Santa Fe Opera

The fabulous outdoor ( yet semi-covered) Santa Fe Opera House. What the photo doesn't show you is the incredible view of the Sangre de Cristo mountains, behind the open air stage, that serve as a backdrop for every opera. 

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Every couple of years or so, I get to visit Santa Fe during the opera festival held there, generally during August. One of the best destination opera festivals in the USA, not just bc of the quality of the stars / shows held there, but bc Santa Fe is such a beautiful place, with many interesting things to do. See art museums and galleries, tour historic sites, shop and eat gourmet food all day long, and see a breath-takingly beautiful opera, a different one each night! 

opera picnic before the show

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This year, I visited when my childhood friend Bill was there, working as a journalist. Bill and I have been attending operas together since we were 13 years old, and he has educated and shared his passion with me, as well as his opera tickets, ever since. Together we have seen Beverly Sills and countless others,  all the way to today's opera stars. 

I stayed at this marvelous little B&B just 5 minutes from the square in Santa Fe, called Ravens Ridge. It was a lovely, serene place to stay, peaceful and restorative from the social la ronde of opera going. Ravens Ridge B & B has a beautiful garden, full of hummingbirds, and serves breakfast each day out of doors in the garden. Beautiful rooms, delicious food. I highly recommend it and will stay there again next time I visit. As an added bonus, the owner of RR B&B is also an oil painter, and we spent many a happy hour discussing her work, as well as my own.


http://www.ravensridgecasita.com/

While in Santa Fe this time, I visited "Meow Wolf" , a sort of modern pop art installation meets indoor playground, full of tiny rooms with wacky themes, escape hatches, colorful lights, campy decor, and general creative fun. Here I am entering a refrigerator, about to slide down a chute into another room. There is always something fun to do in Santa Fe - I've been coming since I was a little girl, when my parents took our family, as many Texans do, to escape the summer heat. (Yeah, SF is a dessert, but at nearly 8,000 ft elevation, it's significantly cooler than Texas.) I've spent years visiting Ghost Ranch, Abiqueu, Taos, Ojai, museums and  art galleries, the Cathedral w the spiral staircase, shopping, sampling restaurants, etc. All the things one does in SF. It's good to know that there  is always something new to experience. 

Hobbies

During a recent trip to Santa Fe, I signed up for another class from the fabulous Santa Fe School of Cooking. I first learned about this place 20+ years ago, and took all their basic Tex Mex and SW NM Mex cooking courses prior to moving to the New York area, preparing myself for the dearth of Mexican food while living there. Those skills have stood in good stead ever since, and I was excited to add to my repertoire.

You can choose from a diverse selection of  classes, either hands on or demonstration, but I mostly prefer hands on - I think I learn it better that way. Both versions come with wine! In this most recent class, the topic was "Chile Rellenos Four Different Ways" - it must be noted that I had never particularly liked chile rellenos, prior to taking the course. (It was the only one that fit my schedule.) However, the four different versions we made were delightful, and significantly better than the canned crap one gets in most chain restaurants. Like so many things in life, making it yourself from quality ingredients makes a huge difference. I highly rec this store/ classes/ experience, if you are in Santa Fe, make an effort to take a class. I would even recommend it as a destination! It's a fun two hours, then you get to eat what you cooked.

https://santafeschoolofcooking.com/Cooking_Classes/index.html

Goliad

                                                             Goliad Courthouse

Goliad, Texas is a beautiful old little town in south Texas, between San Antonio and Corpus Christi / Victoria. One of the earliest settlements in the state, it is the location of one of the 3 famous battles for Texas Independence (the most famous of which is the Battle of the Alamo). It is also the family homestead of one of my oldest friends, whose father passed away in August.

Family reunions these days seem to increasingly only happen at weddings and funerals. My own family of origin is small and mostly deceased or estranged, and long ago I was sort of adopted into my friend's . These people are kinder and more loving to me than my own ever were, and I feel fortunate to know them and be part of them.

My childhood friend Bill has been godfather and mentor to my sons for their entire lives. Lord knows he and his parents have bailed me out of some sticky situations, most notably a terrible divorce in my youth. Bill is the closest thing to a sibling I have; I call him my brother. I have loved his parents as my own. While we were sad in the passing of Bill's father, a widely esteemed kind old man, coming together on his father's behalf was joyful in and of itself.

The Continuing Adventures of a Middle Aged Fat Woman

When I was 20, the summer I lived in Israel and Italy for the digs, my friends and I travelled one weekend to Eilat, on the Red Sea. We visited one of the world’s greatest coral reefs- spent the entire day swimming lazily through a long narrow bay, w very calm water, walk out beach entrance, looking underneath the water surface at the marvelous sites below. 30-100 feet below, in amazingly clear well lit water, we saw the most magical things you can imagine - like Disneyland, a great aquarium, a movie - all rolled into one, only real. Exotic colorful fish and corals of all different kinds. All around us, reddish mountains reflected in to the water. An electric eel swam right up to me, intrigued by the twinkling gold necklace I had on, and tried to bite it. I had to cover the glinting metal w one hand and swim away w the other. As we floated through the water, we were guided by channel markers to follow a path, with some things labeled w signs, below. Finally looking up, I noticed I was waaay out in the ocean, and had to swim back. Young,healthy,and strong, I never experienced fear. Suffered one of the worst sunburns of my life, on my back side, bc I was too focused on all the beauty below to notice I was burning. When the sun finally set, turning the red mountains purple, life and the world around me felt so anti-climatic. Nothing again would ever be so beautiful.

Ever since that experience, I have wanted to repeat it. Yesterday I got the chance.

Rick and I got up at 3:30am, grabbed an early morning flight from Curacao to Bonaire, to join a day trip tour of the coral reefs (also some of the top 10 coral reefs in the world, as w Eilat.) on Klein Bonaire, a tiny little islet next to Bonaire. We were taken out into the middle of the channel on a catamaran sailboat, and accessed the reefs directly by jumping off the boat into the middle of the ocean. The surface of the water was various shades of bright turquoise to dark indigo blue, indicating shallow or deep areas below. There was a fair amount of chop from the winds. The best coral reef observing zone was right where the two color bands of water met, bc this color change also indicated warm to cool convergence zones, where lots of nutrients, and lots of fish would be. This time, I was not young, healthy, and fit - I was fat, middle aged, with numerous health problems and terrified. But I wanted to experience that other worldly beauty one more time. I had a panic attack when I hit the water, but jumped in, anyways. I had problems w my mask. My asthma kicked in to high gear. But I kept going. My swimming is fine, my breathing is problematic. Eventually, our dive guide just towed me around, clinging to a boogie board. I was humiliated. The stereotypical fat American. But I kept going. For it was every bit as beautiful as I remembered. Sugar white sand on the ocean floor, shadowed light and dark by the sun sparkling through waves on the “ceiling” of the ocean’s surface. Corals of every kind and color- purple tubular , yellow, red, green and orange brain, dark green moss, orange staghorn, reddish brown pine tree, purple and yellow fan corals, and more. Parrot fish, angel fish, puffer fish, blue fish, color changing fish, zebra fish, eels, turtles, black and white fish, and more. It was too beautiful for words. I can’t tell you how happy this made me. And of course, today Rick and I each have a terrific sunburn- in-spite of slathering ourselves w sunscreen, wearing rash guard shirts, etc. But that’s ok. I got to experience that beauty one more time.

Retirement Goals

For the past 31 years, I have taught high-school English, mostly in Texas, grades 10-12 (16-18 year olds). Texas is a conservative place overall, and while our cities are increasingly blue / democrats, schools are the last bastion of old Southern traditions. Principals actually address dress code for staff at the beginning of each school year, and teachers can and do get fired if they don’t follow the rules (other excuses might be given, but sexy / trashy/ unkempt dress for females is not tolerated. )  “Teacher dress “ is a real thing and I can spot a fellow educator from far away. 

When I was a girl growing up in Dallas in the 1960’s, my mother ensured that I was “raised right.” I had school dresses and church dresses and play dresses (with shoes to match). My bff , born in Germany, was asked to go home and change bc she didn't wear a dress to school in 1967. My mother also ensured I had nightgowns, robes, under garments, slips and petticoats to go with all my outfits. As late as 1994 my mother wouldn’t let me out the door in a sexy well-fitted British suit that cupped my ass just a bit. She refused to let me get my ears pierced at age 13  bc only “fast” girls did that. We fought on that forever till I threatened to do it myself. 

So it was with deep satisfaction that I celebrated my retirement by getting the one thing I could never have as an AP English teacher, doing the one thing that would piss my mother off violently. Thank god she is dead. Men buy sports cars for their mid-life crises. I got a tattoo. 

Sure everyone has them now you say, but for my social group, I’m just a bit risqué. It’s a lotus, a beautiful flower that grows from the muck, and a unalome, a Buddhist symbol signifying life’s journey.