The PENguin Blog

 Or Nothing to See Here, Move Along We went today to Los Alamos, the site of the Manhattan Project to develop atomic weapons in World War II. I'm not sure what I expected, but it is an ordinary town with an extraordinary past. In 1942 it was a remote farming community on a mesa overlooking Santa Fe. It had a few distinctions, it was the site of a paleo Indian pueblo as well as the New Mexico Ranch School, founded by Arthur Pond, a former Roughrider, to toughen up boys like TR and himself. Among its alums were such varied characters as Gore Vidal and William S. Burroughs, go figure. And it was known to this man, J. Robert Oppenheimer, a Berkeley physicist and outdoorsman, shown here with his partner and nemesis, Brigadier General Leslie S. Groves The city has a strange relationship with its past, partly apologetic, partly proud, and partly educational with a strong dose of propaganda. If you go, do the Bradbury Museum and maybe the Historical Museum which in quaint fashi...

--> or Santa Fe, Five: Taking care of Business No images today as we spent our first totally kickback, non tourist day of the trip. I started the day with a meeting (friends of Bill W.), and then hit Ian’s Garage for an oil change. As much high speed driving under dirty conditions as I have been doing I thought it a good idea, and I generally like to do at least one oil change between scheduled intervals, this is my second. Ian Clemmer is a fanatic in the best sense of the word. If I were within 200 miles of him, he would be doing everything on my cars. Meanwhile, Sharon was doing some necessary domestic chores and looking up bookstores, since she has already burned through what she bought and has discovered that the joys of e-books are not for her on a regular basis, so we hit Collected Wroks, a lovely little local bookstore, well selected as the best are, and then headed over to hook up with Neal Frank at Santa Fe Pens. As much as pens, Neal is now into SCCA racin...

--> Everybody goes to Taos, from D.H. Lawrence to us, and there is a reason—the history, the people, the crafts. Even the town is somewhat special, but, especially it is the pueblo. It is the place that people have lived longest continuously in the current day US and it carries an indefinable aura about it that goes beyond that. And as I remarked to Sharon, it is impossible to take a bad photo there. Unless you can’t take any, and that’s what happened to me mid-morning when I discovered much   to my horror that both of my back-up batteries for my camera were depleted. Still, I managed to capture about 35 images before, here are a few. Our tour guide, whose name I never got, is studying preservation architecture at UNM. Proceeds from the tours support her studies, we were generous As we drove back through the town of Taos, we stopped and shopped, as we are supposed to do and picked up a lovely post World War II Acoma wedding jug ...

So where are the pens. Uhhhh, wellll, I did look at one or two places along the way between Bryce and Zion and saw one clapped out Eversharp Symphony, I think. So my only pen companions are those I brought along. Thus far I have used just about everything except the Matador and the Pelikan lapis M101 replica set. I’m sure I’ll get to them. But, wait, I did come up with a pen, at least an image of a pen, or rather a Waterman’s silver overlay pencil clipped in the jacket pocket (watch that clip) of an early naturalist in Zion Canyon. He was, to my dismay, unidentified, but clearly a man of taste and distinction in the wilderness.

It, truly, did snow today. Not enough to accumulate on the ground where we were, but there is some on the hills around. As a result we spent the day on Museum Hill, at the Museums of International Folk Art and the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture We had read good things about the Folk Art museum, but were not prepared for just how good it is. Usually I’m not one much for taking pictures of museum exhibits, but . . . After lunch we went to see the Indian Arts museum. It was fine, good, but I am growing a bit frustrated at not being able to take respectful images of native American subjects. I totally get the point about why, and it is, after all, their heritage, but still . . . And that’s pretty much it except for one thing. This morning Sharon decided that what has been plaguing her is not a cold so much as chronic altitude sickness. I did a quick Google search and came up with what has been a miracle cure for her. Two 2012 studies seem to show that ...

the Irony Edition.  So, for the past three weeks we have been going across the southwest eating in roadside diners, cafeterias on Indian reservations, never any problem with food. We get to Santa Fe, one of the wortld food capitals and within twelve hours I am doubled up in the middle of the night with food poisoning. In part, it’s my own fault. Ceasar salad with traditional (raw egg) dressing? What could go wrong? Nevertheless, we managed to show up at 10:15 for the Santa Fe History Museum’s daily walking tour of the plaza and surrounds. Our Guide was Phillip Jager, a nice man with a great store of knowledge. Among his more interesting-to-me tidbits of information was the headquarters of the Manhattan Project at 109 Palace Street. We spent the rest of the day low key, wandering the city center and touring the exhibits at the Governor’s Palace. We ran out of steam before we could do the new History Museum proper, did some shopping for supplies, since the casita has ...

It took just a brief afternoon orientation for me to be able, I think, to answer the question why Santa Fe and not Sedona. I’ve been in and through Santa Fe three or four times in my life and every time I came away wanting more, so here we are for a full week, in a very comfortable and spacious casita, where we can eat in if we choose, do laundry and spread out in a way we’ve not been able to in three weeks. By the time we got here we had driven 290 miles and had stopped briefly in Albuquerque. We were both at low energy, but managed to walk a few blocks around the central plaza and environs and to make plans for tomorrow, to include a two hour walking tour of the city followed by free time to do as whim carries us. Dinner will be at El Meson, a Spanish restaurant that has been discussed favorably in the New York Times, no less. For now just a few snapshots. I put the camera on auto and pointed and shot. A few buildings on the main square The Gover...

“Busy” day today at the Canyon de Chelly (and it’s pronounced Shay, a corruption of the Navajo, “tsayi”). We began the day with a vehicle tour of the canyon floor. These can be done only with a guide and a backcountry permit. Our guide was Terrill Spencer, despite the name, a Navajo. Apparently man came to live in the canyon with the advent of the people often (and controversially) called the Anasazi around 700AD. It was they who built the cave and cliff dwellings the ruins of which you will see in the images below. No one knows why they left about 300-400 years later. The Navajo, Hopi and Zuni all moved back into the canyon later, around 1200 and it seems that people have lived on the canyon floors since. What is remarkable is that people still live in the canyon today. Almost all the Navajos we have spoken with have family members who have land holdings and who spend summers down there. What there is to see here is the “written” and anthropological re...