Indian Market 2010

Today we left at 6:00 a.m. to go to Santa Fe for Indian Market. It's not that we're passionate collectors who camp out in front of our favorite vendor's booth to get the piece that won Best in Show. It's that we want to get to Tia Sophia's when it opens for breakfast at 7:00.

After we finished our breakfast, the line to get in wasn't too long. Waiting isn't a pain if you have the newspaper with the lists of winners.

We visited some of our favorite vendors, including Tony Padilla, a Santa Clara sculptor with whom I used to work, and Randall Chitto, whose work Chuckbert collects (image taken with my cell phone).

The merchants on the Plaza said that the crowds were a little smaller this year. Looking south along Lincoln Avenue, I thought the crowds were pretty big.

We rested on the curb on West Palace Avenue and watched the passing scene.

The west side of the Palace of the Governors was a popular place to rest in the shade.

Of course, the big draw for us is finding the visitor dressed most excessively but without a shred of irony. Thus we can eliminate such get-ups as the T-shirts once sported by the staff at the Ore House: "Ya-tah-hey, ya-tah-ho! Eat that fry bread! Go, go, go!"

This woman was dressed festively.

Nothing says Indian Market better than hot pants, a massive belt, and "f--k me" shoes.

Does camera gear count as Indian Market raiment?

How about this breastplate bolo tie?

No special clothing, but her hair is big. The higher the hair, the closer to God.

Hat? Check. Jewelry? Check. Fringed bag? Check. Fiesta skirt? Check. Boots? Check!

A beribboned shirt and a concho belt that cost more than my car are always worth a look.

A cool and breezy look for an August morning.

Clamdiggers draw this ensemble together.

We didn't buy anything, but a barbecued-rib appetizer and a Margarita at Maria's completed a perfect day at Indian Market.

Dinner at Gabriel's

For Mom's birthday dinner, we all went to Gabriel's Restaurant between Los Alamos and Santa Fe.

Here's the Birthday Mom.

To commemorate the event, Chuckbert took a picture of Mom's dinner.

And then Chuckbert took a picture of P-doobie taking a picture of Chuckbert while Mombert and Bobbert cracked up.

Bobbie and Izzy posed nicely with some bunny ears.

Bobbie picked up the check. Seeing her distress, I snapped my fingers to summon a waiter and said, "¡Garçon! El desfibrilador, por favor!" He brought us a parachute and some dried apricots.

Pie: a cut above

Years ago we were in a restaurant--I can't even remember where--and it offered pie for dessert. The price was "$1.50 per cut." (We see the same phrase in Zagat-rated restaurants and in the menu for the Pan-American Exposition of 1901, so it seems to be nothing new or unusual.)

The phrase confused me. If pie is $1.50 per cut, does it mean that if you are the first person to ask, for example, for a piece of a pristine raspberry pie, one that had emerged fresh and fragrant from the oven and then taken the air on the windowsill so that it was still warm enough to gently melt the vanilla ice cream, you would be charged $3.00 for your dessert? After all, it takes two cuts to get that first piece. Or is the word "cut" a synonym for "slice"?

I didn't want to ask the waitress, because there are Scared Straight inmates less formidable than the server we had that day. The restaurant must have been in New Jersey, come to think of it.

I couldn't find anything in the Dictionary of American Regional English to clarify the question, so I hauled out the compact edition of Oxford English Dictionary. That was no small feat, because even in the two-volume form, it takes six men and a boy to maneuver it out of the bookcase. And forget about using just that magnifying glass. At my age, I needed my glasses, the magnifier, and the harsh, gynecological light of the bathroom to read the definitions. ("What are you doing in the bathroom, P-doobie?" "Reading the OED to research pie. What do you think I'm doing?")

Definition 23 is "A piece of anything cut off, esp. meat; a slice." Thus, it would seem that a cut of pie and a slice of pie are the same things. So why not just say a slice of pie and not keep me brooding about it for, lo, these many years?

It's okay. I'm wearing gloves.

I don't know what's happening with food workers in Los Alamos, but it ought to be stopped.

This week I met one of our local authors for coffee at the Coffee Booth. I stepped up to the counter and ordered a coffee in a mug, and the young man got a ceramic mug and inspected it for cleanliness, as the staff there always does. He found a speck of something, and instead of giving me a different mug, he reached inside, scraped the speck carefully with his finger, dumped out whatever was in there, and handed me the mug. I asked for a to-go cup

Several months ago I was standing in line at the Subway next door. The staff there wears plastic gloves on their hands when they prepare the sammitches. The other customers and I watched in disbelief as the young "sandwich artist" scratched her head with her gloved hand and then went back to the customer's order. The customer said, "You just scratched your head!" And the young woman replied, "It's okay. I'm wearing gloves." We went to Ruby K's.

I gave Subway a wide berth after than, but went back about a month ago. This time the young man who was making a sandwich scratched his butt and returned to making sandwiches. The customer said, "You scratched your butt!" The young man replied, "It's okay. I'm wearing gloves." We went to Ruby K's again. (I'm also writing a letter to the president of Subway.)

Michele recalls a time she was at an ice cream parlor in New Hope, Pennsylvania. It was a hot day, and the ice cream in the cone that the helper was preparing began to drip a little. So he licked the drippy part and then handed the cone to the customer. Michele said the only sounds in the place were those of crickets chirping, pins dropping, and tumbleweeds rolling across the deserted streets.


It's okay. We'll put on gloves.

Weee-eeeTUN my wuv, a wonging buhns deep inside me

We are Wagner virgins no more! Michele and I went to see Tristan and Isolde live from the Met yesterday at the Lensic. But first we had a hearty late breakfast at Tia Sophia's so we could enjoy the opera without having to worry about staving off the hunger pangs of midafternoon or the second intermission, whichever came first.

Throughout the first act, the guy next to me kept saying, "Wow!" and we agreed with his assessment (but not with his rudeness in talking out loud), because Deborah Voigt, whom we heard in recital in Santa Fe, and Robert Dean Smith were excellent vocally and were good actors in a park-and-bark. I also liked Michelle DeYoung; I love mezzos. The opera didn't seem 20 minutes long to us, but, as I said, we are Wagner neophytes.

By the second act my enthusiastic neighbor had left the embrace of Polyhymnia and was deep in the arms of Morpheus.

At the second intermission, many in the audience were outside fortifying themselves with the snacks they had brought. We noticed jelly bread, granola bars, pastries, and such heartier fare as ham-and-cheese sandwiches. Inside, the ushers were remonstrating with an elderly gentleman in front of us for bringing in his thermos of coffee into the theatre. He remarked mildly that he had already finished his coffee and was just screwing the cap back on.

We also saw our former neighbor, Ginny R., who said we should read Wagner's biography, because all his operas about "sex and dirty stuff" will make suddenly make sense. She says hi to everyone.

The woman who directed the production for the cinema was roundly booed during the credits. I thought the effects were interesting, but after a while, it seemed that we were watching a movie, and all sense of seeing a live opera was pretty much lost.

After the opera we went to the creperie at The La Fonda Hotel, near the banks of the big Rio Grande River, for a snack. I hate it when the waiter asks, "Are you still working on that?" as if what what's on the plate is a pile of building rubble I'm trying to move. Our waitress yesterday didn't even ask that. She removed Michele's plate because it was obviously empty and Michele had put down her fork. The waitress, plate in hand, then stood in front of me as I continued with my Nutella crepe. Finally she asked, "Do you want me to take your plate?" I said, "No, thank you. I'm still eating." She looked down at at my plate and the half crepe remaining and said, "Oh! I'm sorry!" hustled away, and hustled back with the check.

Here's the link to What's Opera, Doc, because I had trouble uploading the video.