The Santa Fe Review

On a recent Sunday, with May’s gale force winds temporarily subsiding, I took a long, circuitous walk downtown, trying to imagine what Santa Fe was like when young artists outnumbered retirees and wealthy financiers. Detouring over to Camino del Monte Sol, I passed by Eddie Gilbert’s estate where an American flag was flying out front. The New Mexican had just reported that Mr. Gilbert, whom we’ve met here before, is selling his once formidable real estate empire, BGK Properties, at what is apparently a fire sale price. I half expected to see a moving van.

In the 1920s, on the same block where the Gilberts now live, the Cinco Pintores — Will Shuster, Fremont Ellis, Willard Nash, Walter Mruk, and Josef Bakos — built their adobe studios. Ned Hall, an anthropologist and great Santa Fean who died last year, used to tell friends about the years he spent, all but abandoned after his parents’ divorce, shivering in a lean-to behind the Bakos place and walking down to Marcy Street for school. In Ned’s recollection, the artist and his mistress, all friends of the Hall family, were drunk half the time and only interested in the boarding income. The details, described in Ned’s memorable book, An Anthropology of Everyday Life, give a less romantic view of the Pintores than found in the tourist brochures.

The writer Mary Austin lived a block downhill on Monte Sol in what was to become another of entrepreneur Gerald Peters’s acquisitions and is now just one more high-end gallery. Bearing west from there along the Acequia Madre, running with snowmelt, I reached Old Santa Fe Trail, following it south a few blocks to Camino de Las Animas (Road of the Spirits), where the woodcut artist, Gustave Baumann, once lived.

The house, with Baumann’s subtle decorations still intact, was open for the first time as part of the Historic Santa Fe Foundation’s annual tour, and the street was jammed with cars. Inside, the rooms were packed shoulder-to-shoulder and chest-to-chest with visitors. I wonder how many of them left disappointed. There was no Subzero refrigerator, no slate counter tops, no Viking range — just a small, functional kitchen. The ceilings didn’t soar. The bathroom was just a bathroom. In those days, the mad poet Witter Bynner lived a block away on Buena Vista Street in more opulent surroundings, and the writer Oliver LaFarge was around the corner on Old Santa Fe Trail.

The rich people then were often the black sheep of Eastern dynasties thriving on inheritances and trust funds and supplying the artists with booze. Las Animas dead-ends at a bridge and footpath that once led to El Delirio, the estate (now the School for Advanced Research) where the White sisters, Santa Fe’s Paris and Nicky Hilton, presided over their legendary bacchanals.

I followed the path to Garcia Street and two other stops on the tour, more artist hideaways I’d never seen: the Irene von Horvath house, entered through the back of the parking lot for Geronimo restaurant, and the practically vertical Sheldon Parsons residence near the foot of Cerro Gordo Road. These places were also packed like subway cars with people like me who paid five dollars for a ticket, a fantasy, a donation to a good cause. Next year, I bet, the Historic Santa Fe Foundation could charge $10 without the slightest drop-off in sales. Maybe the quirkiness of Santa Fe has been flattened forever by money and bad taste, but there is no shortage of dreamers longing for a glimpse of more interesting times.

George Johnson
The Santa Fe Review

It seemed like a really good idea a few years ago when the Canyon Neighborhood Association began pushing for the conversion of the old hydroelectric site at Camino Cabra and Canyon Road into a public park. The area, closed off for decades, was covered with native grasses and wildflowers shaded by towering evergreens and stately deciduous trees — an inviting mountain meadow cordoned off by an ugly chainlink fence. The plan was to create a “passive park” — no bright lights, no basketball courts or soccer fields, just a quiet patch of land where a person could sit beneath a tree and enjoy nature. All that was required, as far as I could see, was to open the gate and let people in. Nothing of course is ever that simple.

Early last fall the backhoes, concrete mixers, dirt rollers, and dump trucks began parading in and out. Five and often six days a week, living nearby has been like living in an industrial zone: the scraping and banging, the beeping of the backup alarms, the gulping of diesel and gasoline, and the spewing of exhaust fumes.

An old, seldom used dirt driveway leading beyond the park to a water pumping station had to be improved. So day after day a worker with a roadgrader spent most of an eight-hour shift driving back and forth, back and forth, compacting the soil. Meanwhile men with jackhammers tore up the corners of the intersection to make the sidewalks ADA compliant. All along an old arroyo that borders the site, deep cuts were excavated to install retaining walls.

The saving grace was knowing that the project was scheduled to be finished at the end of 2009. Suffering is endurable when you know it is finite and for the common good. When the deadline slipped to January 20, I looked forward to the completion as my birthday present. But that day came and went, and now almost four months later construction is still going on.

A passive park, it might seem, would be one that people walked or bicycled to. The city mandated instead that there be a concrete parking lot. So a big chunk of the area was planed flat and compacted — another noisy, polluting, energy-guzzling process that lasted for weeks. There had to be picnic tables, and the picnic tables had to be on concrete islands connected by wide concrete walkways. An extensive sprinkler system had to be installed.

Part of the enterprise involved restoring the dilapidated building that once housed the hydroelectric plant and turning it into a community center and museum. A great idea but one that requires putting in restrooms along with the plumbing to accommodate them. The building, which once generated power, would now consume it. So more work had to be done to tie it into the city’s electrical grid.

As a result of all the frenzy, much of the natural vegetation is gone. Truck loads of new top soil must be hauled in and truck loads of excavated dirt hauled out. The final step on the agenda is using spraying machinery to “hydroseed” what had already been grassy land. After that will come years of weed control as Russian thistle, kochia, and other Eurasian invaders thrive in the niches inevitably created in disturbed soil. The meadow had to be destroyed in order to save it.

I remain optimistic about the final outcome and grateful for the time some of my neighbors have devoted to the project. The restoration of the old building has been authentic and expertly executed. I like the new coyote fence that now surrounds the grounds and the serpentine walkway along what had been for pedestrians a treacherous stretch of Canyon Road. But I’m still left wondering why the creation of a peaceful little park had to become such a big deal.

George Johnson
The Santa Fe Review

I should have known better. Earlier this month, after District Court Judge Sarah Singleton denied Arthur Firstenberg’s request for a preliminary injunction to keep his neighbor from using her cellphone and other electronic equipment (please see Electromania 4), I predicted that the case would be quietly settled with the defendant, Raphaela Monribot, receiving compensation as the victim of a frivolous lawsuit. But Mr. Firstenberg is not giving up. Yesterday, in a motion asking the court to reconsider the denial, his lawyer, Lindsay Lovejoy, submitted an affidavit from Olle Johansson, an associate professor at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden and one of the few scientists on earth who believe that electrosensitivity is not psychological.

Coincidentally I mention Mr. Johansson in a piece published today in Slate, On Top of Microwave Mountain:

Those who believe they are somehow allergic to electromagnetism point to a supportive paper, Electrohypersensitivity: State-of-the-Art of a Functional Impairment, by Olle Johansson . . . But you probably won’t see them citing studies in the journals Psychosomatic Medicine and Bioelectromagnetics concluding that no robust evidence for electrosensitivity exists.

Mr. Johansson is a lone voice in the woods, which Ms. Monribot’s defense can easily establish. Meanwhile the legal costs for both sides must be skyrocketing.

George Johnson
The Santa Fe Review

Imagine if the safety and effectiveness of prescription medicines were decided not by the federal Food and Drug Administration but by each individual town or village. If a new drug was ruled harmful by the Santa Fe City Council it might be marketed instead in Española or Taos. Or suppose that any city could trump the Environmental Protection Agency. Albuquerque and Las Cruces could compete to attract more industry by steadily racheting down their air and water quality standards.

Except to the most rabid Tea Partier, some matters are best decided on the federal level. In that spirit (and to avoid unconstitutional impediments to interstate commerce), the Telecommunications Act, passed by Congress in 1996, bars municipalities from using health fears as a justification to deny applications for wireless installations that meet or exceed safety standards set by the Federal Communications Commission in consultation with the F.D.A. Yet Santa Fe’s wi-phobes continue to speak as though the restriction were part of some nefarious plot.

The New Mexican didn’t help matters with the weird lead on its story last week about a recent public hearing on the city’s proposed new telecommunications ordinance:

	The federal government does not want cities to talk about possible

	health or environmental consequences from the growing number of

	wireless antennas.

Um, what? Maybe it was simply the imprecision that can arise from writing on deadline, but a clumsy opening like that can only feed the paranoia of those convinced that Santa Feans are under a gag order imposed by F.C.C. agents secretly in the employ of the Verizon Corporation.

The story had other shortcomings. By choosing not to mention that Arthur Firstenberg and Bill Bruno were, as an observer, Steve Stockdale, put it, “the primary front-row speakers for the event,” the reporter may have misled readers into thinking that anti-wireless sentiment has spread beyond the small self-reinforcing fringe group (the “Santa Fe Alliance for Public Health and Safety”) that shows up at every meeting.

Even worse, the story lent false legitimacy to one of the activists, John McPhee, by describing him, without qualification, as an employee of the state health department. According to his Linked-In profile, Mr. McPhee, whose title is childhood safety prevention coordinator, has a bachelor’s degree in sociology and anthropology from Lake Forest College. He is no more of an expert on the health effects of electromagnetic fields than the befuddled citizen who proclaimed at the hearing:

	I've read a lot of [cell phone] studies on the Internet. They

	range from 'Oh, everything is fine' to 'Children should stay away

	from them.' I don't know what to think. ... I don't know about

	you, but I felt a lot better before cell phones and cell towers

	and Wi-Fi.

As Mr. Stockdale noted in his blog post, “Dude, you’re 65 years old. Of course you felt better when you were 50!”

The speaker’s confusion is understandable considering the campaign of obfuscation waged by the Santa Fe Alliance with the help of groups like Powerwatch in the UK and Bioinitiative.org in the United States. Powerwatch has been expertly skewered by skeptic Andy Lewis on his Quackometer site, and the self-published Bioinitiave Report has been condemned for its bias by several international scientific organizations. A European Commission study group called attention to the “alarmist and emotive language” and to conclusions that “have no scientific support from well-conducted EMF research.”

	No mention is made, in fact, of reports that do not concur with

	the authors’ statements and conclusions, [which] are very

	different from those of recent national and international reviews

	on this topic.

The Bioinitiative Report, in other words, is a joke. That doesn’t keep the Santa Fe Alliance from promoting it as gospel.

George Johnson
The Santa Fe Review

Walking downtown on Easter Sunday as the bells chimed in St. Francis Basilica was almost enough to bring back the magic of a Holy Week years ago when I was writing Fire in the Mind. I had taken a year off from my job at the New York Times to gather material for the book, which uses northern New Mexico as a stage to explore how the human mind finds — or imposes — order in the world. A scientist at the Santa Fe Institute had introduced me to a staff member whose father was the mayordomo of the Penitentes in the high mountain village of Truchas. And so on a chilly March evening I found myself standing outside the old tin-roofed morada, listening to the chanting of the brothers muffled by thick adobe walls.

Once I worked up the courage to crack open the door and go inside, the hospitality was as gracious as it was subdued. Near the end of the service, the other guests and I were invited to the table for a simple meal of red chile, beans, corn, and chicken patties while the Penitentes stood behind us and sang their mournful alabados.

I returned to Truchas on Good Friday, driving past the processions of pilgrims headed for Chimayo, to watch a reenactment of the Encuentro, when Christ meets Mary on the way to the crucifixion. That evening was Tinieblas, a long, solemn celebration that ends with the church plunging into darkness. I described the scene in a chapter called “Truchas Interlude”:

	Suddenly, pandemonium breaks out: the rasping of the matraca, the

	shrill cry of flutes, the stamping of feet, the rattling of a box of

	glass -- too many sounds to sort out. In the past, it is said, the

	Penitentes would whip themselves during the confusion and cry out in

	pain. This is the hour of darkness after Christ’s death when, Matthew

	wrote, “the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom;

	and the earth shook, and the rocks were split; the tombs also were

	opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were

	raised . . . .”



	For these few minutes, the world seems devoid of order -- be it that

	of man or God. But faith ultimately triumphs. Chaos is vanquished. The

	lights inside the church go on again.

The symbolism of Easter and its deep connection to the rites of spring, the return of the sun and the Son, light emerging from darkness, seeds from beneath the earth — the mystery seemed real.

This Easter had a different flavor. After leaving downtown I drove out West Alameda Street, past a yard decorated with a giant inflatable rabbit and baby chicks, to the ranch where my wife keeps her horses. Alone in the silence, I spent most of the day burning off newly sprouted weeds with a propane torch, imposing my own order.

The next morning I read about the Easter homicide, in which a teenager was shot to death at a party during “an argument over a girl.” In today’s New Mexican we learn that the suspected assailant has been in trouble with the law since he was 14, piling up charges including aggravated battery with a rock (twice), assault with intent to commit robbery, and battery on a police officer. In the comments section of the newspaper, a reader noted that the suspect’s My Space page (what a world we live in) ties him to that of “lil mizz sad gurl,” the 14-year-old who led police on a highspeed chase last week in a stolen car with two girlfriends.

This afternoon I drove by the house near Frenchy’s Field where the slaying occurred. A makeshift shrine of flowers and devotional candles sat on the sidewalk where someone had spray-painted “RIP Edward” along with what appeared to be a symbol for a Mexican-American gang. In the driveway a woman in pink pants was standing in the bed of a red pickup truck painting a similar message on the rear window. The lilacs and forsythia were in bloom.

George Johnson
The Santa Fe Review