Departments

FUNDRAISER
Find more to love this year with our favorite anise-laden treat, offered by the Plaza Bakery (56 E San Francisco) and the Heart Gallery of New Mexico Foundation, a nonprofit that assists the state’s Children, Youth & Families Division. Gear up for the holiday we “heart” most by picking up these locally made biscochitos—which have been flying off the shelves since December—at Kaune’s, Wild Oats, Mail Call, and other spots. For $4.50 apiece, you’ll be supporting statewide programs to create the best possible care and opportunities for foster children. More: heartgallerynmfoundation.org—MS

COMMUNITY
Ever since Santa Fe embraced Pueblo Revival architecture as its defining style in the 1930s, aesthetic consistency has been a hot topic here. Now the debate’s extended its reach, thanks to the proposed Neighborhood Conservation District Ordinance, a law that, if passed, would enable residents of in-town areas that lie outside the jurisdiction of the Historic Design Review Board (like Juanita Street near the Railyard, and Casa Solana) to determine their neighborhood’s building-design standards. Ten years in the making, the ordinance was introduced to the public last November by city councilor Karen Heldmeyer as protection against what she calls “inappropriate development.”

The concept, which she floated at a series of five community meetings in the fall, would allow property owners to form self-defined coalitions to decide which architectural requirements—building height, scale, setbacks, tree size, etc.—are essential to the spirit and style of their neighborhood. Once two-thirds of homeowners and the city council agree on the regulations, they’d be enforced by City Hall at the building-permit stage—not, Heldmeyer notes, through time-consuming site visits or hearings.

At a public-comment meeting at Casa Solana’s Gonzales Elementary School in early December, the crowd of about 80 was by turns openly skeptical—raising questions about whether stricter design standards might encourage sprawl or limit affordable housing, and how an overburdened planning department would manage the process—and cautiously optimistic. “While I need to see more details, I support any move toward self-determination,” said councilor Chris Calvert of the draft ordinance, which is expected to go to a final vote before the city council in February. “It’s not going to solve everyone’s problems,” admitted Heldmeyer, who modeled the plan after similar programs in Chapel Hill, NC, and Cambridge, MA. “But it can be a tremendously powerful and empowering thing.”—Katie Arnold

BOOKS
New Mexico has long been known for its personalities—be they artists, architects, outlaws, or otherwise. Three thoroughly researched accounts published in late 2007 delve into lesser-known details about movers and shakers who shaped our state, from a gifted gambler to a pair of clashing generals.

Doña Tules: Santa Fe’s Courtesan and Gambler ($21.95, unmpress.com), by Mary J. Straw Cook, explores this eccentric doña’s journey from her birth in Mexico, circa 1800, to her gradual rise to become one of this city’s most powerful, celebrated, and notorious women. This biography of Gertrudis Barceló, known simply as “La Tules,” examines not only the goings-on at her reputed brothel and gambling hall—as well as her prowess as a cardsharp—but also reveals such sensitive and surprising facts as her adoption of a girl after her own children died in infancy. Tules has long been known as a prostitute, but Cook reveals her to be much more: a gifted opportunist with political clout and genuine depth.

It’s easy to make caricatures out of historical figures. Without context, they fall into overly simplified categories— damsel in distress, villain, hero. The General and the Jaguar: Pershing’s Hunt for Pancho Villa ($21.95, nebraskapress.unl.edu), by Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and onetime Albuquerque Tribune reporter Eileen Welsome, avoids this pitfall with a narrative that reads as much like a novel as
a historical account. Welsome’s fantastically detailed book tracks General John Pershing’s 1916 invasion of Columbus, New Mexico, in pursuit of the Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa, supplying a dynamic view of two extraordinary fighters and the attitudes that fueled their game of cat-and-mouse.

Before the artwork of New Mexico’s pueblos had die-hard collectors, it had Josephine Foard. Josephine Foard and the Glazed Pottery of Laguna Pueblo ($39.95, unmpress.com) tells of a Delaware-born “spinster” who in 1899, at the age of 56, journeyed to Laguna Pueblo and spent the next several years showing its potters how to waterproof their ceramic wares by glazing the interiors. Fueled by an ambitious nature, a love of art, and an entrepreneurial bent, she also traveled—often on her own dollar—throughout the eastern United States, convincing reluctant dealers to sell the then-unknown pottery. Authors Dwight P. Lanmon, Lorraine Welling Lanmon, and Dominique Coulet du Gard augment their solid narrative with letters written by Foard detailing her experiences there.—Liz Napieralski 

HOME
This Valentine’s Day, give a gift that benefits all: hypoallergenic silk bedding from Red Lantern import shop (131 W Water, 505-466-3793). Made at a small factory near Hongzhou on the fabled Silk Road, these 100-percent-silk duvets feature coverings in ornate Chinese patterns and are filled with lightweight silk floss. “People think it’s not warm because it’s so light,” says St. John’s student Mimi Chan, who co-runs the family business, “but I have one, and it’s really warm.” These and other fair-trade wares, from furniture to jade jewelry, come from regions Chan has visited and connect the store to her other project: the nonprofit Guanyin Association for Women’s Education, which she and two fellow “johnnies” established in 2007 to send volunteer teacher/mentors overseas.—MS

David Jaramillo of Chimayó surely never imagined that his 1969 Ford LTD, which he and his family carefully customized in the 1980s and which won trophies around the West, would end up preserved for posterity alongside Thomas Jefferson’s Bible and Dorothy’s ruby slippers. Yet that’s precisely what happened: “Dave’s Dream,” bought by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in 1992, is now part of its permanent collection and one of its few automobiles to also reflect a personal and cultural identity. “It’s certainly one of our favorites,” says museum spokesperson Valeska Hilbig. “It’s so over-the-top—most people have never seen anything like it.”—Marin Sardy

HISTORY
Although buildings can’t technically be martyrs, it still seems to be the best word for the stately house that once resided less than a block from the Plaza at 125 Washington Avenue. The building, built in the 1850s by Solomon Spiegelberg, was known as the Simon Nusbaum home and was already more than a century old in 1961, when city planners razed it to make space for an 85-car parking lot. (The site, later built on again, now holds the Hotel Plaza Real).

Since 1926, when Mary Austin and several high-profile friends founded the Old Santa Fe Association, city residents had fought organized battles against “urban renewal”—and, by midcentury, the federal dollars that came with it. By the time the Nusbaum house came down, debates had already raged for a year. One Dallas transplant argued in a July 1960 letter to The New Mexican that the “local eye sore” should be torn down, adding that opponents “refuse to live in this Atomic 20th century.” Soon after, Oliver LaFarge wrote in his column, “There seems to be a magic about parking lots. The city fathers permit them in the most sensitive areas, without any apparent consideration of the damage they do.”

Ultimately, OSFA could neither sway City Hall nor raise enough money to purchase the property, and it was lost. Yet, true to its martyrdom, the casualty became a powerful force in historic preservation, spurring the group to create the Historic Santa Fe Foundation, a nonprofit that now maintains eight regional treasures and recommends buildings for addition to the National Registry of Historic Places. HSFF, 545 Canyon Road, 505-983-2567, historicsantafe.org—MS

Until very recently, not one of New Mexico’s 500 historic markers—those big, brown signs that present a tidbit of state history—was dedicated to the accomplishments of a woman. But indications of a paradigm shift are, if not everywhere, at least in one place: the intersection of Alameda Street and Old Santa Fe Trail. That’s where, on December 1, 2007, a marker was unveiled bearing the name Mother Magdalen Hayden, for the woman who brought formal education to New Mexico Territory in 1852 and founded the Loretto Academy (the state’s first school for women). Hayden is the first to be honored through the New Mexico Historic Women’s Marker Initiative, a Historic Preservation Division program with plans to post 54 signs recognizing the contributions of at least one woman from every county, pueblo, and tribe in New Mexico. “We are trying to correct omissions in the history of how this state was forged,” says Pat French, the initiative’s originator and co-chairwoman. “When children go to school in the future, they won’t only be reading about what men did.” Other honorees from this area: Esther Martinez (1912–2006), a storyteller from Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo, and the elaborately named María Concepción “Concha” Ortiz y Pino de Kleven (1910– 2006) of Santa Fe, the first female majority whip of any state legislature in the nation. The program is still welcoming submissions, which can be sent to the HWMI Selection Committee at 216 Washington, Santa Fe, NM, 87501. Details: nmhistoric preservation.org—Emiliano Garcia-Sarnoff