By Ernie Bulow
Photos courtesy of Shirley Newcomb

Gallup owns way more than its fair and proper share of characters and crazy stories.  Bordertown, railroad stop, mining center, frontier outpost – even though Native Americans and historic Hispanic families dominate the citizenry, certainly in sheer numbers, even the “Anglo” element has been composed largely of immigrants and outcasts.

B.I. Staples, the Big Indian, toured the East with his Navajo friends.

According to tradition, B. I. Staples, the most looming of local figures for a time, was carried into New Mexico on a stretcher – literally.  He was so weak he couldn’t even knock on Death’s door.  Staples, born in Vermont, had been a successful businessman in the East and seemed to have plenty of money, but he wasn’t expected to live to spend it.

From his arrival in 1912 Staples’s life is the stuff of legend.  When the high desert air had put life back in the gangly, somewhat effete Easterner, he immediately began to reinvent himself as the quintessential “local.”  His given name was Berton (a rare few friends may have called him Bert), but he always went in public by B. I. and C. N. Cotton, once said his initials stood for “Big Indian” and is supposed to have remarked that, “Staples knows more about Indians than they know about themselves.”

That’s the sort of assertion that always makes me flinch, but Staples became an almost instant authority on the Red Man, and spent half of each year touring the East with a small contingent of Navajos, giving speeches and demonstrations.  His troupe of weavers, silversmiths and medicine men varied over the years.

Somewhere between 1924 and 1926 (there are lots of versions of his story) he started construction on one of the most remarkable buildings in the area.  He called his tiny “trading post” Crafts del Navajo and the sprawling “hotel” and museum joined to it was known as Casa del Navajo. It was supposedly designed after the original Palace of the Governors in Santa Fe and would eventually feature three rooms of an ample twenty-five by fifty feet, and they became the living room, rug room and museum.  There was also a post office on the premises. Surrounding two well-planted courtyards, with viga-ed porticos, and more than one hundred exterior doors, the building was nearly two hundred feet long and seventy deep.  The place sported eleven fireplaces, which burned a lot of piñon in the winter.

Drawing of Casa del Navajo by John Havens

The Gallup area boasts nearly as many nearby ghost towns as ghosts – with at least twelve place-names in the Zuni Mountains and almost that many scattered over the coal fields just north of town.  Staples built his dream house in a town that lasted just over fifty years – a goodly stretch by local standards.  It started out as Bacon Spring, was renamed Crane (later Crane’s Station), then Coolidge for a railroad official.  It was renamed Dewey and then Guam (which may have been the name of a nearby village).  When Staples showed up he renamed it Coolidge, for the American President, not the railroad magnate.

A cluster of buildings that made up Bacon Springs pre-existed the railroad and was apparently a hotbed of sin – serving the needs, liquid and otherwise of the Fort Wingate soldiers just a few miles away.  Big brown beer bottles are still found where they were discarded along the trail in Wingate Valley.  By 1882 the new railroad had built what amounted to a division point, which included a roundhouse, water tank, coal chute, eating house and other facilities.  It was only a few years before Gallup got the facility moved a few miles farther west.

The legend of B. I Staples begins with his miraculous recovery and grows considerably with his kindness to an unfortunate Navajo boy.  Somewhere in Colorado, Berton happened to be handy when the Indian lad was run over by the train and lost both his legs.  The train workers didn’t even notice and went on down the tracks.  Staples gave the boy what comfort and aid he could.  It didn’t do the young man much good and he died anyway.

But the skinny Easterner (his nickname was Chizzy Nez – Tall Stick) had won the respect and affection of the boy’s father, a powerful medicine man who immediately wanted to make Staples a blood brother.  The initiation ceremony lasted nine days and nights (the length of a major chantway) and drew a crowd of nearly two thousand Navajos.  Staples’s out-of-pocket costs must have been formidable.  According to a Vermont news article, Berton was only the third white man to ever receive the honor of Navajo citizenship.

The same news article quotes Mr. Staples:  “The Tribe believed I was born a Navajo, but had been retained in the East by the Palefaces and they had taken me into their tribe because I was a good fighter.”  He clearly believed the story himself.

B. I. went to work for the A. B. McGaffey lumber enterprise in Thoreau, but shortly opened his own Indian store.  Staples was soon caught up with promoting Indian arts and crafts and is said to have paid higher prices to artists who were willing to do superior or more complex work.  As a Republican and a Mason, Staples rose quickly in the Gallup business society.

He held various offices in the fledgling Ceremonial organization and only retired as its president a short time before his death.  He was obviously a man of taste (one story has him designing clothes in New York City) and he is associated with one of the most important Navajo weavings in history.

Casa del Navajo interior. The living room was a museum in itself.

In the late 1880s Lorenzo Hubbell had either commissioned or simply purchased a giant two-faced rug, a uniquely Navajo product.  The design on each side is completely different, not just reversed like the twilled saddle blanket, or a Pendleton.  The huge rug is seen hanging in the background of the famous photo of Hubbell inspecting a large weaving in front of his Ganado store.

Lorenzo owed his former partner, C. N. Cotton, a lot of money at one point and the weaving passed to him in Gallup.  It was in the possession of Staples when an early writer on Navajo blankets described and photographed the piece.  His “museum” – he called it the Wayside Museum of Archeology – got international attention during the period and famous folks flocked to what was promoted as an oasis of culture in the Southwest desert.

Staples’s guests may have been paying customers, but his guestbook was as richly autographed as the one at Hubbell’s as writers, artists, photographers, archeologists, ethnologists and people famous for being famous trooped through.  Several books were written there, including Erna Fergusson’s classic Dancing Gods.

Anna Ickes, the wife of Roosevelt’s notorious Secretary of the Interior, Harold Ickes, had her own personal hogan on the Casa del Navajo property and spent summers there, writing her famous book Mesa Land: The History and Romance of the American Southwest.  Another resident writer, Gouverneur Morris (author of many books and several films, as well as short stories in major magazines) stayed on with the Newcombs when they took over the place and became a virtual member of the family.

When the United Indian Traders Association was organized in 1931, Staples became the first president and served in that position for the rest of his life.  His wife Rebecca died in 1937 and Berton followed in less than a year.  They had two adopted children.  Staples’s car went off the road into a thirty-foot deep arroyo.  There were rumors that Staples wasn’t able to get past the death of his wife and the car wreck that killed him might not have been an accident.  This is unlikely because he had his pet dog and a Navajo hitchhiker in the car with him.

Pallbearers and honorary pallbearers included a who’s who of Indian arts, and most of the prominent men in Gallup.  Secretary of Interior Harold Ickes and Indian Commissioner John Collier both sent moving tributes for Staples.  Both men had known B. I. before rising to prominent positions in the government.

Soon after Staples’s death the Casa del Navajo was purchased by Charlie and Madge Newcomb who had been traders at Naschitti, Crystal, Prewitt and elsewhere.  Famous guests continued to find a congenial welcome in Coolidge and Joel McCrea was one of many actors who starred in a movie in the area.  The film, Colorado Territory, co-starred Virginia Mayo.  The only change that needed to be made to the set was signage, the building was perfect.

John Havens, the son of Gallup photographer Pete Havens, made some excellent drawings and ground plans of the rancho which give a better picture of the place than any photo was able to capture.  Pete and John are members of the extended Newcomb family.

There were several fires over the years (eleven fireplaces might contribute to that), but the whole place tragically burned down in 1955.  Not long before the fire, the Newcombs had sold the place to Hazel Pruett.  The town of Pruett was named for her brother-in-law.  Fire was apparently in Hazel’s destiny – she died a few years later in a blaze she had started accidentally while smoking in bed.

When Casa del Navajo went up in smoke the town of Coolidge was already long gone and Shirley Newcomb Kelsey says there is hardly a mark to show where it once stood.  Luckily, Shirley and her father were avid photographers and the magnificent place is well documented.

CORRECTION

Zuni Housing employee Linda Luna caught a couple of errors in the piece last month on the Zuni Housing Fair.  The crowd was served oven bread as part of the traditional meal, no tortillas.  More importantly, I gave credit to Costco for the wonderful generosity of the local Wal-Mart and I apologize.

By Be Sargent

Work of Heart Mural, lower right panel
& Work of Strength Mural, lower right panel

We covered the Girl Scouts and Recycling in the June 2011 issue and now we will talk about the real movers and shakers in recycling in Gallup.

The Business Recyclers: left to right, Frank and Barbara Kozeliski, who, until they sold Gallup Sand and Gravel, recycled glass (see the pile of crushed glass in front of them). GS&G still recycles concrete and asphalt. Recycled concrete was used as the base course under the asphalt roadway leading to Gallup High School. Now Barbara is the principal of Gallup Catholic and Frank continues to be a concrete consultant, President of the National Pervious Concrete Pavement Association, giving troubleshooting concrete seminars. Evidently Gallup is the world headquarters for pervious concrete, which captures stormwater and allows it to seep into the ground. Frank also sells the insulated concrete forms that Chris Chavez mentioned in my last article.

Reading a paper is the late, beloved, John Zollinger, owner of the Gallup Independent, which has recycled newspapers back to their paper supplier for over 25 years. Bob Zollinger is also a committed recycler and carries on the tradition.

With wood and windows behind them, Danny and Luz Maria Rainaldi, owners of Another Man’s Treasure, have been in business for 20 years. If not for them we would be mining the landfill for the treasures that they have managed to recycle. They know the value of old doors, moldings, bits and pieces. Danny encourages people to be on the lookout for things that are going to be thrown away.

The two friends below are Linda Popelish and Betsy Windisch, now into 20 some years of struggling to get Gallup to get serious about recycling. Persuaded by the artist, Betsy is holding the optimistic sign ZERO WASTE IN 2020.

Our own Octavia Fellin brought awareness to recycling in Gallup in 1988. Out of this, McKinley Citizens’ Recycling Council was born, and tax-exempt status was achieved.

Betsy Windisch, sometimes president and sometimes not, and Linda Popelish, treasurer or secretary, have shepherded MCRC through an ongoing series of ups and downs.

UP: Drop-offs at Albertsons, Wal-Mart, Rehoboth McKinley Christian Hospital.

DOWN: Cessation of drop-off areas.

UP: Local recycler transported recyclables to Zuni (ZEE – Zuni

Entrepreneurial Enterprise), from there taken to Albuquerque.

DOWN: Prices drop so that is no longer viable.

UP: Gallup Sand & Gravel (GS&G) takes glass.  (Not any more.)

UP: Mayor Bob Rosebrough institutes collection of “Outlaw Glass.”

UP: Rainbow Recycling Center (RRC) opens. Gallup Solid Waste

Dept. cooperates by hauling glass to GS&G.  (Not any more.)

DOWN: Program to give restaurants free glass pick-up fails.

DOWN: RRC closed, due to its monumental pile of plastic deemed unsightly when really it was a tribute to the enthusiasm shown by the citizenry.

UP: Jim Harlin offers to take paper and cardboard at the Community Pantry and John Shaw from McKinley Paper (now Bio-PAPPEL) provides baler.

UP: Community Action for a Renewed Environment (CARE) grant makes it possible to hire Betsy Windisch as a Recycling Coordinator (ends 12/11).

UP: A new Recycling Center at the transfer station on Hasler Valley is open Monday-Saturday, 8 am – 4:30 pm. Now accepting plastic #1 and #2 BOTTLES only, aluminum, steel cans, mixed paper, and more.

DOWN: Many people feel it is too far to go.

I interviewed Betsy and she had this to say: “First of all we must have enlightened leadership and the commitment from government for sustainable recycling. We have tried as a volunteer organization to educate and raise awareness.  It has been difficult.  Volunteers and, even my position as a Recycling Coordinator on the two-year CARE grant, did not come with authority to make things happen.  The grant provided time for education, communication, and awareness-raising through presentations, workshops, newspaper articles, and more.”

In spite of the McKinley Citizens’ Recycling Council members feeling like they were often the “voice crying in the wilderness,” they provided expertise in the area of recycling to the residents of Gallup and McKinley County for over twenty years. Their efforts have resulted in the diversion of thousands of tons of solid waste from our regional landfill.

MCRC as a grassroots citizens’ advocacy and education group see their position as the liaison between the public, local government, and the Solid Waste Authority.  The public is serious about recycling and they want their elected and paid officials to be serious about it, too!  The City and County have representation on the Solid Waste Authority Board, but they may not realize how important recycling is to their constituency.

An understanding of the impact of recycling on energy reduction, cost savings, job creation, is critical.  This is a quality of life and tourism issue, as well.  Betsy gets calls daily from citizens asking what and where they can recycle.  New people coming to town are often in shock that more recycling opportunities aren’t visible and available. Experts have said that three dollars per household per month should pay for curbside recycling.  Grants to assist with a Pay-As-You-Throw program are available and would benefit our community.

Betsy recalls one mayor, years ago, “The then-MCRC-president and I went to talk to him. He said, ‘I think it’s just great that you are doing this recycling.’ And we’re thinking, yeah right, we are just 15 volunteers, we need your help, mayor.” Government officials will need to educate themselves about the importance of a recycling program for our community.  The New Mexico Recycling Coalition, with whom MCRC has collaborated for twenty years, provides expertise to cities and communities throughout the state.

Here’s where we are right now.  Stimulus money awarded to the City has provided the NWNM Regional Solid Waste Authority (Red Rocks Landfill in Thoreau) with a horizontal baler.   The bigger picture is, New Mexico got stimulus money, and New Mexico Environment Dept. (NMED) and New Mexico Recycling Coalition (NMRC) said let’s put out grants for rural communities to up their recycling. That stimulus money was divided among ten different communities. Each one of those communities received a horizontal baler and some of the infrastructure to go with it.

So ours has been delivered and installed. It will bale plastic, newspaper, mixed paper, aluminum and steel cans. These bales will be combined with recyclables from all over the state and sent to market.  The City or SWA will then receive a check for their share depending on market price of the item, and if, and only if, the items are properly cleaned, sorted, and baled.

Recycling is a multi-million dollar business.  Gallup and McKinley County, with informed and committed leadership, can get their share of the “recycling pie.”

The metal recyclers in this town hung in there during this last recession. All over the country companies were downsizing, going out of business, or merging. None of ours did. That meant people who were out of work went scavenging in the arroyos, hauled out all kinds of metal and took it to the recyclers so they could have some money.  So it is in our blood . . .

Shown here in the bottom right panel of Work of Strength, Hilda Kendall, of the Community Food Pantry, driving her forklift, moving bales of cardboard that will be sent to Bio-PAPPEL, formerly McKinley Paper, in Prewitt. This used cardboard will be turned into beautiful rolls of brown paper, such as the one below Hilda, being rolled by Don Hyde who kindly consented to pose.

By Larry Larason

Humans are natural foragers.  In early times we might have gone exploring in the woods and returned home with a basketful of berries and a pretty rock.  Today we explore at Wal-Mart or Family Dollar and return home with bags of stuff we don’t always need.  A book published in 1962, Stalking the Wild Asparagus by Euell Gibbons, promoted foraging for wild food.  This book, and others by the same author, proved very popular and are still in print.  Although he grew up in Texas and New Mexico, the wild foods he wrote about were mostly found in the eastern parts of the country.  And Gibbons’s list of plants included some that were not native to North America.  For example, he recommended day lilies, which in some climates may escape cultivation and go wild.  I did learn some things from Gibbons.  I tried putting cattail buds in pancakes.  Once was enough!  But I found that cattail shoots could fit right in many of the dishes on the menu of a Chinese restaurant.  And he introduced me to Jerusalem artichokes, a native sunflower relative that makes edible tubers, which can be peeled and sliced to add some crunch to a salad.  If you find them in a grocery they will likely be labeled “sunchokes.”

In the early 1960s, when his books came out, I lived in Phoenix, so I didn’t have much luck finding anything that Gibbons wrote about.   But I had foraged for wild foods before.  When I was growing up in northwestern Oklahoma, almost every year in early July my mother would take me and my sisters to gather sand hill plums, which grew in thickets hither and yon in that part of the world.  We almost always had a supply of wild plum jelly at our house.  I wish they grew around here, because that jelly is the best I ever tasted.  One time we found fox grapes growing along a creek and made jelly from those, as well.  While living in the Southwest my wife and I have tried two or three times to make prickly pear jelly; we never got it to jell, but the result made beautifully colored pancake syrup.

I’ve gathered other wild foods including persimmons and walnuts.   One fall, while in college with a tight budget, we found a stand of hickory trees in a state park in Oklahoma and collected a bag of nuts.  They were the most difficult nuts I’ve ever tried to get out of the shell, but they produced the best chocolate chip cookies ever.  A cost-benefit analysis might show that hickory nuts are almost worth the trouble of harvesting for their superb flavor.

Want to eat something like the Ancient Puebloans might have eaten?  I don’t mean forage for your dinner.  Not now, in December.  Nowadays, I do my foraging at Safeway or Albertsons.  But the Ancients ate many of the same foods we eat today.  The three staples of the agricultural tribes were corn, beans, and squash.  This trio is sometimes called “the three sisters.”  I’ve always been a fan of one-skillet meals.  We can add some meat and onion to the three sisters to make a good one-dish dinner.

I apologize for the title of this piece.  Of course the Anasazi didn’t do stir fry.  But that got your attention, didn’t it?  And if a time traveler had gone back to their time and presented them with skillets or woks, I’m sure they would have learned how to stir fry in no time.   Here’s my take on this.

Meats:  The Ancients had a choice of venison and elk.  If their rock art is any indication, they also were fond of mountain sheep.  They also ate rabbit, quail, and other small game.  To be moderately authentic you should look for ground buffalo at the grocery.  If you find it, fine; otherwise, substitute hamburger.  I can’t tell much difference between red meats of whatever source.

Squash:  We’ll use summer squash for this dish.  I prefer the yellow, crookneck.  When I was a kid I remember that these had a very mild, gourd-like under flavor.  I think it has been bred out of modern cultivars, but I miss it.  The Anasazi may not have grown this particular squash, but it was certainly grown by other agricultural tribes in what is now the U.S.  They may have dried and stored it for future use.  Don’t slice it too thin.

Tomatoes:  I’m not sure if tomatoes had spread to the Southwest in pre-Columbian times, but they are definitely American in origin.  Lacking tomatoes the local Ancients might have used tomatillos.  The ones picked off wolfberry bushes might substitute for tomatoes.  Seeds of these fruits have been found in archaeological sites all across the Four Corners, and today the plants grow around so many of the ruins and sites that archaeologists believe they were popular with the ancient inhabitants.  Interestingly, these fruits are closely related to the goji berries that are currently a focus of interest for herbal medicine fans.  Cost-benefit analysis says go buy a tomato at the grocery store and slice it into wedges.

Onion, chopped:  Seasonality is the problem for all hunter-gatherer people.  North America has many species of wild onions, but they come up in the spring, bloom, and then the leaves and stalks dry up and blow away.  After that there is no indication of where the bulb lies in the soil.  Did the ancients harvest and store onions for later use?  Maybe.  In any case, wild onions are quite small.  Go buy a baseball sized one at the grocery.

Corn:  This time of year you will have to buy canned corn, or maybe frozen.  Or you could use hominy.  Actually, I consider corn and beans to be optional in this recipe.

Beans:  Obviously, you want precooked beans for this recipe.  I suggest pintos, or, if you are cooking them yourself, try Anasazi beans, which cook faster than others, although they are more expensive.

Brown the hamburger and onions till the onions are translucent.  If the meat was fatty, you may want to drain it before you toss in the other ingredients.  Now I have a confession: cooking red meat without garlic is a sin in my opinion, so I would shake some garlic salt over this dish while it cooks.  Gibbons indicates that some wild onions taste like garlic, so adding it is not a major violation of the idea of a Pueblo-type dish.  Stir and fry until the tomatoes have gone runny and the squash is limp.  You could cheat by sprinkling some grated cheese on each serving.  Or you could throw in some authentic food stuffs like juniper berries or sunflower seeds.  In the spring add dock leaves for something green.

You may have noticed that I didn’t specify quantities.  The proportion of ingredients is not crucial.  Use your own judgment of how much you want to prepare and how much of each ingredient you want.

The Ancients could only procure plant foods when they were in season.  Our modern food network is a wonderment, supplying fresh produce year round.  Appreciate our bounty, and enjoy a Merry Christmas.

By Greg Cavanaugh

The new Focus is so much better than the old model that Ford might have been wise to give it an entirely different name.   Being a completely new vehicle though, it’s not without a few pre-season jitters.

The domestic automakers have been working hard to take back command of the small car market from the Asian imports.   The domestic competition is namely between the new Focus and the new Chevy Cruze.   Having never driven a Cruze I can’t make any comparisons between the two.  Having driven the Focus for several days I can say, without doubt, that Ford didn’t pull any punches in this fight!

Much like the new Fiesta I drove last fall, I continue to make the argument that small cars are not just for Europe and that these are the types of vehicles most of America SHOULD be driving.  The American penchant for superfluously oversized vehicles has numbed our senses to tolerate lifeless steering, slow reflexes, wallowy and uncontrolled body motions and poor maneuverability – all traits that the good folks at Ford worked to avoid in the new Focus, and it worked.  Small cars are so much more fun to drive and the Focus is a strong example!  The Focus is not a hassle to park; it darts in and out of parking lots with little effort and makes your everyday errands so much less of a chore.

The steering and suspension combination is, without a doubt, the defining character of the Focus.  The steering feels connected.  If you remember the last time you drove a go-kart and the way the steering just seemed so instant and communicative, that’s the Focus’s steering.  It’s so quick that when I was waiting to turn right with my blinker on, my hand relaxed just enough to turn the wheel only the slightest bit . . . and the blinker turned off! The suspension reinforces the steering’s intentions.  While a few roads around Gallup were slightly rough for the Focus’s modest suspension travel, and it certainly would beat you up a bit on the Reservation’s rough dirt and gravel washboards, for the most part, as a city car, it does its job amicably.

The powertrain is designed for economy. Using Ford’s 2.0-liter Duratec with 160 hp and 146 lb-ft. of torque, the engine is smooth, particularly for a 4-cylinder, and returns excellent fuel economy of 28 mpg city and 38 mpg highway.   The engine could use a bit more torque to keep the transmission from having to hold the lower gears longer on hills, but overall it suits the purpose of the car and the easy revving nature adds to the innate sportiness of the Focus.

So what are those jitters?

Firstly, while this is simply a packaging issue, I managed to test drive a car that had both the tech-laden Sync system and heated seats – but no cruise control.  I didn’t even know you could get cars without cruise control anymore.

The Focus’s integration of technology is superb.  There are several different screens available in the dash that relay a variety of information, most notably, a cool “driving score” that helps a driver determine which parts of their driving habits are most affecting their economy.  And I’m still a big fan of Ford’s Sync system, whether in this base form or the higher end MyFord Touch.   However, the ergonomics as a whole need some work.  The heated seat dials are clearly an afterthought and appear almost as aftermarket modifications; they are behind the cup holders in the center console and under the center armrest.  Weird.  Also, the center dash-mounted lock button, while not solely a problem of the Focus, makes it a real pain to unlock the doors for others or to lock the doors if the fob is already in your pocket.

Lastly, and here’s the big one, the dual-clutch automatic transmission needs some work.  So much so that I went online and did a little research to find out if maybe I had gotten a fluke example . . . not the case.  While a couple of things I read stated that after about 1,000 miles or so the transmission came into its own, I found it confusing.  At low speeds it was often slow to shift or felt like it was hunting for gears for no apparent reason.  Downshifts were similar; often I was waiting for the tranny to shift and wondered if I had somehow accidentally knocked the gear level into 1^st or 2^nd.  The upside is that the automatic pulls like a manual at higher speeds, with none of the torque converter mush of a typical automatic transmission.

Frankly, the new Ford Focus is much more of a world car than the previous generation and its nice to finally get the same basic architecture, handling characteristics and overall spirit as the Europeans are getting.  Whether or not Americans as a whole are going to subscribe to those is the million-dollar question – one I’m hoping, for the sake of American drivers everywhere, that the answer to which will finally be yes.

SPECIFICATIONS
VEHICLE TYPE: front-engine, front-wheel-drive, 5-passenger, 5-door wagon
PRICE AS TESTED: $22,330 (base price: $18,200)
ENGINE TYPE: DOHC 16-valve inline-4, aluminum block and head, direct fuel injection
Displacement: 122 cu in, 1999 cc
Power (SAE net): 160 hp @ 6500 rpm
Torque (SAE net): 146 lb-ft @ 4450 rpm
TRANSMISSION: 6-speed dual clutch automatic
DIMENSIONS:
Wheelbase: 104.3 in Length: 171.6 in Width: 71.8 in Height: 57.7 in
Curb weight: 2953 lb
FUEL ECONOMY:
EPA city/highway driving: 28/38 mpg

By Patricia Darak

As I sat at my desk, brain-deep in university coursework, my youngest daughter tiptoed out from her bedroom and peeked in the doorway.

“Mommy?”

I put down my pencil and calculator and turned, focused entirely on my should-be-sleeping-by-now angel.  “Yes, darling?”

Her eyes, already large, opened wider.  “I can’t sleep.  Can you read me another story?”

I gazed at her for a few seconds, then turned and shut my textbook and binder.  Glancing at the clock, I realized that my looming deadline would pass me by.

“Mommy?  Are you coming?”

Smiling widely, I swept her into my arms, kissed her round pink cheek, and headed toward her bedroom without further hesitation.  “But of course, my princess!  I was just thinking of you.  How did you know that I wanted to give you another story?  Is your brain magic?”

She let loose with a musical wave of giggles and hugged my neck tightly.  “I love you, Momma.”  She sighed, then laid her head on my shoulder.  “You’re the best Momma in the whole world.”

I kissed her on the top of her golden mane and gave her another smile.  “And you’re the best you in the whole world.”

After I set her down on her bed, I chose a few storybooks from her bookshelf and made my way over to my princess with the expectantly smiling little face.  She pulled back the covers and invited me in to snuggle while I read to her.  I slipped off my shoes and slid in next to her, then lifted the books up as she tucked in the blanket around me.

“Okay, Momma, you can start now.”

Thirty (or so) minutes, three stories, and many squeals of delight later, my princess was fast asleep with a small smile on her lips and her teddy bear clutched in her folded arms.  Carefully, I leaned over to kiss her forehead and slipped out from under the covers and made my way to the door, stopping to smile down at my baby who knew how to organize my priorities for me.  Homework could be done anytime, but story time and snuggle time come first.

Quietly closing her door, I made my way down the hall so that I could check on my other two sleeping angels.  I stepped silently into their bedrooms and kissed them lightly on their foreheads, then closed their bedroom doors, each with the same happiness that I felt with their little sister.

Gratitude.

Making my way back to my desk, all hope of finishing my homework on time now abandoned, I sank down into my chair and closed my eyes.  I wanted to think about their sleeping expressions and I did; but other thoughts intruded.  Dark thought wrung from newspapers and seemingly endlessly covered accounts of children neglected, abused, abandoned, and worse, swam up from my subconscious and briefly lodged in the forefront of my mind.  Horrible actions, angry people, innocent children, and every stomach-churning combination of the three made me suddenly weep, covering my face with my hands as if to shut out the thoughts and pictures coming from my own head.

When my tears subsided, I washed my face and stared at myself in the mirror.

It wasn’t just stories on the news.  I had grown up with friends’ stories of welts from spankings that took weeks to heal, either at home or in the principal’s office.  How had we all thought that such behavior was normal? Or even worse, justified?  I shook my head and broke the painful reverie.  Stop it, I told myself.  Just stop it.

I went back to each of my children, now all deeply asleep, and carefully gave them kisses and snuggles, making sure not to wake them and thanking everything that was good in the world that I had been spared and that, in turn, my children would be spared.  I had married a man who had the same beliefs as myself, and who cherished the children and their innocence as much as I did.

Every day we tell each other that we love each other and every day hugs and kisses and laughter are freely given and honestly felt.

Gratitude.

And hopes for the new year and all the years beyond?

I hope that my children (and their children, and their children, etc.) can and will grow up mentally, physically, creatively, and spiritually healthy and happy.

I hope that my children (and their children, and their children, etc.) can and will grow old gracefully and full of wisdom and love their family and themselves with all of their hearts.

I hope that the world grows to be a world that encourages and cherishes and holds forth opportunity, not only for my children, but for all children (and all people, for that matter).

I hope that my husband and I can share a long and loving life together, secure in the knowledge that we did our best to live our lives to the fullest.

I hope that gratitude remains a constant part of our daily thoughts and love remains the basis of our existence.

I hope that we, and everyone that we know, have a wonderful holiday and a wonderful every-other-day-of-the-year.

Gratitude.

By Seth Weidenaar

The Cut is a new novel from George Pelecanos, a writer who launched himself to fame with the television series The Wire. Since I have spent a great part of the past few years watching The Wire, reading about The Wire, thinking about The Wire, and finally re-watching The Wire, I quickly pounced upon the opportunity to read a new Pelecanos offering.  In The Cut I found a new character, Spero Lucas, who Pelecanos intends to turn into his serial detective, and several narrative tricks playing out upon the pages that I had read previously in other detective novels and seen previously on the screen in Pelecanos’s earlier work.

Spero Lucas is an ex-marine veteran who works part time for a Washington D.C.  defense attorney. This attorney takes high profile murder and drug cases, using Lucas as an investigator.  The rest of the time Lucas spends working as a private investigator, taking on any job that pays. This is the driving force behind The Cut, a midlevel marijuana dealer hires Lucas to retrieve a few parcels of stolen property for a cut of forty percent of the value of the parcel.  The plot has enough twists and turns to keep the reader of detective novels happy and involved in the solution of the case.  In the interest of heightening your interest, the plot involves drug dealers who can trace drug shipments with package tracking websites, and these traced packages are shipped to unsuspecting homes and then retrieved before the homeowner is aware.   This system is far from perfect, and the right palms need to be greased, which leads to the disappearance of one of the packages.

Lucas appears to be a private investigator cut from the same cloth as Philip Marlowe and Sam Spade.  These hardboiled investigators of the past always kept their cards close to their chest and followed a personal code of honor, which typically led them to the solution of whatever mystery they faced.  Lucas has a similar code of honor, however, he is also a veteran of the Iraq war, something that differentiates him from hardboiled investigators of the past.  The fact that Lucas saw action in Fallujah gives him a much more sinister edge than these previous detectives.  When Lucas takes on the more sordid duties of his investigation he does them without flinching, and he leaves the actions in the past.  Unlike Marlow and Spade who second-guess themselves throughout their respective novels.

Another great difference between Lucas and his historical counterparts is a piece of Pelecanos’s narrative mastery. Lucas comes from a Greek-American family, one of four adopted children, two white and two black.  Lucas’s race is never firmly established throughout the novel.  Nor is the race of his brother, a schoolteacher in Washington D.C. who plays a prominent role in the novel.  This racial de-emphasis hearkens back to Pelecanos’s work on The Wire; in the show the citizens and police of Baltimore banded together for better or worse, a person was accepted for his or her personality and gifts rather than race.  The Cut depicts family ties remaining strong or falling apart due to the personalities of the characters, not their race.

Pelecanos writes with an enormous knowledge of Washington D.C.’s geography.  The narration knows every street, avenue, park, restaurant, bar, and warehouse in the city, and Lucas navigates them with ease.  Just as The Wire explored seemingly every inch of Baltimore, so The Cut narrates every piece of Washington D.C.  The familiarity with and the treatment of the city makes it a major character, one that Lucas manipulates and massages for the secrets required for the case.

Keeping true to his form in The Wire Pelecanos sends some unsuspecting characters into moments of peril in The Cut. One seventeen-year-old student, who likes to read books on film and dreams of someday making films, inhabits the novel’s pages.  For most of the novel I felt myself drawn to the character, but like the adolescents of The Wire, I thought he was an accident waiting to happen.  I was right, but his treatment in the conclusion of The Cut is not nearly as gut wrenching as The Wire’s young characters.  Similar treatments meet the sleazy barons of crime who inhabit the novel.  Pelecanos’s past narratives certainly helped to shape the movements of this current one.

The Cut offers a terrific new style hardboiled detective narrative.  Unlike the works of the Hamment and Chandler, Pelecanos’s offering suggests a detective who is of an even harder-boil, and readers should be aware of this before beginning.  There are a few unsettling moments in the novel, however, it is an exciting page-turner ready to entertain you through the holidays.

By Fowler Roberts

Q. What got you interested in serving with the Red Rock Balloon Rally?
A. Well, it was sort of a natural extension of being a pilot.  I started taking lessons with Peter Procopio in 1988 and bought a balloon.  The natural thing to do was to join the association and help out with the rally.

Q. What do you enjoy most about your affiliation with the rally?
A. I enjoy the camaraderie.  It’s a small, very tight group that puts on the rally.  We’re all volunteers and we’re very close and work very well together.  It’s a hectic time but it’s very enjoyable.

Q. What is the biggest challenge?
A. The biggest challenge for me is finding time.   I’m very busy with my office and practice and sometimes I just have to tell my receptionist:  “Block off next Thursday afternoon. I have some balloon rally stuff to do.”

Q. With regard to the sport of hot air balloon in general, what trends do you see nationwide?
A. Well, I think that the biggest thing we are seeing is fewer and fewer balloonists and the ones that are out there flying are getting grayer and grayer.  Some rallies are dwindling as a result of that.

Q. What do you foresee in terms of the future of the Red Rock Balloon Rally?
A. We are better off than most rallies because this is a very popular rally with great flying conditions and scenery.   We are still able to attract lots of pilots. I think in the future you will see us drawing people from wider and wider areas to our rally using social media and the Internet to advertise.

Q. What do you enjoy doing during the little off time that you have?
A. Well, when I’m not ballooning, I enjoy gardening, hiking and being outdoors.  I also like reading.  I’m enjoying my Kindle.

Q. What is your favorite book or author?
A. I like history and I recently finished Shelby Foote’s Civil War trilogy and really enjoyed that.  It gave me more of an appreciation of what that era was about.

Q. If you could trade places with one famous person, who would it be and why?
A. I would like to be a member of the Louis and Clark expedition. The idea of using your skills and abilities to overcome danger and adversity and then be rewarded with discovery and adventure – that’s very appealing. (smiles)  It’s like ballooning.

By Brett Newberry

It’s hard to imagine functioning in today’s society without access to credit. However, you need to be careful not to fall victim to some of the pitfalls associated with it.

Credit cards allow you to spend money you don’t currently have, and to repay what you’ve spent over time instead of all at once. When you use a card, the balance you owe increases, and your remaining available credit decreases. As you make your payments to reduce your outstanding balance, your available credit once again increases. Thus, your credit revolves around for you to use again.

Since you can spend more than you currently have, you can easily spend more than you can afford. As your balance increases, your minimum monthly payments also increase, and soon you’ll find yourself in over your head – especially if interest rates and a variety of fees are high.

Credit card debt generally carries a high interest rate. Your minimum monthly payment – a percentage (often as low as 2 to 4 percent) of the total balance due – may cover little more than the monthly interest charge. Consequently, your minimum payment may only minimally decrease what you already owe. If possible, increase your monthly payment above the minimum required. The higher you can make the payment, the faster you will pay off the debt.

If you have two different interest rates on one account (i.e. a lower rate for purchases, a higher one for cash advances), the creditor will post the minimum payment toward the lower interest rate balance, not the higher. However, a credit card company must apply any payment over the minimum payment due toward the portion of an existing balance with the highest interest rate.

You may also incur a wide variety of fees. Creditors may charge you an annual fee to maintain the account. These fees can range from $25 to $50 or more each year. They may also charge fees to transfer balances from other cards. Generally, these processing fees equal 2 to 4 percent of the amount you transfer. Many banks levy a similar surcharge on transactions involving conversions from foreign currencies. If you’re late with your monthly payment, you may be charged a late payment fee that can be as much as $39 each month you’re overdue. If you authorize the creditor to complete a transaction that sends your balance over your approved credit limit, you will be assessed an over limit fee.

When these fees add up, you may find that making your minimum monthly payment won’t bring your balances down. In fact, your balance will increase if your monthly payment isn’t greater than the accumulated interest and fees due, since these unpaid charges become a part of the principal you owe. Moreover, your account may then be considered past due and reported as such to the credit bureaus.

You may periodically transfer your balance from one introductory offer to the next. This is known as surfing. Done successfully, surfing lets you avoid the higher interest charges that your debt would incur when the original card offer expires. By the time the interest rate on the original card increases, you’ve surfed over to a new offer at another low rate.

Although surfing helps keep your interest charges to a minimum, it’s not without pitfalls. You may be offered a low rate only on balance transfers; if new purchases and cash advances are billed at a higher interest rate, these charges could offset the savings you would otherwise enjoy. Moreover, as creditors move to counteract the surfing trend, many stipulate that if you transfer balances to another card within a certain time after opening your account, you’ll be retroactively charged a higher rate of interest on the amount you transfer. Thus, surfing before this time period is up eliminates the savings.

Finally, if you transfer balances to a new card, close the original account as soon as you’ve paid it off. Write the creditor a letter asking them to inform the credit bureaus that the account was closed at your request. This prevents new potential creditors from denying you credit when they see too many open lines of credit, and it also deters anyone else from fraudulently using an inactive account.

Credit fraud and identity theft are two of the fastest-growing crimes today. In many cases, you may not know you’ve been victimized until it’s too late. To minimize the chances of being victimized, take precautions to safeguard your credit account information. Don’t carry credit cards you don’t use often. Be sure to sign your cards, and never sign a blank charge slip. When you use the card, try to keep it within your sight.

Until next time,

The Business Doctor