It’s early, but not that early. Light comes late here in Santa Fe.
We’ve had intermittent rain since arriving here in the southwest on Wednesday. Ominous clouds have populated the sky, but until yesterday, they never resulted in much more than short intervals of rain.
Yesterday though, wow, real thunder and lightning attended slashing rain. By the time we walked back to our car after dinner, the sidewalks and alley were filling with deep puddles and gutters had turned into rushing streams.
There was a tornado (small?) in Santa Fe last evening and after we got home from dinner warnings blared from our phones.
We’d been reading about flooding north and west of here, some of it severe. Also impacted: parts of Colorado up as far as Durango. Four Corners.
And here’s what I came here to say: this is the very first time that I have personally felt afraid about a climate-weird storm. New England doesn’t get much by way of hurricanes and tornados. We are many years into a significant drought, of course, and trees are dying from various stresses which is to say we are not immune. No place is immune. But to have a nervous system responding in real time to alarming weather was new.
The day was so very full that I was too engaged to take decent photos. These will have to do. I want to get participants’ permission to post their likenesses before I post those images, so they’ll have to wait.
It’s been a relief, honestly, to let the documentation impulse go a little. I’ve been taking lots of notes though!
The docent at the International Museum of Folk Art told us that the artist drew the faces on the cloth with pencil. I love how skillfully the girls were rendered, top to bottom, and I wish I could convey how impactful the scale of the piece is.
Here are a few more tidbits from yesterday.
Marty Bond again: “Peace is not weakness. It’s power at rest.”
Susan Lanier: “It’s important to know what your job is. If you can do it, your little job will get bigger and deeper and wider. It takes courage.”
Vex: “Sometimes ancestors are not human.”
Rebecca Peterson: “Dreams have wild potential. Don’t pounce on them. Let the dream speak.”
Also Rebecca: “The body goes more slowly than the mind.”
I meant this to be a quick weather post. I guess I got carried away!
Dee~ Wow! You really have had som weather! The view from the back of your place was caught in a moment of amazing! It really is different living with wild weather. I watched a couple of the Four Corners flooding videos – so much water! I noticed part way through that it was doing some sort of therapy-desensitizing (my young daughter had been swept away in a water main break on our hilly street). That was a a nice surprise. I’m glad you didn’t get hit too hard there.
The circle quotes are great, as are the others. The quilt…their faces share so much. I can really feel them. I can imagine that was even stronger in person. Thanks for sharing. I’m looking forward to more!
What happened with your daughter?! How old was she?
Dee~ She was 9 and got swept 4 house widths down the gutter when a water main broke at the top of our street (which was a big hill. I grabbed for her, caught her hand and she slipped right through, as she was covered in so much silt. Her dad tried too and got knocked over. The water company men in their knee high rubber boots pulled them both out. She was safe before she could tumble further where there was a storm drain and a parked car. Nightmare.
Oh my god.
Zow. Fabulous photos. I wondered about you there, I heard about the 4-corners flooding from the storms. Was a a bigger storm than I thought… very scary. glad you’re ok.
It’s raining again here! But no tornado alerts tonight.