It's Quarter to Three or Along About Midnight

Barela Lane #1

Barela Lane #2

Quiet Steps

Twice in the past month we’ve eaten dinner with friends at the Taos Inn, once in Doc Martin’s and the other in the Adobe Bar. Neither meal was memory making but the company made the evening sparkle despite the gruel listed on the menu as a New Mexican Combination Platter.

Christmas Eve in Brentwood

Each was a snowy evening with flakes glistening like crystals beneath the streetlights and the night sounds hushed by the fluff. The thick air and soft blanket of wet snow created a wondrous and silent night. And since Peggy and I were the only people strolling to the adjacent parking lot it felt, well, like “it’s quarter to three, there’s no one in the place except you and me.”

Nightlights #1

Nightlights #2

Nightlights #3

In a handful of recent Instagram posts I took great license with the time of night. For example, I called one post “Along About Midnight” after Guitar Slim’s 1958 tune. It was really 7:30. Hey, what’s five hours among friends?

The scene struck a chord with us and so I found myself revisiting old nocturnes and contemplating making new ones. Maybe it’s a series to develop. We will see what I will see.

I even have a working title, Nightlights. Or maybe Nightlight singular.

Adobe and Snow Again

We woke up to 10 inches of wet snow on Friday. Peggy called me from the historic Martinez Hacienda where she had stopped to photograph on the way to the studio, basically telling me to get my lazy ass out of the house and capture the wonder of the grand hacienda in its cloak of dense snow. I told her, “I’ll get over there immediately.” I'm nothing if not obedient..

I fell into my routine of photographing the wooden wagon, the adobe walls and especially the canales with stalactites of ice slowly developing below. Canal, as you know, means channel in English, and canales are the plural of same. I always try to find a new angle and threw in some abstracts of the wagon and a handful that might belong in my Sketches of Winter series.

Severino Martín moved his family from Abiquiu just after Taos was founded in 1796. Los Martínes, later Los Martinez, settled on land two miles south of Taos and in 1804 built the northern-most Grand Hacienda in New Mexico. Soon Los Martinez owned five square miles abutting the Rio Pueblo and Severino became a powerhouse politico in Northern New Mexico. 

Los Immels live half a mile north of the Hacienda. Lucky us.

Forgotten Anniveraries and Other Parties

Happy Something or Other

Peggy Immel at ArtsThrive.

Again.

Fear not. The red dots appeared Saturday night.

When we woke up Sunday morning a week ago Peggy nudged me, “You’ll never guess what yesterday was.” I responded with a start, “Holy Crap! We forgot again. It was our anniversary. Our 56^th. That’s really hard to do when we’re only 60.”

Then last week we had dinner with friends who are our age and have been married for 59 years. That’s even worse, er, more impressive.

The finished product.

Quick Draw artists at ArtsThrive.

56 years is so epic that the Albuquerque Museum hosted a three-day party to celebrate our accomplishment. It began with a collectors party Thursday night. That’s where the big spenders queue up to buy the art. That night Peggy was one of four artists demonstrating their wizardry. Each delivered a painting in a two-hour race called a “Quick Draw.” It’s a common though nerve wracking practice in plein air competitions throughout the land.

Saturday morning was an artist’s session where participants could meet each other. It was lightly attended but a good time to enjoy the wonderful art without the hordes. And finally, on Saturday night there was our anniversary party with 300 attendees. That was the most festive and when most of the sales happened.

ArtsThrive is a juried event so there are no guarantees that you’ll be invited. And sales are muy importante. If your work sells, you’ll be invited back. I have a hunch we sold enough for an encore.

Up top are basic here I am with my art shots mostly from the artist get-together Saturday morning plus one kissy face appropriate to the occasion. The rest are steps on Peggy’s path to an amazing painting in under two hours.

Neck Snakes or Ties That Bind

Forty years of neckties.

Peggy and I have just participated in three events that are part of ArtsThrive, the annual art exhibition and sale that benefits the Albuquerque Museum. We returned to Taos this late afternoon and I have hundreds of photographs from the show to sort and process. So, I’m going to kick the ball down the field so I can show ArtsThrive in all its glory. It’s a handsome exhibition with stellar artwork and a team of caring managers and volunteers who run the event like a Swiss watch. Much more about the special event and more effusive praise will follow next week.

As a placeholder I’m offering some of the detritus left in the wake of my ongoing purge of my closet. I reckon I’ll be donating (I hope), consigning or trashing some 30 suits and sportscoats that are so large and so out of style that there is no reason beyond nostalgia to keep them. I am, sadly, a pale shadow of my former self and the once grand suitings drape me like a caftan.

Among the useless items are forty some odd ties that along with the big shoulders and wide lapels of the suits and coats must be put out of my misery.

If you're a 41 long or close to it new threads are yours for the taking.

More Morada

Long View

White cross and Steeple

At the end of November I offered a lengthy post about La Morada de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe which I described as the mother ship of Northern New Mexico’s 19 Catholic lay chapels or meeting houses. I was in error as there were as many as 35 of these places of worship. In any event that post became the skeleton of what will be my March-April contribution to Shadow and Light magazine. I’ve learned more about the Catholic Church's resolution to award sole control of the sacred place to the Penitente Brotherhood. I am not swayed. It was overreach by the parish priest. My article will be an expanded version of what you read on November 27.

A glimmer of turquoise

Inside Corner

13th Station of the Cross

In a more recent post, I spoke to the mind-numbing effort to consolidate the contents of many external hard drives into two devices. Achieving that was rewarding unto itself. But the icing on the proverbial cake was uncovering a cache of morada photographs that I knew I had but couldn’t find. Here are a few.

Sun ,Song and a Splash of Color

Red Window, Silver City, New Mexico

La Morada de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe, Taos, New Mexico

Window on the Plaza, Taos, New Mexico

Last week I opened with the admission that I had little to say and that the images would have to suffice. Then I prattled on for some 600 words about my encounter with the Limeliters during those halcyon days of sun, surf and song. At least sun and song. Today, I’ll be true to my word when I tell you that here are a few more photographs that vie for a place in my Spot Color portfolio, on my website and for inclusion in Peggy’s and my late August show at Wilder Nightingale.

Monhegan Patterns, Monhegan Island, Maine

Art Deco in Silver City

If this isn’t the least wordy post ever, it’s close.

Folk Lore and Other Fables

The Pine Café, Independence, California.

I have few words today as I’m in the throes of organizing something like 20 terabytes of photographs dating back to 2014. That scintillating task entails consolidating three billion images, I tend to inflate, from three big hard drives into one muy bigger one. That does not include five back-up drives that splay across my workspace. The result, nonetheless, will be less clutter, fewer cables, and less plugs in sockets. There may even be enough desk top left to replace the scanner that bit the dust last year.

Peek-a-boo, Lama, New Mexico.

Subtle Sky, Santa Paula, California.

That said, here is the second round of new Spot Color images which may or not be shown in the fifth biannual Immel + Immel show at Wilder Nightingale Fine Art in Taos at the end of August.

Red Stool in Rain, Telluride, Colorado.

Reflected Sky #1, Bartlett, New Hampshire.

And speaking of folk music, which we weren’t, there was at least one more close encounter with a folk super group of the era. The era being the early Sixties. My partner John and I were more or less the resident folk act at Arizona State University and were invitees to many a party after performances by visiting acts. One such act was The Limeliters, the Bay Area group founded by Lou Gottlieb, a musicologist at UC Berkeley, Glenn Yarbrough, a soaring tenor and star in his own right, and Alex Hassilev, a Paris born actor and musician who spoke six languages. Hassilev, I recall had a small part in the hilarious film The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming. He is still with us at 90. Yarbrough died in 2016 at 83, Gottlieb at 73 in 1996.

Anyway, we attended a party after the Limeliters performed. We did a short set which was met with hearty applause. Hassilev was complimentary in a self-impressed way but was less sanguine about my beloved Martin 000-18, the iconic steel string guitar of the time. It was the gold standard of acoustic guitars. He shamed my choice of instruments saying something like, “Real musicians play classical guitars.” Being a gob smacked twenty-year old I promptly sold my 000-18 so I could buy a nylon string Goya G40 which later was stolen out of Lynn Quayle’s Triumph Spitfire in broad daylight. There may have been a bar involved. The Goya wasn’t my smartest move as a pre-1967 Martin 000-18 would be worth as much as $10,000 today. The G40 might bring a piddling grand. I had bought the used Martin at Chicago Music in Tucson in the fall of 1959 for $100. New ones brought $150 plus the case. How I came up with $100 when I was living on $150 a month is a mystery to this day.

To my surprise, Chicago Music is still purveying fine guitars after 100 years in Downtown Tucson. To think I bought that fine instrument 63 years ago makes me feel ver old, indeed.