New Mexico Mercury

Provincial Matters, 10-7-2013

V.B. Price's weekly collection of appreciations and observations.

Friday Voyage: Mystery Valley

Discovering the hidden wonder of this lesser traveled, more intimate gem in the shadow of Monument Valley.

The New Deal Revisited in Symposium and Exhibit (This Saturday)

The New Deal lasted only a decade.  But in that decade thousands of bridges in the country were refurbished or built new; thousands of miles of roads were built, hundreds of post offices, schools and community centers were built or festooned with New Deal art provided by unemployed artists, many products of the nation’s best art institutions.

Some of our national icons were completed during the period like the Golden Gate Bridge and Hoover Dam. Three million young men worked in Civilian Conservation Camps, many living outside their communities for the first time...

The Magic of Your Dreams

It’s one of the most important days in the life of Yeira Rubi Beltrán. Her quinceañera. She lives on the west side of Juárez with her brother, Hector and her grandmother, Elvira Romero in a shack with little protection against the rain and wind. To survive, they’ve often had to find scrap metal to sell along the highway. “They’ve suffered a great deal,” Elvira says.

I first met Yeira and Hector in March, 2011. Their grandmother, Elvira was the cook at the nearby mental asylum, Vision in Action that I visit every month...

Counter-Ad to Diesel’s Affront to Muslim Women

Media Literacy Project was disturbed by Diesel’s ad featuring a white woman in a niqab with much of her body exposed and tattooed, reading, “I am not what I appear to be.” Yes, the ad affirmed that women in niqabs are diverse and interesting, but it also was an affront to Muslim women’s modesty and cast their bodies as exotic. It enticed people to look at Muslim women and wonder what’s beneath the clothes, which is the antithesis of what this everyday piece of clothing is intended to do. It took the power away from Muslim women and put the emphasis on their appearance...

My Own California

Long before the Mamas and the Papas recorded their famous song 48 years ago, “California dreaming” was a national preoccupation, and it still is: the land of eternal spring, endless beaches, waving palms, bare sensuality, and men and women—in the title of another famous song by Bob Dylan—“Forever Young.”

These days I am spending a long bit of time in another California, where the mornings are foggy, the ocean is bitterly cold, and many of my neighbors are elderly and not at all rich. The roads are narrow and hilly, and most people, while polite, prefer to ignore their neighbors rather than socialize with them in suburban style. In such respects it is not much different from the East Mountains in New Mexico...

Mercury Q&A with David Tart

In the inaugural installment of this series we speak with world-famous animator David Tart about the animation business and his latest self-reflexive project.

Provincial Matters, 9-30-2013

V.B. Price's weekly collection of appreciations and observations.

Weekly Poem: durable whiteness

still flayed by the swollen pelt racked by pain
durable whiteness
amidst the cracked red sea
a new landscape across my canvas
a new story
you orestes
me hypatia
alack...

Friday Voyage: Croatia

Massive walls, lavender fields, beautiful countryside and a cordial people still recovering from the ravages of war.