in 1680 twelve Indian prisoners are brought into town, accused of plotting against the Spanish government. Turns out, one of the "plotters" is a beautiful young woman and gifted storyteller, Serafina.

The Governor strikes an odd bargain with this Serafina. For every night that she entertains him with a story he will free one of the prisoners. Sounds like the Thousand And One Nights, but with some unusual twists. Not only are the lives of the prisoners at stake, and that of Serafina, but the future of the territory. Can the Spanish colonials and the native peoples cross their cultural divide and live in peace? Can the stories of the gifted Serafina bring them together? Or is it already too late?

Well, you simply have to read this book. Author Rudolfo Anaya writes in a beautiful, heartfelt style, sprinkling his clear, simple English with Spanish words and phrases, to create a vivid impression of the old Southwest. Loosely based on actual historical events, the story is as meaningful as ever in a time when peoples and cultures are struggling to coexist. The stories are so well done that they become more than stories. They speak to the reader personally. This book is easily read but will move you deeply. I recommend it most highly. Reviewed by Louis N. Gruber.

Students and enthusiasts of photography and its history have long considered Peter Bacon Hales's SILVER CITIES indispensable. First released in 1984, it was one of the first, most readable, and most visually interesting, of a crop of new histories of photography that saw the medium as part of a larger sphere of cultural history. This new edition is really welcome-- much longer, even more lavishly illustrated, dramatically revised, beautifully redesigned. Hales has incorporated many of the ideas and discoveries of writers since the book was first published; he has added many new illustrations and changed the old ones, and he has pushed the book well into the 20th century, treating photographers like Walker Evans, James VanderZee, and Edward Steichen. The writing is better, too-- more conversational and fluid, easier to read. If you have a copy of the old SILVER CITIES, you'll have to buy this one, too. If you don't, this is a real eye-opener of a book.

"One may view this book as a study of American attitudes toward the city as revealed in one of its most important media or as an ongoing history of an urban art form," writes Hale, a professor of art history and director of the American Studies Institute at the U. of Illinois - Chicago. The nearly 250 photographs relating to American cities from the pre-Civil War decades to the eve of WWII are roughly divided into the four stages development, maturity, transformation, and diffusion. Earliest photographs from the 1830s and '40s capture plainly the crude, clustered buildings sprouting up in open spaces, as in uncomprehending witness to what was unfolding. Photographs from the latter 1800s reach into the impoverished, fragile, hectic lives of immigrants flooding into the cities. Jacob Riis's photographs figure prominently in this period. Into the 20th century, the photographs again change in subjects and perspectives to go along with modernism's tenets of Promethean, prodigious, growth, large-scale enterprises, and celebration of technology and design. Springing from the "discipline [of] American cultural history," this revised and expanded edition of the 1884 publication not only contains additional photographs, but also related added text reflecting the growth of government sponsorship, mass-market reproduction, the place of women and African-Americans, and the diminished presence of "individual studio practice." Yet despite this last new topic, Hale also in one part brings out the "photographic studio as itself [in italics in original] a part of the developing American urban fabric." Like the earlier edition which has now become a collector's item, this revised edition is patently the leading study on photography as it took cities as subjects and reflected evolving attitudes toward them.

I purchased this book several years ago from the Jr League of Albuquerque. I am now ordering one for my daughter. It has lots of great regional dishes from New Mexico and lots of other great dishes as well. I collect cook books and this is a great one.

A favorite of mine. My first introduction to this book was on a trip to Albuquerque many, many years ago. Since then, I have purchased 6 of these books and given 5 as gifts. Great recipes.

One thing that I particularly like about this book, which may be a surprise to some, is that not all the old fashioned *fat* ingredients have not been taken out of the recipes, and the book not entirely updated to reflect low fat "healthy" foods. I like to eat healthy but once in a while a good, old fashioned recipe with the yummy bad ingredients is just plain good. You can easily eliminate fats yourself but I enjoy the authentic recipes. I can modernize them myself.

Love this book.

Today, when we think of art, we can't imagine a work without the artist's signature or some identifying mark, but in the 1930s, many women and men of New Mexico and southern Colorado worked without credit or recognition. Hispano and Hispana (men and women) worked "sin nombre," literally "without name." But they worked for the love of producing beautiful paintings and murals, fabric and textile art, tin work, and wood carving and furniture. And the love and knowledge of fine crafting shows in everything; much of this cultural legacy appears here in photographs for the first time. This book is a permanent monument to Southwestern Art and the people; it is a cultural and community achievement. The author, or central energy behind the project, Tey Marianna Nunn, has given us her own work of love and persistence--evidence of the will power necessary to recover the names of these nearly lost artists of the New Deal Era.

In May 2001, at the Moroles Art Center in Los Cerrillos, (south of Santa Fe), I had the luck to attend a gathering of the remaining New Deal artists and workers of the Civilian Conservation Corps who told their stories. I feel sure that this revival of interest in the surviving New Deal and WPA artists came about because of Tey Nunn and her book. Thank you so much for the joy this book has brought over the years.

A few years ago, a brilliant and talented student found a gap in the recent art history of New Mexico. She went out and conducted the research, raised the money, wrote the PhD thesis, and then was curator for an exhibit at the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe that identified and saluted the artists whose names had been lost in the dusty archives of our Great Depression and the resulting New Deal. The exhibit changed the lives of the artists still living and assured artistic credit for those who are no longer with us. How many of the thousands of PhD theses produced since Dr. Nunn wrote hers have had any impact, let alone a major impact on the lives of people? This beautiful book is climax to Dr. Nunn's efforts.

Most people will never have the opportunity to be charmed and enlightened by a Dr. Nunn lecture. This book is a wonderful introduction to what a committed individual can do to make modern art history come alive. It is also a very useful introduction to the art of New Mexico created by the true artists of New Mexico, not the visitors (temporary or permanent) from other parts of the country. The Hispana and Hispano artists of the New Deal look straight at us from the pages of this book not for our approval but with pride in the art that they have created. Fortunately for us, Dr. Nunn, the Museum, and the University of Mexico Press have taken the time to reproduce this art to let us share in their joy of creation.

But I read the whole book, and thoroughly enjoyed every chapter in it. Swindle reveals some good and bad attributes about living in the South, and finding political refuge in literary and other hard-drinking circles. Having lived and worked in Louisiana, Texas, Alabama, and Georgia, I couldn't agree more with his prognosis and descriptions. I'll have to find some more of his work. This is a great read.
And the chapter on hog hunting was pretty decent.

You may go to college,you may go to school,you may drive a black Cadillac,don't be nobodys fool.-Elvis Presley '55 I've been trying to write this for the past 2 mos. It,s really a crime our southern culture has been packaged and sold. It's like buying red-hots at Wal-Mart.The Hot-Shots finally did it. They bought our sports,music,food and writers.Our damned culture for Christ-sake. Wrapped it up, in a neat package, sold man. Lock- stock and barrel for the allmighty dollar. Thank God, for one of the last,outlaw southern writers. A gentleman, and reporter.A man that brings us the essence of the dying breed.Michael D.Swindle, will always be a true original. I love him. When it,s gone it,s gone.

I read "Someone Stole My Outhouse," by Cindy Bellinger, last week on a long flight from Los Angeles to Atlanta. Like any good book, this one made many long miles just disappear. At 37,000 feet in the air I looked down and realized I might well be right over the backwoods cabin home of the notorious Cindy Bellinger and her outhouse stealing neighbors.
On the surface this is a book about home improvement, and indeed there is much interesting material here on building footers and tearing down walls and vanishing outhouses. But actually, as I quickly discovered, Cindy Bellinger's writing is certainly always more than just how to fix or build something. I first read a piece of hers in the Santa Fe New Mexican newspaper a few years ago, an article about the fire raging across New Mexico, and the impact it was having on peoples' lives. I was immediately impressed and showed the article to friends who were also impressed.
Very interesting here are the stories of the down-home sort of folks who wander in and out of these tales of home improvement. I also love the way Ms Bellinger uses construction as her focal point to discuss what it is like for a single woman doing things her own way. She has an uncanny interest and appreciation of good tools "for a woman." I admit, I was surprised by much in this book, surprised by her depth of know-how at building, at her appreciation of doing things herself, of the way she never let her sex be an excuse for not doing something she wanted to do.
The building and repairing going on in this book are always central but she admits that, "I'm not a finish carpenter, probably because nothing ever gets finished." But really, like any good artist, Bellinger understands well that it is the doing that counts, that the actual process of building may be more important than the end product. I recommend this book to anyone interested in: good writing, in something unusual and different, to anyone who appreciates a salty, no BS kind of a lady, to anyone who values a woman who has the guts to live life on her own terms, and who knows how to write about it. Someone Stole My Outhouse would make an excellent present for any liberated lady, or for any fellow not easily intimidated by strong women. A darn good read. Check it out.

Reading this book made me feel as though I could try what is usually left to professionals, because Cindy captures the personal aspects of home repair and shares it as a woman, who learns as she goes, has successes and some failures. She gives hope and a wonderful sense of humor to every phase of her projects. She expresses her feelings about the tasks she's tackling and that brings in the human aspect which puts it in the realm of possiblilty, even for the beginner. Her organic way of approaching projects, spiced with her tonge-in-cheek sense of humor makes this book a refreshing and delightful read.

This book is well thought out, organized and highly informative. Trying to grow anything in the different soil and conditions found in the Southwest can be frustrating. Unless you can find a little gem of a book like this. It is like finding the key to a lost treasure chest. The book as a whole is indispensible. It walks you through soil condidions, there is a chapter on why the Southwest is different, has the usual list of perennials, annuals, trees, shrubs, etc. She also has a monthly calendar of to do items that I find extremely helpful. She includes cute sketches throughout the book and I am now studying the planning and landscaping examples in the back of the book. A MUST HAVE for any New Mexico gardener.

Pat

Although Roasalie died several years ago in her late 90's, she was still an active gardener. She was only sorry she couldn't do a new book and add lisianthus.

Shapiro's well-structured monograph takes the reader through an overview of architectural analysis and its applicability to archaeology, summarizes the history and layout of the pueblo, and before diving into the analysis itself, provides an entire chapter which acts as a primer on the theory and method of space syntax analysis. This is an important inclusion, since it transforms the reader into a student of space syntax analysis, providing the tools necessary to decipher and understand the graphs and measurements in later chapters.

Unfortunately, the attentive reader will find themselves confused and misled by some of the explanations which are meant to clarify and illuminate. Multiple, significant errors are present in the section describing the alpha index. The formula given for the alpha index (page 43) and the actual examples which follow are not consistent with one another. Referring to another source, this reviewer concluded that the base formula provided for the alpha index is incorrect (there should be no parentheses in the numerator). The example which calculates the alpha index value for a room block at Acoma Pueblo is incorrect in two ways, and identifying them will be left as an exercise to the reader.

Overall, the book delivers much more than access graphs and indices derived from those graphs. Shapiro uses these tools to detect changes in architecture at Arroyo Hondo which demonstrate changing ideas about how space should be organized. He makes a good case that these new spatial arrangements are responses to the changing social and economic environment, and demonstrates how space syntax analysis could be used elsewhere to reveal architecture as an artifact capable of providing insights into culture and social organization.

This book is not only valuable to Southwestern archaeologists interested in Shapiro's analysis of an ancestral pueblo-- it also serves as an example of how to properly apply space syntax analysis to any settlement where sufficient data on rooms and their connections exist.

Shapiro applies the relatively new methodology of space syntax in the field of architecture to the field of archaeology with fruitful results. In analyzing the organization of space in the 14th-century Pueblo Native American community of Arroyo Hondo in the vicinity of present-day Santa Fe, Shapiro's meticulous archaeological study extending over many years arrives at explanations for "how space was both arranged and correlated with the social and political behavior" of this Pueblo community during the relatively brief time of its 125-year existence. The space syntax methodology together with standard and innovative archaeological techniques leads Shapiro to conclude that changes in the structures of the buildings, particularly those allowing for more privacy for individuals and family groups, relieved some of the stresses that might otherwise have led to warfare by "enabling incoming [i. e., migrant or immigrant] groups to reclaim some of their autonomy" they lost when assimilating into the Arroyo Hondo Pueblo. The author relates how space syntax works applied to archaelogy with tables of measurements, diagrams of building structures, and graph-like illustrations noting architectural features and changes. The content is fairly technical, though readily followed by readers with knowledge of the basics of architecture and archaelogy.