LAS CRUCES — Could technology make us a nation of hermits?
Lately I’ve been wondering if social media could, ironically, be fostering a generation with no — or substantially lesser — social skills.
Hasn’t Facebook substantially diminished actual face time with our fellow human beings? Has the warm, richly nuanced sound of a human voice — in person or via phone — been replaced by tweets and texts and e-mails?
A month with a tumble of texting teenagers has me wondering if this will soon be a world of vanishing physical intimacy.
Will we be connected with the whole world but estranged from those in our own household, from our families and colleagues and even our creative collaborators?
Recalling them as chatty tots, I was stuck this summer by the sometimes almost eerie silence as grandson Alex the Great and his cousins sent flurries of texts to one another while they were just inches apart, in the living room, in the car, eating dinner at the dining room table.
Is this just a phase? Or will our ears and vocal chords atrophy while toddlers develop carpal tunnel syndrome as they furiously manipulate iPads with stubby little fingers?
Which brings me back to the whole physical intimacy thing. Already one-person households are reportedly escalating, even in tough times, when it would make more economic sense to share space.
Will there come a time when we will share spoken words — and hugs and kisses and live face time — only with the technologically illiterate?
Alex, now an old dude of 15, started designing his first website in preschool. Today’s babes often have some kind of online toy interaction almost from birth.
With all the cell phone and Skype communication, will kids with distant grandparents or parents serving in the military far away, be shocked and traumatized when they finally encounter loved ones in 3-D real time instead of familiar flat screen virtual reality forms?
I’ve wondered if our growing obsession with pets has something to do with a longing for lost physical intimacy and aural communication. Despite a few amazing phone rescue stories, dogs and cats do not generally dial 911 or call us on cell phones. They neither text, nor tweet (unless they’re birds). They woof and meow and wag or swish tails. They look us in the eyes. They cuddle and snuggle and let us know they love to take walks and hang out with us.
Think about it. How many human relationships do you have with that much daily honest communication, loving interactions, and joyful, playful, slap-on-the-back good times?
Could furry gratification sate human skin hunger, the need to shake a hand, touch a cheek, embrace a friend?
Will primal drives be enough to keep humans connected? Some say various permutations of cybersex already threaten marriage and traditional hands-on, real-time relationships.
And some see the attachment parenting movement and helicopter parents as a reaction to the growing forces that seem to separate us from intimate relationships with our children at earlier and earlier stages of life, long before kids or moms and dads are ready.
Signs and portents abound.
Thanks to social media, we can foment a revolution overnight. But will we have the social skills to develop and maintain a society?
Is the U.S. Congress a warning about what happens when information access abounds, but the skill sets to live and work together seem to be wasting away?
I watch my grandson and his cousins, close as siblings since their births, often separated now by distance but united by technology.
I find them asleep, exhausted after a rock fest, cuddled in a congenial heap, cell phones dark and silent. Profoundly bonded in dream time.
The sterile, aloof, solitary cybersociety may be coming. Soon, even. But not yet.
S. Derrickson Moore can be reached at (575) 541-5450. Follow her on Twitter @DerricksonMoore.
Wednesday, August 8, 2012
New generations like fusion fashion
By S. Derrickson Moore
dmoore@lcsun-news.com
LAS CRUCES — While pondering back-to-school styles, I had some experts in residence this summer: visiting grandson Alexander the Great and his teen cousins, Lexi and Darian Galbreath, who are dividing their summer between Las Cruces and the Pacific Northwest.
When it comes to fashion trends, that corner of the world, I am given to understand, is still cool, or cool again. Or maybe hot. I’ve been through so many fashion cycles in my life that I have a hard time keeping track of whether the ultimate current accolade is heating up or cooling down. And could it be linked to the weather? Is it cool to be cool where the weather is, too? Or could matching opposites (cool is hot in Las Cruces, and hot is cooler in Seattle) be trendier?
Or on-trend, as cooler/hotter fashionistas are saying these days.
I suspect that when you find yourself referring to “these days” a lot, it could be the first clue that you are hopelessly clueless.
But I try to hang in there and do what good reporters have always done: go directly to the source.
I asked Alex how he would characterize his own style, which emphasized a summer time mix of knee-length solid color shorts with side stripes and shirts (sleeveless and Ts) which reminded me of sports jerseys, but often featured band logos and enigmatic slogans and phrases. He arrived and departed wearing skinny jeans and horizontally striped shirts, mostly in grays and black and muted colors.
“Preppy punk,” he decided, best characterizes his current style, “maybe with a few things some people would call hipster.”
Alex and his primos tried to clue me in on assorted other teen fashion archetypes, from punk and neo-grunge (still kind of a mystery to me) to “hipster,” a term which has endured from the 1930s and ‘40s, if I can trust my parents’ references, though manifestations have changed a lot over the decades.
Today’s hipsters, according to urban dictionary.com are, “a subculture of men and women typically in their 20s and 30s that value independent thinking, counter-culture, progressive politics, an appreciation of art and indie-rock, creativity, intelligence, and witty banter. Hipsters reject the culturally-ignorant attitudes of mainstream consumers, and are often seen wearing vintage and thrift store inspired fashions.”
Sounds like fun to me.
Alex arrived with a retro hairstyle, which reminded me of something between the original Beatles’ moptops and Kurt Cobain’s shaggy mane. While he was in Las Cruces, he got a cut that has a number of names at ontrend websites, at least one of which I can’t use in a family newspaper. It can be waxed and coaxed with products with equally strange names into a kind of tousled or elevated pompadour, and reminds me of Robert Pattinson’s look in the “Twilight” movies with a little early Elvis thrown in.
His cousins had very stylish unisex hair, combed forward and kind of feathered on the ends, that brought to mind late ‘60s Vidal Sassoon geometrics with modern fringes.
Alex’s footwear of choice is a version of the loafers he rejected summarily in his wild preschool youth, when his Gram felt they were a fine alternative to dangling shoe laces.
But that was then and those were leather penny loafers. This is now and we’re talking eco-conscious black canvas loafers by a manufacturer who pledges to donate a pair of shoes to the needy for each pair purchased.
A fine and logical choice for the Millennium kids, also known as “Generation Give,” for their earth-friendly, generous natures.
Walk on, new generations. If the clothes do indeed make the man (or woman) and reflect true substance, you guys are off to a creative start.
S. Derrickson Moore can be reached at dmoore@lcsun-news.com; (575) 541-5450. To share comments, go to www.lcsun-news.com and click on Blogzone and Las Cruces Style. Follow her on Twitter @DerricksonMoore.
dmoore@lcsun-news.com
LAS CRUCES — While pondering back-to-school styles, I had some experts in residence this summer: visiting grandson Alexander the Great and his teen cousins, Lexi and Darian Galbreath, who are dividing their summer between Las Cruces and the Pacific Northwest.
When it comes to fashion trends, that corner of the world, I am given to understand, is still cool, or cool again. Or maybe hot. I’ve been through so many fashion cycles in my life that I have a hard time keeping track of whether the ultimate current accolade is heating up or cooling down. And could it be linked to the weather? Is it cool to be cool where the weather is, too? Or could matching opposites (cool is hot in Las Cruces, and hot is cooler in Seattle) be trendier?
Or on-trend, as cooler/hotter fashionistas are saying these days.
I suspect that when you find yourself referring to “these days” a lot, it could be the first clue that you are hopelessly clueless.
But I try to hang in there and do what good reporters have always done: go directly to the source.
I asked Alex how he would characterize his own style, which emphasized a summer time mix of knee-length solid color shorts with side stripes and shirts (sleeveless and Ts) which reminded me of sports jerseys, but often featured band logos and enigmatic slogans and phrases. He arrived and departed wearing skinny jeans and horizontally striped shirts, mostly in grays and black and muted colors.
“Preppy punk,” he decided, best characterizes his current style, “maybe with a few things some people would call hipster.”
Alex and his primos tried to clue me in on assorted other teen fashion archetypes, from punk and neo-grunge (still kind of a mystery to me) to “hipster,” a term which has endured from the 1930s and ‘40s, if I can trust my parents’ references, though manifestations have changed a lot over the decades.
Today’s hipsters, according to urban dictionary.com are, “a subculture of men and women typically in their 20s and 30s that value independent thinking, counter-culture, progressive politics, an appreciation of art and indie-rock, creativity, intelligence, and witty banter. Hipsters reject the culturally-ignorant attitudes of mainstream consumers, and are often seen wearing vintage and thrift store inspired fashions.”
Sounds like fun to me.
Alex arrived with a retro hairstyle, which reminded me of something between the original Beatles’ moptops and Kurt Cobain’s shaggy mane. While he was in Las Cruces, he got a cut that has a number of names at ontrend websites, at least one of which I can’t use in a family newspaper. It can be waxed and coaxed with products with equally strange names into a kind of tousled or elevated pompadour, and reminds me of Robert Pattinson’s look in the “Twilight” movies with a little early Elvis thrown in.
His cousins had very stylish unisex hair, combed forward and kind of feathered on the ends, that brought to mind late ‘60s Vidal Sassoon geometrics with modern fringes.
Alex’s footwear of choice is a version of the loafers he rejected summarily in his wild preschool youth, when his Gram felt they were a fine alternative to dangling shoe laces.
But that was then and those were leather penny loafers. This is now and we’re talking eco-conscious black canvas loafers by a manufacturer who pledges to donate a pair of shoes to the needy for each pair purchased.
A fine and logical choice for the Millennium kids, also known as “Generation Give,” for their earth-friendly, generous natures.
Walk on, new generations. If the clothes do indeed make the man (or woman) and reflect true substance, you guys are off to a creative start.
S. Derrickson Moore can be reached at dmoore@lcsun-news.com; (575) 541-5450. To share comments, go to www.lcsun-news.com and click on Blogzone and Las Cruces Style. Follow her on Twitter @DerricksonMoore.
Thursday, July 19, 2012
Downtown has a healthy heart again
By S. Derrickson Moore
dmoore@lcsun-news.com
LAS CRUCES — It was a dilemma when I was planning a tour for visitors recently. Where to start? Where is the corazon (heart) de Las Cruces?
It was the same question I posed when I moved here in 1994. But there’s a big difference in potential answers, as I start my 19th summer in the City of Crosses.
Back then, if there was still a heart in downtown Las Cruces, it seemed to be on its last, feeble beats, as forlorn and hopeless as the homeless souls who slept in its shadows and haunted its crumbling corners. One of our reporters called it “a graveyard for high hopes.”
But even then, there were signs of both new and enduring life. A thriving Farmers & Crafts Market. Plans ... however faltering at first ... for urban renewal strategies.
There were solid cornerstones: CoAs Bookstore, then-and-still one of the nation’s largest and most diverse book stores. The Branigan Library. The Branigan Cultural Center, where then-director Sharon Bode-Hempton rallied volunteer groups and gathered some of our best artists to join for exhibits that celebrated Borderland culture, like her annual showcase of Our Lady of Guadalupe images. She also dreamed of regional museum cooperatives and expansion of a city museum system that consisted, back then, of the BCC and Las Cruces Natural History Museum. Today, thanks in large part to Sharon’s efforts, those dreams have been realized with the Las Cruces Museum of Art, the Railroad Museum and an expanded Natural History Museum, due to open downtown this year.
And more change was coming. The reincarnation of Court Youth Center, once just a gleam in the eyes of Irene Oliver Lewis and then-Mayor Ruben Smith, is now a thriving community performance and arts center and home to Alma d’arte Charter High School for the arts.
Citizen’s groups and Downtown Las Cruces got a new shot of life when arts maven Heather Pollard came out of retirement to shepherd more progress.
It started slow and then speeded up ... ironically, during a time when the nation’s economy and most of the world was slowing down and cutting back.
In a Southwest heartbeat (a little more laid back than a New York minute), we have a new city hall, a gleaming new federal building, an expanded library. There are new shops, galleries and restaurants, not just on what was once the Downtown Mall, but expanding throughout the downtown area.
The historic Mesquite area has added a street of eclectic adobe galleries, colonized by talented artists from throughout the world. Downtown area galleries, shops and museums join for the Ramble the first Friday of each month, and artists in surrounding neighborhoods plan periodic art walks and events.
The Rio Grande Theatre, reportedly the nation’s oldest adobe theater, has been restored. It’s headquarters for the Doña Ana Arts Council and hosts all kinds of events and its own theater troupe now, joining the downtown’s pioneer theater group, the Las Cruces Community Theater (celebrating its 50th anniversary) and Ceil and Peter Herman’s inspired addition: The Black Box and its No Strings Theatre Company.
And there’s more, lots more. Fun restaurants, interesting shops. Artists’ studios and cooperatives.
Today, downtown is pulsing with life and fun, especially during fiestas, markets, Rambles and special events. This month, Denise Chávez moved the Border Book Festival headquarters to a cute old town adobe at 314 S. Tornillo St. and said the festival itself may move from Mesilla to Las Cruces’ downtown.
Like any human enterprise, it’s not perfect. I’m still mourning a few of my favorite things: the surprisingly glam La Iguana restaurant. The loss of my favorite Las Cruces tree, which vanished when renovations began on the last downtown Main Street block. Our long-time home base Sun-News building, lost after a 2011 fire.
But I love some of the new landscaping and the expanded market which was named the nation’s No. 1 large market in a recent nationwide poll and now has a waiting list for vendors eager to join the fun.
And I’m looking forward to the completion of the new Sun-News building, and moving back to our querencia, in the corazon of it all.
S. Derrickson Moore can be reached at (575) 541-5450. Follow her on Twitter @DerricksonMoore.
dmoore@lcsun-news.com
LAS CRUCES — It was a dilemma when I was planning a tour for visitors recently. Where to start? Where is the corazon (heart) de Las Cruces?
It was the same question I posed when I moved here in 1994. But there’s a big difference in potential answers, as I start my 19th summer in the City of Crosses.
Back then, if there was still a heart in downtown Las Cruces, it seemed to be on its last, feeble beats, as forlorn and hopeless as the homeless souls who slept in its shadows and haunted its crumbling corners. One of our reporters called it “a graveyard for high hopes.”
But even then, there were signs of both new and enduring life. A thriving Farmers & Crafts Market. Plans ... however faltering at first ... for urban renewal strategies.
There were solid cornerstones: CoAs Bookstore, then-and-still one of the nation’s largest and most diverse book stores. The Branigan Library. The Branigan Cultural Center, where then-director Sharon Bode-Hempton rallied volunteer groups and gathered some of our best artists to join for exhibits that celebrated Borderland culture, like her annual showcase of Our Lady of Guadalupe images. She also dreamed of regional museum cooperatives and expansion of a city museum system that consisted, back then, of the BCC and Las Cruces Natural History Museum. Today, thanks in large part to Sharon’s efforts, those dreams have been realized with the Las Cruces Museum of Art, the Railroad Museum and an expanded Natural History Museum, due to open downtown this year.
And more change was coming. The reincarnation of Court Youth Center, once just a gleam in the eyes of Irene Oliver Lewis and then-Mayor Ruben Smith, is now a thriving community performance and arts center and home to Alma d’arte Charter High School for the arts.
Citizen’s groups and Downtown Las Cruces got a new shot of life when arts maven Heather Pollard came out of retirement to shepherd more progress.
It started slow and then speeded up ... ironically, during a time when the nation’s economy and most of the world was slowing down and cutting back.
In a Southwest heartbeat (a little more laid back than a New York minute), we have a new city hall, a gleaming new federal building, an expanded library. There are new shops, galleries and restaurants, not just on what was once the Downtown Mall, but expanding throughout the downtown area.
The historic Mesquite area has added a street of eclectic adobe galleries, colonized by talented artists from throughout the world. Downtown area galleries, shops and museums join for the Ramble the first Friday of each month, and artists in surrounding neighborhoods plan periodic art walks and events.
The Rio Grande Theatre, reportedly the nation’s oldest adobe theater, has been restored. It’s headquarters for the Doña Ana Arts Council and hosts all kinds of events and its own theater troupe now, joining the downtown’s pioneer theater group, the Las Cruces Community Theater (celebrating its 50th anniversary) and Ceil and Peter Herman’s inspired addition: The Black Box and its No Strings Theatre Company.
And there’s more, lots more. Fun restaurants, interesting shops. Artists’ studios and cooperatives.
Today, downtown is pulsing with life and fun, especially during fiestas, markets, Rambles and special events. This month, Denise Chávez moved the Border Book Festival headquarters to a cute old town adobe at 314 S. Tornillo St. and said the festival itself may move from Mesilla to Las Cruces’ downtown.
Like any human enterprise, it’s not perfect. I’m still mourning a few of my favorite things: the surprisingly glam La Iguana restaurant. The loss of my favorite Las Cruces tree, which vanished when renovations began on the last downtown Main Street block. Our long-time home base Sun-News building, lost after a 2011 fire.
But I love some of the new landscaping and the expanded market which was named the nation’s No. 1 large market in a recent nationwide poll and now has a waiting list for vendors eager to join the fun.
And I’m looking forward to the completion of the new Sun-News building, and moving back to our querencia, in the corazon of it all.
S. Derrickson Moore can be reached at (575) 541-5450. Follow her on Twitter @DerricksonMoore.
Ideas for the Fiesta Dead Zone
By S. Derrickson Moore
dmoore@lcsun-news.com
LAS CRUCES — Do you feel your group or cause is being crowded out by the growing competition during FTFS (Full-Tilt Fiesta Season)?
Maybe it’s time to consider a new approach, and boldly go where few fiesta animals have gone before.
Are you brave and creative enough to tackle the Fiesta Dead Zone (FDZ)?
FTFS traditionally stretches from Labor Day to Memorial Day and things get pretty quiet during the hot summer months.
In recent years, the season has stretched out a bit, with several successful festivals, including Pride Fest, Father’s Day events, Juneteenth, Raft the Rio and Turtle Fest in June and a burgeoning Borderland crop of Fourth of July festivals.
From then until late August, the fiesta pickings have been traditionally been pretty slim.
There’s good reason. We’ve been good sports through increasingly torrid Junes here, but by July, the heat has worn us down, and even though temperatures may drop quite a bit, as they have this year, the monsoons have started.
Much as we love and pray for rain, we high desert creatures have never really figured out how to party in it.
If you’re game, I have just the concept for you: the Singin’ in the Rain Festival, in honor of Nacio Herb Brown, the Deming-born musician who composed the tune that was immortalized in the 1952 movie of the same name. Of course, it would get tricky in drought years. Maybe we could hire rain dancers, install misters and water slides and hedge our bets by holding the festival in tents, or have back-up plans for a Jornada del Muerto Fiesta if we have to call it in case of no rain.
It’s safer to bet that, rain or no, the FDZ season will be hot. So we must come up with more cool alternatives and themes, as the season’s most successful planners have done. Examples: Ice cream Sunday at New Mexico Farm & Ranch Heritage Museum, Asombro’s new Nightlife in the Desert event, Butterfly Flutterby and the brand new Tour de Beer. What could be more refreshing than frozen treats, a cool desert night, breezes generated by butterfly wings and a frosty mug or two?
Even smarter are those who move their fiestas indoors. That’s the plan for the White Sands International Film Fest, most of which is held in Las Cruces movie theaters, in air-conditioned comfort.
Heading inside and cranking up the A/C is a concept that is catching on with more and more fiesta planners.
Arguably, July and August could be prime time for museums, art galleries and theaters (many local theater groups start new seasons about now) and for glittery new facilities like the Las Cruces Convention Center and the almost-finished New Mexico State University Center for the Arts.
The LCCC will host the Men Who Cook benefit Aug. 11. When it’s too hot to cook, why not let our big strong, desert-hardy men do it? And we’ll do our part by eating … in air-conditioned comfort.
The FDZ would be a great time to experiment with new events and uses for the convention center, like the well-received recent community garage sale. We’d probably all be more inclined to clean out our attics and profit from our surplus stuff, if we didn’t have to hang out in our hot driveways all day to make a sale.
It could be that the fiestas dwindle because it’s too hot to generate interest in anything very energetic. Maybe we could gather hammock vendors, power loungers and dream analysts for an annual Siesta Fiesta.
S. Derrickson Moore can be reached at (575) 541-5450. Follow her on Twitter @DerricksonMoore.
dmoore@lcsun-news.com
LAS CRUCES — Do you feel your group or cause is being crowded out by the growing competition during FTFS (Full-Tilt Fiesta Season)?
Maybe it’s time to consider a new approach, and boldly go where few fiesta animals have gone before.
Are you brave and creative enough to tackle the Fiesta Dead Zone (FDZ)?
FTFS traditionally stretches from Labor Day to Memorial Day and things get pretty quiet during the hot summer months.
In recent years, the season has stretched out a bit, with several successful festivals, including Pride Fest, Father’s Day events, Juneteenth, Raft the Rio and Turtle Fest in June and a burgeoning Borderland crop of Fourth of July festivals.
From then until late August, the fiesta pickings have been traditionally been pretty slim.
There’s good reason. We’ve been good sports through increasingly torrid Junes here, but by July, the heat has worn us down, and even though temperatures may drop quite a bit, as they have this year, the monsoons have started.
Much as we love and pray for rain, we high desert creatures have never really figured out how to party in it.
If you’re game, I have just the concept for you: the Singin’ in the Rain Festival, in honor of Nacio Herb Brown, the Deming-born musician who composed the tune that was immortalized in the 1952 movie of the same name. Of course, it would get tricky in drought years. Maybe we could hire rain dancers, install misters and water slides and hedge our bets by holding the festival in tents, or have back-up plans for a Jornada del Muerto Fiesta if we have to call it in case of no rain.
It’s safer to bet that, rain or no, the FDZ season will be hot. So we must come up with more cool alternatives and themes, as the season’s most successful planners have done. Examples: Ice cream Sunday at New Mexico Farm & Ranch Heritage Museum, Asombro’s new Nightlife in the Desert event, Butterfly Flutterby and the brand new Tour de Beer. What could be more refreshing than frozen treats, a cool desert night, breezes generated by butterfly wings and a frosty mug or two?
Even smarter are those who move their fiestas indoors. That’s the plan for the White Sands International Film Fest, most of which is held in Las Cruces movie theaters, in air-conditioned comfort.
Heading inside and cranking up the A/C is a concept that is catching on with more and more fiesta planners.
Arguably, July and August could be prime time for museums, art galleries and theaters (many local theater groups start new seasons about now) and for glittery new facilities like the Las Cruces Convention Center and the almost-finished New Mexico State University Center for the Arts.
The LCCC will host the Men Who Cook benefit Aug. 11. When it’s too hot to cook, why not let our big strong, desert-hardy men do it? And we’ll do our part by eating … in air-conditioned comfort.
The FDZ would be a great time to experiment with new events and uses for the convention center, like the well-received recent community garage sale. We’d probably all be more inclined to clean out our attics and profit from our surplus stuff, if we didn’t have to hang out in our hot driveways all day to make a sale.
It could be that the fiestas dwindle because it’s too hot to generate interest in anything very energetic. Maybe we could gather hammock vendors, power loungers and dream analysts for an annual Siesta Fiesta.
S. Derrickson Moore can be reached at (575) 541-5450. Follow her on Twitter @DerricksonMoore.
Friday, July 6, 2012
How about Super PACs for artists?
By S. Derrickson Moore
dmoore@lcsun-news.com
LAS CRUCES — Where are the Medicis of the world when we really need them?
What seems to be called for, in our increasingly talent-packed city, are some very wealthy patrons of the arts, like those in Italy’s Renaissance cities. Florence, Rome and Venice, so endowed with brilliant visual and performing artists, seemed equally well endowed with wealthy popes, doges and prosperous merchant families willing, nay eager, to lavish commissions on the likes of sculptor and painter Michelangelo, as well as musicians, poets, playwrights.
How can we help support our own multi-talented Renaissance men and women (and kids)?
It’s not unusual to solicit government, corporations and wealthy individuals for grants and bequests for theaters and art centers, major motion pictures, scholarships, fellowships and artist-in-residency programs. New Mexico legislation allocates one percent of public building construction to be dedicated to public art projects.
Lately, however, it seems like everybody is seeking aid from everyone for just about everything.
Maybe it’s the tough economy, cutbacks in art funding, or an aging, over-extended and over-supplied population of arts aficionados. I know several persons (including myself) who have to plan rotating art exhibitions in their own homes and find room for the overflow in art closets and storage areas.
Whatever the reasons, many of us are being called upon to go the extra mile.
It is not enough to buy a painting, sculpture, CD or ticket.
We are being asked to finance works in progress and we’re sent to a multitude of websites to contribute to the funding of films both short and full-length, along with CDs, self-published books and assorted musical, literary, artistic and theatrical endeavors.
The upside is that some of the appeals are as creative as the artists who solicit help. I have been treated to lovely melodies, dramatic film trailers, multimedia extravaganzas and some requests so innovative that they are, themselves, masterpieces of performance art.
The best of the appeals offer value-added bonuses: signed works, sharing of insider insights and experiences, even, in the case of one my favorite local talents, a red enchilada dinner and an in-person performance in your own home.
The downside is that much talent is being wasted and artists are becoming exhausted as they feel forced to keep appealing to what has become a tapped market.
What to do, what to do?
We need artistic Super PACs. And the need seems to be so dire that we can’t wait to come up with anything new and specific on the PAC (Poor Artists Competing? Positive Artistic Cooperation?) front.
Nope. Let’s just take over those existing Super PACs.
I wish we could limit all political discourse to live debates and media interviews, and agree to throw all those millions and billions being spent on attack ads into, say, infrastucture, education, health care and lowering the national debt.
But let’s aim for more modest goals, for now.
Let’s start with the presidential election PACs and require that at least 70 percent of all expenditures be devoted to artistic projects.
Each funded artist or cultural organization would produce a work of art representing the cause or candidate supported by the PAC … and the more abstract and creative the better.
Instead of a full-tilt media blitz of vitriol, we could have city squares filled with noble statues, minstrels and mimes conveying their interpretations of wanna-be civic leaders. Instead of spin doctors and propaganda meisters, we could have filmmakers, poets and novelists offering idealistic visions of the future, and multimedia wizards who, as visionary Robert Kennedy once suggested, dream of things that never were, and ask, “Why not?”
S. Derrickson Moore can be reached at (575) 541-5450. Follow her on Twitter @DerricksonMoore.
dmoore@lcsun-news.com
LAS CRUCES — Where are the Medicis of the world when we really need them?
What seems to be called for, in our increasingly talent-packed city, are some very wealthy patrons of the arts, like those in Italy’s Renaissance cities. Florence, Rome and Venice, so endowed with brilliant visual and performing artists, seemed equally well endowed with wealthy popes, doges and prosperous merchant families willing, nay eager, to lavish commissions on the likes of sculptor and painter Michelangelo, as well as musicians, poets, playwrights.
How can we help support our own multi-talented Renaissance men and women (and kids)?
It’s not unusual to solicit government, corporations and wealthy individuals for grants and bequests for theaters and art centers, major motion pictures, scholarships, fellowships and artist-in-residency programs. New Mexico legislation allocates one percent of public building construction to be dedicated to public art projects.
Lately, however, it seems like everybody is seeking aid from everyone for just about everything.
Maybe it’s the tough economy, cutbacks in art funding, or an aging, over-extended and over-supplied population of arts aficionados. I know several persons (including myself) who have to plan rotating art exhibitions in their own homes and find room for the overflow in art closets and storage areas.
Whatever the reasons, many of us are being called upon to go the extra mile.
It is not enough to buy a painting, sculpture, CD or ticket.
We are being asked to finance works in progress and we’re sent to a multitude of websites to contribute to the funding of films both short and full-length, along with CDs, self-published books and assorted musical, literary, artistic and theatrical endeavors.
The upside is that some of the appeals are as creative as the artists who solicit help. I have been treated to lovely melodies, dramatic film trailers, multimedia extravaganzas and some requests so innovative that they are, themselves, masterpieces of performance art.
The best of the appeals offer value-added bonuses: signed works, sharing of insider insights and experiences, even, in the case of one my favorite local talents, a red enchilada dinner and an in-person performance in your own home.
The downside is that much talent is being wasted and artists are becoming exhausted as they feel forced to keep appealing to what has become a tapped market.
What to do, what to do?
We need artistic Super PACs. And the need seems to be so dire that we can’t wait to come up with anything new and specific on the PAC (Poor Artists Competing? Positive Artistic Cooperation?) front.
Nope. Let’s just take over those existing Super PACs.
I wish we could limit all political discourse to live debates and media interviews, and agree to throw all those millions and billions being spent on attack ads into, say, infrastucture, education, health care and lowering the national debt.
But let’s aim for more modest goals, for now.
Let’s start with the presidential election PACs and require that at least 70 percent of all expenditures be devoted to artistic projects.
Each funded artist or cultural organization would produce a work of art representing the cause or candidate supported by the PAC … and the more abstract and creative the better.
Instead of a full-tilt media blitz of vitriol, we could have city squares filled with noble statues, minstrels and mimes conveying their interpretations of wanna-be civic leaders. Instead of spin doctors and propaganda meisters, we could have filmmakers, poets and novelists offering idealistic visions of the future, and multimedia wizards who, as visionary Robert Kennedy once suggested, dream of things that never were, and ask, “Why not?”
S. Derrickson Moore can be reached at (575) 541-5450. Follow her on Twitter @DerricksonMoore.
How about Super PACs for artists?
By S. Derrickson Moore
dmoore@lcsun-news.com
LAS CRUCES — Where are the Medicis of the world when we really need them?
What seems to be called for, in our increasingly talent-packed city, are some very wealthy patrons of the arts, like those in Italy’s Renaissance cities. Florence, Rome and Venice, so endowed with brilliant visual and performing artists, seemed equally well endowed with wealthy popes, doges and prosperous merchant families willing, nay eager, to lavish commissions on the likes of sculptor and painter Michelangelo, as well as musicians, poets, playwrights.
How can we help support our own multi-talented Renaissance men and women (and kids)?
It’s not unusual to solicit government, corporations and wealthy individuals for grants and bequests for theaters and art centers, major motion pictures, scholarships, fellowships and artist-in-residency programs. New Mexico legislation allocates one percent of public building construction to be dedicated to public art projects.
Lately, however, it seems like everybody is seeking aid from everyone for just about everything.
Maybe it’s the tough economy, cutbacks in art funding, or an aging, over-extended and over-supplied population of arts aficionados. I know several persons (including myself) who have to plan rotating art exhibitions in their own homes and find room for the overflow in art closets and storage areas.
Whatever the reasons, many of us are being called upon to go the extra mile.
It is not enough to buy a painting, sculpture, CD or ticket.
We are being asked to finance works in progress and we’re sent to a multitude of websites to contribute to the funding of films both short and full-length, along with CDs, self-published books and assorted musical, literary, artistic and theatrical endeavors.
The upside is that some of the appeals are as creative as the artists who solicit help. I have been treated to lovely melodies, dramatic film trailers, multimedia extravaganzas and some requests so innovative that they are, themselves, masterpieces of performance art.
The best of the appeals offer value-added bonuses: signed works, sharing of insider insights and experiences, even, in the case of one my favorite local talents, a red enchilada dinner and an in-person performance in your own home.
The downside is that much talent is being wasted and artists are becoming exhausted as they feel forced to keep appealing to what has become a tapped market.
What to do, what to do?
We need artistic Super PACs. And the need seems to be so dire that we can’t wait to come up with anything new and specific on the PAC (Poor Artists Competing? Positive Artistic Cooperation?) front.
Nope. Let’s just take over those existing Super PACs.
I wish we could limit all political discourse to live debates and media interviews, and agree to throw all those millions and billions being spent on attack ads into, say, infrastucture, education, health care and lowering the national debt.
But let’s aim for more modest goals, for now.
Let’s start with the presidential election PACs and require that at least 70 percent of all expenditures be devoted to artistic projects.
Each funded artist or cultural organization would produce a work of art representing the cause or candidate supported by the PAC … and the more abstract and creative the better.
Instead of a full-tilt media blitz of vitriol, we could have city squares filled with noble statues, minstrels and mimes conveying their interpretations of wanna-be civic leaders. Instead of spin doctors and propaganda meisters, we could have filmmakers, poets and novelists offering idealistic visions of the future, and multimedia wizards who, as visionary Robert Kennedy once suggested, dream of things that never were, and ask, “Why not?”
S. Derrickson Moore can be reached at (575) 541-5450. Follow her on Twitter @DerricksonMoore.
dmoore@lcsun-news.com
LAS CRUCES — Where are the Medicis of the world when we really need them?
What seems to be called for, in our increasingly talent-packed city, are some very wealthy patrons of the arts, like those in Italy’s Renaissance cities. Florence, Rome and Venice, so endowed with brilliant visual and performing artists, seemed equally well endowed with wealthy popes, doges and prosperous merchant families willing, nay eager, to lavish commissions on the likes of sculptor and painter Michelangelo, as well as musicians, poets, playwrights.
How can we help support our own multi-talented Renaissance men and women (and kids)?
It’s not unusual to solicit government, corporations and wealthy individuals for grants and bequests for theaters and art centers, major motion pictures, scholarships, fellowships and artist-in-residency programs. New Mexico legislation allocates one percent of public building construction to be dedicated to public art projects.
Lately, however, it seems like everybody is seeking aid from everyone for just about everything.
Maybe it’s the tough economy, cutbacks in art funding, or an aging, over-extended and over-supplied population of arts aficionados. I know several persons (including myself) who have to plan rotating art exhibitions in their own homes and find room for the overflow in art closets and storage areas.
Whatever the reasons, many of us are being called upon to go the extra mile.
It is not enough to buy a painting, sculpture, CD or ticket.
We are being asked to finance works in progress and we’re sent to a multitude of websites to contribute to the funding of films both short and full-length, along with CDs, self-published books and assorted musical, literary, artistic and theatrical endeavors.
The upside is that some of the appeals are as creative as the artists who solicit help. I have been treated to lovely melodies, dramatic film trailers, multimedia extravaganzas and some requests so innovative that they are, themselves, masterpieces of performance art.
The best of the appeals offer value-added bonuses: signed works, sharing of insider insights and experiences, even, in the case of one my favorite local talents, a red enchilada dinner and an in-person performance in your own home.
The downside is that much talent is being wasted and artists are becoming exhausted as they feel forced to keep appealing to what has become a tapped market.
What to do, what to do?
We need artistic Super PACs. And the need seems to be so dire that we can’t wait to come up with anything new and specific on the PAC (Poor Artists Competing? Positive Artistic Cooperation?) front.
Nope. Let’s just take over those existing Super PACs.
I wish we could limit all political discourse to live debates and media interviews, and agree to throw all those millions and billions being spent on attack ads into, say, infrastucture, education, health care and lowering the national debt.
But let’s aim for more modest goals, for now.
Let’s start with the presidential election PACs and require that at least 70 percent of all expenditures be devoted to artistic projects.
Each funded artist or cultural organization would produce a work of art representing the cause or candidate supported by the PAC … and the more abstract and creative the better.
Instead of a full-tilt media blitz of vitriol, we could have city squares filled with noble statues, minstrels and mimes conveying their interpretations of wanna-be civic leaders. Instead of spin doctors and propaganda meisters, we could have filmmakers, poets and novelists offering idealistic visions of the future, and multimedia wizards who, as visionary Robert Kennedy once suggested, dream of things that never were, and ask, “Why not?”
S. Derrickson Moore can be reached at (575) 541-5450. Follow her on Twitter @DerricksonMoore.
Friday, June 29, 2012
Wistful for a grander Rio
By S. Derrickson Moore
dmoore@lcsun-news.com
LAS CRUCES — Once, it was a raging river, wild and free.
These days, it’s often nothing more than a dry strip of sand, awaiting the carefully-controlled trickle that will fuel what seems to be its chief modern function, as an irrigation ditch.
It seems that no serious dribbles start until after the big Memorial Day holiday, especially in drought years like this, when tourists flock to Elephant Butte and Truth or Consequences to enjoy the largest water recreation areas in the state.
But finally, come June, patient farmers and river aficionados finally get their watery reward … or a bit of it, at least.
Early summer is a time the Southwest Environmental Center asks us to remember and enjoy the Rio Grande. That was the motive for creating the wild and wacky Raft the Rio Races 15 years ago.
It’s fun with a serious motive: “to get people down to the river — and enjoying the Rio Grande, and thinking of the river as an asset and resource,” said Southwest Environmental Center executive director Kevin Bixby.
Again this June, the races lured hundreds of participants and many more to cheer on colorfully costumed desert sailors in creative vessels concocted from mostly recycled materials.
It’s also a clever bit of counter-programming at a time when many people seem overwhelmed with never-ending disasters: wars, famines, pollution, nuclear accidents, tsunamis, hurricanes, earthquakes, plagues, economic collapse …
In 2007 the World Wide Fund for Nature put the Rio Grande on its international 10 Most Endangered Rivers list, the only waterway in North America to be so “honored.” American Rivers ranked the Rio Grande as the seventh most endangered river in the United States, citing both toxic chemical pollution, overpumping of water and raw sewage dumping by cities across the border.
As someone who lived near the Rio Grande for a few years, I’m amazed that any water still makes it that far. And after several years of walks on its banks, I’m also amazed — and horrified — that so many here consider the Rio Grande a dumping ground for noxious waste... paint, used motor oil, dirty disposable diapers.
And that’s why I’m a big fan of Bixby and SWEC, the driving forces behind the fun annual race and the year-round Mesilla Valley Bosque State Park.
They’ve started the Herculean effort to remind us of what the Rio Grande once was, a beloved community gathering place, a spot where you could go for a solitary reflective walk or an afternoon of family fun.
Native Las Crucens have told me they remember when it was all that and more: a refuge and THE place to be when they were growing up, for a swim, a walk, a picnic, private time with a girlfriend or boyfriend, a hangout for teens.
When I moved to Las Cruces almost two decades ago, I came with memories of relatively wild Michigan streams, the mighty Columbia and Willamette rivers in Oregon, beaches along the Great Lakes and oceans on both coasts.
The wounded Rio Grande broke my heart and I avoided it for a long time.
Now we have a history together. A memorial service for a dear friend. Stories about wacky races and the La Llorona festival (and a mural of the Weeping Woman under Picacho Bridge). A blue heron sighting. A magical morning walk through the surprisingly varied Mesilla Bosque park terrain with my soulmate that turned out to be a highlight of our last staycation.
It’s over-wrangled and wounded and there’s a lot to do. But there are signs of hope, that once again, the Rio Grande is valued and loved.
S. Derrickson Moore can be reached at (575) 541-5450. Follow her on Twitter @DerricksonMoore.
dmoore@lcsun-news.com
LAS CRUCES — Once, it was a raging river, wild and free.
These days, it’s often nothing more than a dry strip of sand, awaiting the carefully-controlled trickle that will fuel what seems to be its chief modern function, as an irrigation ditch.
It seems that no serious dribbles start until after the big Memorial Day holiday, especially in drought years like this, when tourists flock to Elephant Butte and Truth or Consequences to enjoy the largest water recreation areas in the state.
But finally, come June, patient farmers and river aficionados finally get their watery reward … or a bit of it, at least.
Early summer is a time the Southwest Environmental Center asks us to remember and enjoy the Rio Grande. That was the motive for creating the wild and wacky Raft the Rio Races 15 years ago.
It’s fun with a serious motive: “to get people down to the river — and enjoying the Rio Grande, and thinking of the river as an asset and resource,” said Southwest Environmental Center executive director Kevin Bixby.
Again this June, the races lured hundreds of participants and many more to cheer on colorfully costumed desert sailors in creative vessels concocted from mostly recycled materials.
It’s also a clever bit of counter-programming at a time when many people seem overwhelmed with never-ending disasters: wars, famines, pollution, nuclear accidents, tsunamis, hurricanes, earthquakes, plagues, economic collapse …
In 2007 the World Wide Fund for Nature put the Rio Grande on its international 10 Most Endangered Rivers list, the only waterway in North America to be so “honored.” American Rivers ranked the Rio Grande as the seventh most endangered river in the United States, citing both toxic chemical pollution, overpumping of water and raw sewage dumping by cities across the border.
As someone who lived near the Rio Grande for a few years, I’m amazed that any water still makes it that far. And after several years of walks on its banks, I’m also amazed — and horrified — that so many here consider the Rio Grande a dumping ground for noxious waste... paint, used motor oil, dirty disposable diapers.
And that’s why I’m a big fan of Bixby and SWEC, the driving forces behind the fun annual race and the year-round Mesilla Valley Bosque State Park.
They’ve started the Herculean effort to remind us of what the Rio Grande once was, a beloved community gathering place, a spot where you could go for a solitary reflective walk or an afternoon of family fun.
Native Las Crucens have told me they remember when it was all that and more: a refuge and THE place to be when they were growing up, for a swim, a walk, a picnic, private time with a girlfriend or boyfriend, a hangout for teens.
When I moved to Las Cruces almost two decades ago, I came with memories of relatively wild Michigan streams, the mighty Columbia and Willamette rivers in Oregon, beaches along the Great Lakes and oceans on both coasts.
The wounded Rio Grande broke my heart and I avoided it for a long time.
Now we have a history together. A memorial service for a dear friend. Stories about wacky races and the La Llorona festival (and a mural of the Weeping Woman under Picacho Bridge). A blue heron sighting. A magical morning walk through the surprisingly varied Mesilla Bosque park terrain with my soulmate that turned out to be a highlight of our last staycation.
It’s over-wrangled and wounded and there’s a lot to do. But there are signs of hope, that once again, the Rio Grande is valued and loved.
S. Derrickson Moore can be reached at (575) 541-5450. Follow her on Twitter @DerricksonMoore.
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