Live and Learn New Mexico!

I am still thinking about my credit score woes and how capitalism/materialism just isn’t working for me, and the American dream.  After all, isn’t it a dream that is supposed to be held by all Americans? We know that not all Americans, myself included, want to compete and win. We don’t want to start from scratch, with little money in our pockets, and claw our way to the top, building a small family business into an empire. I've talked about this before but it isn't out of my system.  That is what I understand the American dream to be – you achieve it if you are good at capitalism. Correct me if I’m wrong. (The American dream also seems to apply more to people coming into our country from other countries. For them, many aspects of the dream do still apply. I would argue, however, that it isn’t an American dream but a dream of someone from whatever country they are from – Mary from Ireland’s dream of her be...

I’ve been moving from Bosque Farms to Cedar Crest for over a month now and I’m tired of it. I haven’t been able to settle into my daily work routine, mainly because I still don’t have internet service at the new place, for some ridiculous reason. However, I love the new place and believe I may have finally found my home. Cedar Crest, too, seems to be a great place to try out my new job as local coordinator for Academic Year in America (AYA). As I drove back and forth, back and forth through Albuquerque from one house to the other, I usually chose to drive along Coal Avenue, which turns into Zuni, which empties out on Central a little past Wyoming. It’s an interesting drive. I like to see the unusual businesses, like Diamond Publishing, a business that seems to take up a whole building that could be a small strip mall yet only ever has one car parked in front. I googled it and only found a phone number. I wonder what I would discover if I just called one day. Maybe th...

I have less than a week left on this Bosque Farms property and there is a little sadness but I'm looking forward to finally settling down somewhere that's my own little piece of New Mexico. In the short time I've been here, I've learned a lot, I've been inspired, and I've healed. This amazing, peaceful place allowed me to say goodbye to my parents. I've had time to celebrate their lives and imagine how much they would've loved it here. Dad would've been out working on cars in the garage, and Mom would've spent her days outdoors, the dogs by her side, tending to her yard. Every flower I took a photo of, I saw through her eyes. Our dogs, Buster and Chuck, 13 and 14 years old respectively, get younger each day. It's crazy how good they feel!! I'm a follower of a  senior dog home  in TN, and I love to look at the pix they post on their Facebook page. This place would make a great senior dog home, too, as Chuck and Buster can attest. A...

I'm thinking of Dad as Father's Day approaches, and I am dedicating this post to him. I've discovered in my journey to build Live and Learn New Mexico! that much of how I view learning comes from my dad, who was, I now know, a slow learner himself. My love for this state comes from him, from all those day trips in the car, just meandering around the state, seeing what was there (he was scoping out back yards for old cars to buy and work on). Dad also took us to arts and crafts fairs, estate sales, auctions, garage sales, and thrift stores anywhere and everywhere he could find them. He collected everything. He was an OCD hoarder, I discovered after he died. But now, as I'm moving his and Mom's stuff for the third time, I'm going through all the treasures he hoarded, and there's some good stuff there. There's also a lot of junk. The good stuff includes first edition books about and original artwork by Beatien Yazz, who has become a favorite of mine b...

I read Sir Ken Robinson's book, Creative Schools , and it made me think. I had started with a pretty clear picture and goal for L&LNM -- build a nonprofit program to help adults get their GED, learn to speak English better, and/or gain workplace skills. I was going to run my program as I ran the Adult Learning Center at UNM-Los Alamos. Simple as that. Creative Schools gave me new ideas. I figured I had enough money to allow myself a year to get my nonprofit going. I didn't want to rush into anything. I started blogging, which forces me to look a little deeper, and which in turn forces me to slow down and think before I write. During the 2014-15 school year, the standardized testing debate raged, and I became interested in advocating for teachers, having been one myself. I blogged about it and made the plea to give teachers their power back. That is when my ideas about how I wanted to run L&LNM and the philosophy behind what we do began to expand. I started to focus...

I was facing a slow Monday morning, thinking I need to do something different and not too stressful to ease into my week, when I remembered that I have Sir Ken Robinson's new book, Creative Schools: the Grassroots Revolution that's Transforming Education, on my Kindle.   I haven't even read ten pages and I want to quote just about everything the author says, but there are several ideas in particular that he speaks of that are important to me: we can't change education through political processes -- this revolution will take the efforts of parents, teachers, and kids (thus "grassroots") we have to use a systems approach to help us  understand where the problems lie in the existing school (and political) system redefine and transform schools and education systems can change but sometimes you have to look outside those systems and be innovative in order to create change (or replace them with better systems). I believe this could also be called thinki...

When I was a kid and we ate at restaurants, my dad would always pick up one of those freebie publications in the lobby areas. His favorite was the Thrifty Nickel , which listed items for sale, pets, services for hire, etc. He was always looking for a deal on a used car he could work on. I just liked looking at what people were selling. I got in the habit of picking up the Thrifty Nickel myself and then others when they appeared on the scene. There are some good free newspapers, even these days, and last week I picked up one called New Mexico Kids! (they have the ! after their name, just like Live and Learn New Mexico! Anything with NM in it should be followed by !, don't you think?) Anyway, I took a look at what is happening this summer for kids in New Mexico, and there is a lot. I thought I'd list a few of the ones I would like to do: Shidoni Foundry : Check out this bronze foundry and sculpture gardens at Shidoni in Tesuque. The photo for today's post, at Shidoni...