Snow daze in Santa Fe

But wait!! what is this. footsteps on the beach. not in Santa Fe!

Oh this must be Florida haven of snow bunnies! A quick trip to Pam and Bill's to discuss South Africa's beauty, wonderful people and difficult history. I briefed Pam's Ladies group and discussed with Bill's Symposium South Africa's challenges in terms of AIDS, violence and economic challenges going forward. The reason for coming after all was skiing, so you can imagine my horror when last year we had two inches of precipitation. This year the most spectacular snow, mountain and sunshine 20 minutes from home makes Santa Fe more than just home...it makes it a ski vacation, cultural tourism spot and full of natural beauty.But all is not lost! Back to Santa Fe for a quick ski day with great nephews Luke and Zeke followed by a hot tub in my jacuzzi followed by a massage. Then correct 250 papers for Midterm grades and flunk 10%. It seems that all might be lost when attendance drops in the senior class by 50% and juniors turn up only when it is time to preregister or get their grades. The most disheartening comments: "What do you mean Miss, just let me finish this text message." "Oh miss what page are we on." "Miss, that is too much work to do write an essay for this test." We went through the Age of Immigration by discussing the students ancestry. Recent immigrants from Mexico comprise approximately 40% of my students, another 40% of the students are “Hispanics,” identifying with their Spanish ancestors as distinct from Mexican nationals, and the remaining 20% are white, black and Asian. I am daily confronted by the mental borders that separate my students from each other and from embracing education as the great American equalizer. These students tend to lack age appropriate verbal and writing skills. One thing is clear, however, they all understand this image. "Freedom, jobs, opportunities, welcome to all." I began the new year with the book The End of Poverty. Just when I thought all would be lost forever, my Seniors came up with these bright questions about poverty: "What can we do about poverty." Why does the US spend so much on The War when people are so poor?" "Why do families have eight kids when they are so poor?" "Miss, my boss saw me reading that book and he wants to borrow it." "I love this book, this tells my life story when our family left Guatemala." Ah yes, the pros and cons of teaching!

We are in the home stretch at school Spring fever has set in as teachers scurry around for professional development. I have chosen Yale New Haven Institute where I hope to go this summer. I recently passed my NM Public Education Department Portfolio review. I think the committee was impressed by my presentation. Having survived first year of public school teaching, I can only tell you the opening scene of "Freedom Writers" tell the story accurately. I signed up for another year and look forward to a long summer!

Santa Fe and the southwest

Santa Fe and the southwest

Tilp family celebrates Christmas!!

The Tilp family portrait from 1958 and we are all alive and well! Thanks be to God. Our wonderful parents are in Essex, CT where they have developed a home and new friends at Essex Meadows. My father is known as the most mobile member of the residence, as he is completely reoriented to where he lives. He attends the early morning breakfast bunch, while my mother has made one foray to the gym and many--dressed to the nines-- to the dining room. They are both well. My sister Pam and her husband Bill and family are spending Christmas in Steamboat Springs. Wendy and her boyfriend Burton are happily enjoying Deep River Ct. together this holiday. Robin and husband Lindsay and son, Robert, will be entertaining the McManii clan in New York. Niece Reeve and her husband Mike and children are about to enjoy the white Christmas here in Santa Fe. Son Zeke is wired about a new Batman lego. I enjoyed opening our presents earlier this week in peace and tranquility. I ventured off to school this morning only to find yet another snow day closure and not the two hour delay reported on television. So off I went to the back of Mesa Verde to the beautiful landscape overlooking the Alameda and Santa Fe Mt. FINALLY all is white with about 10 inches of snow. I am not the only one enjoying the snow, though as the neighborhood dogs are on the loose and happy to be outdoors finally after yesterday's 10 hour snow. We have all

Tilp family celebrates Christmas!!

The Tilp family portrait from 1958 and we are all alive and well! Thanks be to God. Our wonderful parents are in Essex, CT where they have developed a home and new friends at Essex Meadows. My father is known as the most mobile member of the residence, as he is completely reoriented to where he lives. He attends the early morning breakfast bunch, while my mother has made one foray to the gym and many--dressed to the nines-- to the dining room. They are both well. My sister Pam and her husband Bill and family are spending Christmas in Steamboat Springs. Wendy and her boyfriend Burton are happily enjoying Deep River Ct. together this holiday. Robin and husband Lindsay and son, Robert, will be entertaining the McManii clan in New York. Niece Reeve and her husband Mike and children are about to enjoy the white Christmas here in Santa Fe. Son Zeke is wired about a new Batman lego. I enjoyed opening our presents earlier this week in peace and tranquility. I ventured off to school this morning only to find yet another snow day closure and not the two hour delay reported on television. So off I went to the back of Mesa Verde to the beautiful landscape overlooking the Alameda and Santa Fe Mt. FINALLY all is white with about 10 inches of snow. I am not the only one enjoying the snow, though as the neighborhood dogs are on the loose and happy to be outdoors finally after yesterday's 10 hour snow. We have all

Family values

Tilp family celebrates Christmas!!

The Tilp family portrait from 1958 and we are all alive and well! Thanks be to God. Our wonderful parents are in Essex, CT where they have developed a home and new friends at Essex Meadows. My father is known as the most mobile member of the residence, as he is completely reoriented to where he lives. He attends the early morning breakfast bunch, while my mother has made one foray to the gym and many--dressed to the nines-- to the dining room. They are both well. My sister Pam and her husband Bill and family are spending Christmas in Steamboat Springs. Wendy and her boyfriend Burton are happily enjoying Deep River Ct. together this holiday. Robin and husband Lindsay and son, Robert, will be entertaining the McManii clan in New York. Niece Reeve and her husband Mike and children are about to enjoy the white Christmas here in Santa Fe. Son Zeke is wired about a new Batman lego. I enjoyed opening our presents earlier this week in peace and tranquility. I ventured off to school this morning only to find yet another snow day closure and not the two hour delay reported on television. So off I went to the back of Mesa Verde to the beautiful landscape overlooking the Alameda and Santa Fe Mt. FINALLY all is white with about 10 inches of snow. I am not the only one enjoying the snow, though as the neighborhood dogs are on the loose and happy to be outdoors finally after yesterday's 10 hour snow. We have all gone our separate ways this Christmas but are united in spirit. Our most recent family portrait here from my niece Kate's wedding shows again the incredible beauty of this Southwest landscape...What a treasure this earth is and all of the people in it can be at this time of year when we celebrate light and life. May you and your family enjoy these holidays and the beauty around you which can be touched and felt with the heart. Peace on Earth and Happy 2007 to all.

As long as you are there

Adrienne Rich writes: "Living in the earth-deposits of our history Today a backhoe divulged out of a crumbling flank of earth one bottle amber perfect a hundred-year-old cure for fever or melancholy a tonic for living on this earth in the winters of this climate.” It has been one year since I moved to Santa Fe. People still ask me "Do you like it in Santa Fe?" I am convinced that the longer you are in a place, the more it grows on you and, if you are willing, the more you learn. My friend from Pojoaque, Ray has bestowed on me a beautiful drum which he worked on for a month. First he selected a cottonwood trunk and hollowed it out to just the perfect depth for sound. Then he stretched a deer hide across the top and attached it with some straps. The drum stick too is a work of art. Native Americans have an amazing appreciation for nature. Nothing is discarded, everything is used--from the pine needles to the reeds by the stream to the trunks of a tree. Each and every item in nature is sacred and has meaning and usefulness. I was sitting in church today next to a young man who had earrings and was dressed in blue jeans like me. We look out on Santa Fe Mountain above the altar and through large windows onto the horizon. A squal was picking up and moving toward us. The top of Santa Fe Mt. is enveloped in a cloud which is dropping snow on it. The young man says, "It looks like it might snow." I looked out and saw it heading toward us. "Do you think we will really get snow?" I inquired. "Snow or rain it is all good." he replied. I could not have moved here without my friend Ellen's help or my niece, Reeve and her family. We have celebrated birthdays and weddings and visits. A South Africa friend Claudia is here. I met her sister Pauline and her daughter, Junita, over 30 years ago in Nairobi. We had a birthday party at the Tesuque Village Market for Claudia. My niece, Reeve and her husband Mike have done a wonderful job with the restaurant. They are building a pizza oven and have enclosed the outside porch and heated it so that you can 'sit outside' this winter. Reeve and Mike's sons appeared on my door step for Halloween as Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker. The littlest one could not keep his helmet on for more than one minute. Fiestas, Spanish Market, Indian Market and Halloween have all come and gone. At the high school, teachers are not allowed to distribute candy and even the coke machines now have only sugar free drinks. So my students have turned to caffeine and "red bulls" and "Dynamites" in the morning. We had one orgy of candy on halloween and then it was onto the elections for an orgy of politics. The only way to really impress students is to be funny and provocative so halloween and the elections provided common cause. My colleague and I decided that we would dress up in period costumes. Chanelle is an english teacher and was Hester Prynne from the Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne. I was Abe Lincoln from our Civil War studies and the students had read the Gettysburg address and the Emancipation proclamation. Our school lost one teacher this month from ovarian cancer. In the tribute that was paid to her by the students during a memorial services, some of them said, "She taught us about complex physics and biology." However, it was more than that, they said, she taught them to question. In the beginning of the year, she brought a black box with something in it to class. Throughout the year, they asked question after question, trying to determine "What is in it?" They never got the answer. I asked one student who had completed a terrific assignment on diaries and letters of the Civil War how she had impersonated a slave so well in a diary. It astounded me that a girl from the southwest who has scant experience of the North and South, let alone what it was like to be a slave. We agreed that slaves probably could not write well, or they had taught one another. She replied, "I love Anne Frank, and I feel what she wrote too." One just has to be open for the wonderous moment and experience it once it comes. It really does not matter where it occurs as long as you are there.

We have all gone to look for America

The past several weeks have been a remarkable journey into those little known hearts and homes of Americans-or as my case has been-into New Mexicans corazons and casitas. My government and economics class gets a real taste of it as we focused last week on "Elections: Fact or Emotion-Myth or Reality..what is really happening across the country in voter minds." As they poured over data on candidates and their records and spending, students came up on their own with the idea that "candidates who use attack ads have weak records to stand on and it makes the attacker look worse"The Congressional fight here in NM (Wilson versus Madrid) is a case in point. The students are calling it the chick fight of the decade. The students are convinced that the biggest determinant for success as a candidate now stands on where you stood and how you stand on the war in Iraq. Most of my students frequently talk about "doing more for the poor" and so we are going to read An End to Poverty by Jeffrey Sachs, if I can convince the school district to fork out the $350 to buy enough paper backs for all the students. My history and geography students are in an earlier period on the antecedents (political, social and economic) to the Civil War in the United States. "Let's talk about Civil War." When you have moral outrage and economic tension, that equals Civil War. I submit to you that those were the indicators during the time of slavery coupled with the North and South codependence in economics terms or raw goods and manufacturing, and the fragility of a new nation, you get civil war. Sound familiar? Most of my students know little or nothing about Africa. Less than .005 percent are African American and so it is challenging. One thing I hope to do is get Nelson Mandela or Desmond Tutu painted on the mural on the front of the building along with Dr. Martin Luther King, Cesar Chavez and Frida Kahlo. I am still loving the teaching despite the day to day challenges. I can see a spark in many of the students despite the fact that the constant refrain is "Oh miss, this is so boring," or "Oh miss, can't we have a free day." Food works especially pizza and with the help of Ken Burnes on the Civil War, the new biography of Harriet Tubman and my indomitable passion for expanding the horizons of young people, will shall prevail. I feel like I am making progress in the planting of ideas that will some day come to fruition.

On a totally different note, my niece, Reeve, and her family and I went to a pueblo pow wow for young children in Pojoaque. There the kids were learning traditional dance.

They performed admirably with swirls and swoops as birds would and even the littlest ones seemd destined for stardome.

One feels that that world is 'lost' or losing its power. More and more traditions are dying out and while the porcupine feathers or shell headresses may be

replaced by something different, the intent and message is still there: pride in one's heritage, preservation of customs, respect for ancestry and tradition. These photos are courtesy of my niece Reeve.

Homecoming Week

From Fiestas to Homecoming. Capital High School during homecoming was chaotic but under control. We moved from 55 minute periods to 1 1/2 hour periods for 3 days. The length of time certainly makes a difference in the classroom. and what with 5 classes of 27 students average, it gives more prep time. The entire school enjoyed some fun activities and games like pie eating contests, tug of war, musical chairs, the senior survival challenge etc. In my US Government class, we have been covering some interesting topics since the start of the new school year. Among them are September 11th and the fallout from the Afghani and Iraq War. Also separation of powers and checks and balances as set forth in the Constitution and the erosion of habeas corpus through Presidential powers. First with the Supreme Court ruling on the Guantanamo Prisoners and now with the unprecedented powers approved by the Congress for the President. The senior class students are circumspect but quite decided about two things: they do not like the war and they feel the US is very fragmented and disunited. Their community and even the classroom has many differences represented but in the entire global scheme, they are much alike in heritage (hispanic) and comforts (american). I posted all my grades yesterday--worked a 60 hour week to get it done. There is snow on Santa Fe mt. and ice on my windshield but the garden still has the pond running and Mr. Turtle is somewhere hidden under a rock for a while. Some friends and I went high up to The White Rock overlook to see the Rio Grande, Black Mesa and of course for a short trip to Valle Grande (a dormant volcano) and Bandelier which is celebrating its 90th birthday. Bandelier is an ancient Anasazi Ruins where cliff dwellers resided for years before they disappeared and their offspring emerged in the Cochiti Pueblo and surrounding areas. The winter is definitely upon us as the minute the sun goes down the temperature drops almost twenty degrees. The mornings are crisp and clear though and the sunsets can be fabulous. The view from Mesa Verde reveals the aspens turning a bit yellow and the Santa Fe Ski Basin (though it had snow on it last week) is now covered with yellow and green aspens and evergreens and pinons. The Santa Fean chile festivals are in full swing. This is a local pasttime that surpasses any other. Chiles green or red are de rigeur. They are roasted or in a sauce on everything. The Indian Summer is bringing warm days but chilly nights, magnificent sunrises and lots of yellows and greens. We are waiting for the first snowfall which usually occurs in October. Hopefully this year, I will be able to ski 16 miles from my house. Otherwise, I will go back to Steamboat Springs where my nieces live in Colorado to get in some great skiing.

And the Rains Came! and So Did the Monsoons!

Santa Fe's past winter was the worst in 100 years for the snow pack which helps to create rivers and streams was nil--so say local historians. In the early spring, one would have thought that the drought of the Southwest was permanent until the monsoon season arrived this July-August. And then the torrential rains came and flooded towns, created rivers of road water and sand flowing down roads and through the arroyos. They actually had to release water from the dam on the Santa Fe reservoir to allow it to go through town in the arroyo a sight that has not happened for years!! The road in front of my house is on a steep incline from some dunes overlooking Santa Fe town. It is covered in mud from a flash flood earlier last month. High above me is a remarkable view of the mountains to the North, the Sangre de Christo to the East and the Jemez Mts to the West. Things have been in full bloom roses all year round, lavender and of course the miniature sun flowers that are planted in every vacant field. It is truly a season in bloom. My last week at Capital High School was dramatically new and exciting. Walking into a classroom of 130 students (75 in US History and Geography) and (50 in US Government and economics) was a dream come true. Even the sage teachers who warned me about tricks and trouble from schedule mishaps has not yet dampened my enthusiasm. Over 80 percent of the students are either from New Mexico hispanic origin or are 'old Mexican' origin. There is a small percentage of Caucasian and Native American too. Many of the Hispanic students as they like to call themselves are proud of their ancestry and this past week they celebrated the burning of the effigy of Zozobra to let go of the winter doldrums. The Fiesta time of Santa Fe is upon us and the king and queen of the Fiesta came to the school where all students and the principal and faculty danced traditional dances with the Fiesta celebrants. I have learned my students names by making seating charts despite having 4-5 Veronicas and Alejandros. I also having an icebreaker game tossing the balls to each student while they say their name and I say mine. My classes in US history are an eye opener as many students do not know basic facts about Columbus, the American revolution, colonial history, the slave trade or anything. It is a challenge to have them know the importance of civics and American history so I began with the topics "Why Study History?" and "What is good government?" The answers were pretty traditional "to not make the mistakes of the past..etc" and "to help the poor and have jobs." We started to talk about careers a little with history and voting and what it means to live in the USA. The students confide in me that as Americans they feel very fragmented and disunited. That is hard to hear but understandable in the times we live. I got the best response from music when I played Bob Marley cds for them on a Friday. They resonate to the songs of the revolution and protest. Many of the girls are thinking only of the next lip stick application, is my cell phone text messaging and the like. I have my own rules and they are followed. My best moments come when I feel a light bulb go off and something I have said connects. It is vital to write everything on the board and I use an overhead projector, movies sometimes and read allowed from literature. I am enthusiastic about teaching and will give my every effort to learn the way that these students can find meaning and connections with what I teach, whether out of necessity to get a good grade, or to see that the teacher does not give them 'the look."

Santa Fe and the Southwest

The Southwest of the United States and New Mexico are new territories for me. There is much to learn about the western style of ranching and riding. The geology, native american culture and hispanic traditions and language provide much to learn and appreciate.
My goal in coming here is to learn new things, listen to the ancient voices of wisdom and the youth of this part of the country. Every day I get a new glimpse of something unfamiliar but fascinating.

I received a phone call from the Santa Fe Public Schools. I did not realize it at the time, but I was about to be interviewed and offered the job I wanted. What happened next was too exciting, an interview team from the largest and most diverse high school in Santa Fe called me in and we had an interview of say 45 minutes. In it I was asked about my teaching style, lesson plans and what I would present to students. Because my forte is in political science, I was able to make a good pitch for high school government, history and economics. However, I did not know that is what they were looking for. I received a call in no time, saying they were very impressed and wanted to call my references right away. Anyway, the rest is history...and I will be starting to teach on August 15th (actually those are in service weeks).

This week I celebrate my 56th birthday with a sense of joy and mission. I just returned from a sight seeing trip to Colorado. We were able to visit my sister and her two children and spouses. My niece, Kate, was in a steel chef competition and won hands down. She is a French Culinary Institute, Jean George Von Richtegen mentee, and co-owns and is executive chef at a restaurant called Cafe Diva.

The other daughter, Sky, was in a 18 hour relay for cancer. She had a picture of her late father and a friend named Meredith around her neck. She and her pals stayed up all night walking and running for an hour at a time at the local high school. I hear they did pretty well raising money. One of the sponsors was Starbucks and that is why they were doing the insomniac thing.


The scenery in Colorado was spell binding such as this at Mesa Verde, the ancient cliff dwellings of the pueblo peoples. One vista after another. My friend, Ellen Chippendale. and I pictured above riding horses drove over 1,000 miles from Telluride to Steamboat to Alamosa and back to Santa Fe. We enjoyed the Southwest and have had our imagination captured by its natural beauty and history