Rick Alan Rice
- Publisher of RARWRITER.com and the Revolution Culture Journal.
No, but it may be a signal for help,
and not necessarily in a bad way.
God is a construction of peoples’
need to have an organizing influence in their lives, standards to live
by, and some reason to carry on. In all of those ways, God and
everything that comes with it – the afterlife, sense of well being and
spiritual comfort, and purpose in all things – is truly helpful to
people, as various studies have seemed to indicate. Belief is powerful,
almost regardless of its details.
That God, and the belief therein, is
a signal for help is endemic to the genesis of the subject, if you will
pardon the pun. Read Post -
Comment
Letter to Conservatives: The
Party of Wealth – Theirs
Sam Broussard -
Writer, Songwriter, Musician, member of Steve Reilly and the Mamou
Playboys
Three of the front
runners for the Republican nomination are now just memories, pundit
fodder: Huckabee and Trump, and Palin recedes into political tinnitus.
But the retiring of all three has one thing in common, and it’s money.
Huckabee just bought a huge house in Florida and is enjoying his status
and salary at Fox News. Trump is more at home on his reality show. And
Palin is enjoying both Fox money and reality TV and will probably be the
next Oprah Winfrey, although she’ll never get more than twenty percent
of the viewers because only that percentage of Americans can identify
with her spunky pride in her ignorance. And yes, she’s pretty.
I am a rock
star. Ok, ok, I am in a band with a rock star. I am also a
husband, father of three daughters, and a small business owner who pays
his taxes like anyone else. I never got into politics until the last
election and wrote and produced a non-partisan PSA video for Comcast
called “Get Out and Vote” to help assuage voter apathy throughout this
ailing nation. I didn’t vote for either one of the major candidates in
2008. I am all about trying to rally everyone to start voting again so
we can possibly support a third political party that makes sense. If we
can educate and get people out to the polls again, I believe that there
could be a groundswell of voters who could turn the tides in future
elections.
We need a party “by the people and for the people”. As corny as that
sounds, it is a precept that our nation was founded upon and if we are
to lift up and resuscitate this
suffocating political system, we are going to need a leader who actually
leads rather than folds like a cheap stroller just to please his
parties’ special interests.
The RCJ Posts Issues
Questionnaire on Obama - Obama 2012 – Where Do You
Stand?
Rick Alan Rice - Publisher of RARWRITER.com and the
Revolution Culture Journal. He is also proprietor of A&E/IT Consulting
firm Rick A Rice Consulting.
The Revolution
Culture Journal (RCJ) invites you to participate in a little experiment
to help us understand public perception of President Barack Obama,
particularly as it relates to enthusiasm for his re-election in 2012.
We have identified
34 issues in U.S. foreign and domestic policy and devised a scale to
determine how well respondents feel President Obama is doing with each.
Use this link to go to the questionnaire.
Bechtel’s Long-Term Commitment
to Nuclear Disaster
Rick Alan Rice - Publisher of RARWRITER.com and the
Revolution Culture Journal. He is also proprietor of A&E/IT Consulting
firm Rick A Rice Consulting.
Somehow the idea of
using nuclear fission, and eventually nuclear fusion, to boil water,
produce steam, drive turbines and produce direct current electricity has
found its way back into the list of acceptable alternatives as an
environmentally friendly solution. This bit of Houdini depends entirely
on comparison to power generation through the burning of coal, which
produces carbon emissions and is a primary contributor to rising levels
of greenhouse gas (GHG) in our choking environment.
Applying Grover Norquist to
Corporation Intellectual Starvation
Rick Alan Rice - Publisher of RARWRITER.com and the
Revolution Culture Journal. He is also proprietor of A&E/IT Consulting
firm Rick A Rice Consulting.
In my career as a
consultant, I have all kinds of opportunities to interact with different
personality types at different levels of organizations. Some of these
are of the kind that might make others feel that life is not worth
living, but the advantage of consultancy is that my involvements are
focused, short, and generally sweet, and then I leave the office dramas
behind for a quick dip into the next kiln of opportunity. I am like a
merry mercenary in that way, unexposed to the daily grind of the
organizations with which I work.
Staff people, on
the other hand, are subject to hierarchical structures and personality
profiles, and their critical path issue is: a) whether or not to stay in
the roles they are in, given the odds of rising up to a more satisfying
position within the organization; or b) to cast their fates to wind,
which is the job market.
Appointment with Disaster -
Republican Domestic Policy
Rick Alan Rice
- Publisher of RARWRITER.com and the Revolution Culture Journal.
While the rich
are enjoying tax breaks they have no need for and U.S. corporations are
holding on to record profits, padding their accounts to ensure that this
is not their rainy day, but doing little to further the
employment and domestic security needs of United States citizens, word
comes that we are running out of money to provide help for a growing
population of homeless (see the Huffington
Post on this date). Read Post -
Comment
___________
Welcoming the Arab Street to
U.S. Foreign Policy
Rick Alan Rice - Publisher of RARWRITER.com and the
Revolution Culture Journal.
I was all set
to thank the progressive Arab world, or at least the 25 percent of it
that is situated in Egypt, for taking charge of U.S. foreign policy and
forcing it to make sense. Then those pro-Mubarak thugs showed up and
shocked the global community back to reality. Read Post -
Comment
___________
Why Your College Student Can't
Read, Write or Even Think
Rick Alan Rice - Publisher, Writer, A&E / IT
Consultant
Back a hundred
years ago, when I was in college, all the guys who were doing the best
in the classes I took all seemed to be Viet Nam veterans going to school
on government grants. They tended to stand out because they were older
and far more experienced than their classmates. It seems unlikely that
they were brighter, but they were fundamentally different in terms of
focus and perspective in ways that seemed obviously helpful to them. Read Post - Comment
The Catholic
Archdiocese of Santa Fe, New Mexico has a big self-imposed problem on its hands,
having either to do with a Disneyland mentality for "spiritual retreat", and
execrable design tastes, or a cheesy design for commercial development posing as
spiritual stewardship. Throw in utter disregard for history, exploitive
interests in the real places that El Santuario and the Santo Niño chapel (shown
above) have in the spiritual lives of people of faith, and others with deep
respect for cultural values, and you get a range of intense emotional responses
that are almost entirely negative.
Why does the Archdiocese of Santa Fe want so
badly to develop this site near the culturally significant El Santuario site,
even against the will of the area's preservationists?
HOTEL RETREAT:
The Associated Press broke this story, which was first carried locally in the
December 3, 2011 edition of the Albuquerque Journal - Santa Fe/North
newspaper. This represented quite a scoop on the more local Santa Fe New
Mexican,
which later published the tentative site plan (left) for a proposed
Jardín de los Niños Spiritual Retreat; a $2.5
million, 8,000-square-foot, 25
guest-rooms-with-kitchen-services-and-discussion-room hotel designed to provide
accommodations for some of the community's steady stream of visitors.
El Santuario, dating to 1760, is sometimes called
"the Lourdes of America" for healing powers associated with a wooden cross that
was found on the site on which the sanctuary was built. (See the story in the right column.) Catholic believers
and people of cultural curiosity visit the place year around, and on Good Friday
annually there are thousands of pilgrims who travel by foot to visit El
Santuario de Chimayo's shrines.
The plans for the retreat center were apparently
a closely held secret up until information about the development was leaked and
the AP story broke. Attention immediately turned to the principal figures in the
drama: Santa Fe residents Gil and Nidia Martinez, and
Father Julio Gonzalez, of
Spain, who is Chimayo's Parish Priest. These three are working in conjunction
with the Santa Fe Archidiocese, which owns the land upon which the proposed
hotel retreat will be built.
Martinez is a businessman who runs
Terra Bella Artful Interiors, located in Santa Fe's
Sanbusco Center, and he has some history with development in Chimayo. This is
where little Santo Niño chapel (shown above) comes into the picture, for
Martinez is the person responsible for the modifications to the historic site.
Where once it was a humble chapel of authentic design heritage, it has been
transformed into what some have described as a "Disneyesque farce". The
point of detractors of Martinez' plan for the spiritual retreat is pretty straight
forward: if the abomination they feel that Martinez has made of Santo Niño
chapel is indicative of his vision for the planned retreat, they don't want it!
MUD AND ADOBE RUINS:
Part
of the underlying conflict over the
Jardín de los Niños Spiritual Retreat has to do
with how much archaeological integrity a community
should commit to preserving when working with a historically and culturally significant site.
Or, in
more concrete terms, how much can any of us feel is lost and gained by the sort
of modifications that were made to historic Santo Niño chapel? (Shown below
as it looked in 1985 and in something closer to its original form, prior to the makeover shown at the top of
this page.)
Surely
the value and the magnetism of these historic sites is inextricably tied to the
way visitors experience their architectural spaces. And whatever power they
retain is absolutely tied to the quality of their authenticity.
Not to
put too fine a point on it, but this is why the faithful pilgrimage to El
Santuario de Chimayo, but only paying tourists get in to see "Historic Front
Street" in Dodge City, Kansas or a hundred other examples of replicated historic
places.
El
Santuario is all about authenticity and humility, right down to its muddy, unpaved walkways and
its evolved reason for being, which is expressing faith and sacrifice, and
providing a place for asking for relief from burden.
While
it may seem obvious to most that one doesn't make design modifications to a
structure of historic importance, how big of a ring protecting an area from
development does one put around a unique place such as El Santuario de Chimayo?
While
there is diversity of opinion among Chimayo's small and insular business
community - one of which sold to the Archdiocese the property on which the
planned hotel/retreat is to be built - there is a call for a legitimate planned
approach to Chimayo's overall development. These typically involve Specific
Plans supported by Architectural Design Guidelines, which many municipalities
use to plan infrastructure development and to control the aesthetic
characteristics of new development, either to preserve historic integrity or to
create new design standards for conformity and contextual consistency in
vertical construction and streetscape.
"Indeed, there is a jumbled quality to the
compound, with several new shrines behind the chapel, including one to Our Lady
of La Vang, a Marian apparition from Vietnam," says Raymond Bal, a local businessman
lobbying for a professional approach to area planning. The pressure of pilgrimage has influenced an ad
hoc development even amid the humble sanctity of the site. "The immediate area
includes a half-dozen souvenir shops and a dozen homes, some of which appear
vacant, a recently completed museum next to the santuario, and two other chapels
— Santo Niño de Atocha and a recently completed meditation center called the
Praying Heart Portal."
Some of that has been the work of the
aforementioned Gil Martinez, who reports having been involved with the local
parish for seven years, having remodeled the 1857 Santo Niño de Atocha Chapel
and built both the Praying Heart Portal and the new museum. He has referred to
these as preservation projects, and said the "most important" to him "is
salvaging the residence of Bernardo Abeyta,
who in 1816 completed the graceful adobe chapel — officially
El Santuario de Nuestro Señor de Esquipulas — on
the site where a wooden crucifix had miraculously appeared."
Whether or not one thinks of historic
preservation as a "salvage project" probably frames one's view of Martinez's
work. Among his plans for the Archdiocese property are razing the two mid-20th
century houses on the site and building four or five new buildings, one of which
would be a museum dedicated to Bernardo Abeyta. This complex, he anticipates, will
take two to three years to build, which in design-build construction terms is fast, particularly if one is paying any attention to architectural detail or
doing anything to vet alternative designs with stakeholder groups. (Yours truly
bases this on many years of consultant experience in the Architecture/Engineering/Construction
sector.)
Rapidity of development has characterized the
Jardín de los Niños Spiritual Retreat and related projects, a fact that Martinez
has been frank to admit. “Our plan was to put a press let go out (sic) around
February or March,” he was reported by the Albuquerque Journal as saying. “By
that time, you would have had … more things only to demonstrate. But that came
out and right away we’re perplexing to fool around catch-up. (sic)”
Martinez and the Archdiocese have been remarkably
more coherent in their efforts to rush their project by Santa Fe County
Planning and Zoning officials: a plan to short-circuit community resistance that
was itself short circuited when the AP piece broke in December (2011). Gil and Nidia Martinez have launched a non-profit organization, Los Niños Foundation, to
help raise the money for the retreat. As of last report, standard checklist
items like filing for a grave application on the Archdiocese site, had only just
been initiated.
HISTORIC PRESERVATION:
The El Santuario chapel is listed in the State Registry of Historic Properties
and the Federal Registry of National Historic Landmarks, which obligates the
State of New Mexico to perform as the executor of specified governances
regarding use and restrictions on modifications. Those opposing the developments
are banking on those restrictive covenants.
"The reason is to give Santa Fe County time to
develop a preservation plan, especially for the Plaza of Potrero, because we need
protection of its fragile nature," says businessman Bal. "We're
losing ambiance, we're losing its religiosity."
Chimayo's backbone, when it comes to preserving
the integrity of this special place, so renowned for its spiritual vibe that
some devotees visit annually for its renewing qualities, have been in evidence
for a long time. In the 1980s, the hamlet refused to allow filmmaker Robert Redford
to film the Milagro
Beanfield War in the area because locals didn't want the commotion that such
a production would have brought to Chimayo.
There is now an "Occupy Española" page on Facebook.
The "Friends of El Santuario" have organized a
letter-writing-and-email campaign to raise awareness of public opposition to the
planned developments in the El Santuario area. Their statement
demanding the halt of approvals for the projects, and a list of persons to
contact to register opposition to the development plans are listed below.
FRIENDS OF EL SANTUARIO We, the
residents of Chimayo, El Potrero Plaza (next to El Santuario), and anyone
sensitive to the sanctity of El Santuario de Chimayo, ask the Santa Fe County
Commissioners to halt approval of all applications for zoning changes and for
new construction near El Santuario. We further request Santa Fe County to help
our community adopt a comprehensive plan to protect and preserve the residential
nature and the historic integrity of the nationally beloved El Santuario de
Chimayo.
KRQE Television January 28,
2012 Story on the Controversy
To understand the controversy in
Chimayo, which at its most basic is a real estate development issue, one must
really read the piece below from the New Mexico History.org.
It is a spectacular account of a healing
belief associated with the El Santuario site, and a native people's devotion to
a crucified Jesus who looked a lot like them. This is the story of
a "Mecca" that annually attracts thousands of pilgrims, including processions on
foot from Santa Fe, more than 25 miles away.
EDITOR'S NOTE:
The text below comes from New Mexico History.org and has been edited for this
article to provide basic background for the Chimayo story.
Read the entire description by using this link.
Following
in a long tradition of miraculous shrines in Mexico and Spain, it is no doubt
the most important Catholic pilgrimage center in the United States. As many as
300,000 pilgrims visit the shrine every year, approximately 30,000 during Holy
Week alone. There is no formal founding date for the settlement of Chimayó, but
Tewa Indians had long lived in the area before the Hispanic settlements were
established. At least 33 prehistoric sites have been documented along the Santa
Cruz River and its tributaries which include the Chimayó area. In 1695 Diego de
Vargas attempted to re-settle Tewa-speaking Tano Indians at “Zimayo,” but they
refused to take up this new settlement. After the Reconquest in 1696, the
returning and newly arrived Hispanic families at Santa Cruz de la Cañada began
to spread out along the river and its tributaries, and the lush area known as
El Potrero (The Pasture), the future site of El
Santuario, soon attracted settlers. The first formal community was
nearby Plaza del Cerro (its chapel dedicated to San
Buenaventura), which was established by 1751.
By 1805 if not earlier,
devotion to a miraculous Guatemalan image of Christ crucified known as Our Lord
of Esquipulas (Nuestro Señor de Esquipulas) had become popular at El Potrero.
In that year a child was christened with the name Juan de Esquipulas by Fray
Sebastián Alvarez, the resident Franciscan friar at Santa Cruz de la Cañada. In
1813 Bernardo Abeyta (uncle of the child so christened) petitioned in the name
of the residents of El Potrero to the same Fray Sebastián for permission to
build a chapel dedicated to Our Lord of Esquipulas, who had already been honored
since 1810 in a small chapel of the Abeyta family. Fray Sebastián wrote in
support of Abeyta’s petition in 1813 that people had been coming to Abeyta’s
chapel for some time to “give praise to the sovereign Redeemer” and “to relieve
their ailments.” He also stated the location and name of the new chapel “at the
said plaza or Rancho del Potrero, which is called El Santuario de Esquipulas.”
By 1816 the Potrero chapel was completed and its elegant carved door, still to
be seen today, was made by carpenter Pedro Domíngez at the expense of Fray José
Corea, the resident friar at Santa Cruz, who had succeeded Alvarez.
Devotion to Our Lord of Esquipulas originated at
an early colonial shrine in Guatemala where the earth itself was said to be
effective in curing illnesses. This miraculous statue of Christ is attached to a
“living” cross, painted green and sprouting leaves and branches, symbolic of its
healing and life-giving qualities. At both the shrine in Guatemala and at El
Santuario pilgrims come from distant places to be healed, and there has been
much speculation concerning the way in which the devotion to the miraculous
image and the healing earth of such an apparently remote shrine in Guatamala
came to be transplanted to New Mexico.
It appears that devotion to this
dark-complected image of Christ crucified was spread through Mexico primarily by
Franciscan friars.
The original miraculous statue of Our Lord of
Esquipulas was popular with the Indians in Guatemala, in part because of the
dark complexion of the face of Christ, and it is not surprising that the image
at El Santuario was also popular with Pueblo Indians in New Mexico. The site of
Santuario was said by the Tewas to have originally been a hot springs which
eventually dried up leaving the healing earth. This healing earth had long been
known and used by the Tewas prior to the Spanish occupation of the Santa Cruz
valley. The name Chimayó derives from the Tewa words Tsi Mayoh, meaning “Hill of
the East.” This hill rises just above Chimayó and is a prominent landmark seen
from all directions. According to Alfonso Ortiz, it was one of the four sacred
hills in the Tewa cosmology. In historic times both Indians and Hispanos have
traditionally been pilgrims to El Santuario, and they have parallel stories
concerning the miraculous origin of the statue of Our Lord of Esquipulas. Like
many similar images of superhuman origin in Mexico and in Spain, the statue was
said to have been miraculously discovered by some one at the future site of the
El Santuario (Bernardo Abeyta is the discoverer in some local Hispano versions)
and taken to Santa Cruz (or to Santa Fe) to the priest, but it inexplicably
returned to El Potrero. After this happened several times, it was clear that Our
Lord wanted to stay at this place, and therefore the church was built.
Bernardo Abeyta died in 1856 and was buried with
ecclesiastical permission in El Santuario. At about the
same time another chapel was built in El Potrero just a short distance away from
El Santuario. Built by Severiano Medina, this chapel was dedicated to the Santo
Niño de Atocha, a very popular miraculous image from Fresnillo, Zacatecas.
According to family tradition, Medina built the chapel as a promesa because the
Santo Niño had cured him from severe rheumatism. The cult of the Santo Niño de
Atocha became especially important in northern Mexico and New Mexico after the
1820s. Many images of him, both paintings and sculpture, were created by local
santeros in New Mexico in this period, and the name Atocha starts to frequently
appear in baptismal records. This second chapel was soon incorporated into the
local Catholic observances, and the Santo Niño became associated with the
healing earth at the Santuario, where a statue of him also appeared, to some
degree replacing in importance Our Lord of Esquipulas.
The church structure, completed in 1816, is
unusual for having two additional rooms forming a sort of enlarged vestibule
before entering the nave. These rooms were part of the original structure or
added shortly thereafter. They are noted in an 1818 inventory, which also lists
large quantities of local woven goods and other items stored in these rooms,
most likely for the purpose of selling them to pilgrims and itinerant traders.
Pilgrimage sites have traditionally combined piety with commerce. Large trading
fairs in colonial Mexico were held annually at such miraculous shrines as Our
Lady of San Juan de los Lagos in Jalisco, where many New Mexicans traveled every
year, so it is not surprising that El Santuario would also have a commercial
aspect to it.
Its spiritual aspects also replicate those of
Mexican pilgrimage shrines. The nave of the church is decorated with remarkable
examples of nineteenth-century religious folk art, including altarscreens by
José Rafael Aragón, José Aragón, Molleno, and other santeros. Behind the altar
the miraculous statue of Our Lord of Esquipulas commands the attention of every
pilgrim, before he or she enters the room containing the healing earth. On the
left side of the nave near the altar are two separate rooms. In one the walls
are covered with a multitude of expressions of thanks for the cure of ailments,
including some pictorial images similar to the ex-votos paintings found at
Mexican shrines, and the other small room contains the posito, a small circular
hole in the ground in which is found the healing earth.
El Santuario remained in the ownership of the
descendants of Bernardo Abeyta until 1929 when the Spanish Colonial Arts Society
in Santa Fe, headed by writer Mary Austin, artist Frank Applegate and
architect/preservationist John Gaw Meem, purchased it from the family and
donated it to the Archdiocese of Santa Fe. Today El Santuario continues to be an
important spiritual center, attracting pilgrims from all over the Southwest and
elsewhere through the entire year. During Holy Week every year thousands of
pilgrims walk to El Santuario from Santa Fe and other starting points.
"Let nothing disturb you.
Let nothing frighten you.
All things pass.
God does not change.
Patience achieves everything.
Whoever has God lacks nothing.
God alone suffices."
- Saint Teresa of Avila
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON THE
AP STORY -
Was the Story an Intended Plant Rather than a Leak As Reported?
Editor's Note:
It has been reported as a "leak", but a source who shall
remain anonymous has commented that this is incorrect. That source says, "The
claim that the story was leaked is bogus - the same AP writer did a profile
story on the Santuario which ran, I think, November 30 or Dec. 1 in the
Albuquerque Journal. This was a clear publicity campaign for the fundraising
effort - which may have indeed misfired, but was definitely not a leak as
claimed."
The founders of Los Niños Foundation have
organized a public meeting for February 8, 2012 to allow public viewpoints
regarding the retreat to be voiced. The invitation is shown below: