Features

Eleven teenagers swayed in formation on the carpeted floor of the United World College Student Center. Their bodies dipped low, hips rocking to an a cappella beat. Their audience — a group of 20 local middle school students — watched, eyes wide, surprised to hear young men and women chant about a subject usually taboo.

“We’re rapping, we’re rapping, and you should, too! Wearing a condom will help protect you!”

Laura Swartz lifted her arm parallel to floor. A red-tailed hawk dug into her denim shirt. The steady arch of his beak feigned nonchalance, but his eyes captured every tiny motion in the room.

Swartz wore a heavy canvas glove for protection. Her movements were sure, rehearsed. She spread the hawk’s right wing. An audience of forty Las Vegas residents leaned forward to examine the raptor’s plumage.

In the midst of dark, war-torn 1939, artist Marc Chagall feared his days were numbered. The Nazis marched toward Paris, toward the small enclave of artists and intellectuals housing the middle-aged Russian Jew. Chagall hid his works as best he could; he placed his etchings on Biblical themes — the beginnings of a series he started after a visit to Palestine — in a locked trunk and shipped them to a Swiss friend.

The gossipers. The whisperers. Whatever you want to call them, they’re inevitable. The butter these people churn is everywhere we turn and even when we don’t realize it.

What I do realize though, is that being a subject to gossip is one of the sacrifices one makes when living in a small town. It comes with the territory. Anyone who is somebody is going to be talked about and they just have to accept it. Even the nobodies are talked about; it’s unavoidable.

“My Camping Trip”

Carol Johnson,

author and illustrator

ISBN: 1-4276-1307-9

For information, contact Carol Johnson, P.O. Box 1152, Pecos, NM, 87552 or at casjart@gmail.com

This charming children’s book has a painting on every page and a simple text to go with the picture. The book is printed on good quality paper so the pictures can be savored with no fear that the book will decompose as it is held by little fingers.

Karoline Puentes’s voice remains level as she talks about the night a young man named Rodrigo Baca attacked her, left her for dead on the side of dimly lit Santa Fe street.

“He beat me nearly to death, leaving me permanently disabled. It took me months to recover some sense of normal life.”

Cristina Gonzlez first noticed a change in light when she moved to New Mexico from Seattle after being awarded a Roswell Artist-in-Residence Program grant in 1998.

“My color changed immediately once I moved to Roswell. The light in New Mexico is very distinct. Unusual. I was painting with heavy blues and grays - the hues of the cloudy northwest sky - but immediately switched to yellows, reds, the vibrant colors of the desert landscape. It wasn’t a conscious switch.”

The year 1905. Planet earth twisted through its annual elliptical path, the sun one sure comfort in a tumultuous existence. The Russian Revolution began with the slaughter of unarmed demonstrators in St. Petersburg. Albert Einstein revealed his theory of special relativity and explained the photoelectric effect by quantization. The Wright Brothers pilot the first successful half-hour aeroplane trip. 1905 was a strange year for Mark Twain, too.

There is a whole other world out there for those who choose to travel across an ocean and visit another country. From different electric plugs and voltage to dealing with liters and kilometers to the way toilets flush, core rules that govern our lives in the United States are completely different. This summer my family was able to visit Switzerland, Italy, and England.

It was our first trip to Europe. Each of these countries has their own natural beauty. But the way each country does things sure opened up our minds.