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EVENT CALENDAR |
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August 2008 |
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Features -
Cover Story
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Friday, 22 August 2008 |
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Albuquerque is developing at an increasingly rapid pace. Likely, there are those who will choose to either fight against the changes or simply ignore them. Then there are those who spend their days making those changes. At the suggestion of our readers, Local iQ shines the spotlight on ten citizens positively shaping the future of our fair city.
Drew Stuart
Founder, New Mexico Extreme, Inc./Director, Warehouse 508
Background:
Originally from Missouri, Stuart was recruited to New Mexico by the
Albuquerque Isotopes organization to head up stadium operations. He
brought with him a good amount of experience gained by working for
similar sports outfits like the Kansas City Royals and the Myrtle
Beach Pelicans, among others. Anyone who has attended an Isotopes game
and witnessed the operation’s clockwork-like efficiency, has seen
Stuart’s work.
An avid snowboarder, Stuart has also worked as a part-time ski
technician at a local ski shop. It was there where he realized that
Albuquerque didn’t offer much in terms of affordable, viable outdoor
activities for the city’s youth.
“These kids would come into the shop after seeing a Shaun White video,
wanting to get into snowboarding,” Stuart said. “Then after realizing
that a board setup would cost them $500, they would know there was no
way they could snowboard.”
Faced with those realizations himself, Stuart founded New Mexico
Extreme, Inc., a non-profit corporation that creates structured
activities for the city’s youth centered around physical activity and
sports. In fact, Local iQ caught up with Stuart for a photo as he was
holding a skate competition at the Los Altos Skate Park.
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Leaving the light on for Nels |
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Music -
On The Stage
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Wednesday, 20 August 2008 |
 PHOTO BY ARTHUR NOBRE
Armed with new record and pending European tour, folk hero Nels Andrews stops by to say hello to a few old friends
BY TODD ERIC LOVATO
In just a few days, former local folk hero Nels Andrews will return to
his former stomping grounds, riding a wave of newfound international
recognition. He’s also toting a new critically acclaimed album, Off
Track Betting.
Following the release of his 2005 debut Sunday Shoes, Andrews packed
up his acoustic guitar and pork pie hats and made the leap to Brooklyn,
New York, to pursue his music. For Andrews, whose lifetime of
wanderlust has carried him to Alaskan fisheries, heartland carnivals
and tree-planting operations in South Dakota, the move to Brooklyn was
just another chapter in an already storied career.
The East Coast underground folk scene warmly embraced Andrews’
pathos-filled songwriting and sun-baked tenor. And as it turned out, so
did Europe. The same year, Sunday Shoes found its way across the pond
and into the hands of British disc jockey Bob Harris of BBC Radio 2,
one of the U.K.’s most popular radio stations.
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Letters From The Lookout #1 |
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'Lookout' -
Letters
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Thursday, 17 July 2008 |
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Local iQ’s Blake Driver spends the summer and autumn seasons on Sand Mountain Lookout in the McKenzie River Ranger District of the Willamette National Forest in Oregon. This is his first in a series of letters to his readers back home. Your letters to the lookout can be sent to
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BY BLAKE DRIVER
Sand Mountain was still under 10 feet of snow on my first day of work, which was the last day of June. But even if I had been able to get up there, the smoke haze from the bazillion and one fires burning up California would have made visibility a big round zero anyway.
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Local iQ 2008 Photo Contest Winners |
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Features -
Cover Story
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Thursday, 07 August 2008 |
Contest draws a multitude of photographic work from local visionaries
INTRODUCTION BY KEVIN HOPPER
The assignment: "Local Color."
The response: immense.
Local iQ's Second Annual Photo Contest received a huge response from local photographers, both amateur and professional. As expected, submissions ranged from beautiful New Mexican landscapes to colorful graffiti murals painted on dingy Downtown alley walls. In all, we received upwards of 300 entries from close to 100 photographers, resulting in the gargantuan task of sorting through a mountain of pixels to pick out a handful of compositions that best captured the idea of "local color."
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Food -
Profile
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Friday, 08 August 2008 |
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One local fig lover shares his vast
knowledge of an important and unlikely Old World import
BY JANET YAGODA SHAGAM, Ph.D.
“There’s the Fig Man” is a
phrase that often punctuates the comfortable ambiance of the various
Albuquerque Growers’ Markets that Lloyd Kreitzer frequents. It is
clear that Kreitzer and his fig trees both have reputations that precede
them.
Nearly everyone who stops at Kreitzer’s
display table is amazed to discover that it is possible to grow figs
in Albuquerque. This, said “Fig Man” Kreitzer in a recent interview
with Local iQ, is not unusual, “Fig trees unify good taste and humanity.
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Long tall Texan learning to live ‘Large’ |
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Music -
On The Stage
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Friday, 08 August 2008 |
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BY KEVIN HOPPER
It is no secret that the state of
Texas has a long tradition of spawning ultra-talented musicians and
songwriters who are largely adored by country music fans worldwide,
yet gracefully manage to retain an indescribable and elusive lone spirit
that only they individually possess. Storied troubadours who can claim
membership to this nonpareil circle include such musical luminaries
as Townes Van Zant, Joe Ely, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Kris Kristofferson,
Guy Clark, Willie Nelson and Billy Joe Shaver, among many others.
Certainly, those songwriters will
be forever regarded as some of the the best that Texas has to offer
to the world. This writer suspects that it is an unassuming but well-known
songwriter named Lyle Lovett that will one day be held in the highest
regard when the topic of Texan music is discussed.
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Arts -
Exhibit
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Friday, 08 August 2008 |
All that glitters is New Mexican gold
BY SOPHIA CARVLIN MILLER
Don’t be surprised if you find
a little bit of glitter in your hair when you come home from the New
Mex Now Mix exhibit at the National Hispanic Cultural Center. The inaugural
show of the NHCC’s Community Gallery features four artists working
with mixed media, including digital collage, salvaged materials, found
objects and lots of glitter.
Drawing their inspiration from New
Mexican Hispanic folk arts, artists Goldie Garcia, Kenny Chávez, Johnny
Salas and Alex Chávez have transformed the traditional into something
dazzling. Take, for example, Garcia’s mini-shrine “Guadalupe’s
‘Chooe’ (Shoe).” The plastic-encased image of the Virgin
is lovingly nestled in a sparkling ruby pump, surrounded by beads, glitter,
sequins and pieces of tin. Then there’s Johnny Salas’ “Lucha Libre
(Modern Day Gods of Mexico),” a tribute to the popular Mexican masked
wrestlers. Like most works in the exhibit, these two pieces have a decadently
reverent feel in their depiction of figures important in Hispanic culture.
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Lavender’s uses span generations, cultures |
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Food -
Ingredients
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Friday, 08 August 2008 |
When Spanish explorer Juan de Oñate
brought lavender with him to San Juan Pueblo in 1598, he changed our
New Mexican landscape and our healing customs forever. Now, the pale
violet flowers of this herb are in full bloom and their rich, nervine
fragrance marks the peak of summer. As they blossom, the flowers are
harvested to make potent remedios, or remedies, according to New Mexico
curandera traditions. Meanwhile, modern science is discovering exciting
new uses for lavender, with implications for improving sexual health
and fighting cancer.
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Music -
On The Stage
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Thursday, 24 July 2008 |
Long ago local favorites, The Gluey Brothers, set to make two rare appearances in their former home state
BY KEVIN HOPPER
I first encountered the Gluey Brothers in a remote recording studio just off the Turqoise Trail, somewhere between Madrid and Santa Fe, as they were putting the finishing touches on their debut release, Luncheon Meat of the Giants. After hearing just a fraction of their music, while sipping some of the best coffee I have ever tasted, I was hooked.
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Deconstructing a sleeping giant |
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Film -
Review
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Thursday, 24 July 2008 |
BY JEFF BERG
With the exception of the Non-Fiction Weekend film series, the next two films scheduled at Guild Cinema offer two decidedly different documentary looks at the politics of China.
The first, Dalai Lama Renaissance, is the most recent release in a spate of films featuring the Dalai Lama; he’s been in nearly 60 films and television shows since 1987. Unlike the far superior 10 Questions for the Dalai Lama, this movie is not about the man himself, nor is it likely to convince those who need convincing, that the world is completely dysfunctional.
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Arts -
Exhibit
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Thursday, 24 July 2008 |
 Albuquerque’s Old Town is known for many things — ghosts of soldiers, historic trading posts, a bustling tourist trade and more Southwestern trinkets and baubles than you can shake a rain stick at.
But stunning, groundbreaking contemporary art? Apparently, Bright Rain Gallery is attempting to lay the foundation for a highly atypical modern push in this traditional art-saturated area with the introduction of abstract work by Jessica Kennedy. Though she is currently enrolled in UNM’s MFA program, even the keenest art eye would never know she isn’t a seasoned pro. The Michigan native creates pieces that, ever so delicately, balance symmetry with chaos and swathes of monochromatic nothingness with surprising and complex little bursts of larger than life color. Don’t let the turquoise and adobe fool you, there’s still an artistic pulse within these historic walls.
—KH
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