Two Santa Fe's

Even though we're still in Santa Fe I decided to dig back through my collection a little and see if I had neglected anything. Found this shot from our time in Turners Falls, MA, and decided to work with it. Turners is one of many mill towns along the Connecticut river. We took a liking to it, especially to the people there. But we had left all of our belongings back in Arizona, including the jeep, and we needed to come back and deal with all that.

So now we find ourselves in Santa Fe, having decided to come here for specific reasons-- low unemployment (in theory, though the employment is very seasonal and about 78% of the money here comes from tourism in the Summer months primarily). We also came here because it's not Arizona. Of late that State has been gaining national recognition for far right wing politics, bigotry and paranoia. But most of all Sheryl and I came to New Mexico for the art market of Santa Fe; the second largest in the US, despite being a rather small city of about 70,000 souls.

But there are two Santa Fe's, at least. The art market is a small grouping of galleries along Canyon road, The Plaza, and to a lesser extent the Railway District. All that is very nice and fairly upscale and touristy-- not so slick and polished as Carmel, but for sure a destination for the art buyer or the art tourist. The rest of the city sprawls all over the place, is not terribly pretty, and seems to have nothing to do with the "art core" of the place. Besides the money from tourism the rest of the place is sustained by government jobs, as this is the State capitol. As far as countryside, views etc, most of the place feels closed in upon itself. The topography is "high and dry". If you like sunny weather, there's a ton of it. If you like lakes and streams, there are none. None. Dry river beds full of sand. I adjusted pretty easily to the 7000 feet altitude, but I think we expected some kind of magic here, and we aren't particularly experiencing that in "The and of Enchantment". Maybe that's our fault, and maybe that's OK too. We've been learning a lot and the people here are pretty marvelous, just as they have been everywhere we go.