Thursday, February 10, 2011
Red Willow farm manager Shirley Trujillo swung open the thick round metal door of the GARN heater to reveal a blazing pile of piñón logs — the foundation of a complex but sustainable system that is allowing agriculture to thrive even as temperatures plunge.
Thirty-two-hundred gallons of water swirls around the steel encasement surrounding the fire. The heated water then channels into above- and below-ground pipes warming the Red Willow greenhouses, as well as two other buildings on site.
"All the ash and creosote are burned off when the smoke travels through the second core of the system," explained Trujillo, over the whir of the induction fan. "So after the first 10 minutes, the system is smoke-free."
The GARN, also known as a biomass heater, is one of several innovative heating systems propelling Red Willow Growers at Taos Pueblo through its second winter of farming and its first season of the Red Willow Winter Market.
Produce, such as winter squash, onions, garlic, cabbage and greens are available as well as homemade soaps, baked goods and fresh, hot tamales every Wednesday throughout the winter from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. in the building adjacent to the Red Willow Education Center.
"It's wonderful," said Gayle Mace, while balancing a Taos Pueblo buttercup squash and several onions in her arms.
Mace was visiting Taos recently from La Veta Pass, Colo., with her daughter Alana Mace.
"We're both gardeners and big farmers market fans, so when we saw the sign on the road, we said, 'Oh let's go!'"
All Taos Pueblo growers and producers are welcome to sell at the market by joining the Red Willow Co-op, which currently has about 60 members, according to treasurer and technical advisor Curtis Miller. Members are also entitled to borrow equipment and to access technical and marketing assistance.
Producers are encouraged to coordinate with farmers so their products can include locally grown produce whenever possible.
"I use wild plums, chokecherries and apples from local trees for my jams," said Henrietta Gomez, who was also selling her pork and vegetarian tamales from a steaming crock pot. "I get my black beans and onions for my tamales from the co-op. My corn is from Luis (Archuleta), squash and zucchini are from Curtis. When I was a kid we grew everything — we planted the corn, chili, everything that went into it, even the husks. I try to make them just like my grandmother's. So far I have a lot of loyal repeat customers."
Model program
The success of the yearround greenhouses has put Taos Pueblo on the map as a model for other pueblos and communities looking to revitalize agriculture.
"We've had tribes from Tuba City, Hopi, Dine, Navajo Country, White Apache Mountain come to see what we're doing," said Trujillo. "A lot of them want to start putting in greenhouses and nurseries.
"A couple running a school in Colorado saw the GARN and put one in. They came back this summer and said it's been running really well."
The GARN, which burns wood harvested from Taos Pueblo thinnings, produces enough heat for two greenhouses — one 75 by 24 feet and the other, 30 by 100 feet — as well as the classroom and administrative offices of the Red Willow Learning and Education Center and the new preservation building.
Excess heat from the GARN room itself is vented into the adjacent growers market room to keep shoppers toasty.
Preserving energy
Red Willow's west greenhouse utilizes another simple but effective heating system in addition to the GARN. Strategically placed fans, enclosed in barrels, siphon hot air that naturally collects at the top of the greenhouse into an underground piping system that warms the earth around the plants.
"Just doing that, the ground never freezes," said Carl Rosenberg, who assists Taos Pueblo in building and managing green energy systems.
"Even before we had the hydronic heating system, I was harvesting chard and beet greens this high," he said, gesturing to the height of his thigh. Cellulose insulation is another energy preserving tool used at Red Willow.
Made from locally sourced 100 percent recycled newspaper, it was used in the new preservation building, as well as the new walk-in cooler for its excellent insulation rating.
Solar panels provide the energy for the greenhouses' drip and irrigation systems and a grant has been secured to acquire additional panels that can take the greenhouses and the GARN entirely off the grid, as well as provide back up for these systems.
'Different farming'
Preservation supervisor Daniel Marcus lights the first fire in the GARN each morning at 7 a.m. Marcus learned to farm as a youth working side by side with his grandfather and since coming onboard at Red Willow in 2007, he has picked up a few new tools.
"I've learned about radiant heating, electrical systems and greenhouse construction …This is a whole different era, with different farming to do and advanced techniques that go with it," he said.
The unique blend of traditional and contemporary techniques used at Red Willow are being passed down to younger generations through the Red Willow Education Center's after-school and summer youth programs started by Education Director Shawn Duran. They host students from Vista Grande, Taos High School and Taos Cyber School for 16-20 hours a week to assist with all aspects of yearround farming.
Red Willow encompasses three separate entities: Red Willow Growers, Red Willow Center and Red Willow Coop. It emerged following the sustainable agriculture initiative approved by Taos Pueblo tribal administrator Valentino Cordova in 2002. The summer market, which started in 2007 with three vendors now has 20 vendors; the winter market has about seven growers.
"We're going to agriculture again," said Trujillo. "It all has to do with health. A lot of Native people have diabetes and high blood pressure and a healthier diet can help with these issues. And it's beautiful to see green in winter, it's just amazing how things can still grow."
For more information, visit www.redwillowcoop.com
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Sunday, February 6, 2011
Taos Youth Poetry Celebration
February 4, 2010
As the poetry lesson begins at Chrysalis alternative high school on January 28, there’s some wise cracking and hesitation. Some eyes drift towards the white board with its flurry of post-it sized pieces of paper tacked beneath the words Powerless/Power.
Teachers offer a continual stream of encouragement and within minutes students’ eyes are glued to the work in front of them and pencils move with steady focus. A few students then share their work aloud.
“…Silence is running down my spine
I cry ashes from the fire of my body…” one student reads.
“I try to perfection, I hope I got my weapon…” reads another.
“Writing poetry gets my pain out,” junior Lucinda Romero explains after this class (which was taught by Orion Cervio with assistance from Rosalie Grace) has ended. “When I was in a gang it was bad but when I sit and write about it, it gets my feelings out and I don’t have to worry about gang life anymore,” Romero adds. She plans to attend college after graduation and then medical school.
A growing community of local teens is finding an outlet in poetry and creative writing, which is being fostered by some innovative programs and dedicated teachers in the high schools.
This Friday, Feb. 5, at 7 p.m., at the Taos Community Auditorium, SOMOS presents a special segment of the Winter Writer’s Series featuring writers from Taos area high schools, including Taos High School, Chrysalis, Vista Grande, Chamisa Mesa and Moreno Valley High School. The emcee will be poetry activist Anne MacNaughton, who will also present her work.
To ensure that all family members, teachers and community members may attend, this event will be free of charge. Donations are welcome.
MacNaughton has been blazing poetry trails in Taos since 1982 when she co-founded SOMOS with 12 others. This same year, with her husband Peter Rabbit, she also founded Taos Poetry Circus, a poetry performance group that was active in Taos for decades. She was the director of the Poetry Education Project for many years, where she spearheaded efforts to put spoken word into the high schools of America as a credited course.
It was in one such course at Chrysalis that senior Christopher Breceda’s interest in poetry was sparked two years ago.
“Now that I’ve been introduced to it, there won’t be a day when I won’t use it,” says Breceda, who plans on joining the National Guard after he graduates.
His poem “Math is Sex,” which was published in the 2009 Chrysalis literary journal, uses vivid language to describe how individuals add up to families – and then are subtracted.
“…Then you can subtract the
woman and two kids After
the man cheats on the woman
that will give you one lonely
man that has to pay child support
and a woman that all alone is
trying to support two kids…”
Several seasoned members of the Taos High School Poetry club (from which the Taos High Poetry Slam team is derived) will be performing group and individual poems at Friday’s event. “(The club) is like a college level seminar where we study poetry, philosophy, political science… Our role is to challenge students to be innovative,” says Cervio, who coaches along with THS english teacher Francis Hahn and Megan Bradley.
The Poetry slam team will compete in regional competitions in Northern New Mexico over the summer and then at the National Competition in Los Angeles. Regardless of their interest in competing, all THS students with a passion for poetry are welcome to participate in the club.
Because of the self-revealing nature of the art form, students get to know each other on a much deeper level than they would from just engaging in usual conversation, according to junior Lewis Bailey.
“Hearing each others poetry gives us such insight into our inner being and makes it so easy to connect interpersonally… We know exactly how to make each other laugh and that comes from sharing poetry with each other,” he says.
Coaches and students seem to agree that certain themes – such as nature, healing and personal growth – distinguish the poetry of Taos youth from that of their peers.
“We would never wear shoes because
we didn’t want to lose the feeling of the earth on our soles
over gravel, mud, and potholes we would let
the space between our toes record the joys of our journeys…
…We learned to climb no trespassing signs
Before we learned to read the words…”
- excerpt from the The Mesa by Lewis Bailey
Team captain Olivia Romo has written in diaries since she was a child and these expressions eventually became poetry. “I sometimes find beauty in small things, like walking down the hall and talking to someone or going fishing with my Dad. The people and culture of Taos give me inspirational topics,” she says. She will present a group poem with Bailey on Friday that explodes with passion and searing truths.
Students from Gabrielle Herbertson’s class at Chamisa Mesa High School include actress, poet and co-host on KTAO’s weekly “Listen Up” talk radio show Maggie Carson, as well as Anastasia Fever.
“You might recognize me as that small woman with a big mouth and a mane of brown hair who always carries a book. My passions begin with intellect, but roar fully alive in storytelling,” says seventeen-year-old Fever.
Students not already mentioned who will share their creative writing at the event, and their teachers, include Emma Sims and Seth Fugman from Vista Grande who study with Edward Dougherty; A.C. Franklin, John Bowden, Julia Castillo, Olivia Romo, Aili Seiler from THS; Leyton Cassidy from Moreno Valley High School; student mentor/graduate Andrew Gonzales, Joseph Garcia and Andrew Marcus from Chrysalis who also receive writing instruction from Rosalie Grace and Kris Edwards.
The program is subject to change. For more information call SOMOS 575 758-0081 or visit www.somostaos.org
As the poetry lesson begins at Chrysalis alternative high school on January 28, there’s some wise cracking and hesitation. Some eyes drift towards the white board with its flurry of post-it sized pieces of paper tacked beneath the words Powerless/Power.
Teachers offer a continual stream of encouragement and within minutes students’ eyes are glued to the work in front of them and pencils move with steady focus. A few students then share their work aloud.
“…Silence is running down my spine
I cry ashes from the fire of my body…” one student reads.
“I try to perfection, I hope I got my weapon…” reads another.
“Writing poetry gets my pain out,” junior Lucinda Romero explains after this class (which was taught by Orion Cervio with assistance from Rosalie Grace) has ended. “When I was in a gang it was bad but when I sit and write about it, it gets my feelings out and I don’t have to worry about gang life anymore,” Romero adds. She plans to attend college after graduation and then medical school.
A growing community of local teens is finding an outlet in poetry and creative writing, which is being fostered by some innovative programs and dedicated teachers in the high schools.
This Friday, Feb. 5, at 7 p.m., at the Taos Community Auditorium, SOMOS presents a special segment of the Winter Writer’s Series featuring writers from Taos area high schools, including Taos High School, Chrysalis, Vista Grande, Chamisa Mesa and Moreno Valley High School. The emcee will be poetry activist Anne MacNaughton, who will also present her work.
To ensure that all family members, teachers and community members may attend, this event will be free of charge. Donations are welcome.
MacNaughton has been blazing poetry trails in Taos since 1982 when she co-founded SOMOS with 12 others. This same year, with her husband Peter Rabbit, she also founded Taos Poetry Circus, a poetry performance group that was active in Taos for decades. She was the director of the Poetry Education Project for many years, where she spearheaded efforts to put spoken word into the high schools of America as a credited course.
It was in one such course at Chrysalis that senior Christopher Breceda’s interest in poetry was sparked two years ago.
“Now that I’ve been introduced to it, there won’t be a day when I won’t use it,” says Breceda, who plans on joining the National Guard after he graduates.
His poem “Math is Sex,” which was published in the 2009 Chrysalis literary journal, uses vivid language to describe how individuals add up to families – and then are subtracted.
“…Then you can subtract the
woman and two kids After
the man cheats on the woman
that will give you one lonely
man that has to pay child support
and a woman that all alone is
trying to support two kids…”
Several seasoned members of the Taos High School Poetry club (from which the Taos High Poetry Slam team is derived) will be performing group and individual poems at Friday’s event. “(The club) is like a college level seminar where we study poetry, philosophy, political science… Our role is to challenge students to be innovative,” says Cervio, who coaches along with THS english teacher Francis Hahn and Megan Bradley.
The Poetry slam team will compete in regional competitions in Northern New Mexico over the summer and then at the National Competition in Los Angeles. Regardless of their interest in competing, all THS students with a passion for poetry are welcome to participate in the club.
Because of the self-revealing nature of the art form, students get to know each other on a much deeper level than they would from just engaging in usual conversation, according to junior Lewis Bailey.
“Hearing each others poetry gives us such insight into our inner being and makes it so easy to connect interpersonally… We know exactly how to make each other laugh and that comes from sharing poetry with each other,” he says.
Coaches and students seem to agree that certain themes – such as nature, healing and personal growth – distinguish the poetry of Taos youth from that of their peers.
“We would never wear shoes because
we didn’t want to lose the feeling of the earth on our soles
over gravel, mud, and potholes we would let
the space between our toes record the joys of our journeys…
…We learned to climb no trespassing signs
Before we learned to read the words…”
- excerpt from the The Mesa by Lewis Bailey
Team captain Olivia Romo has written in diaries since she was a child and these expressions eventually became poetry. “I sometimes find beauty in small things, like walking down the hall and talking to someone or going fishing with my Dad. The people and culture of Taos give me inspirational topics,” she says. She will present a group poem with Bailey on Friday that explodes with passion and searing truths.
Students from Gabrielle Herbertson’s class at Chamisa Mesa High School include actress, poet and co-host on KTAO’s weekly “Listen Up” talk radio show Maggie Carson, as well as Anastasia Fever.
“You might recognize me as that small woman with a big mouth and a mane of brown hair who always carries a book. My passions begin with intellect, but roar fully alive in storytelling,” says seventeen-year-old Fever.
Students not already mentioned who will share their creative writing at the event, and their teachers, include Emma Sims and Seth Fugman from Vista Grande who study with Edward Dougherty; A.C. Franklin, John Bowden, Julia Castillo, Olivia Romo, Aili Seiler from THS; Leyton Cassidy from Moreno Valley High School; student mentor/graduate Andrew Gonzales, Joseph Garcia and Andrew Marcus from Chrysalis who also receive writing instruction from Rosalie Grace and Kris Edwards.
The program is subject to change. For more information call SOMOS 575 758-0081 or visit www.somostaos.org
Friday, January 21, 2011
How to Cook a Crocodile: A Memoir with Recipes
November 4, 2010
Bonnie Lee Black experienced “nostalgia for Africa” – an affliction so common that a phrase was coined – since 1972 when she left the continent after living there for several years. In 1996, inspired by a Peace Corps ad in the New York Times, she returned.
Over the course of her two-year post in the equatorial rainforest village of Lastoursville in Gabon, Africa, Black accrued a lifetime of adventures, which are chronicled in her new book, “How to Cook a Crocodile: A Memoir with Recipes.”
She will host a book signing on Saturday, Nov. 6 from 2-4pm at Moby Dickens Bookstore on 124-A Bent Street.
“In America, we tend to value things only by money so we think, ‘Oh these people are very poor, they only make a dollar a day.’ But they have other riches that we’re not throwing into the calculation: friends, family, time… If I had to say in short my purpose for writing the book, it’s that I hope it can be an anti-dote to racism,” said Black in a recent interview.
While Black launched a number of service projects during her years of work in Lastoursville, her official job was health and nutrition instructor at the hospital’s mother infant clinic.
A lively assortment of props served as her assistants. Chantal Chanson, a purple-haired homemade puppet sang catchy tunes that were also recipes for dehydration medicine; Henri, an eight inch carved wood penis was the model for AIDS prevention demonstrations. These and other theatrics helped solidify her reputation as “folle,” crazy woman, a label she embraced.
“I’d be as crazy as can to keep their attention so they’d go back to their villages and say to their friends, ‘There’s this woman in Lastoursville you’ve got to go hear what she has to say.’ By the end, my classroom was standing room only,” said Black.
While adapting as best she can to equatorial heat, insects, reptiles and disease threats, Black falls in love with a young photographer from the Ivory Coast; befriends locals including an elderly, childless market vender who Bonnie adopts as her “maman,” and a revered Cameroonian chef who teaches her the art of butchering a crocodile.
She writes with a vivid intimacy and humility that allows messages of simplicity, adaptation and unity to emerge through colorful stories.
“In Africa on the ground, in the towns and villages, they’ve by and large had to struggle all their lives. Struggle is part and parcel of living for them so having struggled myself I feel like there’s this unspoken understanding that we’re all in this together,” says Black.
At one point in the story, she suffers a life-threatening burn. Her boyfriend, Youssef, goes for help, saving her life and she is brought to a hospital in Libreville, Gabon’s capital. The Peace Corps offers to medically terminate her so she can receive care in the United States that would prevent large amounts of permanent scarring on her leg.
“I don’t want it,” I told the Peace Corps doctor who visited me and Youssef at the clinic every evening,” she writes. “‘I won’t be modeling bathing suits or entering any beauty pageants. I want to return to my post.’ I dug in my heels. I had to stay in Africa.”
On top of her daily classes at the hospital, Black also organized and taught English, craft-making, cooking and (particularly inspired) bread-making classes to members of the community.
Towards the end of her two-year post, she teaches bread baking to a group of unemployed foresters, their wives and children. “By this time, in the two years I’d been in Gabon, I’d taught the same bread-baking lesson nearly 100 times. But I was far from tired of it… For me making bread was a labor of love, a near religious experience…” explains Black.
In the tradition of M.F.K. Fisher, author of How to Cook a Wolf, a World War II era memoir, Black includes original and workable recipes in her memoir. They serve as visceral punctuation marks, usually popping up at the end of chapters, offering a chance for readers to bring the smells and tastes of Africa into their homes.
The inclusion of actual letters in the book is another literary tool Black utilizes with success. A particularly poignant one was written to her sister who had apparently been feeling that her life was bland compared to Bonnie’s. Black responds by writing candidly of the unglamorous and frustrating nature of much of her work and then offers encouragement from an African perspective.
“I think life is very difficult, a constant struggle – not a struggle to be “happy” but a struggle to stay on your own footpath and keep hiking…” she writes.
Black currently teaches english, creative non-fiction writing and culinary arts classes at UNM-Taos. This is her first book since the publication of “Somewhere Child” 30 years ago. The latter book, also a memoir, brought Black national recognition and was instrumental in creating the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and the implementation of various laws around the issue of child-snatching.
“I have returned to writing, believing now more than ever that writers must write,” Black writes in the forward. “It is our responsibility, our reason for being. It takes courage and audacity, but some truths need to be told and retold in order that the untrue stories don’t outlive them.”
For more information, call Moby Dickens at (575) 758-3050 or visit Bonnie on facebook. Her book is available on www.amazon.com
Bonnie Lee Black experienced “nostalgia for Africa” – an affliction so common that a phrase was coined – since 1972 when she left the continent after living there for several years. In 1996, inspired by a Peace Corps ad in the New York Times, she returned.
Over the course of her two-year post in the equatorial rainforest village of Lastoursville in Gabon, Africa, Black accrued a lifetime of adventures, which are chronicled in her new book, “How to Cook a Crocodile: A Memoir with Recipes.”
She will host a book signing on Saturday, Nov. 6 from 2-4pm at Moby Dickens Bookstore on 124-A Bent Street.
“In America, we tend to value things only by money so we think, ‘Oh these people are very poor, they only make a dollar a day.’ But they have other riches that we’re not throwing into the calculation: friends, family, time… If I had to say in short my purpose for writing the book, it’s that I hope it can be an anti-dote to racism,” said Black in a recent interview.
While Black launched a number of service projects during her years of work in Lastoursville, her official job was health and nutrition instructor at the hospital’s mother infant clinic.
A lively assortment of props served as her assistants. Chantal Chanson, a purple-haired homemade puppet sang catchy tunes that were also recipes for dehydration medicine; Henri, an eight inch carved wood penis was the model for AIDS prevention demonstrations. These and other theatrics helped solidify her reputation as “folle,” crazy woman, a label she embraced.
“I’d be as crazy as can to keep their attention so they’d go back to their villages and say to their friends, ‘There’s this woman in Lastoursville you’ve got to go hear what she has to say.’ By the end, my classroom was standing room only,” said Black.
While adapting as best she can to equatorial heat, insects, reptiles and disease threats, Black falls in love with a young photographer from the Ivory Coast; befriends locals including an elderly, childless market vender who Bonnie adopts as her “maman,” and a revered Cameroonian chef who teaches her the art of butchering a crocodile.
She writes with a vivid intimacy and humility that allows messages of simplicity, adaptation and unity to emerge through colorful stories.
“In Africa on the ground, in the towns and villages, they’ve by and large had to struggle all their lives. Struggle is part and parcel of living for them so having struggled myself I feel like there’s this unspoken understanding that we’re all in this together,” says Black.
At one point in the story, she suffers a life-threatening burn. Her boyfriend, Youssef, goes for help, saving her life and she is brought to a hospital in Libreville, Gabon’s capital. The Peace Corps offers to medically terminate her so she can receive care in the United States that would prevent large amounts of permanent scarring on her leg.
“I don’t want it,” I told the Peace Corps doctor who visited me and Youssef at the clinic every evening,” she writes. “‘I won’t be modeling bathing suits or entering any beauty pageants. I want to return to my post.’ I dug in my heels. I had to stay in Africa.”
On top of her daily classes at the hospital, Black also organized and taught English, craft-making, cooking and (particularly inspired) bread-making classes to members of the community.
Towards the end of her two-year post, she teaches bread baking to a group of unemployed foresters, their wives and children. “By this time, in the two years I’d been in Gabon, I’d taught the same bread-baking lesson nearly 100 times. But I was far from tired of it… For me making bread was a labor of love, a near religious experience…” explains Black.
In the tradition of M.F.K. Fisher, author of How to Cook a Wolf, a World War II era memoir, Black includes original and workable recipes in her memoir. They serve as visceral punctuation marks, usually popping up at the end of chapters, offering a chance for readers to bring the smells and tastes of Africa into their homes.
The inclusion of actual letters in the book is another literary tool Black utilizes with success. A particularly poignant one was written to her sister who had apparently been feeling that her life was bland compared to Bonnie’s. Black responds by writing candidly of the unglamorous and frustrating nature of much of her work and then offers encouragement from an African perspective.
“I think life is very difficult, a constant struggle – not a struggle to be “happy” but a struggle to stay on your own footpath and keep hiking…” she writes.
Black currently teaches english, creative non-fiction writing and culinary arts classes at UNM-Taos. This is her first book since the publication of “Somewhere Child” 30 years ago. The latter book, also a memoir, brought Black national recognition and was instrumental in creating the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and the implementation of various laws around the issue of child-snatching.
“I have returned to writing, believing now more than ever that writers must write,” Black writes in the forward. “It is our responsibility, our reason for being. It takes courage and audacity, but some truths need to be told and retold in order that the untrue stories don’t outlive them.”
For more information, call Moby Dickens at (575) 758-3050 or visit Bonnie on facebook. Her book is available on www.amazon.com
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