Summer Reading

August 6, 2023

Hello again,

Well, another hot week has come and gone.  We got our obligatory weekly thunderstorm mid-week, but otherwise it has remained dry.  Almost every day it starts clouding up late in the afternoon and starts looking suspiciously like it might actually rain a little bit.  Most times, however, it skirts us to the north in the Mora Valley.  Or, at other times, it seems to come right off the mesa to our west and either slide to one side of us or the other, if not actually raining up higher in the atmosphere but never making it to the ground.  All of my typical activities that I do after work during the week get really thrown off by all this heat.  I dare not run the dogs too much, as we still are right in the heart of snake season.  Other times I would mow a little or work on my cars or get into some other things in and around the house, but with the heat, I'm still not getting much more done than reading.  To pick up on that thread from last week, as I was relating the book 'We Fed Them Cactus' by Fabiola Cabeza de Baca, I intimated that she was relating all the tales of buffalo hunting out on the plains from her own youth.  However, as she lived from 1894 to 1991, it clearly couldn't be her own remembrances that were powering her stories of the mid-1800s, but rather that of her grandparents and extended family that took part in the hunts.  This isn't the biggest detail in the world, but I always strive to keep things as accurate as I can.  A year or so ago I recounted the time of Las Gorras Blancas(the White Hoods) who roamed all over San Miguel County, starting around the time that the railroad reached Las Vegas in 1879, apparently terrorizing all the inhabitants by cutting down livestock fencing, stringing up 'cattle rustlers'(almost always a death sentence imposed on the spot by a clearly partisan crowd, oftentimes instigated by nothing more than someone else wanting to get their hands on land that wasn't theirs), poisoning wells and breaking open dams.  I tried painting an intelligent picture of what was going on, but after further reading, it seems that agents from the railroad and other Eastern companies were involved(often wearing white hoods to muddy the waters) as was a large group of bandits based in Las Vegas and led by Vicente Silva...again, often disguising themselves to cast blame elsewhere.  On top of all of this, there were also hooded religious orders, Los Penitentes, rooted in ancient Spain, that were active here, as well, further making it harder to figure out what actually happened so long ago.  I'll just have to save up a little more money to buy some more books to further all of my investigations!  My list is growing...

I also referenced the preponderance of Aztec(now Nahuatl) words that have survived around here and tend to be used instead of the more common Spanish words.  As I related the story of some of the Tlaxcaltecas being moved out here along the Pecos River to serve as a buffer between Santa Fe and the Comanches, I neglected to reveal that the Tlaxcaltecas, as well as many other tribes that were considered part of or related to the Aztec alliance in central Mexico, all spoke languages related to Aztec.  So, while Aztecs themselves weren't relocated here, many words from their language moved here with the Spanish and their Indian allies.  I'll just say that growing up in Pennsylvania and being surrounded by place names that tended to usually be from the Delaware language, as well as Iroquois in some instances, it's absolutely thrilling to read about all the tribes that traversed this area where we now live and to read about how their languages shaped all the place names: Apache; Comanche; Navajo; Zuni; Hopi; Pueblos.  And, loosely saying Pueblo disguises the fact that that adds up to 20 tribes that speak languages from at least three or four completely different language families!  The differences within a language family being akin to the differences between, say, Gaelic, French, Polish and Greek and the differences between totally different language families being as broad as the differences between Arabic, Chinese, Swahili and Latin.  It speaks to how long the history of this area has been unfolding for very similar groups to be speaking completely unintelligible languages.  It's also casts a comic light on the grand pronouncements that the Spanish conquistadors would make upon entering a new pueblo, initially without interpreters, when they would read out all of the rules that were now being imposed upon them by Pope and King in a language that none of the natives present would have been able to understand a word of...talk about setting someone up to fail!

So, enough with the history and language lessons...now, for some pictures!  First, the boss wanted me to check on her cat to see if he was begging to go out...and I saw this.  Then, on the way back outside, I saw one of the crazy black and orange grasshoppers that we have out here.  Next, five shots of Ela & Willow checking on things with me around the ranch: first, in the garden shed to see if any more kittens were born to any of our outside cats; then, up by Rui's grave to get a good look around the ranch; and, finally, off of our soon-to-be front porch where I've been stockpiling scaffolding in anticipation of the final stucco work that needs to be done before we can move in.  Then, true to form, Erin didn't think we'd have any produce from the garden this year and then dug all these potatoes out of the ground!  Next, my current stack of books that I keep reading and digging through, trying to map out this wild and ancient land that we now find ourselves in.  Then, all of the stones that were raked up by the hydroseeders around the new house before the seeding was actually done...a little stony out here, don't you think?  Next, a shot minus the dogs from up on Boot Hill where all of our critters go to rest.  Finally, five shots of some of the odd & end jobs that have been keeping me busy lately, including: keeping the seldomly-run backhoe up and running; making all of the cardboard from the boss's move disappear to the recycling center at Highlands University in town; and, then, slowly but surely getting all of the leftover supplies into the Depot from out in the field and the barns...I've already crammed five pallets worth of stuff in there and have it somewhat organized.

That's it for now, have a great week!