ArtStorming the Art of Remembrance: Pen La Farge

Santa Fe can feel like a beautiful postcard, but what happens when the postcard replaces the place? We sit down with writer and historian Pen La Farge to treat “legacy” the way it shows up in real life: not as a name on a building, but as the culture a community protects, forgets, or hands forward.

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Music for ArtStorming was written and performed by John Cruikshank.

Transcript

Season Theme And Legacy Lens

Speaker 7 0:00

Have you ever wondered what makes creative people tick? Where do their ideas come from? What keeps them energized? What kinds of things get in their way? Is their life really as much fun as it looks from the outside? Hello, I'm your host Lili Pierpont, and this is Art Storming, a podcast about how ideas become paintings or poems, performances or collections. Each episode, I'll chat with a guest from the arts community and we'll explore how the most creative among us stare down a blank canvas or reach into the void and create something new. In our inaugural season, art Storming the City Different, we dipped our toes into the vast ocean of creativity with a focus on some of our favorite creators of Santa Fe, New Mexico. That conversation was enjoyed by artists and non-artists alike because it showed us how we can all benefit from learning how to generate something from nothing. Dream bigger, charter, new territories, and solve problems in new ways. In season two, we're gonna take that concept of generating our lives with intention to the next level. This season, we're talking about legacy art as legacy, and how the most creative among us tackle this rich and deeply personal subject. Welcome to Art Storming, the Art of Remembrance.

1:20

When we hear the word legacy, we usually think of something. A person leaves behind a name on a building, a statue, or a family inheritance. But what if the legacy which lives beyond us is the community itself? Today, we're shifting our lens away from individual achievement and toward the collective soul of a city. Joining us is writer and historian. Penn Lafarge, a man who serves as a living bridge to the deep complex memory of New Mexico. Through Penn's story, we see a legacy of a place that spans centuries from his mother's Bacca family roots, dating back to 1600 to his father's transformative work, documenting the Navajo and Hobie languages. But more importantly, we're exploring the golden age of Santa Fe. A time when three distinct cultures didn't just coexist, they integrated. It's a conversation about memory change and how we honor the places we love. Let's explore the city different with Penn Lafarge.

Meet Writer And Historian Penn Lafarge

Speaker 3 2:22

Alright, so I am art storming today with Penn Lafarge. And I really wanted to talk to you because this particular season is about legacy and I thought it would be really interesting since you're a writer and you've written a book about remembrances of Santa Fe. You come from a legacy family, so many layers to legacy about what you do as a historian, as a writer. And so I thought it would be really interesting to catalog. The legacy of community, the legacy of a community like Santa Fe. And so that's just, that's where we're gonna start. so tell me a little bit about, your family, how long you've been in Santa Fe and what you understand about the legacy of Santa Fe.

Family Roots And Early Santa Fe

Speaker 3 3:06

That's a big

Speaker 5 3:07

topic. Yes. I would say that's huge. my family, my mother's family is Spanish Baca and the Bacas, uh, came. 1600. So we've been here for 400 years. My father, uh, the Lafarge family, my father, first came here as an anthropology student at Harvard, to study the Indians in, summers of 1923 and 1924, and then returned regularly throughout the twenties and thirties. occasionally to live, uh, with his first wife for a while, 19 29, 19 30, but return to go on anthropological expeditions, through the Navajo country, through Hopi country. Uh, back when there weren't any roads one had to pack in, otherwise one didn't get

Speaker 3 4:02

there. Was he a contemporary of Natalie Curtis? Um,

Speaker 5 4:06

yes. A little bit. A little bit later. Little bit later, yes. But yes.

Speaker 3 4:10

Wow. 'cause I've, I've read the book, ladies of the Canyons. Yes. That talks all about this incredible group of women that came through Santa Fe and she happened to be very interested in cataloging the dance and Yes. And uh,

Speaker 5 4:21

yeah.

Speaker 3 4:21

Song of the Native Americans. So your father was right in that camp.

Speaker 5 4:25

Well, my father was arguably the premier. Student of an expert on the Indians in North America, and to a large extent Central America, because that's, actually where his anthropological work took him in the twenties, and to a le less degree in the thirties was to Mexico and Guatemala to study the Maya. He was an ethnologist, so he studied their languages, uh, the Mayan language, trying to determine how they were related. And how they went back or if they went back and how they went back to the ancient Mayan. so that was his work in the twenties and thirties, but he also worked with the Navajos and the Hopis. And his work with the Navajos resulted in his creating the first Navajo dictionary, the first Navajo alphabet, and. That is how he came to know the Navajos so well as to be able to write Laughing Boy, which, novel shows a deep knowledge of them as people of their culture, of their thoughts, of their folk ways. And, he was able to do that because he knew them so thoroughly. So, he came here to Santa Fe to start off on his expeditions to Navajo country. And then he also worked with John Collier, who later was the superintendent of, of Indian Affairs on creating a constitution for the Hopies. which because they're so quarrelsome, they've never passed. Uh, so yes, that's my, my father's connection. Then he did live here. Briefly, couple of one year maybe with his first wife. Then he returned after he had divorced his first wife and married my mother who was from New Mexico. Um, they returned here, before the war and then again after the war permanently.

Speaker 3 6:28

do you have siblings? other than a half sibling that you mentioned earlier.

Speaker 5 6:31

Uh, my father had two children by his first wife. The, uh, daughter. My half sister lives, in La Mesa, which is. South of Las Cruces, which until she moved there, I didn't know there was anything south of Las Cruces.

Speaker 3 6:47

Wow. And so, your mother was a Bacca, you said? Yes. And that's obviously a very well known name here in Santa Fe for, but for the people who don't live here in Santa Fe, say a little bit more about your, your mother's heritage and then we'll get more into you.

Speaker 5 7:02

My mother's, well, how far do you want me to go back?

Speaker 3 7:06

Well, 400 years is a lot of history.

Speaker 5 7:08

Well, even before that, my.

A Seven Year Trek Across America

Speaker 5 7:10

Ever so great as Roger Kipling would've said, my great great ever so great grandfather was Alvar Nunez, VE Baca, who was part of a, a major and very large expedition, thenar of ice expedition that was shepherded on the Gulf Coast in I think 1530 and. Four men survived, one of whom was my great-grandfather, and another one, famously was a blackmore named Estevan. And they spent seven years going, walking from the Florida Gulf Coast All the way across America to back in and back in, into Mexico. It took them seven years, often naked. they were there were times when they were made into gods and times that they were made into slaves. His account of this, adventure is absolutely fascinating. It's, it's a real life adventure, which men who had no idea where they were, where they were going or how to get there, were spent seven years. The first white man through this area, through Southern part of what is today, the United States, New Mexico, and back down into Mexico where they found the Spanish again. and then his grandson was. part of the, expeditions who came to New Mexico in 1600, the first settlers having arrived in 1598, and we've been here ever since.

Speaker 3 8:43

Wow. Wow. That is quite a legacy. Your dad meets your mom and he's, obviously got this prolific career. tell me your story. you were born here.

Speaker 5 8:54

I was.

Speaker 3 8:55

Okay. And were you raised here?

Speaker 5 8:58

Yes. Uh, yeah. I was, I was one of the first children born in what was then the new wing of the St. Of St. Vincent Hospital, which was downtown, and now the new wing in all St. Vincent Hospital is no longer hospital. It's, uh, moved and is now the. Hotel. so I was born there, one of the first children born there. And, uh, yes, I was raised here. I went to a mare grade school and then was a founding student at the Santa Fe Preparatory School.

Speaker 3 9:33

And you went off to college, I presume?

Speaker 5 9:35

I went off to boarding school and then to college, uh, Boston University.

Speaker 3 9:39

Oh, you went to bu

Speaker 5 9:40

I did.

Speaker 3 9:41

I was there briefly.

Speaker 5 9:42

Were you?

Speaker 3 9:42

Yes. In 19 78, 9, excuse me, 1979 from one semester. It didn't last long. It was too big for me.

Speaker 5 9:52

It's, it's a, yeah. Um, I didn't go there necessarily because I, well, I did not go there because of its size. I went there because it had one of the best history departments in the nation and the, the size of it and the amorphousness of it, and the fact that it's campus really is Commonwealth Avenue. Not much of a campus. Was, keeps me from having any particular sentiment about it. It's a large amorphous university in which everyone is just a number. But my, my history department, the history, the departments and the professors were really good and, uh, wanted to get a feel for them.

Speaker 3 10:30

And So you majored in history?

Speaker 5 10:32

I did.

Speaker 3 10:32

Um, what, where did you, what was your focus?

Speaker 5 10:35

European history? More focused than that. I was a major in early modern intellectual European history.

Speaker 3 10:44

So is where did the book that you wrote come from in, in terms of that? Or was that,

Speaker 5 10:50

or a

Speaker 3 10:50

side gig?

Speaker 5 10:51

No, it's, it's really completely different.

Why Document Santa Fe’s Golden Age

Speaker 5 10:54

I had been raised with the idea that Santa Fe's Golden age, as it were, was roughly the 1930s, as people said, everywhere else was the Roaring twenties. Here it was the roaring thirties, not because there was a lot of wealth, there wasn't the depression, hit everybody, but that was the period in which the, a lot of the artists came here. Few artists before and during the war. First World War, mostly artists came afterward. artists, writers, poets, photographers, of all kinds came here. In the thirties or the twenties and then in the thirties we'd, everything seemed to just coalesce and come alive and it was a great time until the war and it was a great time, not in terms of wealth, but in terms of unity and culture and everybody enjoying themselves in each other. And it was a, it was a really lively, interesting. Place with a lot going on. So, uh, having heard all this about my, the time before I was born or the very early part of my life, I wanted to record it. So that people would know why it was that they either moved to Santa Fe or having been born here, stayed in Santa Fe. What made it unique? What made it special? What makes it stand out? So that people who come here, come here from thousands of miles, come here from Japan, uh, which is extraordinary because we really are in the middle of nowhere. And until the highway system went through, particularly the. The interstate highway system in the fifties, it was really difficult to get here. So people who came here really had to want to come here. And so why did people come here? What made this, uh, such a special place? What made it the city different? So I wanted c create a record of what it was like here in that period, roughly 1920 to 1955. So I thought about taking my historical training as a, um. as a way of getting into it, but I couldn't think of any way to really capture the flavor of the place as it distinguished from merely the events that was more difficult.

Learning Oral History The Hard Way

Speaker 5 13:25

So I, it was about that time when I was in college and then graduate school that, studs circle's, oral histories came out. and, um, his book about the Second World War, the name of which escapes me so I took that as a template. I thought, that's not a bad idea for capturing people's feelings and culture and thoughts and experiences as distinguished from just events. What happened? And I called him up out of the middle of nowhere. He didn't know who I was but he lived around the corner from me, in Chicago, uh, well, yeah, in Chicago where he lived around corner, the corner from a friend of mine whom I'd gone to Boston University with. We were roommates. And so I called him up and he was nice enough to talk to me about oral history and so I came, I was really an a, a hit and miss experiment. But it was an experiment and it, I, it took a long time to do it. It took a long time for me to figure out how to do what I was doing, how to interview people. It's interviewing is not a science, it's an art, and it's a difficult art to, to learn cold. And so I had to learn how to interview people and where to interview people and what questions to ask. So it was a long process, but out of that process came, turned left at the sleeping dog.

Speaker 3 15:02

And I, I just love the title. So when you grew up here, did you know you were living in a very special place and so when you went east, you had that in mind? This is was in the back of your mind that. Somehow you were going to come back to Santa Fe and explore its history further?

Speaker 5 15:19

Yes and no. Um, I didn't come back here with the intention after graduate school of creating a history or an oral history. I came back. To be a writer, but the idea that the period that Santa Fe became the city different and became as well known as it is back then among a certain group of people later on, among greater group of people, that then it sort of haunted me until I decided I had to do something about it. My training in history really wasn't terribly much geared toward this, but it was, it was geared toward an interest in history and a love of history, but not how to do this particular thing.

Leaving Home To See It Clearly

Speaker 5 16:09

Not until I went away really did it. I knew it was special. I knew it was unusual, if not unique, but I couldn't appreciate quite how until I went away first to boarding school, then to college. Then it really bore in on me how different it was. And back then it is different today, but back then it was a completely different world. I remember as a child hearing about or reading about places back east or in the rest of the, world, and they always seemed a tremendous distance away from New Mexico and in some cases they really were. But it in New Mexico was quite separated from the rest of the nation. Santa Fe. Was separated even further because we're in the middle of New Mexico We really were a far away and many people didn't even know that New Mexico was a state in the union, which is why our license plate says in New Mexico, USA no other license plate says that.

Speaker 3 17:12

Is that true?

17:13

That's

Speaker 3 17:13

true. I've never even noticed that having lived here for 10 years,

Speaker 5 17:16

it says New Mexico USA. So we can prove to people who, I had a friend who was stopped on by a highway patrolman in Massachusetts, when he was going to college there. Also, Worcester Art College. The highway patrolman wanted to see his international driver's license. And my friend, I don't happen to have a New Mexico driver's license. He says, well, that's no good here. You have to have an international driver's license. And my friend said, well, new Mexico's a state and the union, the, uh, the highway patrolman said, no, it's not. There's no such places New Mexico. My my friend said, yes, there is. He said, no, this is Old Mexico. You need to give me your driver's license. So my friend tried to convince him and the patrolman said, where is New Mexico? And my friend said, it's between Arizona and Texas. And the patrolman said There's nothing between Arizona and Texas. So my friend got out of his car and took him around to the license plate and said, see, it says New Mexico USA, and that's why it's there. So that was the state of things when I went away back east to school, some people knew New Mexico was part of the union, but they didn't know really where it was or what it was like. I thought it was old desert and very hot, at least viewed us as being like southern. Arizona, which were not. and yes, it was, you know, we, having Spanish culture here meant very little to anybody having Indian culture. here again, there are Indians elsewhere, but they tend to be almost invisible. And they're, they've been deracinated, they don't live on their, in this, their tribal lands necessarily. And they don't necessarily speak their language and they don't necessarily practice their ancient religion here. All those things are true so that the Spanish heritage by Spanish heritage, the fact the culture here is largely formed, not entirely, but largely Anglo culture. He was foreign by. Artists of all sorts is completely different from the rest of the United States where artists are those people over there, and we have anthropologists and archeologists by the score. Many places in the United States you could. Never find an either one. So this was a most unusual agglomeration of people and cultures, and it was very far away from the rest of the nation. So guess it

Speaker 3 19:46

must have been so crazy for you as a kid from here with all that sophistication, which probably wasn't understood as sophistication on the East Coast. But with that very. Broad and deep. even going from New York to Philadelphia, I was considered a complete anomaly when I was boarding school age. I How, what, what was it like for you to try to fit into an east coast boarding school?

Speaker 5 20:12

Oh, I was a complete fish outta water.

Speaker 3 20:14

I bet.

Speaker 5 20:15

it was my father's culture and I had visited and stayed with cousins on the East coast, but it was still a. A very distant culture to me. I was very much into Westerner, very much a new Mexican. So when I got there, I was the only boy there that wore silver and turquoise. Uh, many of the, I think I very well am I have been the only boy at my school who, uh, came from west of the Mississippi and many of the kids didn't. If they knew where New Mexico was, it was vague and I really, it was, I was a complete fish out of water to, to the point that, uh, one day I was walking down the main street of campus. At Brooks School and I came across one of the master's wives. This was early on, it may have been October or so of my, of my first year there, came across one of the crop master's wives and I really liked the way she was addressed, which was completely different from anything in Santa Fe. It was very Eastern, but I liked it Probably the first and only time that's ever happened to her. I stopped her and I said, I like the way you're dressed. And I think she must have been somewhat stupefied, uh, that a boy would stop her and say this. And she, she said, thank you. And I said, where'd you get your clothes from? And she looked at me. She said, LL Bean. I said. What's LL Bean, and she looked at me as though I'd fallen out of a tree.

Speaker 3 21:53

I can imagine. Well, it's of course the uniform of the East coast of certain, certain parts, but So did you find yourself wanting to shop at LL Bean? I don't, I can't imagine you in LL Bean.

Speaker 5 22:05

Not necessarily. but I, I wanted to know where this look came from, so eventually I did. I did become used to it and then I fell in love with my school. My last year there, my senior year was. My sixth forum year was, was wonderful. I really loved it, especially the spring. I didn't want to graduate. I may have been the only high schooler ever who didn't want to graduate, but I didn't want to graduate. I wanted to it to continue. I had such a good time by the time I left,

Speaker 3 22:38

well, you must have made an impression on, on the other students there for you to go from feeling fish out of water to feeling like you didn't wanna leave. So.

Speaker 5 22:46

I don't know

Speaker 3 22:47

what, you must've been quite the ambassador for New Mexico.

Speaker 5 22:50

I don't know. I think

Speaker 3 22:52

you're too, you're too modest to admit it.

Speaker 5 22:54

I think. I think, well, I think they made more of an impression on me than I made on them.

Speaker 3 22:59

did you gravitate towards the art students or other hist history students?

Speaker 5 23:04

Well, at a, at a boarding school, you're one takes all sorts of different courses. it's not focused on anything as it might be in college. So, uh. There weren't art students per se. There were students who were more inclined toward the arts and we had a mutual interest, but I can't say we formed any sort of interest group. And history was a love, but again, it was just a course among many. I had an affiliation for the history professors with History Masters and the other students. But no, I wouldn't say they formed any interest

Speaker 3 23:39

because at my, at my boarding school, we had clubs and so we had arts clubs and history clubs and things of that nature. No, we

Speaker 5 23:44

didn't. We didn't

Speaker 3 23:45

have, didn't that gross?

Speaker 5 23:46

No.

Speaker 3 23:46

Yeah. So you just sort of, kind of assimilated. And then, um, you stayed on the East Coast for college, obviously.

Speaker 5 23:52

Yes.

Speaker 3 23:53

And then it sounds like you migrated towards Chicago on your way back. west.

Speaker 5 23:57

Well, I wanted to go to, uh, I, I got my master's at, uh, Boston University also. Then I wanted try something new and. I re, I wasn't all that attached, as I said, to Boston University as a place because there really is no place. It's, it's a series of, of departments that are scattered along streets. So I had no particular fondness and I still don't for Boston University, I was fond of my friends. I experienced all sorts of new things and new people and new cultures when I went back east to college as well and met my first people who were really from suburbia. 'cause we didn't have suburbia here. Uh, they were from suburbia in, in New Jersey and Connecticut, in Philadelphia. people who came out of a background that were essentially sort of like leave it to Beaver, uh, which I'd never encountered before. So I learned a lot from that. and I. Was fascinating about, I wanted to try something new and different. So I went to, uh, Northwestern to work on a doctorate and that's how I wound up in Chicago. And it also attracted me because my roommate, from Boston University had moved there and, uh, we had remained close friends. So he was my one friend at Chicago.

Speaker 3 25:23

Yeah, well, It's often said that, you know, you learn more about your own culture. When you go into a kind of more distant culture, it puts it into stark relief. And so it makes sense to me that by going to the East Coast, it would sort of bring you back and give you fresh eyes to look at, at Santa Fe.

Speaker 5 25:39

And that was what emphasized in my mind how different Santa Fe was from everywhere else. It's different today, but back then. The differences were much more stark than they are today because Santa Fe was, had not changed so much to become part of the national culture. We were still very much New Mexico, very much ourselves, and the national culture had not inundated us as the way it has now.

Speaker 3 26:09

Yes. How soon after you got back did you start on the book? You said it took a, a long time for you to complete it, but you started your explorations into the art of interview and then compiling the stories.

Speaker 5 26:23

Well, it wasn't quite as clear cut as that, but yes. I started in the, I'm not sure, I would say the early middle eighties, 84, maybe 85. And started off interviewing, then realized I didn't know what I was doing and sort went back and picked up that stitch, uh, by trying to learn how to interview, which is difficult, I must say. And then continued learning and interviewing from there.

Choosing Voices And Shaping Interviews

Speaker 3 26:53

and how did you decide who you were going to include in the book?

Speaker 5 26:57

people that had been, most of them were people I knew. People I thought would be interesting and from diverse areas of our culture. people, Spanish American Heritage, people, Indians, Anglos of especially artistic Anglos or are connected to art, artistic endeavors. Uh, some of them I didn't know or I knew. Distantly or through relatives. Most of them I knew, not all, but I wanted an interesting and varied agglomeration. And so I did my best to put that together. And since many of them are friends of mine, uh, not all, many of them are friends of mine. That was fairly easy. On the other hand, some of them I didn't know, but we became. Good friends in the process. so that was, somewhat hit and miss, but there was a, an underlying plan to it.

Speaker 3 27:59

So that's, it's interesting. I didn't realize that we had that in common until you just said that, but when I decided to do my first season. I interviewed mostly new Mexican artists. So the first season was was called City Different, and I talked to mostly people that I had met in the first eight years, nine years that I'd been here in New Mexico. And then as I, I didn't exhaust that pool by any chance, but I wanted to make sure that I was well rounded in the same way that you did. So I started reaching out beyond my immediate circle of friends and, um, I found. That those are now friends. I mean, these conversations just sort of, created that scene. So, did you find it more difficult to interview the people that you knew well, or the people that you knew less? Well,

Speaker 5 28:43

I don't think that made much difference. one of the first interviews in my book is Amalia Sena Sanchez, who was the first Fiesta Queen. She was 95 when I interviewed her. She lived to be 105. She was as sharp as tack.

Speaker 6 29:03

I knew her and I knew of her through my grandmother and to a lesser extent through my, my Aunt Josephine, my mother having died when I was 20. But she would, she knew my mother, she knew my family well enough that she said, she told me that she and her daughter had a running argument as to whether I looked more like my father or my mother. and. So, uh, although I didn't, I had, you know, met her in passing. I didn't really meet her until I sat down to interview her, and that was one of the easiest interviews I've ever had. I asked her one question, she talked for 45 minutes. So that's an interview. on the other hand, a woman I'd known all my life. Who had a fascinating life and a fascinating background. I interviewed her when I went back and listened to the tape at the end of it, trying to cooking the interviews down into a book, I, I found that the interview I had with her was. Was virtually useless. There was nothing there. It was just a lot of platitudes and empty phrases and, uh, little bit of, of usable material. So I went back and I interviewed her at the very, she was my first interview and I went back and I, she was my last interview. And again, despite the fact at this point, I had experience and knew more what I doing was doing than I had before. Still, it came out badly, uh, just. Again, platitudes and empty phrases. Perfectly. Nice woman. Lovely woman with all my joy, the interview, but there was just, was no meat there. So whether I knew the person or not was, I would say irrelevant.

Speaker 8 30:53

Well, I guess, you know, it's, your situation is different 'cause you're trying to put together a sort of a comprehensive body of work, whereas my interviews are all, each one is a, a standalone. but do you feel that you got to know your city better? Having completed that project and or did it leave you with more questions?

Speaker 6 31:12

Oh, both. Both. I knew my city better. I knew its history better. I knew what it was like and before I was born and my early childhood better. I learned all that. But yes, it left me with all sorts of questions. Of course. Yeah.

Speaker 8 31:27

And have you considered a, a second book or what does the, how has your work progressed from that point?

Speaker 6 31:33

Well, the, the second book, the, the time for that has passed all the people I would interview on a, on a continuation of the book into a later period of, are either dead or dying. So that, that it would be nice, but it never happened.

Speaker 8 31:48

And you don't feel, find that there's like another sort of generation of people, maybe your contemporaries, that, that would've made an interesting follow up to the book or did you feel that it was complete?

Speaker 6 32:00

Well, I dunno that it's complete, but no, I, I was always thinking about the time when. Santa Fe's wasn't as well recorded as it is today. Now everything is in the papers and everything is recorded, and everything's on TV and everything's everything. Everything today is known, well known. All you have to do is find it. back then our history, our life, our culture was not as completely recorded as it is today, and I don't. I hadn't really thought until you brought it up of recording my own generation, but frankly, I was more interested in what, what made our generation, what made the culture that we, and the place we were born into.

Speaker 8 32:50

Yeah, I get that. And at the same time, it sort of makes me curious I mean, one of the things that is very interesting about this project that I've been doing is that I get to have conversations that are beyond what you can know about somebody on their internet page, on their website page, or what you would read about them in the story. You get to the essence and the sense of a person, and of course you've seen Santa Fe.

How Santa Fe Changed Over Time

Speaker 8 33:14

Morph and change into the city that it is now. How would you say it's different now? I mean, I know that's a huge question, but what do you see as the biggest difference between then and now? And when I say then, I mean when your experience of it and not, not the people that you interviewed.

Speaker 6 33:33

Well, there's no one, element to it. There are many elements. I would say the, the first thing leaped to my mind is that we're no longer as distant from the rest of the nation as we were. That we're much, well, it's the highway system went into the fifties that really changed things. then Albuquerque became a major airport major. In quotation mark. Uh, but it's, it became an airport in which people actually flew into from around the nation says it's international, but, and occasionally it actually is. Um, I. So I think that then many more people, it's no longer true that people, or I suppose there are still pockets of people who don't know where New Mexico is, but it's not as true as it used to be. The New Mexico magazine, I don't know whether it still does, but New Mexico Magazine used to have a page in every issue called one of our 50 is Missing. And it was, it was all rec recordings of people who called in. Or wrote into the Chamber of Commerce or to the state saying, can we drink the water? Do you accept American money? Um, yeah. Are we going to die of diseases? My father in one of his Sunday columns, he had a weekly column for years in the newspaper, and one of his Sunday columns, said that, I don't know whether he'd been written to or some of the state of this Chamber of Commerce, but the question was, do you accept American money? To which his To which his answer was avidly.

Speaker 8 35:19

Perfect.

Speaker 6 35:20

So that is, that's a major difference, is that we are now really part of the culture much more than we used to be. Our western culture is not so distinct. Our Spanish culture is not as distinct as it was, even though it's, it's strengthening, going back to its heritage and its language. Which is really good. Uh, still the Spanish Americans are now much more part of the mainstream in every way, and they're much more American than they used to be. All sorts of phrases and dichos and words that used to be used commonly are no longer used, have dropped out of use. Attitudes have changed, appear. People stopped going to church. The Spanish, who used to be absolutely regular going to church are more than I think Anglos are, but not as the way they used to be. Uh, the Indian culture, again, has been inundated by American culture, and it's not as a part. When I was a child, the Indians lived on the reservation. They lived on their, in their pueblos. They did not live anywhere else, aside from a very few. Now they do. they're losing in many cases, unfortunately, their language, which is their transmission of culture, since their languages by and large aren't written. And, so their. They, they're becoming more like everybody else, which is a problem. we are not as far, and therefore we are also not as small. Santa Fe is not a large city, but it's a small city. It didn't used to be a city. It used to be a town. And when I was young. It really was a town with a small intimate feel in which everybody knew everybody else's business and everybody was acquainted with everybody or at least knew of and heard of everybody else, or, and that's just no longer true. well, it used to be that when Anglos moved here. One of the assumptions was that they would go to the Indian Pueblos to watch the dances because that was really an important part of what it meant to be a new Mexican. And the early artists and writers were fascinated by the Indians. They wrote about them, they painted them, they photographed them. And not going to an Indian dance was considered unthinkable. Now. People move here, never even crosses their minds. So that's another way in which things have changed in which we've become more distant from our own culture and our own, accumulated heritage and more like the rest of the nation and the Indians or those people over there rather than part of whom we are.

Tourism Second Homes And Cultural Dilution

Speaker 8 38:14

So what do you think are the most important legacies that you'd like to see carried forward? I mean, if you were to think of Santa Fe as a person, as a member of the family that get, characteristics that get passed down, or if you were to write a eulogy for Old Santa Fe, what aspects of it would you celebrate and hope to see carried forward into the next generation that maybe aren't being considered? I mean, you just appointed to, the curiosity and integration of the three cultures, native and Spanish and Anglo and that, that's kind of getting more diluted. It sounds like you're saying.

Speaker 6 38:53

Well, it is because the outside American culture really has. Flooded New Mexico. It's inevitable because of media, televisions, movies, to a lesser extent. Um, but especially television and now every other sort of media and all the people who are able to easily move in and move out, move through, and all the tourists. We used to, we've had tourists for a long time, but now we have. Floods of tourists, which we did not have when I was young. Uh, the tourist season was essentially the summer, and then that was that after the summer was over, we had the town back to ourselves. That just isn't true any longer. all these influences watered down and dilute what was. What were three strong cultures that lived side by side. So I suppose one of the things I'd want to see continued into the future are the three cultures living side by side distinct yet together and, strongly themselves and their heritage strongly themselves. there is a. politically correct sentiment that we are multicultural. Oh, there are all sorts of cultures. We're not just three cultures. I disagree. there's the Indian culture. There's a Spanish culture, and then as it is with the, culture back east in Pennsylvania there are the Amish and there's everybody else. And everybody else is who they aren't and they are the English here. If you aren't Spanish and you aren't Indian, you are Anglo, which means just everybody else.

Speaker 8 40:40

Mm.

Speaker 6 40:41

And I think that is an accurate reproduction of the way we live. And the way we view ourselves is that we are Anglo, we are Indian or Spanish or both, and then everybody else, whether they're. Anglo-American, Irish American, uh, Italian, black or Chinese, they're Anglo because of not of whom they are, but of whom they're not. I think that needs to be continued. I definitely think that the artistic colony, the creative colony we have here in all of its forms, which is, I don't see any chance of it's changing anytime soon because it's so strong. But I think that needs to be continued because that's very much part of whom we are. I would like us to continue to be somewhat separate from the rest of the country in order to maintain these qualities in our identity.

Speaker 8 41:35

Yeah. it's so interesting having lived here for 10 years. It is like no place I've ever lived. I feel like it's a place where, it requires being here 10 years for it even to start to open itself up to you. And that it's a place that reveals itself to you just like a person. As you get to know it, the more it opens up and reveals itself to you, and then you, you learn more about the history. And there are so many things that I love about Santa Fe and Mo. One of them is that, and this might be actually contributing to what you are, Not happy about, but the people who move here seem to come here so deliberately. They are drawn here because there seems to be something that magnetically attracts them that that says. That maintains their integrity or even, uh, blossoms their integrity. People come here at a certain stage of life, they've, they've lived a whole life somewhere else and they come here to do their real work or their artistic work or the fullest expression of their work. And I think there's something about Santa Fe that really, attracts that there's something. About the energy here without getting too woo, but there's, there's something really here. So say a little bit what your experience of that would be. What do you think it is that draws people here? The kind of people that we, that will carry on these characteristics that you think are important?

Speaker 6 42:58

first I have to say that one of the things that has changed. is a couple of things that have changed. First, a lot I, it is my impression that a lot more people in the old days came here by accident. They came here. Loved it and decided to stay. Whereas, I don't think there's so many accidental, people who, people have come here more or less accidentally. They've come here, they unexpectedly fell in love with it and then stayed. I don't think that happens quite so often. Or if it does, it's not quite so visible. The other thing I would say is that more people now here come deliberately. It's because it's hip and cool and it's has a high profile and we're in the top 10 list of favorite places to go to. So a lot of people come here because of our high profile and because it's hip and cool. Ever since 1982 when we were on the cover of three magazines and we were declared by Esquire to be. As the place to be. People now come here much more deliberately and be not than they used to, and not because of, not because of the interesting and exotic cultures, but because it's. I have to repeat myself hip and cool to be here, or everybody else says, oh, you've got to go. Mm. And so there are, increasingly contingent of people who are drawn to a, um, a colony of people who are here because it's the place to be. And those people tend not to be interested in the depth of the culture, not in the Indian and Spanish cultures. They tend to be here and then to talk mostly among themselves. There's certainly, I think the film colony here or what he is a potential film colony are, uh, actors, writers, directors, producers. I think I get the impression they're mostly interested in each other and I, I hope I'm wrong, but I get that feeling. I think a lot of people here are here because they are interested in each other and not because they're interested in everybody else.

Speaker 8 45:15

Yeah. Well, I think there's this, uh, saying that Santa Fe either. Draws you in or spits you out and that those people that are aren't here to, that don't resonate with the true spirit of the place may be here for a time, but eventually they kind of get pushed along.

Speaker 6 45:33

That's often true.

Speaker 8 45:35

Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 6 45:37

Also, we have a lot, another phenomenon that we have more than we used to is people who are part-time. Residents. Right? The second homes.

Speaker 8 45:47

Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 6 45:47

especially the wealthy. Now the wealthy used to come here and didn't show off their wealth. That's important. They didn't show off their wealth, they didn't make it obvious. they didn't, Show it off in the sense of making it other people See, you see how important and how rich I am now they build on, on ridge tops. So everybody has to look at them. They get the view, we get to look at them. and they, are much more, this is, I'm generalizing of course, condescending, And second homes, as it were, are I think are of bad phenomenon because that house then sits empty part of the year and if it's empty as a hole in the fabric of the neighborhood as a whole is in a sweater. so both. People with second homes and now these damnable air and b and b apartments and houses all over the place are all holes in the fabric of the neighborhood. People who don't vote, people who don't care about local problems and local issues. People who don't know their neighbors terribly well there. They're just not fully present. And that's a, that's a damaging change.

Speaker 8 47:06

So what do you think that we can do as a community to maintain the integrity and, and bring back some of the qualities of the old Santa Fe that you remember?

Preservation As A Shared Responsibility

Speaker 6 47:20

I don't know. I don't think it can be necessarily brought back. I think that, um. If the Spanish American culture continues to work on maintaining, maintaining its language and, and resurrecting the old culture and its old folk ways, especially in the northern villages, that would help, if the Indians are not drowned in the popular culture, but don't lose their languages and, um. Don't, don't view themselves as I was at a hearing last night about the monument of the, that was torn down in the plaza and there are a lot of, of Indians who are angry and hostile, and that never used to be the case. I think that's a damaging change. I think that, that if they. Should maintain their integrity, but not, not maintain it in, in a hostile way, but uh, in an integral way that would help. I think it would help if the Anglo, contingent became genuinely interested in the other two cultures and in the history of Santa Fe. New Mexico has a fascinating, complicated, and deep history, more so than. If not every other state in the union, then almost every other state in the union, Massachusetts might be a, an exception. but our culture here is deep and rich and complicated, and people need to know, I think as a generality, people need know more about it, how we came to be whom we are and why.

Speaker 8 49:07

Yeah. And it would be interesting to explore what vehicles we have for that to have people, I know I was visiting, Montreal, and they have this wonderful program at night where the history, and culture department project, these images of these old movies on sides of buildings, and you have an app that you can listen to that sort of gives the history of, Montreal at night, which is amazing because in the winter it's so dark there that the days are shorter. So it, it opens up a whole possibility for how to learn about the history. I've had this idea for Santa Fe to have similar projections on Adobe Walls that talk about, you know, little snippets of the history here and there so that even people who live here can learn more about it. Because as I said, I've been here 10 years and I'm only just now starting to be able to peel back the layers and understand all the various, versions of Santa Fe that there are.

Speaker 6 50:02

Well, certainly. well that's an interesting idea and certainly reading about this town, uh, the town and the state, there are a lot of books about culture and history here that are read by historians and people interested in culture, but they really should be more widely disseminated, especially the books on history. And we have a lot of history here. I think it would help if people. Well, for Santa Fe in particular, I think people should belong to the old Santa Fe Association, on whose board I serve. I

Speaker 8 50:36

didn't know there was one here.

The Old Santa Fe Association’s Role

Speaker 8 50:38

Another thing I'm learning after 10 years, the old Santa Fe Association,

Speaker 6 50:41

the old Santa Fe Association, is 101 hundred years old this year, and it is dedicated to the preservation of our culture and our heritage and our buildings and the welfare of the, of the town It has been. Over a hundred years at various times, an extraordinarily important organization. It started by, in a fight to not bring a chatauqua here to Santa Fe, which was deemed, and it's, it's a, is somewhat complicated story. It was deemed I irrelevant and it was stopped. And then at various times it came back to, Stop 'em. Highway being put through in the center of town in the 1940s came alive again to preserve the barko and the historic dwellings of Santa Fe and to keep the city from being built over by buildings and culture that had nothing to do with Santa Fe in the 1950s, which my father and John go meme then Wrote the Historic Styles Ordinance, which is the precursor of today's historic district ordinance, in the 1957. And that was to preserve the historic areas of Santa Fe from being ruined really by potential, buildings that had nothing to do with our culture and heritage. It is a, an organization that has not had As high a profile as it should in the last few decades, but it, it does important work in preserving our culture, our heritage, our buildings, and in fighting against, bad ideas, bad buildings, bad developments, bad, uh, those things in town, which would, which tear away at our integrity. An example might be, the plans for St. Francis Drive, which is going to make it from a semi-rural, drive into a completely, built up drive the way more akin to Rios Road than to what it has been. And the last really untouched entrance into town, from Las Vegas. Old Pecos Trail is under threat as well. those are the things that the, uh, old Santa Fe Association fights against trying to maintain the integrity in the air. There's a lot more that we do.

Speaker 8 53:09

Yeah. Well, it's interesting 'cause if you think of, of Santa Fe, and one of the reasons I I thought of having this conversation with you is that I liked the idea of thinking of Santa Fe as if it was. a person with, with a personality and a, and a lifespan. And, you know, it, it, it's interesting to think of how anybody goes through life and changes and incorporates the new things that they learn, but also maintains a sense of themselves. And so when we think about writing a eulogy for Santa Fe, I mean, well, hopefully it's not dying, so that would not be appropriate. But like, how does a community maintain its integrity? Maintain its sense of self and its sense of soul and still adapt to new circumstances. And I think it's what many communities are trying to do and are faced with and it's a, it is a really interesting problem. How do we do that? But I think of Santa Fe has got such specific. Personality traits and characteristics that make it so unique in the United States. And, you know, it's, it's more nostalgic about the idea of keeping Santa Fe's integrity intact. And yet we still have to come into the modern age in some way, shape, or form. So how do you grapple with those two things in your own mind?

Speaker 6 54:28

Well, I, I, there is nostalgia, and the. To a certain degree with the work I've done on, for instance, turn left, the sleeping dog was a form of nostalgia. But it isn't just nostalgia. we live in our history in a way that few other places do. In America, We live within our history. It is all around us. It is what has created the state in our cultures. So it is very much a living history in a way that it wouldn't be in many other places because the history is so scattered, so forgotten, and it's because people have moved in and out so much that the history is less integral. I think that. Preservation of what you're talking about, of history and culture really has to be a conscious effort.

Speaker 55:16

all too often it is not conscious. It is left to those people over there. We'll, we're just going to go along with whatever happens. I think if people value history, if they value culture, if they value heritage, if they value integrity, they have to work for it. They have to be conscious of it. They have to appreciate it. They have to learn about it, and it can't just be left up to somebody else. They have to part. Participate in this, which is why the old Santa Fe Association is so important, is as a way to participate in keeping integral our culture, our heritage, and our history, I think is something that has to be thoughtfully done. many of the problems that we have now with bad developments, bad buildings, bad ideas, is that people just don't think They're not thoughtful about what they do. they're doing what they want to do without any. Real thought for, is this a good idea? How is this going to affect the culture? How is it going to affect the city? How is it going to affect the people? or they don't care, because there's money to be made. I think it has to be approached in a thoughtful manner and really has to be a thoughtful process of participating and not just leaving it up to somebody else to do it.

Speaker 2 56:33

That's such a perfect, way to. To talk about everything that we're trying to do with the whole Art Bridge Initiative is to bring people into this deliberate living, deliberate thinking about their own lives, the choices that they make on a daily basis, and how that contributes to the legacy that they leave behind. And when we talk about legacy at Art Bridge, we're not talking about a name on a building. We're talking about that echo of who we are as a people, how we. Leave behind what, what matters to us, what we care about, which is exactly why I wanted to talk to you about the city of Santa Fe. And I think you've made a, perfect case for why Santa Fe needs to be considered in that very deliberate way.

Speaker 57:17

Having said that, I have another appointment and I'm afraid I'm going to have to draw this to a close.

Speaker 2 57:23

Perfect. Perfect timing. Thank you so much Penn. That was fantastic. And um, to be continued.

Closing Thanks And How To Help

Speaker 4 57:31

So thanks for joining us today. Art Storming is brought to you and supported by Art Bridge, nm. And listeners like you look for us on your favorite podcast platforms or wherever you listen. Your subscriptions, likes, comments, and shares. Help us to reach more listeners and attract the support we need to thrive in these challenging times. If you love what you hear, please consider making a contribution. We rely on your help to keep these conversations going. Every dollar you contribute goes directly into programs that support our mission, and we've been offered a matching grant that will match every dollar that you contribute. That means more compelling stories, more in-depth articles, and an even greater impact on our community. Please visit our website@www.art bridge nm.org and thank you so much for being an essential part of our work.