Mesa Walk in Beauty (sung to a Spanish colonial dance tune)

WHEN WE WALK ALONG THE MESA TRAIL  ( inspired by the song  'La Camilla', a northern New Mexican tune and dance which has three parts; a couple step close, step close, step close to the middle from the outside circle, then a funny little shuffle back to the start, repeat, then polka around for two stanzas.  Words and adaptations and variations  by Thor Sigstedt. The song is is D, with the chords going DAGD,GDAD   then DAD and the low E string on the guitar is tuned down to a D note, so the guitar can sing that low D that I cannot.  TS. © November 1, 2013)

When we walk along the mesa trail, we see the little things that are a lying there so still
When we dance along the mesa rim,  under the sun,  darting over here and there

Oh the beautiful, the beautiful ,  the beautiful  little leaf

And  the beautiful, yes the beautiful, see the blue blue sky above
(then repeat instrumentally or hum)

When we hunt upon the mesa top, then we whisper quietly, and then stop
When we wander upon the crumpled crown, always dancing round and round and round and round

 Oh the beautiful,  the beautiful, the fluttering little dove
Oh the wonderful,  the wonderful, yes the blue blue sky above
(repeat instru)   (then instrumental of whole series)

When we stop to gaze upon the town, then we feel like shouting, "we are here looking down"
When we stop to rest under the pinon tree, then we feel like sleeping, yes, right here in shade

Oh the beautiful,  the beautiful, the beautiful walking trail
Oh the wonder, the fabulous, oe'r the beautiful trail we go
(repeat instru)

When we wander away from the trail, softly walking carefully around the little tree
When we walk upon the soft soft earth, felling wonder at what this nature's worth

Oh the beautiful, the beautiful, the beautiful land I see
Oh the marvelous, the wonderful, the timeless things I feel
(repeat  instru)
Oh the beautiful, the beautiful, the ..................(repeat 4 times or so with, perhaps a full instrumental and then fade out)

Mansi McClure Kern: Life Celebration and Memorial Announcement

 

Please go to "Mansi Kern" link in right hand column and click that link for more information.  Feel free to make a comment on this blog at the bottom.  The program is being developed right now, so feel free to come back and check it out.  

The Madrid Folk Music Festival occurs on the same day as Mansi's Life Celebration, and also Todd Lovato (Mansi's grandson), with Todd and the Fox is playing there at 2:45, so there is time to get over there.  Todd and Eric have also kindly chosen to donate a number of free tickets to the festival in Madrid to people coming to Mansi's Life Celebration, so it is first come, first serve for a number of them.   It seems very appropriate to honor folk music this way and dance and enjoy as this is a great way to celebrate Mansi's life work as a folk artist and performer.  Many Santa Feans, over the years have performed with her and so that is a wonderful sign of her activity in this field.  Mansi would dance or play or listen anywhere at the drop of a hat and so that is what we are hoping to do on the day of her memorial. It is sort of on the way to Madrid; go to Adventure Trails ranch and then take 285 to Galisteo and take the newly paved road, hwy 42 east to the Turquoise Trail and then left through Cerrillos to Madrid.  Parking may be tight as the balloon festival and the music festival are in full swing.  More about that later......

 

 

 

 

Mansi McClure Kern, 89, of Tesuque, died Monday, August 5th, peacefully in her own home.

Mansi, the oldest of five children, was born to the late Helena Modjeska Chase Johnson Drea and Harry McClure Johnson, April 16th, 1924, in Winetka, Illinois.  Mansi graduated from Putney (High)  School, Putney Vermont,  in 1942 and then attended Benningon College for three years, leaving due to illness then finished up her degree as a teacher from Colorado College in 1970. She married Val Sigstedt , then Ken Kern; mostly, though, raising her four children as a single parent. She moved to Santa Fe in 1951 for a few years then returned permanently in 1963. 

Mansi had a life-long career as a folk dance teacher with both children and adults, teaching at Loretto Academy, four of the northern Indian pueblos, also privately and she  performed as a professional musician/accordionist all over the country, including Aspen, Colorado, Idyllwild, California and Santa Fe New Mexico and was a violinist for the Santa Fe Symphony in the early days.  Mansi collected, interviewed and archived many of the Spanish Colonial New Mexican  Folk Music and Dances and musicians; playing with the viejitos in the remote villages to learn the music ; this in the mid sixties, performed with her music group, The Festival Folk Ensemble (which also included many of her grown children and grandchildren and family members)  for over 20 years at the Santa Fe Fiesta, Taos Fiesta, Pagosa Springs Fiesta, Las Vegas Fiesta,  Baille Cascarones, Las Golondrinas, El Nido and many other venues and coordinated an exhibition dance group often  at the same time, played  at nursing homes and hospitals and was a familiar face and participant with Baille Cascarones each year, displaying her great dance ability and knowledge and passion for  the local traditional dances.  She will be dearly missed at those dances!

She built the “Pavillion Melodia”, a large circular dance and performance and teaching center  on Avenida Melodia, Tesuque and held many dances and musical events there. She was also an avid proponent of organic foods since high school, being way ahead of her time in that aspect and she was a guiding light for that life style, which, for many, now, is standard practice.  She also was an ardent pacifist, anti-nuclear advocate and nature lover, "back-to-the-lander", defender of racial and cultural equality.  Recently she could be seen as an iconic figure gracefully enjoying the Summer Music on the Plaza concerts ; was dancing on the plaza only a few weeks ago. She was, truly; a Santa Fe treasure.

Mansi  is survived by four children: Shawn Sigstedt of Steamboat Springs, Colorado; Thor Sigstedt of Spirit Valley below Canoncito; Anhara Lovato of Tesuque and Tanya Kern of Tesuque and Phoenix, Arizona. She also is survived by eight grandchildren (Todd, Juniper and Nico Lovato; Tara Pack, Dylan and Sophia (Sigstedt); Lief and Olin Sigstedt  and two great-grandsons ( Abe and Torsten Pack).  She is also survived by her two sisters, Elizabeth Stickney and Priscilla Paetsch and her nephew, Bristol Stickney.

There will be a memorial on October 12, 2013.  Musicians and friends are invited to bring their instruments and others can grab a maraca and join in the festivities.  Please bring memories and photos and a simple food offering  to the event.  Any flowers and decorations can be brought at that time.  Please call 505-466-4403 for more information or go to http://thor-sigstedt.blogspot.com for more details.

Susurrus Arroyo

“ An arroyo (/əˈrɔɪoʊ/; Spanish: [aˈroʝo], "brook"), also called a wash, is a dry creek or stream bed—gulch that temporarily or seasonally fills and flows after sufficient rain.[1] Wadi is a similar term in Africa. In Spain, a rambla has a similar meaning to arroyo. In Hispanic America any small river might be called arroyo, even if it flows continually all year and is never dry.”  pohu'u 'creek with water in it' <po 'water', /tu'it 'large groove' 'arroyo').

What a great word for something; arroyo

Just real close to susurrus, oddly

(Powerful and flows right off your tongue);

But gulch works too.  Like; “ the granite crag with the arch in the gulch and the other crag across

The canyon survey the arroyo below as the susurrus waters subside”.

Even if you don’t quite know what arroyo means exactly

But you know one when you see one

(…or hear one)

Or are in one or near one

Its all about water, the soil, the milieu, as it were

….and the  forest

….and how things are taken care of;

How things are taken care of;

How we take care of them and …

How they take care of us,

Bringing fresh life to any area

And, like many things; not entirely predictable

But it’s always smart to look upstream

As we walk the dry arroyo under the hot sun

And around the bend of the mesa up there;

Looking for dark dark clouds

(not a bad thing to look for in a drought down by the river bed)

And lightning and thunder

And then, perhaps, the rocks will thunder, too, as they crash into each other

Tumbling down the arroyo and then happily resting, cleansed, washed and

Surrounded by clean, crisp, squeaky sand and fine reddish silt and pine cones

After the flood; The Susurrus Arroyo!;

Feeding crystal clear pools to wonder at,

Like an 8 year old does by the sea, amongst the rocks; into tidal pools’ life forms…

Then perhaps the stroll leads to a cowboy bath;

Stripped naked beneath the rustic skyscraper gorge

Splash, kick and splash;

So beautiful it hurts your feelings.  

“Arroyos can be natural fluvial landforms or constructed flood control channels. The term usually applies to a sloped or mountainous terrain in xeric and desert climates. In addition: in many rural communities arroyos are also the principal transportation routes; and in many urban communities arroyos are also parks and recreational locations, often with linear multi-use bicycle, pedestrian, and equestrian trails. Flash flooding can cause the deep arroyos or deposition of sediment on flooded lands. This can lower the groundwater level of the surrounding area, making it unsuitable for agriculture. However a shallow water table lowered in desert arroyo valleys can reduce saline seeping and alkali deposits in the topsoil, making it suitable for irrigated farming”. ….They are also great for volleyball games and horseshoe throwing and gathering  sand, taking children down to them (or ducks)……..that’s what I’m  talkin’ about!!

Feeling Our Way Around Forgeries

 Most families have a horsethief or two in their histories, but we just have forgery in our closet.  My dad first told us that my grandfather, Thorsten (which means “Thor’s Stone”, which suggests that the ‘real’ “Thor’s Hammer” was not what we think of as one, but just an old stone; a reverse  knock-off, honestly)  over from Sweden after carving  a copy of the “royal barge” for the king;

 

 was  running from a business destroyed by alcoholism ; not his but his brother’s; his business partner.  The business: making duplicates of ‘ priceless’ antiques; read: the 6th Louis Catorce dining chair to match and fill out the other five already in existence and crying out for the full set to achieve the primo price. Oddly, my first unwitting, of course, foray into the ‘family business’ (which I only discovered years after I was already an established furniture maker) ,was making “Taos Beds”; well, to be honest, everyone made them in those halcyon days of the mid seventies, as they were going like hotcakes.  Only one problem; it was Taos Furniture or some such (different stories out there) that “invented” them, although my grandmother  (on the other side) said they were just “Morris Chairs”.  I often get people who want something they have already seen somewhere and  I try to make a little change to keep honest, but, frankly, it is sometimes hard not to copy a little.  I have also been copied and  mostly consider it a sort of compliment; on a good day.  The guy I learned from came up with all these designs; cool ones with lots of detail and he was so proud.  Finally I discovered that he had a (tum tum dum tum); book (that he took his ‘original’ designs from).  These kinds of stories go on and on.  Just the other day,  I was asked to take a picture of a gate so that I could make some woodwork based on it.  I often “google”  (a legitimate real word now) anything that I want to represent and take the best twenty or so pictures from  “images” and then  paste them  into Microsoft Word and use them to help create the final piece.  Hey; it works!

 So, there is something, though, that needs to be paid attention to and I think it rallies around the word “authenticity;, so  what does it look like?  If you take a bucket of water from a trout stream, or  you dam it up to make a lake, you do not have a trout stream.; a trout stream is only a trout stream when it is flowing between its own two banks, at its own pace, in its own sweet way (language borrowed from The River Why).  Or like the lyrics: “You know all the words and you sung all the notes, but you never quite learned the song she sang, you never quite learned  the song…”  So, there are subtleties here, like talking about love, quality and they involve the dynamics of us peoples’ eyes; you see, we, most of us, have the ability to notice the most minute details like whether the edges of a piece of furniture is planed, sanded, routered, chiseled or left alone.  People like Bernard Ewell, fine art appraiser, neighbor and  one of the more interesting people in the world, who has a refined eye for detail and can often just feel that there is something wrong with a forged, say, Dali piece and then takes it from there.  There is a lot at stake here and  that  is why he wrote a soon-to- be- released book, Artful Dodgers: Fraud and Foolishness in the Art Market.  The issue is ubiquitous and Bernard says that Thomas Hoving of the Metropolitan  Museum of Art  said that  “40 percent of all pieces offered  to him for display are forgeries”!!  So; Buyer Beware; but that is not enough; for instance, right here in our neck of the woods are three businesses (Bobcat Bite, The Legal Tender, Santa Fe Southern)  that  self-define authenticity and probably cannot be replaced; once they are gone, with all of their characteristics; good natured attitude, sense of honor, sense of place, sense of esthetics, mysterious ingredients that make the heart soar; it takes some magic to make anything successful and it is hard, if not impossible, to duplicate.  This not ‘paint by the numbers’, folks, and do not be fooled by cheap imitations…..or expensive ones!  As Bernard’s ‘motto’ goes:  If a (person) has integrity nothing else matters; if a (person) does not have integrity nothing else matters.

 

"Buffalo Ball" - An Okay Game

I thought I would talk about something almost timeless; something that embodies our culture, even right here in the high desert valleys, basins and mesas of Northern New Mexico;  something that so many of us can relate to, no matter where we are from.  I thought  about sports; thinking about how in 1971 China had basketball hoops in every village and factory and school; playing the game as an integral part of their lives.  They thought if we were American, then we would be very good at the game, so, during National Day in Peking they pitted us against the Peking University Team in front of a large audience (this was after the ping-pong “diplomacy” team and before Nixon).  Of course it was a joke (on us) and they ended up handing us the ball (like the globetrotters) so we could shoot!  We got better over time and played in front of huge audiences anxious to get a peek at us and the kids loved to run up and blurt out “OK”!  I thought about Herman Agoya from Okay Owinga, who came to a barbeque here and played hoops in our dirt driveway with the children, while the Chinese guests  they came to be with would not try horseshoes out cause they said “it is a children’s game”.  Hmm.  I recalled playing volleyball in our arroyo in Pacheco Canyon.    I thought about baseball, though, which everyone has a story about; a wound from sliding on the dirt, and special time hitting a home run or a tragedy like being “benched”.  I had all of these experiences and had begun to think that I just didn’t have the eye to hit or the ability.  It became a negative obsession until Roger asked if I wanted to play city league softball some  36 years ago.  I said, “well, I am worried that I can’t  hit and don’t want to embarrass myself or anyone else”.  I felt sheepish, like the guy tapping his foot and wanting to dance, but just feels he isn’t dance material.  I tried out and, wow, I did OK;  playing for many years  and there is, somewhere, a huge 3^rd place trophy at the then Santa Fe Reporter, the then Green Onion and even Vergara Printing.  I remember how we used to play in the meadow by the windmill, too, with neighbors and friends at kids parties, running around hoping to not trip over a chamisa or turn an ankle in a gopher hole; also the places we played and practiced, like Canyon Road Park (that’s what we called it; like we called Valle Grande “Valle Grande” and never dreamt  outsiders would hang a hat like the pretentious “Valles Caldera” on Valle Grande) and the field at the then College of Santa Fe, which had “Agujeras Grande” prairie dog holes and mounds tempting death  in the outfield.  I pass by the newly leveled ball field at the ECI, that Brian must have circled around on with their tractor a thousand times and think, “better than CSF”.  My favorite activity, though, was to gather buffalo gourds by the railroad tracks, put them in plastic buckets, grab some of the old softball bats and my huge first baseman’s glove (which I used in the outfield) and climb the gravel track’s “mound”  to pitch them to whichever children or passers- by  wanted to give it a shot.  It was as much fun as ‘taking the ducks to the river’ (an expression I made up based on that chest opening activity) !  These images, to me, are timeless.

  So when Bernard and Dave and Tom and I took a short hike up to the burned-out line-camp shack this cool spring day and scanned our eyeballs  over the Galisteo Basin to Lamy (home of the International Kite Flying Contest  ’81-‘87),  then clambered down to the other side where  we entered the zone which, like baseball and basketball and dancing and ‘taking the ducks……’; the arena where, for some reason, the camera is clicking right and left, the sky is blue blue, the senses are heightened, the imagination is stimulated and you feel like you are at a world class art museum or landscape (and you are!) as you perch on perfectly flat natural sandstone benches under timeless stone overhangs with soot stains in all the right places, the ancient junipers nearby have been hacked by axes a century or more ago to make a wooden club/bat and/or some charcoal (you know; for smelting silver in Socorro and such).  Here, someone had a contest, I think, hundreds of years ago;  to see which one could paint nicely  on this sacred stone and impress themselves (or someone else; perhaps a lover); the best “swing” they could take at rendering a lizard, a toad, and some buffalo gourd “b-balls” or their own “mitts”.  Batter Up…..Swing Batter! Okay?

How to Re-Create or Wonderful New ‘USes’

Years ago there was another drought coupled with swarms of grasshoppers chewing my veggies , sparking an interest in raising turkeys which, I found out, are grasshopper eating machines and you just had to be careful with the turkeys around your children because they tended to go for the little dot eyes, being capable but not all that smart; (not the child; the fowl, of course).  I even bought a bb gun to use them for target practice (not the child, of course) and even tried to teach my teenagers how to shoot, until I had to put a halt to that because of the car windows they were shooting out by mistake when they missed the grasshopper.  I ventured up to the other end of our valley to visit Suchi.  I am not sure where she is now and haven’t seen her truck, riddled with progressive bumper stickers and loaded down with manure, for a while.  Her garden was stunning; the corn plants were taller than me; the soil was the proverbial “sponge” we yack about at watershed restoration meetings; when you walked on it.  I said, “How do you do it” and she said, and I quote, “Soil is Everything!”  I continue to think about that statement and what it means and I take it to perhaps even loftier levels than she might have.  I am still working on the soil in my little way, having raised donkeys for many years and I have used their ‘road apples’ for mulch, fertilizer and for blackening steel, which I discovered when I remembered that Maria the potter discovered the black glaze she is so famous for because when they were firing, raku style, there was manure in the straw and the rest is history. I also compost and save or recycle almost everything.  There is that word again; a dirty word in family squabbles; I have learned not to talk in generalities like, “you always……. everything”; that is a recipe for disaster!  But, with things, which many people eschew, preferring a minimalist, non-material, Zen sort of existence where objects are tossed or given away with fervor; and I am often the recipient, therefore have a fairly large ranch style ‘boneyard’ for objects of interest to me (everything) and I often sing the little song as I cart away ‘unwanted items’, “I’m just a guy who can’t say “No”; I’m in a terrible fix….”.  So I have stuff to make stuff with and that is what I do.  I love old weathered wood because I do not have to put a finish on; maybe some wax; saving  time and my health.  I save trips to town because I have the “raw materials” on hand to create with.  It is a lifestyle and sort of a choice.  An old pet travelling container on end makes a great compost bin and mine have survived a few bear raids.  Cardboard is great for working on cars or making templates. Pallets are very useful; I even made an emergency railroad crossing.  I mix oil and sawdust to start fires in my shop.  I use steel for making stiff things and tools, like the great spud that I call “The Tool” out of a broken leaf spring; wire is always handy, iron is for melting with the Iron Tribe, dead piñons have warmed our house for years.  The list of resourcefully created objects  drones on, including an outdoor reusable dance floor that Keith helped me put together a few times, a log splitter, bridges and road drags, plant holders and sheds, fences and sculptures.  When talk arises about “reconstruct, recycle, reinvent, restore”, my eyes light up and the juices get flowing and I am off; “cooking soup with stale words and fresh meanings; it tastes soo good”, thinking outside of the “crate”. Now we are talking ‘sustainability’ , helping the “soil”, the milieu, as it were;  get better and better, until we are rich and fecund and useful, like the busy beavers of old or my two year old grandson, Abe, who made a Play-Doh blender; with fruit, ready to whirl,  the other day.   And these concepts all apply to our personal desires to rebuild our contentment, reinvent our attitudes and priorities; take the raw materials of our past, pay attention to the values, find our voices, remember our experiences and create wonderful new “USes”!  Good pun, if I do say so myself!