You better believe I picked the heck out of those beauties, and cooked them up into the most delicious syrups, jams, and candies. The postman got some, my neighbors got some, and my friends and family probably got more than they wanted. I shared cases of mixer with my favorite bartenders, and loved the cocktail recipes they’ve cooked up with it.

Time passed, and there I was on Jenny’s farm, in chokecherry season, and I remembered that there was a tree on the ditch. I walked over and the neighbors’ dog started barking wildly until Adrienne came out to see what the fuss was about. I explained that I was picking chokecherries so I could give Julie some jam so I could pick her cactus and make more prickly pear yumminess. Adrienne showed me the motherlode near her home office, at the back of her big field. I never would have found that tree! The chokecherries were dark and luscious, staining my fingers as I filled my bucket. Adrienne laughed when I offered the prickly pear syrup in return, but her husband loved it. And Julie got more chokecherry jam and delicious chokecherry cordial.

Then the wild plums got ripe all up and down the Rio Embudo. Tiny, but sweet like candy. Jenny and Adrienne’s neighbor Jeannie hollered at me as I walked down the road with my trusty fruit pickin’ bucket. “I have so many,” she called, “I appreciate the fruit getting used!” So I picked up and down her ditch as she told me about the loves of her life: her late husband, her elementary students and her grown children who live far off but visit as much as they can. Lluvia and Maria heard I was picking Jeannie’s plums and asked, please could I pick theirs too? What a year for fruit!!

So Jeannie got plum wine in cute little Italian bottles, and all the ladies got jam and candies and hooch. And some of the plums got sugared, and some of the plums got baked into pastries. A lot of the plums just ended up right in my belly and I’m sorry to say I actually did the thing where I snuck around at night and left little baskets of plums by my neighbors’ doorsteps because there really were maybe too many. But as they say, nothing succeeds like excess, and who am I to close my eyes to such a bountiful gift?

And the world turned, and the seasons passed as they do. I woke up the morning of December 25th with not a single present nor holiday card nor a loved one by my side to wish me well. So I took my gifts from the golden summer and turned them into the Chanukkah delicacy, sufganiyot. Wild plum and chokecherry filled donuts, sprinkled with the plum infused sugar. My recently widowed friend got a plate, so did my recently divorced friend. My friend who is caring for her dad in hospice got one. My friends whose nests emptied out this fall. My friend who just got a pacemaker. New friends, old friends, friends I haven’t seen in a long while. Friends who were struggling and friends who were celebrating. Two dozen in total. It took all day, and I returned home exhausted and content.

I frequently fear for humanity, with so much anger and division and alienation and bitterness. But I’m learning that each act of kindness in this dark world acts as a stone thrown in a pond, with ripples expanding in extraordinary ways. A little friendship, a little sugar and the earth’s bounty, and a miracle happens. The light increases, the joy grows, and the community becomes stronger.

Thanks to all my subscribers for making this truly shit year a beautiful one! I don’t know why you do it, but I appreciate you!! May 2025 bring you daily miracles, increased joy, and delicious treats!

“Mama, why is this here?” my daughter asked as we drove slowly alongside the dizzying, massive structure. “I mean besides racism?”

Well shoot, honey. Besides racism? It’s hard to know how to find a thread to start talking about the border without bringing up racism. It’s not like the grass is greener north of the border. Desolation feels like the most useful adjective for describing the landscape, towns, and people in this part of America. I guess the “why” starts with the fact that Americans really wanted the gold in California, and New Mexico was totally in the way.

It must have been a crazy time, back in the middle of the 19th century. In America, it was all about manifest destiny! Expanding the Republic from sea to shining sea! In Mexico, it was about revolution! and more revolution! and more revolution! and more revolution. Que viva!! In 1820, the US and Spain had been close to signing a treaty to formally establish a boundary, which would have ceded what is now California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas, along with about half of Colorado, bits of Kansas and Oklahoma.  Before any treaty could be finalized, Mexico broke from Spain.

New Mexicans were royalists to the bone, in no small part because the Spanish crown supported the mission project, providing a fairly dependable trickle of income and goods to the impoverished colony. New Mexico’s last Spanish Governor, Don Pedro Pino, had pleaded with the crown for protection against the aggressively restless Americans. Subsequent governors would plead with whichever Mexican government was in power during those turbulent years, but no help was ever provided, and not only did the restless Americans pour in on the Old Santa Fe Trail, but a few years later they invaded on that very trail, as always, en route to somewhere more interesting (in this case, Ciudad Chihuahua).

By the time the dust settled and the ink dried on the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, America discovered it was stuck with New Mexico. And if that wasn’t enough, a few years later, they had to buy a little more to tack on at the bottom so the Southern Pacific trains could go through. The government gifted quite a bit of land to the railroad companies, and the Southern Pacific tried their darnedest to sell the heck out of the Chihuahuan desert scrublands, walking right up to the line of outright fraud, with the hyperbole they published in their organ, Sunset Magazine. “Everlasting and inexhaustible” water? Psssht, not EVEN! 

The job of surveying the border first fell to the one John Bartlett, who spent a lot of time partying and dancing and admiring the low-cut necklines popular in New Mexico at that time. He accidentally ceded quite a bit of land to Mexico through his cavalier carelessness, but the Gadsden Purchase resolved the error. The job of TRULY establishing the border then became the work of Brigadier General William H. Emory, who took his job incredibly seriously. Emory wrote of his expedition:

My own expectations, and I hope those of the government, were entirely fulfilled in the manner in which the work was accomplished. Under all circumstances-- during the cold winter exposed upon the bare ground of the bleak plains, and in the summer to the hot sun blazing over the arid desert-- every order was executed with fidelity, and the work was completed within the time, and largely within the amount appropriated by Congress. 

We passed the entire width of the continent and returned with the loss only of two men, and without losing a single animal, (except those worn out by service), or suffering a stampede by the Indians ; at the same time that our co-operators on the Mexican commission were twice robbed of every hoof by the Apaches, and extensive losses were sustained by other detachments of United States troops, and by our citizens traversing this region.

Starting at El Paso, and throughout the desert, Emory built stone monuments to mark the border. We had traveled down there to find this one, right on the corner of the bootheel.

Sadly, the whole border is so obstructed now that getting to the monument— which is still there because the terrain is so rugged the fence has gaps— did not seem possible in the vehicle we had, or in the time we had. It’s worth it to note that everything looks pretty much exactly like it did in Emory’s time. This is some incredibly hostile land, filled with a variety of plants with long thorns, and also venomous snakes. As Emory pointed out, this hostile land was already inhabited, even before the Spanish, by the famously hostile Chiricahua Apache.

The Spanish, and then the Mexicans, coped with the Apache as best as they could, but the Americans were determined that nothing was going to stop economic development in this particular desolate patch of land, so they sent the US Army to deal with it. Except because this was happening after the Civil War, they sent the newly-created colored battalions, who eventually became known as “Buffalo Soldiers” down to the border to fight all the people in the land they inadvertently seized.

A doctor who spent years stationed with these battalions wrote,

“to the west and southwest stretched the limitless prairie, dreary and desolated. The only green things visible in the landscape were the few stunted trees at the spring, half way between the Fort and the entrance to Cook’s Cañon. After marching for days and weeks through an enemy’s country, with the rough mess-kit of a campaigner, with the horror of a visitation of cholera, to which their brave surgeon and his wife fell victims, these ignorant colored soldiers who had been buoyed with delusive hopes on leaving the fertile lands of Georgia, found themselves in this dreary, prison-like abode, exposed to all the discomforts of a home in the desert, and to all the dangers of a powerful tribe of merciless Apaches, forever on the warpath.”

Even after things got settled with the Apaches, the Army continued to deploy the Buffalo Soldiers to protect corporate infrastructure in desolate places, including mines and railroads.

One of the most unpleasant outposts must have been Camp Furlong, just north of the Mexican border, protecting the Southern Pacific railroad depot, hotel and customs office. When I first came across these pictures at the UNM library, I thought they were taken outside the camp. They were not, they were taken in camp. This was where these men had been living for four years. In tents. When I stood in this place recently, it was bitterly cold, windy, and alternating hail, rain and snow. New Mexico State Parks has planted cactus all over so it looks quite pretty, but just beyond the town, it’s back to the mesquite and creosote and dust devils. If you look at this picture, they’re all sitting on ammo crates, because that’s all they got from the Army.  How do you tell this story without racism?

So that was how things stood at the turn of the 20th century. America had more or less fought itself out…. but Mexico had not!

I’m told that Pancho Villa was the first reality star, and was sort of just having a revolución for the hell of it, and staging stunts for the press like issuing his own currency or invading America. So he crossed the border with his troops, and scuffled with the Buffalo Soldiers (who had to bust the lock off the armory because the white COs had locked up the ammo and lost the keys), then retreated. 

In this part of the world it was the greatest thing that ever happened! The soldiers at Camp Furlong got buildings to live in! Columbus got on the map! Nowadays you can visit Pancho Villa State Park and if you’re lucky, eat at Pancho Villa Burritos food truck. We were not lucky because as I said, it’s desolate, and Columbus is quietly dying in the sun. Its primary purpose seems to be hosting people getting dental work done five miles away in Puerto Palomas de Villa, where a magnificently heroic Pancho Villa greets you as you cross into the country.

Puerto Palomas is everything Columbus is not. It’s lively, full of children and young people, with abundant restaurants and shopping. The medical industry dominates the town, with large, modern dental and vision clinics serving the desperate Americans pouring across the border. But nearly everywhere you go in town the border wall dominates the landscape, looming over residents’ bungalows and gardens.

This specific bit of fencing seems to have been a particularly expensive artifact of George W. Bush’s Global War on Terror. His newly-formed, sinister Department of Homeland Security pushed for the Secure Fence Act of 2006, which ended up costing over six billion dollars and broke numerous environmental laws to build several hundred miles of border fence. The hysteria of the GWOT fueled hysteria around immigration, and an early version of MAGA involved the border ranchers forming a militia to drive around in jeeps and shoot at migrants and destroy water caches. Under pressure from the right, Obama continued to fund the work, adding cameras and other technology to monitor border crossings, and CBP completed the fence in 2015, including many miles of pedestrian fencing, secondary fencing and tertiary fencing.

Customs and Border Patrol seems like they’re probably the highest paying jobs down in the bootheel, and pretty sweet gigs, too. In our effort to find the corner monument, we saw CPB guys in their trucks with the big police cameras on them, in their trucks watching traffic, and in their trucks at the checkpoints. They did not get out to interact with us. The 5G is not great out there but maybe they have porn downloaded on their laptops. It’s pretty lonely otherwise. The train doesn’t even go through any more; the embankments are collapsed and the tracks have been pulled up.

So…. why is that terrible, brutal scar of a wall here? Besides racism? Greed, to start with. A sense of exceptionalism. Theater and ego. A reckless disregard for the land and its people in favor of scoring political points. Coastal scorn for the heartland. 

And it really wasn't worth it.

Why start a venture with stories about poop? It’s a terrible idea, it’s unprofessional, it’s juvenile, it’s gross. 

Todos hacemos caca, so the saying goes. Everyone poops. Kurt Vonnegut speculates that a million years from now, the one thread that connects humans then with the humans of our time is that when someone farts, everyone giggles. The Fool of Tarot laughs as he sets off under his own steam, bound for adventure, showing his ass to the past. Stink and poop are always in the trickster’s arsenal because we first experience and understand the world through our bodies, which excrete and eliminate in all kinds of hilariously smelly ways.

I have always loved trickster tales and for the most part this podcast will be about the scammers and politicians and conmen who populate New Mexico’s history so richly. But just like any academic study starts with the Greeks, it seems right that this podcast should start with my favorite trickster, showing his whole ass.

Desert Abundance is a very personal project, born out of decades loving the lands and people of New Mexico. Perhaps these are not my stories to tell, and for that I’m sorry. I love these stories a lot, and hope I do them justice.

Traditional flat roofs are a leaky nightmare, but you can climb up on them to check if the mountain is still there..

The funny thing is I was already here. I had transferred to the Santa Fe campus of my college and really spent a pretty long time up in the ivory tower on the hill, not thinking about my surroundings much. But I did notice things. The people were freaking weird as hell in every possible way and very rich or very poor and lots of people were very angry for reasons that were not clear. Every day and every view is insanely beautiful and just watching the clouds roll through the sky is magnificent. The river ran through town but there was no water in it. One day they opened the gates of the acequia madre and everyone came out to watch the water trickle through the ditch. Why? What the heck?

Just regular New Mexico stuff, with the tourists watching.

Milagro Beanfield War held the answers to my questions. At first I fell in love with his characters, the “inbred, toothless, tubercular, flea-bitten, illiterate vecinos, sobrinos, primos, cuates, cabrones, rancheros and general all-around fregado’d jodidos.” From blustering, ignorant asshole Joe Mondragon, the hero of the story, to sweet alcoholic Flossie with her Texas drawl and her “are we the baddies” moment, and including the cops, the mechanics who can keep any car running, the lost and confused city kid, the drunken santero, the bad dogs, the grifters and developers, the embittered and cynical leftist attorney, the immortal Amarante Cordova and his drunken asshole old lunatic friends, the housekeepers, veterans, lonely widowers, and small farmers, every person in this story is someone you will meet in New Mexico, even the Coyote angel. If you look at the landscape and the weather and the low low prices for real estate, you may think OH HEY WHY NOT. Or maybe you’re just a clueless college kid in a new town. And then you end up with Abel Armijo the backhoe driver next door with his goddamn rooster that crowed whenever it felt like it, which was all the freaking time.

Goddamn rooster! Abel Armijo the backhoe driver turned out to be a nice guy and it only now occurs to me that he always introduced himself as Abel Armijo the backhoe driver because he knew a lot of Abel Armijos who did other things (maybe nefarious!!) and wanted to avoid confusion.

John Nichols helped me understand and appreciate Abel Armijo the backhoe driver and his goddamn rooster. Milagro Beanfield War also opened my eyes as to why the Armijos and the Trujillos and the Jaramillos and the Montoyas and the Bacas were all so pissed. I can’t say even now I understand all the ins and outs of New Mexico land and water disputes but there is no denying the fact that Americans invaded, and then spent nearly a century raiding the land and water of the folks who were already there. Nichols captured the story one battle in a war that has raged since 1848, when Mexico ceded territory with the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. That war continues to this day, and northern New Mexico still feels very much like occupied territory.

In this land, for the people here, the land is sacred and the water is sacred. The relationship with the land and water is sacred, and those who care for the water and the land are honored. One of Nichols’ characters in the New Mexico trilogy literally cleans the acequia and frees the water as he is dying. When I read that, I understood why people lined the streets along the acequia madre to see the water flow again. It had been a long time coming (like decades-long lawsuits), and everyone’s heart burst with joy to have the water returned.

The Rio Grande cutting through the Taos gorge. Agua es Vida.

If not for John Nichols, I might not have started learning about the deep history of the people here, and the more recent history of American exploitation and extraction that happened on an individual level, with ruthless Anglo attorneys scamming residents out of lands, and it happened at the federal level, with fiats (creation of Santa Fe & Carson National Forests) that locked people out of their common lands. The history is all incredibly sad and convoluted and horrible and maddening, and Milagro Beanfield War is such a gentle, loving and humorous introduction.

The last few years I’ve been working with many villages like the fictional Milagro in northern New Mexico to support a community archiving initiative, where both residents and those in the diaspora can digitize and share their family images, documents and more, and reconnect in this way with both family and place. I’ve seen is that community libraries, community centers and schools become places for the residents of many generations to share their agricultural strategies, and knowledge of the land and water, with the newcomers who share their values.

And honestly, I think John Nichols plays a part in that too. What’s he been up to in the 50ish years since he wrote Milagro Beanfield War? Well, he wrote a metric shit ton of books, which are ok, and wrote another metric shit ton of letters and op-eds for very specific local audiences to persuade people in power to care for the land and the water and the people and to persuade the people coming in to care for the land and the water and the people AND to hold the fuckers in power accountable every single minute of every single day. And more or less, people have listened and made things better.

When I was following up on what happened to the Taos hippies, John Nichols was the only one who not only stayed, but stayed a thorn in the side of capitalism and colonialism. Praise be upon him and may his memory inspire us to show our love by making good trouble and great art. May “a bunch of limping, chewed-up, noisy, useless, blind drunk, flea-bitten, tail-dragging, shifty-eyed Coyote Angels” sing him right to heaven.

Joe fell into a peculiar reverie….he was with his father, Esequiel Mondragon…. on either side of them, in the Curandero Valley, aspen trees were a lovely buttery yellow, shivering in the Indian Summer breezes. Several times they spotted small bunches of mule deer moving along the upper meadow slopes near the tree line…. Today that road in the valley had been paved….

After the Civil War ended, the United States turned its energies into warring on the Native people, or as military documents put it, “securing the western frontiers.” In New Mexico, raids on settlers had increased while the Anglos fought each other, and the U.S. Army was willing to back an ambitious, but ill-conceived plan to remove some of the Natives from their homelands and turn them into peaceful farmers. Toward this effort, the Diné were driven from their homes, and forced to march to Hwéeldi, the place of suffering and fear, where they were held with many Mescalero Apaches. In 1868, the Diné negotiated a treaty enabling them to peaceably return to their sacred homeland. The full might of the military then turned against the Chiricahua, Mimbres and Mescalero Apache for another two decades.

Life was daily misery, privation, and danger for soldiers stationed out in New Mexico. Memoirist James Bennett’s commander was killed by Apaches in the White Mountains, and although barefoot in February, Bennett survived the icy mountains on a “light diet” of horse and mule flesh to return Captain Stanton’s remains to his widow. Malaria turned out to be a surprisingly bad problem for the riverside forts; Fort Thorn was entirely decommissioned because of epidemic conditions. 

The military’s solution to the horrible conditions was to send in newly commissioned Black soldiers (later nicknamed Buffalo Soldiers), many newly freed and wishing to leave the south. The 57th and 125th Infantry Regiments arrived in 1866 and were stationed between Fort Stanton and Fort Selden. 

Nothing about their service was easy, starting with the resentment of the white soldiers. The military doctor W. Thornton Parker wrote about when the first detachment of Black soldiers was sent to Fort Craig for guard duty. The white soldiers there were “bordering on munity” and “bloodshed was seriously anticipated.” The white soldiers refused to present arms or acknowledge the new guard despite direct orders, so the officers hung them by their thumbs until they agreed to “salute the uniform of the United States” regardless of who was wearing it.

The Black infantrymen often got the most menial or dangerous jobs. Most jobs at some forts, like gathering firewood, were both. Fear of encountering the Apaches was constant, so soldiers could not leave their garrison without permission, and usually hunted in large parties. 

Describing the troops’ life at Fort Cummings in 1867, Parker wrote

“to the west and southwest stretched the limitless prairie, dreary and desolated. The only green things visible in the landscape were the few stunted trees at the spring, half way between the Fort and the entrance to Cook’s Cañon. After marching for days and weeks through an enemy’s country, with the rough mess-kit of a campaigner, with the horror of a visitation of cholera, to which their brave surgeon and his wife fell victims, these ignorant colored soldiers, who had been buoyed with delusive hopes on leaving the fertile fields of Georgia, found themselves in this dreary, prison-like abode, exposed to all the discomforts of a home in the desert, and to all the dangers of a powerful tribe of merciless Apaches, forever on the warpath.”

On top of that, “Every possible punishment employed in the discipline of frontier posts was inflicted on them.” 

Despite the hardships of these posts, and the discouraging beginnings, the Black troops distinguished themselves as “trustworthy, brave and intelligent,” particularly the 24th and 25th Infantry and the 9th and 10th Cavalry.  The fabled 9th Cavalry relocated their regimental headquarters to Fort Union between 1875-1881, and from there deployed to Fort Bayard, Fort Craig, Fort Cummings, Fort McRae, Fort Selden, Fort Stanton, Fort Tularosa and Fort Wingate. The 9th Cavalry not only fought bravely against the Apaches in “Victorio’s War,” but helped restore peace during the violent upheavals in Lincoln and Colfax counties.

Geronimo’s band of Chiricahua Apache surrendered in 1886, and the United States slowly decommissioned their forts, allowing some to crumble into the ground, and repurposing others as hospitals. The final active Black regiments, members of the 25th Infantry Regiment and ninth Cavalry Regiment, were stationed at Fort Bayard and Fort Wingate 1898-1899. After leaving the military, many men established homesteads, particularly in eastern and southern New Mexico.

Earlier this year, I was honored to assist with a commemoration project to honor some of these men. In an unlikely but fruitful alliance, the New Mexico Buffalo Soldiers Motorcycle Club and the Lew Wallace chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution teamed up to create audio eulogies for each Buffalo Soldier buried in historic Fairview Cemetery in Albuquerque (that the DAR ladies could find records for), starting with the first newly freed men like James Price.

Sargeant James Price

From my amazing colleagues at the Salus Populi Pension Project, I was aware that the the records of colored soldiers were not well maintained or preserved. However, I was unprepared for how scant the documents turned out to be. In many cases, we had an enlistment date, a re-enlistment date, and a date for mustering out. In some cases, there was paperwork for a charitable group paying for a funeral or headstone.

Private Oscar Warner

In order to paint a clear picture, we created timelines for where these troops had been stationed. It became clear that well after the territorial era, these Buffalo Soldiers stayed in the thick of things, from combating Pancho Villa down at Camp Furlong to fighting alongside Teddy Roosevelt in Puerto Rico and the Philippines.

Private Sammuel Scott

On retirement, many of the veterans in Fairview got jobs with the railroad and settled in downtown Albuquerque. There, they continued to support each other, trying to negotiate a system that delayed both health care and benefits long past death, like in the case of poor Joseph Cammel.

Private Joseph Cammel

The pictures that emerged were heartbreaking, maddening, and incredibly inspiring. Despite everything in the system being against them, these men served honorably, lived honorably, and contributed to a diverse and vibrant community where their descendents could thrive. Eleazar Reynolds did not let his illiteracy stop his rise in the military ranks, but he ensured his children could read and write.

Sargeant Eleazar Reynolds

This project cost little beyond time and love to put together and it’s a beautiful way to surface heros (on many levels) who would otherwise be erased and forgotten. We’re hoping to work next with Fort Bayard in Silver City, the final resting place for many more of these valiant frontiersmen.

photographs of African American soldiers; Columbus (N.M.); 24th Infantry Division; 1918. Courtesy Center for Southwest Research, University Libraries, University of New Mexico

Wishing everyone a meaningful rememberance and the hope of peace.

In the time of the cottonwood, there was a man who had two beautiful wives, Blue Corn Maiden and Yellow Corn Maiden. These women both fell under the spell of some terrible witches. The witches caused them to be unfaithful to their husband and to become promiscuous and lying.

The stories about what happened next differ, but in no version of the tale do things turn out well for the wives. Their husband followed them to Uwaalaka and saw them having sex with the witches (who were mostly male). In some stories, the husband killed one wife, so the other wife decided to be faithful to him. In other stories, he killed both wives.

Witches didn’t leave the Taos girls alone, either. A witch boy had his eye on a certain pretty girl, but she refused him, so he killed her. The witches stole her body and then used magic to pull the bewitched arrows, spikes and stones out of her body while laughingly comparing their skills at sorcery. The girl’s little sister witnessed the theft of the corpse and followed the witches. She watched from behind a rock in mounting horror. The witches revived her dead sister only to turn her into a deer so they could hunt her and kill her again. As the witches rained arrows down on the terrified doe, the little sister ran home, appalled, helpless to stop the evil acts.

In the morning, a neighbor woman stopped by the girl’s house with a basket of fresh venison. The sister bravely drove the woman away, shouting, “We don’t eat people! Only witches eat people! You eat it yourself, you cannibal!”

Heeding the girl’s cries, the people of the Pueblo drove the woman and the other witches out. In revenge, the witches caused many people to sicken and even die. The witches had discovered a way to make themselves invisible so hunters could not find them. Finally, the Taos people trekked up to where Deer Woman lived in the mountains and asked her for help. She suggested that the witches could not resist a bet. If her two strong and fleet sons ran against the witches, they would surely prevail, and then the witches would have to leave.

As predicted, the witches agreed to the bet but insisted the race be around the whole world. When the Deer Woman’s sons showed up, the people’s hearts sank. The boys were nothing but skeletons with a little flesh. How could these skinny boys possibly outrun witches? The old men decided that all they could do was pray for victory.

The witches turned themselves into falcons, and soon they flew ahead of the Deer Boys, laughing and taunting them. The boys had been expecting this and took out little bags of medicine that they used to create a brutal thunderstorm. The thunder frightened the witch falcons, the rain soaked them and the lightning finally drove them to seek shelter. The birds huddled under a tree miserably, By the time the witches’ feathers were dry enough to fly, the Deer Boys were almost all the way around the world. The witch falcons doubled their speed until they could see the boys and flew even faster. The people and the witches were waiting at the finish line with their clubs, each waiting for their team to cross the finish line before killing the others. The Deer Boys finished just ahead of the witches, and the people fell on the witches with their clubs before the falcons could even cross the line themselves. The people killed all the witches except one, an old man.

He fell on his knees and pleaded for mercy, promising to change his ways and do only good for the rest of his days. Many disbelieved the words of the witch and were in favor of killing him. Some kindhearted souls argued that he was an old man and could do little harm. In the end, mercy won the day, and the old man was allowed to leave. Treacherously, he did not give up his evil ways, and today all witches on the earth are descended from the one witch allowed to survive.

Eventually, people learned effective ways of catching witches. The most common method entailed killing and skinning all stray animals. One night at Taos Junction, a man killed a witch in this way. While he was riding home, a huge black dog came bounding out of the brush and menaced him. He drew his bow and shot the dog with arrows until it fell dead. Cautiously, he used a knife to skin the dog and discovered a man curled up inside the dog skin. The Taos man recognized the dead brujo as one of a group of witches from Santo Domingo and Tesuque.

Another innovative Taos technique for capturing witches was making a “Juan circle.” First, a big circle is drawn. Then, a man named Juan enters the circle and turns his shirt inside out. The witches are irresistibly drawn into the circle and can be easily killed. Two men from Taos named Juan made quite a name for themselves as witch hunters and caught dozens of witches with this method.

Witch problems persisted in New Mexican pueblos and villages long after the Americans came. To their horror, New Mexicans came to discover that they could no longer prosecute witches under the new judicial system.

In 1853, four men from Nambé were hauled into Santa Fe on charges of murdering two others, who were believed to be witches. The accused, who included the governor of the pueblo and the fiscal, or constable, asserted that the alleged witches had been eating babies. They further claimed that they had seen the witches draw infant bones out of their mouths and noses. The baffled judge dismissed the charges for lack of jurisdiction.

About the same time, a man was arrested in Taos on charges of witchcraft. Officials bound the prisoner over to the United States District Court so that justice could be served, American style. They were soon to be disappointed. The district attorney explained to the frustrated prosecutor that witchcraft was not a crime under American law. When the people of Taos realized that their new government would not protect them from sorcery, they ultimately took matters into their own hands and simply lynched suspected witches.

The images in this piece were created by Taos artists such as Ila McAfee, Dorothy Brett and Frieda Lawrence from as illustrations and decorations for the local newspaper, El Crepusculó. My talented and delightful neighbor, Jane Abrams, found the original wood blocks, and recreated the charming, long-lost images of Taos as the American artists found it in the early 20th century.

You can find these stories and more in Wicked Taos, published by the History Press.

Legend has it that Scary Bunny was built by Rep Melanie Stansbury’s mother. I can affirm that children are mysteriously drawn to Scary Bunny like iron filings to a magnet, and over the two decades I wore Scary Bunny, children left their parents to cling to my giant weird floppy paws. I am a background checked mom, a scout leader, and a school volunteer, and I’ve never felt like such a dangerous predator as when I was Scary Bunny.

So anyway, my friend (second robot from the right), a vet who had been struggling with being in a wheelchair, decided the way to go was to turn his wheelchair into a puppet, and build a banging sound system into the chair. As a young woman commented to me once, “it must be great to have your own personal DJ and walk around vibing all the time.” It really is, especially as a middle-aged woman. Turns out there aren’t many spaces in the world that welcome middle-aged women getting funky in public. But if you’re a puppet, they let you do anything, and love you for it!

So the next step of course was making a puppet to match my DJ. Meet PortaBella (Bella for short) and Mr. Mushroom. We danced our way right through the pandemic and made some friends along the way.

And even more friends! Every time our merry ragged crew goes out, we make more friends. Everyone gets so freaking happy when the puppets are around, the city has started inviting us to family events. Guess what? It makes us happy, too! I remember at one point I was approached by some interviewer gathering covid stories, and he was like, are you sad? And I said no, I’m a giant mushroom dancing in the street with my mushroom friends! How could I be sad?

Which brings me to my point, I guess. Maybe being a weirdo in public isn’t your thing but what is your thing is:

Being joyful with your friends

Seriously. When we can’t sing Hallelujah or dance a jig or break bread or quaff a drink with the merry fellows, we feel sad and lonely and alienated and scared. For one reason or another, institutions that used to support community joy— singing and dancing and eating and drinking and being grateful— have fallen into disrepair and even family-oriented celebrations have fallen prey to commercialism and now ring hollow as joy creating.

How I see it is the best form of activism against fascism is creating opportunities for community joy. We can’t be scared when we’re laughing with our friends or eating a meal. We can’t fear strangers once we meet them. The gratitude that comes with spreading joy dispells hopelessness.

This morning I read well-written article after well-written article here on the Island of Niceness about creeping fascism and how it scares people away from public engagement. There are lots of “punch a Nazi” solutions but for those who took Palpatine seriously, try radical joy instead. In the end, living well is such sweet revenge. Especially if you are, at heart, a fungi.

Meet Claunch Bean Elevator.

If that’s too much for you can call her Bean, Black Bean, Baby Bean, or Bean Elevator. (yes I got eyedrops from the vet, she’ll be fine)

What, you may ask, is a Claunch Bean Elevator? Oh wow, only the most magical place in New Mexico, duh!

To see it for yourself, you have to to to Claunch! Claunch is far away from everything and you will never accidentally go to Claunch unless you didn’t know it was there because it’s such a small town. But it’s not on the road anywhere you’re going. And it’s probably not on the map you have either. (Sure it’s on Google, but you think you’re gonna have Google out there? Pssshttt. )

There’s about a dozen people who still live there but the WPA-era school is a burned out husk. The church looks OK, the post office was open when we were there and there’s not much else. The boy said it looked like the set of “There Will be Blood.”

Later I found out that Claunch was a thriving bean producing community until the nuclear tests of the 50s and they were downwinders, so…. no more beans, no more Claunch. I even met a Kathleen Claunch, who works down in Hobbes, and although her great-grandfather settled the community, she’s never set foot in it herself.

Anyway, back to the Claunch Bean Elevator. It’s right in the middle of town, across from the Claunch Community Church and defunct school.

If you should ignore the signs and sneak in under the loose siding you’ll find a mid-century museum. The newest items in here are maybe early sixties. Furniture, appliances, all kinds of amazing stuff just tucked away. But what’s really stunning are hundreds and hundreds of pictures on the walls of Mr. Claunch and his “dance partner,” a dark-haired beauty with stunning long legs. Mr. Claunch and his “dance partner” must have loved the high life his bean money brought him, because in all the pictures, they’re dancing, drinking cocktails, on cruises and beaches, at parties, laughing all the way through the forties, fifties, and early sixties together. Grinning around cigarettes and martinis when they’re not spinning and dipping, her long legs flashing from a number of gorgeous dance outfits.

Mrs. Claunch was still alive when we were there in 2020. Mr. Claunch had been gone for some 50 years by that point. My sense was Mrs. Claunch was still pretty pissed about all the dancing and that’s why everything was shoved into the bean elevator. But nothing will ever erase my sense of stepping back to a moment in time, a memory of raucous (and possibly raunchy) joy, when the bean crops were good, the music was playing on the hi-fidelity turntable, and you could dance all night with the lovely woman who was not your wife.

ANYWAY back to the important part, the kitty. Poor little dirty sad thing was out forgotten in the desert after some catastrophe. No one in the world was going to love her except me and my kids. Just like the Claunch Bean Elevator. And she’s a miracle of joy and love for me, also like the Claunch Bean Elevator.

There’s another layer, which has to do with the kitten in Milagro Beanfield War, but Bean Elevator is sleeping on my lap so there’s no way I can get up & get the reference. Trust me, the reference is simultaneously super cute and incredibly profound.

Thanks for reading! Hope you enjoy Claunch if you ever make it there! Don’t forget to stop at the Claunch Bean Elevator! It’s the most amazeballs!!

Harding County is not on any beaten path, and there are fewer people who live there than who lived in my apartment complex. Fewer cases of covid, too.

The town of Mills was established because a guy decided it would be brilliant to raise fruits and vegetables at the bottom of the canyon. It worked fine until the creek rose… the Canadian River, which formed the canyon, flooded and wiped out all the crops, trees, and structures. Also the hoist system he built to bring up the crops broke and fell into the canyon. Then WWI came along and everyone left and never came back. Or something like that, I’m not going to look any of this up.

Mills today has a post office and a kitty and a handful of people. There’s also awesome ruins to explore including the fabled two-holer outhouse. I took a speeding bluebird to the face when I hollered into the grain silo. Ow!

So we exhausted the pleasures of Mills & drove down into the canyon. There was a huge sign at the rim like “TURN BACK DO NOT DRIVE THIS ROAD YOU WILL DIE” but I never think those signs apply to me. 100 yards later I deeply regretted it but it was way too late. Somehow we made it down into the canyon and into a campsite on the river just before the monsoon hit and huddled though torrential flooding that thankfully abated. I stayed nervous though, wondering how to get OUT of the canyon the next day considering the steep single track road was mostly slippery clay where it wasn’t jagged rocks. We decided to hike as long as we could to let the road dry out the next day.

The next day was beautiful, and perfect for hiking! Except we didn’t want to be down by the river because there were fresh bear tracks. :-(

We tried exploring the hills, but there were rattlesnakes. :-(

We tried to explore the ruins, but there was a family of unmasked Texans (July 2020, no one had vaccines) camping down there too. They were cute but yuck.

Besides the built ruins, it was easy to see where the orchards had been.

And where the fields had been. Such a huge effort, wiped out in a single weather event.

Speaking of getting wiped out, the unmasked Texans had already left and the clouds were massing for the afternoon rains. It was time to leave. I have honestly never been so incredibly scared in my entire life as I was driving back to the rim on that road. It’s a miracle my Scion didn’t transform into a flaming ball of wreckage with what I put it through.

When we were safely trundling back to Mills along the long washboard road, I commented to my son that I wanted to tell him to take his seatbelt off & jump if I went off the road, but I didn’t want to scare him, and he answered “oh mom, I had my hand on the door handle the whole time.”

Anyway, that’s Mills, NM, at the heart of Harding County. I was glad to be reminded there are plenty of things to die of besides covid, and plenty of ways hubris shapes our interactions with nature. I will never go back. Five stars.

Epilogue: in a fit of depression during lockdown, I archived everything in my photo roll during the first six months of covid. Thanks, creepy and invasive Google bots, for reminding me of the anniversary of not dying horribly in the middle of nowhere.

When I figure out how to align my paypal & my substack subscription I’ll change the name. :-)