SantaFe.com

Carol Carpenter is a native New Mexican (Artesia) and resident (Madrid) who currently is an administrator and dramatic writing instructor at the College of Santa Fe. She has had a writing career that has spanned publishing fiction in small magazines to Hollywood where she wrote trailers and promotional pieces. However, it is as a playwright that Carol Carpenter shows enormous promise. Her most recent play, Wild Dogs, pits the residents of Madrid against Disney Productions when the mega-company invaded the fiercely independent village to shoot the big budget film,

The spirit of the invisible life forces of the Pueblo of North America. The kachinas, or kachinam, are impersonated by elaborately costumed masked male members of the tribes who visit Pueblo villages the first half of the year. In a variety of ceremonies, they dance, sing, bring gifts to the children, and sometimes administer public scoldings. Although not worshiped, kachinas are greatly revered, and one of their main purposes is to bring rain for the spring crops. The term kachina also applies to cottonwood dolls made by the Hopi and Zuni that are exquisitely carved and dressed like the...

The American Planning Association (APA) has designated Canyon Road in Santa Fe, New Mexico, as one of 10 Great Streets for 2007 through APA's Great Places in America program. APA Great Places exemplify exceptional character and highlight the role planners and planning play in creating communities of lasting value.

“We are honored that Canyon Road has received this recognition,” Santa Fe Mayor David Coss said. “In the last century, Canyon Road has transitioned from a traditional Santa Fe neighborhood to a world-renowned center for artists and art lovers,” he added.

Santa Fe is simply chock-full of art galleries for all tastes and budgets. A few of those galleries are, however, destinations in themselves, places people intend to go to long before they arrive in New Mexico. Winter is a time for Santa Fe galleries to show work by well-known local artists and many of our top picks this month are doing just that.

The Gerald Peters Gallery, founded in 1972, is recognized as one the world’s largest and most respected dealers in American art of the nineteenth- and twentieth- and now twenty-first century.

This winter the gallery will have a retrospective of...

Mayor David Coss’s city hall office looks more like the setting for a flamenco dancer. Sitting within its bright pink and yellow walls, the 53-year old Illinois native who grew up in Santa Fe speaks just above a whisper, as if by contrast with his surroundings, while reflecting on the fun and frustrations of his first term.

The Museum of Indian Arts & Culture has a fascinating new exhibit, Native Couture: A History of Santa Fe Style (through June 7, 2009). The exhibit chronicles changes in taste and fashion from the 1880s through to the present in Native American jewelry, and from 1968 to the 1990s in clothing. Not only a dazzling collection, it celebrates the ingenuity and inspiration that's transformed traditional dress and design over time into contemporary urban chic, while still keeping elements that are timeless.

If you ever wondered where to find beekeepers beyond the virtue of a farmer’s market, steal off to a mead tasting and surely you will find them in a swarm. Mead was hot in the Dark Ages, a sweet wine brewed from honey, water and yeast. It may even be the legendary “ambrosia” spoken of in myths and fairytales. For a beekeeper, it is their preferred poison.

So off I went to a mead tasting at the home of Kate Whealan, the coordinator of the Sangre de Cristo Beekeepers. The house was cozy with soft-spoken beekeepers sipping mead around a warm fire. So inviting was the scene, a spider...