Future Site of...

Photo: Jared Tarbell/Wiki Commons/CC License

 

 

 

I miss Truth or Consequences. My residence was short-lived. Four months and handful of days were all I managed before packing up for home. Home is Albuquerque, were I sit working now at the UNM Fine Arts Library. The library sits on top of the Architecture building at the corner of Central and Cornell. It is a gorgeous and airy place. Much fancier than the kids reading room at the T or C public library. There are no bean bags however, and no craft hours. The sense of belonging is different. It is a solitary pursuit despite the quick ability to meet people here or to see an occasional familiar face. It is like the city verses the town. The scope is grander. There is more at hand to do and see. But there is an anonymity despite the regular familiarity of  people and places. There is more to have but more is required to have it. My place is here and here I am. The journey from all of my there(s) to this here (this there here?) is my history. Place is no backdrop to this tale, it is a lead character. 

If my central question is how we narrate places, and what this may mean, my secondary consideration is how we narrate ourselves into the landscape. What do we need in a place? Basics of food, shelter, and belonging. And other things. Those other things, the elements (if this was physical science the elements would be elemental, here they are descriptive, narrative, qualitative, but just as real) are what I am looking to figure out, partially and momentarily, in this place ethnography. 

My next dissertation section in the first chapter is the town's history. I have been re-writing my opening pages. The first draft of everything I write is posted here first. I would never allow my students to engage this practice. There is too much clutter in first drafts. There is to much meandering and entirely too much crap. After four or five or ten revisions, writing is passably good if you are a passing to good writer. I am passing, would like to be good, do not write enough to be great. That's my story anyway. Here are some stories of the town I have been reading online this morning to remind myself of the narratives many are reading from their places. I will post the town history I have cobbled together separately. 

Sierra County New Mexico

(http://www.sierracountynewmexico.info/truth-or-consequences/)

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Truth or Consequences New Mexico

 

Once known as Hot Springs, Truth or Consequences New Mexico is a small resort town with a year-round population of slightly more than 6,000.

A walk through downtown T or C can be like stepping into a living time capsule; one can stroll among businesses on WPA-era sidewalks, take a soak in T or C’s ancient hot springs, or dine at a steak house straight out of the 1980s (the town offers a range of interesting dining options).

You’ll find all sorts of lodging here, from larger, name-brand motels “uptown” (near I-25 exit 79 and Walmart) to charmingly-restored commercial Spa/Hotels in the Historic Hot Springs and Downtown District, to the many motor courts along Date Street.

Situated off I-25 between Albuquerque and Las Cruces, this little town got its big name in 1950 as part of a publicity scheme to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Ralph Edwards’ hugely successful game show on NBC radio. (more info on the name change) Once Hot Springs became Truth or Consequences, Edwards traveled to town annually, celebrity friends in tow, for nearly 50 years, and oooh was there a party! They called it “Fiesta,” and though Edwards has been gone for some time now, Fiesta continues to this day.

Activities include the Miss Fiesta pageant, a parade, rodeos (motorcyle and traditional), a golf tournament, and – in Ralph Edwards Park – music, performance, and contests including a junk boat race and rubber duck race on the Rio Grande. (Complete info is on the Fiesta website.)

Las Palomas Plaza (pictured at left), completed by the artist Shel Neymark circa 2003, is an inviting feature of downtown T or C. Located next door to the artifact-studded Geronimo Springs Museum and across the street from the Post Office, the fountain provides a place for visitors to sit and relax while soaking their feet in the town’s famous hot mineral waters. Currently, the water cycles at 15 minutes on / 15 minutes off – these waters are worth waiting for if you can spare the time!

MainStreet Truth or Consequences, a community-based group dedicated to the revitalization and beautification of the downtown, partners with the Sierra County Tourism Board in the promotion of downtown Truth or Consequences, its Historic Hot Springs District and water sports on the Rio Grande.

MainStreet is also the group behind the monthly Second Saturday Art Hop, a night when many downtown businesses open their doors from 6-9pm.

TRUTH OR CONSEQUENCES HOT SPRINGS HISTORIC DISTRICT

There are TEN commercial bathhouses offering hot springs in the cool town’s easily walkable historic hot springs & commercial district.

The bathhouses were the town’s biggest draw in the Hot Springs era, back when T or C was advertised as the City of Health.

Today, the springs are experiencing a resurgence in popularity. Most of T or C’s spas have been charmingly restored and are open to walk-ins who can pay to soak by the hour. Several also offer lodging.

Want to read about goings-on in T or C? Check out the Truth or Consequences category in our blog.

Hot Springs in Truth or Consequences

Since before recorded history, the therapeutic benefits of the hot springs in this area have drawn people here.

The hot thermal water flows out of a rift along the Rio Grande that appeared more than 50 million years ago. The rift uplifted T or C’s landmark hill, and faults along the rift allow deep groundwater to flow freely to the surface without losing heat or minerals — producing pristine waters with temperatures ranging from 98 to 115 degrees, with trace elements of 38 different minerals. The pH of the water is 7, or neutral.

May Cure
“Whatever Ails You”

With almost 2,700 parts per million of assorted minerals, these thermal springs constitute some of the most heavily mineralized water in the United States. The continually flowing waters also have two important and unique features:

— The water has no unpleasant odor.
— The single largest ingredient in the water is chloride, a naturally occurring germ killer that sterilizes the skin and ensures the purity of the water.

Located in the downtown Hot Springs Bathhouse Historic and Commercial District, the spas and bathhouses of Truth or Consequences are central to its history. The region gained recognition as a health center at the turn of the century, and in the 1920s, ‘30s, and ‘40s motorists flocked to area resorts. Some were prescribed the “21 day soak” regimen, said to cure “anything that ails you.” In a nutshell, the regimen is – soak in our hot springs once daily for 21 days, at around the same time each day, and spend as much time resting & recovering immediately afterward as you taking the waters.

Today, the charmingly restored hotels, motels, RV parks, and spas reflect this history and offer travelers a wide range of accommodations that retain the flavor of this bygone era, along with healing treatments including massage, reflexology, mud wraps, reiki, and more.

Visitors seeking in-room private baths will find several to choose from, and most of the baths are open to walk-ins who can pay to soak by the half hour or hour.

“Book Online” buttons and $$ ratings below refer to spas with lodging rooms.
$ = 40-59 per night | $$ = 60-89 per night | $$$ = 90 and up per night

Artesian Mineral Baths

575-894-2684

312 Marr

Walk-ins are welcome during business hours - 9am-12pm and 1-8pm daily except Wednesday.

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Blackstone Hotsprings

575-894-0894

410 Austin

$$-$$$

Open to Walk-ins from 9am-9pm daily.  Call ahead or stop in with a credit card to reserve either the Wet Room (which includes a large hot spring pool and a steam room) or one of the 2 Historic Baths.  more info

Each of Blackstone’s 7 rooms is inspired by a different television show (ie Twilight Zone, Golden Girls, Roy Rogers) and includes unlimited use of in-room hot springs…. Read more »

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Charles Motel & Spa

575-894-7154

601 Broadway

$-$$

Baths at The Charles are open to Walk-ins from 8am-10pm. Punch cards are available; buy in bulk and save $1 per soak.  more info

1940s traditional spa services include on-site hot springs mineral baths (one soak per person per night). Most rooms have kitchens. … Read more »

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Fire Water Lodge

575-740-0315

311 Broadway

$$

Walk-ins are not available; Fire Water baths are reserved for lodging guests.

Lodging guests have access to private baths, either inside or outside, depending on the room. Rooms are situated around a comfortable central courtyard…. Read more »

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Hay-Yo-Kay Hot Springs

575-894-2228

300 Austin

Hay-Yo-Kay is open to walk-ins Monday & Saturday, 10am-8pm; Wednesday, Thursday & Friday 10am-9pm; and Sunday 10am-5pm.

There is no lodging available at Hay-Yo-Kay Springs, only hot springs / mineral water baths available to walk-ins. … Read more »

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Indian Springs

575-894-2018

218 Austin Street

$

Walk-ins are welcome at Indian Springs on a first-come/first-served basis.  Stop by!

Two private, natural-flowing hot spring pools are situated next to six 1940s-style efficiency apartments. Rooms are available on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. Lodgers get two free half-hour baths per day. SPA HOURS 8am – 9pm daily $4 per person for for a half hour bath Baths are gravel-bottom, mostly natural flow, but a pump in the small bath maintains… Read more »

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La Paloma Hot Springs & Spa

575-894-3148

311 Marr

$$-$$$

Walk-ins are welcome at La Paloma Hot Springs and Spa from 10am-10pm daily.  more info

La Paloma, formerly Marshall Miracle Pools, is a natural free flowing bathhouse with no pumps or pipes. Originally the first car park in T or C, it is now a quiet and peaceful space to escape the stress and demands of life. Stop in, take a breath, have a soak and find yourself…. Read more »

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Pelican Spa

575-894-0055

306 S. Pershing Street

$-$$$

Sorry, Walk-ins are not allowed; baths at Pelican Spa are for lodging guests.  Pelican hot spring bath photos

Affordable overnight lodging in several downtown locations with unlimited hot spring soaks available to lodging guests on a first-come / first-served basis…. Read more »

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Riverbend Hot Springs

575-894-7625

100 Austin

$$-$$$

Walk-ins are welcome during business hours, 8am-10pm, with the last soak at 9pm. Sessions last 50 minutes in the private pools, 1 hour in the public baths. Call ahead or pre-book soaks online!

Riverbend offers lodging, public and private pools on the banks of the Rio Grande, a sauna, and unmatched views of the river and Turtleback mountain…. Read more »

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Sierra Grande Lodge & Spa

575-894-6976

501 McAdoo

$$-$$$

Walk-ins are welcome, but it's suggested that you call ahead to book a spa treatment or bath.  more info

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, Sierra Grande offers full spa services, hot spring baths, a 2-bedroom casita and meeting rooms…. Read more »

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Spa Services, Massage, Reflexology

If you’re looking for an opportunity to be pampered to the nines, there are two full-service spas in Truth or Consequences/Elephant Butte, and massage and other treatments can be arranged on-site at several hotels in the county.  Please see our Spa page for more information.

History of the Hot Springs as a Destination

Riverbend back in the day

Downtown Truth or Consequences sits atop a large natural aquifer that produces somewhat salty, odorless water ranging in temperature from 100-115 degrees Fahrenheit. Were the city (and nearby Elephant Butte Dam) not here, the downtown area would be a swampy basin of warm mud, subject to seasonal flooding from the Rio Grande.

The Chiricahua (Warm Springs) Apaches named these springs “Place to Pray” and considered them a sacred place for healing. (Many locals repeat the “Geronimo Soaked Here” tale, but it is thought by local historians to wishful thinking, not fact.)

During the late 1800s, while neighboring areas like Kingston and Chloride were experiencing the Gold and Silver Rush, the hot springs were visited by more and more people and the area became known as “Palomas Hot Springs.” The first generation of bath houses were actually tents, and a soak entailed laying in the hot mud and slathering it all over oneself; doing so was thought to cure rheumatism.

The event that changed the area forever was the construction of Elephant Butte Dam between 1911 and 1916. Liquor and gambling were outlawed at the construction site, but establishments in the hot springs settlement five miles away offered both – and in abundance. The population grew rapidly and the town was incorporated in 1916.

Once the dam was completed, the flow of the river was altered such that more land could be claimed from the flood plain, allowing for stick frame bathhouses to be built in what had been swamp. Wells were sunk into the aquifer, allowing clear spring water to flow. The town developed as a health resort; hot mineral water was an accepted medical treatment, and slogans like “City of Health” and “Health Capital of the Southwest” drew visitors and healers alike.

Over the course of the 20th century, the town’s name was changed first to Hot Springs, then famously to Truth or Consequences. Some say that last change caused the mineral baths to be forgotten, but today the hot springs seem to be experiencing a resurgence in popularity.

Truth or Consequences Mineral Water Analysis
courtesy of the Charles Motel & Spa

Thank you for your interest in Truth or Consequences Hot Springs Baths!

introduction draft/methods

introduction draft/methods

This study explores people’s ideas and theories about place through an ethnographic and historic place study of the town of Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. The broader lens of this work explores place narratives in the wider region from the turn of the 19^th century through historic and archival research methods. The methods employed in this study seek to uncover dimensions of place, specifically and more generally, through a range of ethnographic and historic methods. What people make of places is a question of meaning. How do people form meaningful relationships in the places they occupy? How do they attach and inscribe meaning into their places? Ideas and theories, the mental structures used to make sense of external experiences and give them meaning, are powerfully evident in ways people make places recognizable and meaningful. We narrate, name, identify, remember, commemorate and mark places. What people make of places is also a meaningful question. Fixing place into a particular narrative is a worthy endeavor. It is worthy because we are, as philosopher Casey Stevens reminds us, nothing without place. 

On a practical level, our knowledge of places is often a matter of survival. This trait, which apparently receded in the last century, has revived in light of environmental crises. In many ways place is culture. A reflection of our material and bounded habitats, whether tangible or imagined, place reflections are evident in clothing, dance, food, kinship structures, built environments, spiritual practice, geolocational arrangements, ritual, ornamentation and even skin pigmentation of and arrangement of facial features and bodies. These characteristics persist and adapt in the contemporary world of movement, dislocation, contest and collusion. People also narrate place traditions into being. Far away and longing to create what they have imagined in places unseen is a mainstay in the southwest region and across the world. Cultural appropriation and blatant displays of cultural creation and spectacle are mainstays of the global and local landscape of place. These place narratives and cultural creations performances are as telling as any historical account of place that strives to portray objective reality.

Place ethnography is similar to traditional ethnography, which seeks to discern cultural characteristics through field-based observation and documentation. Keith Basso was formative in the development of place ethnography, first articulated in his book Wisdom Sits in Places (1996). Basso implores ethnographers interested in place to explore them with deliberate speed. Beyond expanding knowledge of particular social groups, the hallmark of ethnographic research, he contends place ethnography is a critical endeavor in the contemporary moment. In this “unsettled age,” and in these “distorted times” with so much at stake, he writes it is “unfortunate that anthropologists seldom study what people make of places.”[i] Basso follows this sweeping list of trials with a more lighthearted exploration of how adept people are at creating richly lived and sensed places, and how deeply attached people can be to their places. Relationships represented, enacted and embodied in the physical landscape, these attachments can be profound. “For surely as place is an elemental existential fact, sense of place is a universal genre of experience,” writes Basso, musing that transcultural qualities might be uncovered through place ethnographic research.[ii]

The term transcultural is perhaps a more useful concept than universal. Increasingly, claims of universal experiences or qualities are suspect. Yet the desire to find qualities that transcend the particular is heady. “Everything, or almost everything, hinges on the particulars,” says Basso, “and because it does, ethnography is essential.” (145). Striving to find patterns in the particulars, to move to the universal, is the work of scholars however. Some excellent place scholarship in recent years erodes Basso’s claim that “ethnographic inquiry into cultural constructions of geographical realities is at best weakly developed” (105). Basso’s work with Steven Feld is one example. Together they edited Senses of Place (1996), a collection of research first presented of a conference at the Santa Fe School for Advanced Research convened to explore the complex relationships between people and places. Place ethnographies, they write, seek to "locate the intricate strengths and fragilities that connect places to social imagination and practice, to memory and desire, to dwelling and movement” (8). The call to ethnographic place study is powerful in Wisdom Sits in Places. Basso’s text is deceptively slim given its philosophical force. Insightfully cogent, deeply philosophical, delightful, honest and surprising, the text offers encouragement to scholars without supplying a methodological framework. Twenty years of prior fieldwork, a directive to create a map with Apache place names, coupled with what emerged as profoundly insightful conclusions about language, place and wisdom resulted in text that remains unequaled in its philosophical appeal.

Michael Trujillo’s book Land of Disenchantment: Latina/o Identities and Transformations in Northern New Mexico (2009) is an equally complex work of ethnography. Trujillo’s work in the Northern New Mexico town of Española is the other intellectual pillar of this project. Uncomfortably opposed at many junctures, these texts taken together nonetheless form a framework for my own research. Basso work, hailed as “a classic creative ethnographic representation” on the book’s back cover strikes a much different tone. Trujillo, on the other hand, claims his goal is “to challenge ethnography.”[iii] Trujillo employs what he describes as the once-radical and now reasonably common style of the modernist ethnography. Representations of supposedly cohesive cultural groups have long been a mainstay of ethnography in New Mexico. Not merely portrayed as cohesive, but outside of the modern, First Nation and Nuevomexicana/o communities have long endured the ethnographic gaze. Basso does not spend much time grappling with this history. According to Basso the task of ethnographers is to fashion a written account that adequately conveys his or her understandings of other people’s understandings. It is a discomforting business abounding with loose ends claims Basso. Yet with patience, good humor and perseverance, it is possible to achieve the ethnographer’s task of determining what expressive acts might mean, and relating them to larger ideas world. Fashioning accounts they convey ethnographer’s understanding of other’s understandings is daunting but worthy says Basso. “To argue otherwise (and there is a bit of that around these days) is to dismiss ethnography as a valid source of cultural knowledge and turn it into a solipsistic sideshow, an ominous prospect only slightly less appealing than the self-engrossed meanderings of those who seek to promote it.”[iv]

Trujillo seeks to engage the modernist ethnography through a series of essays, “a form designed to address such complex and often-indefinable subjects.”[v] This form captures the dynamic intertexuality between the ethnographic gaze and the ethnographic archive. Prior representations of cultural groups loom in any present ethnographic account, yet through this method the ethnographer admits, much as Basso does, to the challenge of bewilderment and incomprehension that accompanies observation.

Unlike Basso, Trujillo eschews the “desire to unmask or defrock some larger or deeper truth,” an approach to ethnographic representation he claims Michael Taussig exemplifies in his work. Yet Trujillo concedes that even as he strives to recognize the complex, partial and subjective representations his ethnographic accounts by their very nature portray, he still seeks “to paint a picture that is somehow more whole than previous ethnographies.”[vi] Basso contends that ethnography, although often painful and wrenching, is also a great deal of fun. Occasionally, he remarks, ethnographers “stumble onto culturally given ideas,” that are worthy of wider attention, attention that places and their sensing deserve. Trujillo, equally candid, speaks to finding something “sublime and fulfilling,” in exploring the juxtaposition between the positive and negative, the framework he uses to interrogate his own ethnographic accounts. 

Historic methods and research are engaged both comparatively and in order to look specifically at how place narratives operate in creating place identity. What ideas and theories do people have about places? How are these ideas present in the narratives people create and recount about places? I suspect in the process of writing about these accounts I will grapple with these questions extensively, struggling to make sense of my ethnographic data. The quality of the scholars who work I propose to model assures nothing but a very high bar. I approach my attempts to order these observations thematically. I often concede to chronological accounts given the ease of chronological history. Place is a ranging concept, and these impositions of order are equally wide and shifting. Even places that persist over centuries of records are in constant flux as people, power structures, cultural systems, landscapes, geographical features and other characteristics change. Place a temporary apparition despite the seemingly tangible physical reality that so often accompanies it. Like a series of snapshots capturing glimpses of place at particular moments, the historical record in story, print, photo or other documentation is one way to know a place. Historic and archival records are a key method in place studies. The records examined in this study certainly include newsprint, historic photographs, surveys, archival and government documents.

Place narratives are also abundant in other historic sources. Promotional material, maps, as well as travel guides and similar material provide place histories of their own. Considering why places are narrated in particular ways illuminates why claims to definitive place histories are so powerful. Communities can agree on particular facts and still hold vastly different ideas about what these shared observations mean. Place histories, like any other, are tenuous and partial. Good history is carefully crafted and with painstaking to detail and documentation. Traditional sources have similar flaws in truth telling but carry higher expectations.  Of equal interest, however, are the histories that are not so reliable or rigorous. Veracity is not necessarily the point of this interrogation, especially in regards to non-traditional sources. It is, rather, to seek patterns in place narratives.

Place ethnography uses a multitude of traditional methods, such as interviews and observations, coupled with approaches such as empirical observations on public space use and policy analysis, phenomenological methods from architecture that seek to capture the experience of a place, and elements of that consciousness-based experience, as well as photography, site sketching, and other common documentation techniques. I draw these specific methods from a rich body of critical and historical approaches employed for qualitative data collection. Fieldwork is the primary means of data collection. As the foundation for qualitative ethnographic research, careful observation reveals a great deal of rich information. This is what ethnographer Clifford Geertz calls "thick description." Engaging in community and cultural place processes requires both observation and participant observation. Interviews are the foundation for this study, coupled with a range of other methods. Physical landscape and cultural use patterns, site sketching, and photo documentation of the physical and built environment, visual analysis and interpretation of artifacts in the landscape, the setting and relationship of buildings, the movement of people and other things, such as animals and cars, through the landscape, and archival research on these elements round out my methods. Cultural landscape documentation seeks to capture the patterns of human shaping of the physical environment, and the ways in which the physical environment shapes cultural norms and patterns. A final component of my data collection will be social mapping, the documentation of relationships between groups, institutions, organizations, social structures as well as the relationships between people, things and places.

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[i] Basso, 105.

[ii] Basso, 148.

[iii] Trujillo, 209

[iv] Basso, Wisdom, 111.

[v] Trujillo, 23.

[vi] Trujillo, 26. 

first draft: introduction/introduction

Tita Berger

Dissertation First Draft: Introduction

Welcome to Truth or Consequences: Place and Place Making in Modern New Mexico

   

“What do people make of places?” Keith Basso, Wisdom Sits in Places (xiii).[i]

“How do you find it here?” Local inquiry into what people make of places.

This work examines what people make of places and how people go about making places. The central focus of this work is a place study of Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. The wider lens of this work explores contemporary and historical ideas about place and place making in the wider region. These include ideas about modernity, critical regionalism, globalization, historical narratives, tourism, preservation, revitalization, sustainability, place memory and cultural landscapes. Place studies encourage connections to broader histories while remaining grounded in specific sites. Questions of what people make of places, and how people go about consciously or unthinkingly shaping places are never very far from ideas about how places shape people. Despite this power and presence, places have long been regulated to the backdrop of history. The still-typical question about how people find a place illustrates this idea. The power of place as a tool to locate bodies is evident in this question. While this is no longer the case in a great deal of scholarship, viewing place as a static geographical locator is still common practice.

How do we find a place? Place is so widely and commonly used that it does not lend itself readily to academic argument. This work takes as true the idea that place is a dynamic and constantly shifting configuration of forces describing localities. A locality encompasses specific sites as well as the quality of having a position in space. Unlike place, however, locality has a much more narrow understanding. This is perhaps why studies exploring places generally or places in particular rely heavily on specific descriptors such as place memory, populated place, or sense of place. The constellation of influences comprising place is fluid, and attempts to talk about a place or place identity is therefore an attempt to temporarily fix these forces. Ranging from geography to global capital markets, these forces are physical, political, cultural and historical. They are also expressions of shared social engagements, infrastructure and narrative. How do these forces temporarily coalesce and create dominant place identities?  This study seeks to uncover these moments in order to consider how place identities emerge. Through an exploration of what these place forces are, how they emerge, are sustained, contested, reconfigured and reoccurring, we will arrive, as T.S. Elliot is famously paraphrased as writing, where we started, to know a place for the very first time.  

Against emerging arguments of placeless world, or a borderless world, is an increased awareness of the power of place. This power is generally cast as a positive expression. Place commemorations and celebrations are a mainstay of global tourism and place revitalization. Preserving cultural landscapes or sites considered integral to dominant understandings of important history and cultural expression is a popular cure to the supposed globalization of place and culture. The power of place is often evoked as a tool to combat the supposed placelessness that is seen in ubiquitous commercial strips and capital-driven touristscapes with authentic cultural expressions. Yet it is often the desire to be in ‘authentic’ places that drives commodification and entrenches borders.  Places can be powerful indicators of poverty and exclusion. Violent histories are obscured or occluded in many cultural landscapes. Critical renderings of place entail greater considerations of these forces. To this end, place studies are largely method-driven while attending carefully to theoretical lenses that shape place understandings. The ways in which a specific place is rendered meaningful entails consideration into the multiple ways that we inscribe meaning to place.   

This is a method-driven place study that engages extensive theoretical discussions. I begin with an overview of place ethnography. I follow with a discussion of various theoretical understandings of place in tandem with an overview of the literature and recent works on place. An overview of the content and organization of the remaining chapters is provided. This introductory chapter concludes with a synopsis of my research town of Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. The production of this study is an attempt to contribute to the understanding of our shares social-life in place. It is an account of the cultural, social, political, individual and communal sense of place in the contemporary moment based on ethnographic methods of discovery. It is also an attempt to craft an account of place based on historical and archival methods cast in contemporary theoretical understandings. Most importantly, this study seeks to contribute to the growing awareness of the power of place. Sense of place, as Keith Basso reminds us, “rests its case on the premise that being from somewhere is always referable to being from nowhere.” (148). Attending to the many ways that the power of place is understood, how somewhere is created, is the ultimate goal of this work.  

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[i] This is the opening query in Basso’s preface to Wisdom Sits in Places (1996). This question, I various incarnations, is the driving force in my dissertation work. Historical narratives of what people ‘made,’ of the southwest region remain powerful contemporary dialogue shapers for example. All of my observations and research can be understood as an iteration of this question. Basso argues that the question of what people make of places “is as old as people and places themselves, as old as human attachments to portions of the earth,” (xiii).

Photo Essay by Carlos Padilla, Commentary by Tita Berger

Sense of Place, Or, I Heart My Town 

Or, When Words are Not Enough, 

Or, How's the Writing Going? 

Here are a few examples of how I "sense" Truth or Consequence. Carlos Padilla captures the town in such a way that his photos are like little love notes that I love to read. He creates a particular and lovey sense of place in his photographs that accords with my own experience. Keith Basso prefers the active "sensing of place" over the more popular and commonly used "sense of place. (Wisdom Sits in Places, 143).  Sensing of place is a form of cultural activity he contends. We all take part in this activity to varying degrees. I am rereading this text for the umpteenth time, a task I hope to write about with some small measure of clarity sometime soon.  It is my guidebook. Basso claims Albert Camus has the best sense of place definition. Camus writes that senses of place is not merely known or felt, but something "people do," which Basso proclaims "brings the whole idea rather firmly down to earth" (143).  Exactly where the sense of place belongs he says. 

I have spent the last week looking at a few  contemporary photo books of the town. They are studies in contrasts. I actually find myself muttering "asshole," when I look at a certain book. Here is an outtake of a "review" of this collection on Amazon: 

"Nick Waplington has been taking photographs in and around Truth or Consequences, a small town in New Mexico, for nearly 10 years. Typical and unremarkable in many ways, the town voted to change its name to that of a celebrated radio quiz show in 1950. Waplington records the town behind the extraordinary name, the lives of its people and the landscape they live in while at the same time constructing a personal tribute to American photography, paying stylistic homage to such great pioneers of the genre as Edward Weston and Walker Evans. A highly original and strikingly perceptive work, Truth or Consequences is as thought-provoking as it is aesthetically absorbing, as it introduces us to another world whose human reality remains timelessly arresting." Or this, also on Amazon: "As the subject of photographer Nick Waplington's captivating lens, the town's name takes on a profundity that defies its frivolous origin. His portraits and landscape shots follow the bizarre yet somehow ordinary lives of the inhabitants of "T or C", as well as paying homage to the great pioneers of American photography such as Edward Weston and Walker Evans. These stunning yet commonplace photographs were shot over a period of ten years, during which Waplington revisited the town many times. Drawn together in a book for Phaidon, 'Truth or Consequences' has been hailed as his most extensive and enthralling study since 'Living Room' ...' Dazed and Confused 'The book captures some genuinely affecting moments ... while also offering generous tributes to past masters of American photography.' Time Out '

Yet another: " Nick Waplington has captured the combined weirdness and ordinariness of the everyday, the disused and the down-at-heel. Like a wide-screen road-movie, images of American popular culture collide.' Evening Standard." 

Several lines should alert the alert reader why I mutter asshole every so often. It is a horrible, voyeuristic and contrived work. I really enjoy disturbing and unsettling images of people and places. But these photos do not challenge understandings or fashion new ones. Rather, these photos are as place-less as most American commercial strips. And even strip malls can be cool places, unless you are convinced they are not. Depends on what you look at, and how you look. It is theory and method. 

The photographs are the antithesis of every photograph that I have culled from Carlos Padilla's facebook page. The photos here are picture-perfect instagram-washed loveliness for sure, but as I struggle to start my public dissertation writing, as promised, but perhaps not deliverable for a while longer, these are the images that I need to see. Thanks Sherry Fletcher, for buying me my own book to critique (call me at 505.917.9111 if you want to look at it at Passion Pie or the Happy Belly Deli or the Flying Star) and talking me through every method and theory issue. 

You can't have places without having people. I have such good people. 

Basso writes that an "ethnographer must somehow fashion a written account that adequately conveys his or her understandings of other people's understandings" (110). Basso says ethnography "discomforting businesses which lose ends abound and nothing is ever certain." I have been trying to make sense of this sense of place. Or rather, other people's sense of this place, and how they make sense of it as well. If that makes sense. Hahaha. My progress is slow but steady, which Basso notes is the hopeful end to fieldwork. The transition from now-monthly comments on my  field work interviews and observations to the task of making sense and writing about those  moments in a continuous narrative has stymied me a little. A lot. It is discomforting. So I am going to allow a little more time to enjoy the process of ethnography. A little more time to enjoy the process of making sense of what I have done this last year and change. Not too much. I write this in case my committee meanders through this post, but enough to enjoy the view for a few more weeks. 

This is what Basso contends is often missing or hidden from ethnographic accounts. It is a   great deal of fun. The doing it can be joyful. Like a photograph (a topic I have covered at length in these pages), we can take a moment to burrow in the sheer loveliness of what we chose to see before we emerge to examine all that we overlook and all that needs attending to with  a more critical eye in our landscapes.  That's where I will leave it for today. Clenched teeth and furrowed brow are no guarantee of literary success," writes Basso. So I am going to wander around the town for a little while longer, taking only photographs and leaving only footprints. I jest. But I do think a photo essay of my own, on the bathhouses that have been the foundation for the sense of place in the Downtown Historic Bathhouse and Commercial District, might be in order. 

Prelude: Being in Place

We shall not cease from exploration, 

and the end of all our exploring 

will be to arrive where we started 

and know the place for the first time. 

T. S. Eliot 

Borrowed Without Permission from the Facebook Photo Archives
of Carlos Padilla (see below). 

I begin my first public dissertation-draft installment following this brief prelude. I was away from my dissertation town of Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, for the longest period since my ethnographic project began more than a year ago. Almost two months passed. There were IRB issues, (Institutional Review Board at UNM--the people who make sure research is carried out in an ethical and methodical manner given the historical abuse committed in the supposed pursuit of knowledge--see the first couple of lengthy posted from 2012 on this history if you are at all inclined to know more--nothing I would recommend), personal issues, global weather calamities, ordinary life/work happenings and the like. A host of likely excuses. The seasonal change is a reminder of work to attend to and promises to keep. 

Finally made my first Art Hop this last Saturday and still did not make it through the town proper to every venue. I look forward to more time spent wandering. It was a gorgeous good time. Emagen fell in love with the square dancers. Do the 5th graders still have to learn how to square dance? Or was that 8th grade? My urban Albuquerque friends thought that learning square dancing was hysterical. So did we as I recall. 

Not that different really, or maybe so. It is a question that frames many of my observations about Truth or Consequences. Less a general verses specific rendering than it is a question of pattern and particularity. "What is it about this place man?" I will drop the man from the draft version. Maybe. I need to spend more time, wandering and otherwise. Not too much, though I could spend a lifetime doing ethnographic work. I say this a lot, but as a method it is pretty compelling. I begin my dissertation-draft writing talking about ethnography as a method. I will beat that horse a little longer across the landscape in view. 

Speaking of landscapes, the new downtown mural by "the Young da Vincis," is the kind of inspired landscape that keeps me looking around in wonder.  The impeccable Kathleen Sloan wrote this brief account. 

****************************************************************

Young da Vincis’ Debut—Lee Belle Johnson Senior Center Murals

By Kathleen Sloan

HERALD Reporter

The City of Truth or Consequences got several beautiful murals for the cost of materials and the group organized and named by Jia Apple as “the Young da Vincis” got trained in the art of mural making.

 

Apple and seven of the eight da Vincis presented the murals to the city on Saturday, August 18, at 5 p.m. at the site—the Lee Belle Johnson Senior Center, at 301 S. Foch St.

  

The da Vincis are, Reed Tische, Megan Burke, Bethany Walker, Jannelle Knaus, Josh Candelaria, Kyle Cunningham, Jeannie Ortiz and Hannah Goldman (who was moving the day of the dedication and was unable to attend). 

Something less tangible than the murals and the transfer of craftsmanship was in evidence at the dedication—an esprit de corps among the artists for one thing, and a communal joy wafting through the crowd for another.

The project started in April. Four months and at least 2,160 work hours went into it—nine people working about 12 hours a week for 20 weeks. Local flora/fauna/habitat is the theme, which were researched. Overall design and consistency of design had to be hammered out and executed. The integrity of the historic building had to be preserved and the mural materials and attachment had to be researched and executed. Apple’s experience as a muralist saved hundreds more man-hours that would have had to be expended without her leadership. 

Apple also modeled how to go after and get civic support for a project. She and some of the da Vincis gave two presentations to the city commission. 

Apple’s itemized budget and estimated labor (not charged for) also gave the da Vincis and hopefully the community some idea how valuable artists and art are to a community. 

Apple suggested Truth or Consequences MainStreet approve the design of the murals, which the city commission approved, opening up further community participation, transparency and oversight. There are several civics lessons to be learned and pondered in that move.

 

The disparate shapes of the boarded-up windows—used as an inset for the murals—must have made maintaining a design scheme throughout difficult. 

Repeated design elements gave consistency and rhythm. The habitat was strongly delineated in curvy shapes and diagonals that pull you into the picture. Land, water, mountains and sky were depicted in a consistent palette of alternating oranges and blues. 

The animal life was consistently depicted two ways—as strong black silhouettes, or set apart in a tondo/circle form, painted in “grisaille” or in shades of black and white with some tans. 

This non-color/overlay/animal design contrasted with the high-color habitat shows great visual thinking. It works very well with the strong curvy lines of the historic adobe building—a WPA project. Jia Apple and the Young da Vincis’ strong communal effort and involvement are a great continuation of the WPA tradition.

***

Ah. Love the continued traditions made fresh anew. To that end, the continued tradition to moving south among others, I am moving myself and bonny traveling companion to Monticello full time. 

I will intersperse random moments ‘in town,’ with late night dissertation writing in the months ahead. I have been derelict in posting regularly these past few months. I was processing, pausing for reflection, and procrastinating. The last one should stand alone. Speaking of standing alone, I will spend the next months in the company of many others as I write out one of many draft versions of my dissertation here in this virtual space. It will be my first-round draft, and for this I apologize in advance to my few but dedicated and much-loved readers. 

The final version will be readily available in a year or so if my good luck and hard work hold. I have much work to do in the town still, but it is work that can join my narrative like the arroyos have been joining the river in the past few weeks. Tumultuous floods when there is rain. I am sorry for the pain and loss that the weather brought to some families in the past months and years, from fire to rain to everyday heartache. 

The community persists, stronger in ways even as parts break and sever. Pulled together by love, by family and history ties, by loss and redemption, but art and dancing girls--never torn asunder as long as there is the will to keep going—this is community and being in place. 

#Flooding in Ash Canyon eroded Highway 152. Part of the highway and guardrails fell into the canyon below with a portion of asphalt having no support underneath. #newmexico #rain. Caption and photo borrowed without permission from the facebook photo archives of Carlos Padilla (Herald Editor). 

summertime fire and rain

Summertime

www.sierracountynewmexico.info

The absence of posts has not gone unnoticed. This short post will do little to excuse the long stretch of silence, but it must suffice. A "Year in Reflection," was in the works, but it was so slow-going it was abandoned before it hit this blog. In lieu of a year-in-review piece, the interviews I have completed are being coded for qualitative review and analysis. The data I have gathered is immense. It is finally coming together intellectually. My heart remains in the town, wandering around and wanting sweets from the Ppassion Pie, objecting to my professional objectivity. My head is finally wrapping around patterns, however, and soon I will present drafts sections of my dissertation. 

For most readers it will be unbelievably dull. Dissertations are created for a small select group of individuals, the last mighty hurdle before joining the ranks of the massively educated. Most dissertation drafts are presented as conference papers. I will blatantly display my attempts here for all to read. I will strive to write clearly and academically, a thing I have seen done. But it was done by the writers who line my top shelf of favorite texts, and I am not altogether convinced I am capable of doing such a thing. In the process, regardless, I will inform my small by devoted audience about place, place making, modernity, diaspora, history, theory, and all manner of academic and popular subjects.   

My writing desk, mouldering mounds of files and books, raw and transcribed interviews, and various sundry goods will be transported to Monticello next week, so the work of writing this dissertation can be finished even as I finish up my final few interviews. I could spend the next several years interviewing people from the town. What I make of all I have learned from others will be the subject of my monthly posts from this point forward.

On another note, as I think about water, water, water--this molecular miracle that runs through my dissertation, I finish this long over-due post with a brief but powerful article about our arid lands. The rains have come, lashing and tremendous in short bursts. The Silver Fire blanketed the town and region under heavy yellowed skies, laying low over 200 square miles, or 1140,00 acres. Although 80 percent contained, the month old fire made for unsettled citizens throughout the region and too much misery to calculate. The western wildfires in the past several years have taken lives and homes and country. Do they change how we think of the world? What we do in the world? Do they give us pause to reconsider how we live and the fragile ecosystems of the arid lands? And what about our fragile towns, and fragile selves?

 www.abqjournal.com

 

There is not a drought

http://www.ruidosonews.com/ruidoso-opinion_columnists/ci_23555598/there-is-not-drought

Jerry Ortiz y Pino/NM Senate, District 12

Posted:   06/27/2013 06:09:04 PM MDT

The interim legislative Water and Natural Resources Committee met in Santa Fe and heard updates on New Mexico's water situation so sobering that the usual back-slapping and good-natured ribbing with which most such gatherings conclude were noticeably muted. 

The litany of symptoms of our current plight wasn't what left most participants shaken last week. Rather, it was a reminder from the leader of a newly-formed drought subcommittee that a growing number of scientists suggest New Mexico's lack of rain does not necessarily mean we are in a drought-a temporary moisture shortfall that eventually corrects itself. 

Researchers point to evidence from the past thousand years that absence of rainfall is the norm. The past 50 years were the true aberration. In short, we may not see more rain for a very long time.

Since we've only been receiving 6 to 10 inches annually during this abnormally wet recent era, we should take steps immediately to deal with the implications of a prolonged period of 1 to 3 inches of rainfall per year.

All our water policy and planning is premised on that 6 to 10 inches figure. It forms the basis of multiple compact obligations to neighboring states, agreements with the federal government and promises to in-state industry, tribal governments, urban communities, farmers and ranchers. If that level of rain doesn't materialize, our margin of error is slim; we suffer serious cutbacks. And if we don't get moisture for two or more years in succession (like now), we deplete reserves and rapidly face catastrophe. 

There are many signs of the disaster our current policy plus two years of lower rainfall have produced in 2013:

Ranchers throughout the state have on average reduced the size of their herds by two-thirds, and   many have sold off all their animals under duress. 

Farmers who have been promised three acre feet of irrigation water will have to get by this year with three inches. This means many crops will fail, and others will have lower yield. 

There will be little to no pecan crop this year in the Mesilla Valley. The lack of irrigation water has forced orchardists to prune their trees back to the main trunk in an effort to save them.

Four lakes in this state have severely limited access. (The water level is so far below the boat ramps that they pose a genuine public safety hazard if anyone attempts a launch.) Elephant Butte, our iconic recreational reservoir, faces water levels lower than the year the dam was built over a century ago.  

Farmers in the Carlsbad Irrigation District are locked in conflict with other farmers upstream-not because of river flow overuse (there is no river flow), but because pumping wells north of the district has lowered the aquifer and drastically affected availability of water for Carlsbad irrigators.

A similar issue has prompted a formal lawsuit against our state by Texas. It contends farmers in the Mesilla Valley, who turned to well water as compensation for the lack of ditch water, are negatively impacting El Paso-area agriculture. If we lose that court case, the state of New Mexico could be compelled to pay damages as high as a billion dollars.

Tinder-dry conditions in our mountains and forests have closed most of them to visitors. The air is heavy with smoke and ash from numerous blazes already destroying hundreds of thousands of acres of vegetation. 

Albuquerque has seen 20 percent of its urban trees, its life-giving canopy, lost to lack of rainfall and restrictions on water use required over the last two years. 

And wildlife, desperate for food and water, will increasingly be forced to confront people in our foothill and suburban developments-with a resultant loss of life and limb for animals and occasionally people.

 All this is the product of two years of reduced rainfall. What if experts are correct and it's decades before we achieve the 6- to 10-inch levels again? How do we adjust to that frightening reality? How will Albuquerque, which is dependent on San Juan-Chama water rights purchased years ago, deal with a scenario in which the San Juan River Basin runs dry?

Photos of bone-dry Heron Lake and El Vado Reservoir circulated at the committee meeting were not comforting, to say the least. Water rights are only enforceable if there is water to own. A couple more years of thin Colorado snowpack like the last two will make our city's vaunted rights theoretical at best. It's clear that if we're to avoid the fate of earlier civilizations in this area that disappeared when rivers and springs dried up, we have to change our thinking and our policies.

We need revamped agriculture. Is New Mexico really an ideal place for cotton cultivation or dairies - both among our biggest agricultural crops, but both water-intensive?Perhaps if we receive 6 to10 inches of rain a year. But what if we live in a new era of 1 to 3 inches?We need to ask other hard questions. Is it wise to rely on unproven technology to bail us out? Does desalinization of brackish water from deep aquifers offer anything more than a temporary fix? Can we build a pipeline from the Mississippi Valley to move millions of acre feet uphill - and does that make economic, environmental or social sense?

Would systems for water recycling and reuse change the situation enough to justify the capital investments required? Is cloud seeding anything more than a pipe dream? Perhaps most crucially, can a New Mexico with 1 to 3 inches of annual rainfall for the foreseeable future sustain even its current population-let alone a growing one?Water, our most precious natural resource, must be kept high on the agenda of our state policy-makers. Further, we ought to demand answers from the candidates in next year's state elections.

Anyone who aspires to be governor for the next four years will face no bigger challenge New Mexico's water policy problems. Those alone may be the key to making a choice among the candidates.We haven't seen leadership on this front from Gov. Susana Martinez so far. Has she finally decided on a direction she wants to take us? Do any of her challengers have more than platitudes to offer? If we don't demand answers-if we are too unrealistic or too politically paralyzed to act decisively-the inexorable processes of nature will continue, and we will simply resign ourselves to becoming their victims.

The Anasazi left us important advice: Pray for rain, of course. But as a people, act as if the answer to those prayers won't arrive for a hundred years.