Excellent fence

I like the fences I see all round New Mexico. If you look at the photos of the Sandias above, you see these stick like fences. I'm posting a photo of a Buddhist Nun's fensc, where there is a plain iron structure faces with these sticks. I love it.

Arizona Fire smoke out Albuquerque

For the past week. Albuquerque has been choked up with smoke, so thick that we joked it was like standing on the wrong side of the campfire. I'm putting up some beautiful photos of the Sandias, taken from the Sandia Reservation. The mountains should be a crisp as the foreground, but instead look like the Mohawk river valley mountains.

15 minute drying time

How dry is it here? It takes about 15 minutes to dry things out on the clothes line on a sunny day. (Which is everyday)

Old Pawn Jewelry @ 100 years old

This is a Navajo necklace which is about 100 years old. I bought it from a woman who was in the State Department on the Navajo Reservations for over 50 years. She held this necklace as a pawn for a navajo person, and it was never redeemed. It was common practice for white people on the Res to practice pawning with the natives as that there was no banking system available to them. It wasn't just drinking money that was needed, but necessities of life. The woman I bought this from told me that is was a very old necklace when she acquired it, and that was over 60 years ago.  So 100 years is a conservative guess.

Old Pawn Jewelry

Out here, Old Pawn Jewelry is a highly sought after form of Indian jewelry. The story goes that when one needed money they would pawn it, and sometimes not be able to redeem it in the required amount of time. One can only imagine the trickery involved. Oh well, I bought the fetish necklace from an divorcing couple estate sale for @ $10.00. A new form of Pawning...estate sales that is. It was made by the Santa Domingo Pueblo, which is served by the Santa Fe office of the IHS.

All the little animals and colors have meanings that date back centuries. I really don't know how old this necklace is, but the silver is old looking on the clasp.

Husband's birthday gift

This is for W. It is a landscape of New Mexico by a buddhist nun who was getting rid of "things". It is of the Rio Grande, with the spots of nature in it. Trees, bushes, clouds and mountain all seem to be made up of separate dots out here.

Santa Ana Pueblo Field Clinic

Santa Ana Pueblo Clinic is another clinic in the Albuquerque service unit. I should be going there also as an Extern in the next few week. The first photo is the clinic, the 2nd photo is showing tribal offices, which create a streetscape in Santa Ana. This Pueblo, like the others are settlements that date back to the early 1100's.  They built buildings which were about two stories high 2 centuries later. Each Pueblo has been culturally distinct from one another even though Santa Ana , Zia, Sandia Pueblos are close together.