SantaFe.com

Ed Grothus doesn't really need a special forum for speaking his mind. He's been doing it for almost 39 years, since he left his job as a machinist with Los Alamos National Laboratory and began speaking out against nuclear proliferation and selling the lab's throwaways at the store he calls the Black Hole.

During that time, he often found himself in the national news, whether it was for accidentally finding a book with the signatures of 47 major Manhattan Project players that sold at Sotheby's for $23,000 or for getting a visit from the Secret Service after sending some "organic plutonium"...

Friday, May 9, 2008
by Polly Summar • Journal Santa Fe

Julia Roberts — the artist, not the actress — has followed her own muse to the Southwest. After years in Hawaii, Australia and a long sojourn in Europe, she is now comfortably ensconced in Santa Fe and showing new works at Dorothy Rogers Fine Art, a tiny gallery in The Design Center. Roberts is especially known for her printmaking in a variety of methods, and will lecture “About Prints” Saturday afternoon at the gallery. Backed up by the 37 prints she’s showing in a current exhibition at Rogers, she’ll talk about her use of intaglio, especially through etching, aquatint, lift-ground,...

Friday, May 9, 2008
by Kate McGraw • Journal Santa Fe

Location plays a big role in Los Mayas Restaurante’s success. For 10 years, this downtown restaurant has served up guacamole, sangria, food and live music to a steady clientele of visitors and some locals. Los Mayas is about a block from the Hilton and Eldorado Hotel — an easy walk.

The Wednesday night of our visit, the dining room was about 80 percent filled. One large group, college students in town for a photo workshop, had great fun taking pictures of one another, the guitar duo on stage, the beautifully plated food and the romantic ambiance. On Thursday, the patio will be uncovered,...

Friday, May 9, 2008
by Anne Hillerman • Journal Santa Fe

Idon’t often like flowers in artwork with the exception of botanical illustrations, and the older, the better. Little else has risen to the challenge of saying something about flowers that flowers don’t say better themselves. Paintings of flowers — even realist paintings — are more often about painting than the flowers.

But Vera Sprunt’s exhibition, “Tideline,” intrigues me. The 12 images in this show are mixedmedia works that combine layers of black-andwhite photographs printed on clear film and sheets of Mylar painted with acrylic gouache. It’s an unusual technique that Sprunt uses to...

Friday, May 9, 2008
by Hollis Walker • Journal Santa Fe

Almost 100 Frito pies are sold every day at the Five & Dime General Store, which celebrates its 10th anniversary Thursday.

Plenty of locals stop by the East San Francisco Street business to get their daily fix, says snack bar employee Lorraine Chavez, who has been preparing and serving the cheesy and spicy Frito Pies for a decade.

Chavez and the entire snack bar staff cook a huge pot of fresh, homemade chili made with ground beef and red Chimayo chile every morning on an electric stove in the store's small kitchen. Beans are added to the chile before three, 4-ounce ladles of the mixture...

Tuesday, May 6, 2008
by Emily Van Cleve • Journal Santa Fe

Welcoming a new baby is part joy, part work. It can also be lonely if there's no family around.

"We call ourselves the modern-day version of extended family," said Julie Peet, program director for Many Mothers, a nonprofit organization that provides help for new mothers.

And Joyce Bond, 53, knew she was going to need an extra pair of arms— or two or three— when she learned she was going to deliver triplets.

"I'm probably the oldest mom of triplets in New Mexico," said Bond, marketing manager for the city's Public Works Department, who said fertility treatments were involved in the pregnancy.

Saturday, May 3, 2008
by Polly Summar • Journal Santa Fe

Bill Hon has 904 reasons to hope a recently approved parking plan for Santa Fe's Railyard district goes off without a hitch.

Hon, the city's parking division director, has been at the center a contentious debate about how to best allocate and pay for 904 soon-to-be-available parking spaces in the burgeoning Railyard, which will feature a movie theater, commercial outlets, a commuter train stop and the city's farmers market.

Much of the uproar surrounding the Railyard parking stems from the fact the area has been touted as a community-oriented development.

Sunday, May 4, 2008
by Dan Boyd • Journal Santa Fe

Daniel Pedro's family was a little taken aback when he announced his intent to study ancestral human remains.

On the 19-year-old's native Zuni Pueblo, it is taboo for tribal members to handle remains.

But as a budding anthropologist, Pedro said he's been troubled by one method that's used to identify where American Indian remains came from, which involves crushing bone to extract DNA.

There must be a better way, Pedro thought. For three years, Pedro has been working on a computer program that might one day determine the ethncity of skeletal remains simply by analyzing their facial structure.

Sunday, May 4, 2008
by Raam Wong • Journal Santa Fe

Coming from as far as Switzerland and Canada, a few hundred people gathered Sunday afternoon at the College of Santa Fe to celebrate the life of Tibetan Buddhist scholar and northern New Mexico "living treasure" Lobsang Lhalungpa, 80, who died last week in a car crash.

The drab interior of Alumni Hall was transformed into a riot of color with prayer flags and banners, reams of soft fabric and Asian rugs. On a small central stage sat monks from the Drepung Loseling Monastery in India, surrounding a photograph of a serenely smiling Lhalungpa.

"I want to thank you all in this community for...

Monday, May 5, 2008
by Kiera Hay • Journal Santa Fe

Adventure sports are nothing new for Caroline Colonna of Taos. The 44-year-old mother of four has competed in everything from extreme skiing competitions to triathlons to martial arts events.

But, today, Colonna and 19 others will compete in a race that is as mysterious to the general public as it is to its participants.

"They haven't told us what the events will be like— they want an element of surprise," Colonna said during an interview with the Journal. "But they told us there will be orienteering, kayaking and mountain climbing, and to bring a bike helmet, running shoes, bike pedals,...

Monday, May 5, 2008
by Vince Kong • Journal Santa Fe