Shavua Tov

So far, Santa Fe has been the place where I learned the most facts about the place after I got there. I know that doesn't sound terribly momentous, but give me a second.

I went knowing about the hills and the heat, the mountains and the cacti. I knew that I wanted to see the Georgia O Keefe Museum and the Navajo jewelry. What I did not know is that Santa Fe, and New Mexico in general is home to a truly intriguing mix of people. There are the "natives" which can mean Native American, or descendant of the original Spanish settlers, and then there are the transplants - East Coasters looking for something more artistic and rural, but most notably, the senior community. 

I went gallery hopping on Friday and found that I lowered the average age significantly. Apparently Santa Fe attracts a large senior population looking for a nice, breezy balmy place to retire. This does create some interesting socioeconomic circumstances, where the transplants move in and start pricing out many of the poorer locals. Politics are also apparently, still heavily influenced by members of the "mob" - patriarchs descended from Spanish settlers. 

I also did not realize how close I am to the lab that built the A-bomb. There is a large population in Santa Fe who works there as well. I met a gentleman in shul who worked there, but didn't not want to comment further on his experiences "blowing things up" in the Navada desert. So I left it at that.

After the gallery hoppage on Friday, I went to the Georgia O Keefe Museum. The art was brilliant, but they also had a great movie about her life that included her letters and video interviews with the artist herself. She spoke a lot about the spiritual draw she felt to be in Santa Fe and the almost religious experience it was for her to paint the natural world around her. One of the striking things they portrayed in their photography exhibit, was the metamorphosis of OKeefe from the 20 year old that Steigletz photographed, into the desert hardened woman she became later in life. 

Thats all I've got for now. Shavua tov.

Santa Fe

 It was a long but beautiful drive from Liberal KS to Santa Fe NM. It didn't help that I stopped every few miles to take pictures.

Driving through Oklahoma and Texas felt almost exactly as it should - I saw one of those dust ball things roll across the highway and there was a cowboy with a heard of cattle a little ways off the road. There were huge expanses of highway that passed through small towns with rows of boarded up buildings. It felt almost as dusty and empty as I'd expected, but had none of the depressiveness that I was expecting from such movies as Feivel Goes West.

In addition to the boarded up banks and diners, there was always a Dairy Queen and a Family Dollar Store. There were always advertisements for fairs and parades and ranching events and cattle auctions. There were quaint shops with local art and artisanal products. There were also always other people passing through. I tried to think about a time when you couldn't just drive across the country and while such a vision is picturesque, there is something magnificent as well in what has been achieved in modern connectivity.

So here are more pictures -

This is the view jogging in Santa Fe

This is a random mountain

Messa thingy

The clothing selection in a town in New Mexico

Same town

Me being happy

I dont know what this is or where it is

Said hi to Dorothy

A cloud that I liked

More Pictures

Some more pictures. 

Dirt Road. By: Sophie Felder

Lines and Stuff. By: Sophie Felder

Cows and Water. By: Sophie Felder

Hotel Motel Holiday Inn. By: Sophie Felder

Slurpies. By: Sophie Felder

Pictures!!!

On a separate note, I am in Liberal Kansas, but have yet to see a liberal.

Murder

Today I committed my first road murder. A small little armadillo
had the terrible misfortune to tip toe across my path. I heard the crunch after I registered what I'd seen on the road. RIP little guy.

Honestly I feel terrible and I'm really broken up about it.

In other news, I made it all the way across Kansas today! It was beautiful. The emerald green meeting the bright blue of the horizon made my breath catch in my throat. I'd never seen color like that. There's even another color of shimmery light blue sky that hovers right above the pale grass that I hadn't seen either.

The real icing on the cake of color, is that I saw a full rainbow... IN KANSAS!!!

Not only that, I'm currently in liberal ks, the official home to Dorothy's house. Beat that.

Road trip by the colors-
Green trees and hills...green fields...green and yellow fields...straw fields with bales if hay...yellow grass with cows...grey brush

Kansas is small

I've been in Kansas for the past few days. But tomorrow I don't think I will be in Kansas anymore lol. Can someone please tell Bubbe I posted that?

Above is the parking lot to the Kansas City Library. The walls look like books and the stairs look like books so I guess they have some kind of theme going on.

Evan and I have seen just about everything there is in Kansas - The Arboretum, The Kemper Contemporary Art Museum, Power and Light District. And I have also been hanging out with my co-workers from last summer's stint in Kansas. One of my friends from Kansas, works in an animal rescue hospital where she has to dress up in an owl costume to feed the baby owls so they don't imprint on humans. She told me not to tell anyone about that so I'm really hoping she never sees this.

Meet Me In St Louis

I've been on the road for a week (~23 hours of driving) and have made it all the way to St Louis.

The road so far in numbers -
Fallen Trees: 3
Dead Raccoons: 4
Dead Squirrels: too many
Dead Deer: 1
Places named Pocahontas: 1
Crosses the size of a large building: 1

After leaving Bubbe's house, I drove to Pittsburg where I learned that Pittsburg invented everything useful in our lives. Steel, heart transplants, the polio vaccine, Rosie the Riveter, environmentalism, glass, the civil war, abolitionism, the washing machine, Mr Rogers, ketchup - the list got to the point where I became a skeptic.

Jill, Miriam and Jacob were kind enough to show me around to the Church Brewery - 

And this thing called the incline...aptly names since it was in fact on an incline. It went up the side of a mountain so that we got to see this - 

I left Pittsburg to drive to Ohio and ran into this along the way - 

So I stopped for a bit at an antique place that featured stuff Speilberg rented to use in the movie Lincoln -


When I woke up the next morning in Ohio, it looked like this outside -


So far its been quite a trip.

This is a bonus picture of Bubbe's dog -