Lori Weber's Blog

The phrase itself has almost become cliched, but the sentiment is a very real one. How I am trying to achieve that, in this tiny box of a house that is besieged by summer noises - the perpetual sliding screech of mini van doors as moms take their kids to swim lessons in the pool behind the house; the thumping of rap music from a boom-box on the basketball court, the tennis players who try to imitate Sharapova on the courts. And then my cats that cannot stand a closed door so meow and scratch on it incessantly, begging to be let in. And the terrible knowledge that I am not alone in the house to begin with, that I am just pretending, here behind this closed door. I think writers need to be 100% selfish and yet the guilt that comes with that is galling. So all I have achieved is a massive headache, for which I will have to retrieve Tylenol from the kitchen which lies beyond my cave. I will break the 5th wall and go out, there is no choice. Somewhere, a little cottage by an ocean beckons. Cracked tea cups in a china plate and the smell of mice-poo. I would do anything to be there!!!

I spent 5 glorious weeks in Berlin, three of them on my own, working on a new novel. I fell in love with the city for so many reasons and it was terribly hard to say goodbye. While I was there, I posted Berlin tid-bits on my Facebook page. I have now collected those and am copying them below and adding them to my poor, ignored Blog. Enjoy! Cheers!

Berlin Tid-Bits By Lori (May 25 – June 28, 2014)

• Older women wander this former eastern neighbourhood, Friedrichshain, like relics from a by-gone era, wearing tan walking shoes and heavy nylons, pressed skirts and jackets with flowered broaches. They pull their shopping carts, stopping to greet each other in a secret language only they share, bemusing the changes they’ve seen in the last 30 years, scorning the hipsters and punks, with their tattoos and piercings and big black dogs.

• Debates rage fast and furious over who makes the best currywurst in this town and remind me a bit of the bagel wars in Montreal: Saint-Viateur or Fairmount?

• Stylish young men wear scarves and leather shoes here and I have yet to see many sandals. Even when it’s about 20 degrees, people wear scarves and even coats. I am sweltering everywhere. The U-Bahn is stifling, so are the stores. But people seem so bundled. My teacher laughs and says it’s because I’m Canadian and anything about -10 seems hot to me. Maybe …

• Bikes are everywhere, on the roads, the sidewalks, the U-Bahns. Sometimes the bike path cuts right in front of where you exit a U-Bahn station and, if you forget that and step out, you are likely to be run over, unapologetically. Training starts young – even little kids zip in and out of people, cars and whatever else is in their way. It’s kind of a neat orchestration to watch – from a safe distance.

• Tough-looking men with loads of tattoos and piercings walk with 2 or 3 dogs following at their heels like dark furry shadows, all off-leash and rather scraggly looking. In the U-Bahn they curl at the mens’ feet like guardians and send mean looks to dog-phobic Canadians like me. Makes me think of Bill Sykes and his pit-bull in Oliver. Creepy!

• To get both the garbage and recycling bins from the inner courtyards of these old tall buildings, the workers have keys to enter EACH dwelling, so they pull the bins through the lobby and hook them to the trucks outside. What a long process! And drivers in cars stuck behind the trucks just wait patiently. I can see why people say Berliners are very chill!

• I am mind-boggled by how many Berliners smoke; cigarette butts clog the cobblestone streets like odd stationary caterpillars, sometimes piled so thick outside entranceways you feel them squish under your feet.

• Kids seem less coddled here; the very young walk more (fewer strollers) and have to cope with the challenges of navigating city sidewalks. In fact, everyone seems a little less coddled here – convenience and comfort are more of a North American preoccupation. Water is expensive, hence no long luxury showers or automatic glasses of ice-water in restaurants (which I sorely miss). Even bathrooms cost money, so “going” can be a challenge.

• Many U-Bahn stations are works of art. My two favourite so far are Wittenbergplatz and Rathaus Spandau, pictured below. The entire system is quick and vast and might account for why there are so few cars on the road. For a big city there is very little traffic. The wide Soviet attempt at Parisien-style boulevards, Karl Marx Allee (formerly Stalin Allee) is eerily quiet, even at rush hour. I’d say there are more bikes than cars. I like it!

• Kino Intimes is now officially my favourite bar/café hangout in the area; it really is also an intimate movie theatre.

• The streetcars have a special button you can press if you’re getting off with a stroller so that the driver knows to hold the doors open for longer – cool! I’ve seen metro doors snap shut on strollers in Montreal, much to their passengers’ mothers’ horror (horrors?).

• The old Hamburger Bahnhoff (in Berlin) is now a huge contemporary art museum: literally kilometres of obscure and unfathomable work. The funnest thing is watching people’s faces as they try hard not to let it show that they have no @*&?ing idea what they’re looking at.

• Stores in my hip neighbourhood (Friedrichshain) are often just as hard to decode: I cut my hair at a place that sells kids’ clothing; yesterday I passed a shoe shop where people were eating pizza at a counter that ran down the middle. OK? Why not? After all, there is a barber shop in Montreal that moonlights as a bar!

• Blue-collar workers in this town are literally all in blue: royal blue overalls (seen below at Holocaust Memorial). I find it creepy, like they are part of some club or sub-class, and need to be easy to spot. I can’t decide if that’s treating people who do some not so pleasant work with more or less respect. In any case, something about it bugs me.

• You’re never far from a big fat delicious salty German pretzel, Milka chocolate bar, good cheap German beer, Berliners (jam-filled donuts which Berliners call Pfannkuchen, but everyone else in Germany calls Berliners), Curry Wurst, or, if you like beer mixed with sweet syrup (yuck!)Berliner Weisse. And food is CHEAP!!!

• World Cup fever is ON; I can watch the match in my flat with the sound down and know from the collective groans & roars that float up from the bars & cafes what is happening. German goals (Tors) are accompanied by flares and firecrackers. This sets off all the dogs, who joyously add to the din. (Have not seen one cat since I arrived.)

• Each city has its public transportation “look.” In Paris, people turn into statues with very unhappy faces; in Berlin the look is not quite as cold but it is definitely “stay-out-of-my-space.” Strangers rarely speak, except to ask people to remove their knapsacks when it’s crowded; if someone is hogging a seat with a bag you have the right to sit on it. It will be removed with a cold glance at the last second, without repercussion. And yet … if you ask for help or directions you will get both, and perhaps a smile to boot.

• Most German women favour short hair, very different from the Montreal long curly lock aesthetic; but short in really interestingly sculpted ways – I like it! (That is, unless they are in dread-locks.)

• More people read books on the U-Bahn here, I’d say, than listen to iPods; not sure if that’s true at home – don’t think so. And my sense is that newspapers are still quite popular here. Nice to see!

• “Vintage” clothing is just as over-priced and over-rated here as it is in Montreal. But there are some great second-hand shops. Fun!

• It is my last day in Berlin – so very sad. I have enjoyed my 5 weeks here immensely. I could write a whole essay on my thoughts on the city, but here are some final ones. Berlin has done an amazing job of not “disappearing” its Nazi past, while building toward to a modern, vibrant, and artistic future. I quite like the mix of old & new. I can’t imagine living somewhere that was all one way or the other; in fact, I love Montreal for the same reason. One thing that bothers me is just how much stuff is being geared toward 3-day tourists. I mean, why come to Berlin to visit a fake dungeon or see wax figures of Miley Cyrus or John F. Kennedy. I suppose many big cities have done this, but I loathe watching it happen. Another thing I have an issue with are the museums (like the DDR one – although I admit I didn’t go) which allow you to walk through a real GDR livingroom and open the kitchen cupboards to see just how bare and unvaried the goods were, or sit in a Trabi. It’s as though eastern Germans are extinct animals and we can now tour their unfortunate cages. It strikes me as disrespectful somehow. I took a picture of a huge apartment block in north-eastern Berlin from a U-Bahn window yesterday and felt crappy for the same reason; I mean, people live there and there I was taking a shot of their ugly building. It reminded me of how I felt visiting Taos Pueblo in New Mexico, looking at the adobe structures the native people live in. It was interesting, but I was never quite comfortable with gawking at real people and their living conditions. Then too, the image of a zoo kept coming to mind. So, yes there is real and very interesting history here and some of it is presented very tastefully (like at the Topography of Terrors), but some of it is just being used to make money. And the tour buses …. Don’t get me started on those??!!! The public transportation in this city is so fast and easy, yet thousands of people sit on those buses that clog and pollute the streets. Oh well …. Bla bla. I shouldn’t focus on what I dislike, in this – my last post from Berlin. There is so much I love: the different neighbourhoods for one. I love mine: Friedrichshain. Kreuzberg is great, especially the market. And there are so many others. So, farewell Berlin. Thanks for the memories. After tomorrow morning, ich will nicht mehr eine Berliner sein. Ciao!

I have long believed that the key to turning kids on to reading is giving them books they will WANT to read. It is a contentious issue, in some ways, in any English Department: to stick with the canon of classics or big “L” literary texts of the day; or to simply find stories that you know will speak to your target audience. For me, the books I choose have to be well-written; that is, engaging intellectually and emotionally and use language that contains all the juicy qualities of any strong text (metaphor, imagery, symbolism, complex characters). So for a few years now I have taught a young adult fiction course called Teen Spirit in my cegep English class in Quebec. (Cegep is a post-secondary institution; 2 year pre-university or 3-year technical programs- yeah, we do things differently here!).

Each year, students do creative projects on the 5 books we read; their projects can focus on one or more books and must somehow illuminate something about the text, its themes, characters, settings, etc. They can do sculpture, art, writing, computer-based work, performance art, anything really. I love to see what they come up with.

This year, we had a cake for the very first time (pictured above): It was work of genius. The cake was based on the book “Nothing” by Janne Teller, a little existentialist gem. The student, Cassandra, recreated the pile of meaning that a group of grade 8 kids create in order to prove that life does have meaning. Cassandra made a 3-layer cake, with the layers becoming progressively darker to reflect the way the objects on the pile become “darker” and she made all the objects that make it onto the pile (over 20) out of fondant. It was brilliant and delicious.

Another student made an incredible structure, also 3-tiered, to show the levels of power and influence in the book “All Good Children” by Catherine Austen. The people in the layers were connected by fishing wire so that when the wheel the top was turned, the kids’ brains (painted walnuts) rose out of their heads on one side (the corporation’s view of Nesting) or dropped into them on the other. It was an impressive feat of engineering that demonstrated two different points of view on the inoculation program at the heart of this wonderful book.

There were loads of other great projects, too numerous to describe here, from a monologue by an electron, a puzzle, a board-game, a humongous cloud from the book “Feed” by MT Anderson, to several impressive structures of the sawmill and tent central to two books; one student did an installation piece of the garbage can of Young Ju’s family’s home in Mi Gook (”A Step from Heaven”) to show what got trashed during the family’s integration period. We also had loads of musical talent: original piano pieces to accompany “Feed” and “Shine” and an original song to depict the emotions of Titus in “Feed”. Several models of Titus’s head captured the mass of confusion in that young hero’s brain as he navigates the consumer world and the world Violet exposes him to. We had poems and new chapters and chapter endings, as well as journalists’ articles on various events in the books. There were also several wonderful pieces of art, from watercolours, to blow-torched crayons on canvas, and pen & ink. So MUCH talent!!!

I love this day, “Museum Day” — there is nothing more satisfying for a teacher AND an author of young adult fiction, than to see kids turned on by books. It’s also great to watch them recapture a sense of creativity and play. I think Sir Ken Robinson is quite correct when he laments the loss of creativity in our schools; we focus so much on skills, heavily weighted to technological skills, that self-expression often gets shoved aside. These projects showed me just as much about kids’ understanding of the novels as their essays will in a few weeks.

We keep hearing kids don’t read … but many of us keep trying to turn that around. It seems like an uphill battle, but I think many of my students have taken a step in that direction. I can only hope they keep climbing once the course is finished.

Greetings ignored followers. I do not ignore you out of arrogance, believe me, but out of a strong sense that nobody really reads my blog anyway. Although, someone must. I sometimes see the graph go up, so that must be proof.

I realized I had not written a thing since summer and it was time to dip back in and write an update of my new book, Picture Me (James Lorimer and Co.). It came out about 3 weeks ago and has had a good review in one of Canada’s biggest book review magazines, Quill & Quire. It was a review that made me very happy, not because it was full of praise, but because the writer recognized that I was taking on quite a challenge with the narrative structure. He called it “bold.” What a lovely word. I don’t think that word has ever been used in connection with me before. He also liked my ambiguous ending, which pleased me no end because many Goodreads people were quite negative about that.

Too bad, I say. If writers always play it safe, what’s the point? We need to experiment, to play, to push the narrative envelope, so to speak.

So that is just a wee little update for now, on the new book front.

On the writing front, Catherine Austen, author of All Good Children, came to my Teen Spirit (YA) course on Friday to speak to my two classes. She is a real artist. I loved the way she spoke about spreading a trail of bread crumbs into a story, ones that could be picked up and used later on. What a great metaphor for building plot. She credits Tim Wynn-Jones with that, but I will always think of her when I hear it. Or when I am writing and wondering why I am putting in this or that detail.

Oh, hearing her speak made me long to write again, but alas, teaching full time right now leaves me NO time for my own writing. Soon, soon, little books harboured inside me like sailboats in a storm. (Oh, that was bad - I AM rusty).

Cheerio for now, Lori

This is just a quick entry to say that I finally have a title for my new book, due out August 2013. It will be called Picture Me, which fits very nicely with the action and the theme. Cover on its way. I’ll post it when it arrives from my publisher, James Lorimer and Co.

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Here are the bright and smiling faces of students who live in Denmark, yet attend a high school in Germany. The school is called the Deutsches Gymnasium für Nordschleswig and the town the kids live in, which is a bordertown, is called Abenraa (Danish name) or Apenrade (German name). It must be quite odd living in two countries, moving between the two several times per day. The students spoke German — and I was delighted to try to eavesdrop — and Danish, and were in Canada to improve their already wonderful English at the Vanier College Language School. They had read my verse novel, Yellow Mini (Fitzhenry and Whiteside 2011) and were eager to ask insightful questions, to which I hope I had equally insightful answers.

One thing that seemed to surprise some of the students was the whole process of working with an editor. I tried to explain the role of the editor, comparing it to the role of an athletic coach who might take the raw material of his/her athlete and work to bring out their best, but they still seemed very concerned that working with an editor meant the author would lose her control over the work. Not at all, I replied. A good editor works with me to bring out the very best in the manuscript. One young man seemed almost angered at the idea that someone would tell me what to change; I retorted that ‘what’ did not mean ‘how’, and that in the end I could argue my cause if I disagreed.

I suppose when you are young it strikes you as wrong that anyone should tell you what to do in any circumstance. But I never felt bullied by any of my editors (Hadley Dyer, Meghan Nolan, Christie Harkin); I believe each one helped me make my books better. Perhaps I have been lucky and some writers have had unworkable relationships with their editors. I am about to embark on a new editing experience with my fourth editor, Carrie Gleason, and I hope the journey is as smooth (so far so good).

Upon returning home from the workshop, I learned of the Boston Marathon bombings: what horror. Sometimes, in my job as a teacher, or workshop-giver, I do wonder how young people manage to stay optimistic about the world they are inheriting. I ask myself if the world really is going crazy, or if it always has been that way? It appears to me that violence and conflict have been part of the human story forever, but what has changed are the means and the coverage. There is no way to escape the gloom, the media is so ubiquitous. And we also don’t want our young people burying their heads in the sand; we want them to know what is going on in the world. But do they? The media is so temporal and so selective in what they cover and for how long.

Another tragedy struck one week later; the factory collapse in Bangladesh. Will that tragedy, with its corporate ties, get as much coverage, or raise as much ire in the west? I hate to be cynical, but I doubt it. This brings me back to books and literature. What better means to get young people thinking about their world, and hopefully instill the desire to change it. I quote below a verse from Yellow Mini, spoken by one of the main characters. Her passion is working for social change:

Factories in Bangladesh

are full of kids whose fingers

bleed. They sleep

on planks in dorms,

their stomachs rumbling.

Their schooling has ended,

the whole balloon

of their childhood pierced

and emptied in a flash

by a sewing machine needle

so that people like Stacey

can buy skinny jeans

that cling to their bony hips.

When I shared the poem with the Danish students, they got it. They know. They are aware. And they want change. Their intelligence gives me hope for the future.

We are back home. It feels strange, after three months away, but oh so familiar. We exchanged constant sunshine for gray, sagebrush for snow. And I am loving it. I am not a skier, but I still love winter and I can’t wait to have enough snow to strap on the snow-shoes.

I did so much writing during my sabbatical, I am now at the point where I just sit and wait for others (mostly editors) to get back to me. I hate this stage. It’s all out of my hands. I want to jump into my next project, but with 3 books in the pipeline, that would be crazy. Sooner or later, I’ll be editing. Apparently the publisher has found an illustrator for my picture book, so that slow project is rolling. I am anxious!

One of the nice things about our stay in Taos was meeting a young adult author, Lauren Bjorkman, whose new book came out while we were there. It is called Miss Fortune Cookie and I loved it. I could so relate to the main character, Erin. In fact, I told Lauren it was kind of freaky. Erin could have been me at seventeen. I don’t want to give too much away, but I strongly recommend it. It is full of humour and real emotion.

Lauren gave a shout out to me and my book, Yellow Mini, in her blog. You can see it at:

www.laurenbjorkman.com

Well, back to reality ….

So much has been written about the Grand Canyon, I don’t know what I can add. One hears what a mystical and transformative experience seeing it is, that one stands there expecting to be suddenly and profoundly changed. It is hard for the experience to live up to the hype and yet … it is so breath-taking.

We were lucky to arrive just in time for sunset last Sunday. We watched the tips and peaks turn from red and brown to gold, as the lowering sun struck the rock. At one point, the full moon rose, adding to the charm. Vishnu’s peak, oddly named because it so resembles a breast, was the final piece of rock to remain golden, right under the full moon. It was like mother earth’s breast, rising up to meet the full mouth of the moon. Quite spectacular.

We then returned for sunrise the following morning and the entire canyon was filled with white mist. We watched the mist lift and reveal the treasure of peaks and canyons below as the sky brightened.

We shared the whole experience with my sister and brother-in-law which made it even more special. One does feel more profound standing there on the lookouts, staring at the millions of year old rock that seems to wave on and dip forever. It is a bit of a cliché to say it reminds you of just how small and fleeting your own life is, but it does. In fact, the entire landscape of the southwest does that.

So now I have seen the Grand Canyon. I am glad. It was special. Words are inadequate so I will stop.

My poor ignored blog. I cannot believe I have not written about southern New Mexico, where we toured 3 weeks ago. I cannot believe I did not write about the marvels of the Carlsbad Caverns, with their astounding formations, or “speleothems” – stalactites or stalagmites that were formed over millions of years by minerals dripping into the cave. In each “room”, you feel you are on another planet, one made of pink chandeliers or green gaping monster mouths. I cannot believe I didn’t tell you this before. To enter the cave, you walk down a path that wends and winds for an hour, taking you deeper and deeper, a whole mile, into the earth. You see frozen waterfalls, spiraling fingers, dancing sheets and massive draperies. There are soda straws in the Doll’s Theatre, a hooded Klansman in the Slaughter Canyon, and a Bashful Elephant in the Big Room.

It is simply the most eerily other-worldly place I have ever seen in my life and the most beautiful. I had expected to feel a touch of claustrophobia, but didn’t. The rooms are large and the ceilings so high you don’t feel encaged. And then the strangeness draws you in and you never want to leave.

Now, speaking of strangeness, let me backtrack. We went to Carlsbad via Roswell, of alien fame. The town is not much to look at, but the UFO museum and the infamous story that it depicts of happenings in 1947 is very interesting. There are written testimonials of people who swear they saw the funny little creatures and of cover-ups and conspiracies. I have not made up my mind, but it is puzzling. The town milks the alien theme for all it’s worth, with alien themed everything and who can blame them? One senses the economic hardship in the south more so than in northern New Mexico. Many main street stores are gone and restaurants in the 2011 guidebook closed. The wealth and chi-chiness of Santa Fe seems worlds away.

White Sands National Monument is an oasis of gypsum-sand that resembles the Sahara, only whiter. Driving through it is like driving through Quebec streets after a snow storm, with drifts and mounds everywhere. Very very pretty. The monument is in the middle of the White Sands Missile Range, which is strange, and signs tell you that access is sometimes restricted when missiles are being tested. Some comfort!

Down we went through Las Cruces, NM’s second largest city, and into Mesilla, its tiny sister town that is bursting with charm. Then up to Silver City with its old west look and feel; we stopped at City of Rocks State Park, an odd cluster of weird rock formations thrown up by some geological wonder. A hair-raising drive of hair-pin turns over the Gila mountains (white-knuckled all the way) took us up to the weirdly named Truth or Consequences (taken from the old game show), then up to Albuquerque, and eventually home.

And now …. I am so glad I told you!

Every time we do a new drive I swear it is the prettiest drive I have ever done. I said that climbing up the cliff-hanging 20 mile switch-back road to Mesa Verde (a real nail-biter); then I said it again going up the magnificent road into Arches National Park; a day later I revised my decision and decided that the road into Canyonlands topped them all. Now, having driven from Bluff, Utah, through Valley of the Gods and on to Monument Valley, I have changed my mind again.

The thing about traveling in this part of the world is that every time you turn a corner you are in slightly different terrain. The rocks are redder (more iron) or browner, sometimes even white; they might have some feeble vegetation clinging to them, or they may be completely bare; the rock could be cut lengthwise or vertically, in huge chunks or little boulders; it is ever-changing, even from one side of the road to the other. I have to confess that the immense sandstone mountains are things of beauty, but they scare me as well. You are so small and insignificant next to them and driving through them, especially on the rim roads, you feel like a flea that can so easily be flicked off into oblivion. Then the flatter desert land opens up and I feel myself breathe easier, as if I am being embraced, not threatened, by the landscape.

I overheard a man at the Peace Tree Café in Monticello (pronounced sselo, not chello as we would in Quebec) say that in a whole life-time, maybe only 5 days could be counted as truly special, where you see magical things and the weather is great and you feel 100% happy. (He was one of a group of 4 dirt-bikers.) I hope there are more than five, but when you think about it, maybe he was right. We all have fleeting moments of happiness, but whole magical days are rare. Our three exploring Mesa Verde, Arches and then Canyonlands were magical indeed. The beauty of these places could not have made them otherwise.

The cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde were built 1400 years ago and inhabited until around 1200 when, for reasons unknown, the native people left the mesa and migrated to various areas of the southwest, including here to Taos Pueblo. Their dwellings, literally carved into the sandstone, are extremely well-preserved. There are 4500 archaeological sites in the park, 600 of them cliff dwellings. Standing around the ancient structures, peeking into the rooms and kivas, one really feels connected to history. It is a beautiful area, impossible to do justice to in this blog. The structures at Arches National Park rise out of the ground like magnificent red sculptures. You can literally spend an entire day driving and hiking between them, getting really close, climbing them and touching them in a way that makes you feel part of a very ancient piece of nature. Finally, the deep and mysterious canyons at Canyonlands National Park are spectacular shades of blue and purple, especially in the early morning light. We saw the site where a meteor crashed to earth 60 million years ago, at Upheaval Dome, charring the earth gray. The gray still stands all these years later. This landscape reminds one again and again of just how much history the earth holds and how small our own little lives are in comparison.

The roads here can be a trip in themselves. You sail through flat land then suddenly drop on a 10% grade out of nowhere, tumbling through blasted rock, and realize that you were up on a mesa top all along. People drive very fast, even around wicked curves that have me holding my breath or pressing the brakes. On a short stretch of the 191 north of Bluff, we saw 6 dead deer by the roadside, but still people were blasting through. Only I was watching the side of the road, breath held, waiting for a deer to dart out. I did not want to kill one and I also did not want to be killed by one. In Navajo Nation, mostly in Arizona, horses roam free, literally munching the grass at the roadside, as though it would be an insult to the majestic beasts to lock them behind fences. We drove through a dust funnel that whipped debris against our windows and shook our little rental car.

Our final two days were spent in Navajo land, driving the mystical Valley of the Gods off of highway 163 and then down to Monument Valley. Valley of the Gods is a smaller version of the latter, but it was my favourite of the two. There is no entrance fee, no visitor centre, no gift shop, just a stunning valley littered with oddly-shaped buttes and a rather precarious dirt road that our little car had some trouble navigating. There was only one other car there, spewing up dust way ahead of us, so we were aware that if our car bit the dust we might have little help, but the drive was magical nonetheless. Then the drive down to Monument Valley is so pretty you become mesmerized by it. The buttes are visible forever and the road dips and turns, pulling you forward, promising the reward of the most famous cowboy movie landscape. However, the road around the valley is so BAD, we could not do it all. There are deep deep ruts and high belly-scraping rocks. Your car lurches and pitches and scrapes around steep turns. We joked about how this might be Navajo revenge for the Long Walk. Many people opt for the jeep tours which are very expensive. Whole bus loads of people go in long trolleys. (My favourite were the French ladies in their fancy high-heeled sandals.) It is all a bit too touristy, but hey, I am sure it brings the people much-needed money. The ever present native jewelry and art is in abundance here, as everywhere in this area, but beware. It is not all authentic. Much is made in China. The authentic work, however, is beautiful, albeit pricey. My favourite “place to shop” was at roadside stands where mothers and daughters spread out blankets and sell their own work. They share a bit of history and the children are bubbly and excited to show you which beads they threaded.

Our final excursion was to Canyon de Chelly (pronounded Shay) which is rich in Navajo history. Ancestral Pueblo Indian homes, resembling those at Mesa Verde, line the canyon and one cannot fathom how they were built, the rock is so steep. The Navajo lived and farmed in the area for many centuries and used the canyon to hide from Spanish invaders. In 1864 the US, led by Kit Carson, entered the canyon and killed most of the Navajo. The rest were forced to march over 300 miles to Fort Sumner, NM. In 1868 those that survived were allowed to return. Today, the Navajo Nation, which is huge, seems to be thriving and quite well-developed with their own schools, laws, etc.

In all, we drove 1300 miles in 7 days and saw some incredible things that neither of us will ever forget. Here we are, back in Taos, and the house really is feeling like home. Taos is bubbling with tourists still, and there is yet another arts festival in town, this time related to wool. Twenty or so stalls are set up and artisans are selling their homespun yarns, made of alpaca, llama, sheep, rabbit, etc. It is pretty stuff, but pricey. This is a schizophrenic town that way. In the grocery store parking lot, a down and out native man was trying to pawn necklaces for food. Then at Kit Carson (yes, he of the Long Walk) Park, skeins of yarn are selling for $30-$50. There are both extremes here: poverty and wealth, and, as a gallery owner told us, not much of a middle class. Perhaps that is the way of America today, although I feel it must be more true of this particular town than many.

Farewell once again from the Colorado Plateau.