Wally Gordon

Beginning in early spring and continuing into late autumn, I often see a man walking on Raven Road in my neighborhood with a backpack, a shabby jacket and a smile. He is elderly, lean, with long hair and a beard as gray as my own. He wears dirty boots, a torn shirt and shabby pants. He is always by himself, although when I greet him, he responds with a friendly word and wave.

This man, with all his repulsiveness and attractiveness, is much like the protagonist of Jerusalem, an unusual play, in equal parts entertainment and philosophical statement, that opened last week at the Vortex Theater in Albuquerque…

Ever since Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel invented dynamite 150 years ago, people have been trying to make lemonade out of his lemons. The most famous example is Nobel himself, who created the Nobel Prizes, rewarding peacemaking and sundry civilized achievements in literature and science, to atone for the murderous violence he unleashed on the world.

The effort to find useful, even pleasant employment for explosives continues today in New Mexico, home of the biggest explosive of them all, the atomic bomb.

A new book published by the University of New Mexico Press, Detonography: The Explosive Art of Evelyn Rosenberg, parses and celebrates this current effort…