Jock Soto: Beauty Amid the Storm

Renowned ballet dancer Jock Soto, born in Gallup, New Mexico, retired from the New York City Ballet stage in 2005 and is now a master ballet instructor worldwide. Photo courtesy of Luis Fuentes.

COVID-19 is a Category 5 hurricane. We wear masks to shield against the virus much like protecting windows with plywood. Masks might protect our health but don’t do much for our fragile psyches. We strive to feel physically safe in our shelters, but we know there is mayhem out there. Millions and millions of jobs are lost, and no one knows how long it will take to recover. And while uncertain futures are pondered behind precariously protective masks, videos of threatening and deadly acts go viral. COVID’s seething undercurrents take a different shape. . . . a human torrent fills the streets, saying enough is enough. . .

There are and will be countless narratives about the recent happenings in America’s cities. But I am not one to add to the collection. Instead I’m moved to write about resiliency, about perseverance, about strength, indeed, about the gift of beauty in the midst of mayhem. 

I’m moved to write about Jock Soto, world-renowned dancer, born in Gallup, New Mexico to Navajo mother Josephine Towne and Puerto Rican father Jose Soto.

Young Jock Soto with his parents, Jose Soto and Josephine Towne on the rodeo circuit in pre-New York days. Photo courtesy of Jock Soto.

Jock Soto is now 55, retired from the stage but in demand as a teacher of aspiring and professional dancers in New York and around the world. Now, during COVID, he teaches via Zoom from his and his husband Luis Fuentes’s New Mexico sanctuary in Eagle’s Nest, not far from Taos. 

I first saw Jock Soto dance in the late 1980s at the former New York State Theater (now the David H Koch Theater) at Lincoln Center. I saw him not long after he was appointed the youngest principal dancer of the New York City Ballet at the time (and the last male dancer to have been handpicked by the late George Balanchine, the company’s founder and its spiritual leader in perpetuity).

I had been invited to the performance of Balanchine’s Symphony in C featuring Soto by a dear friend visiting from out of town. My friend knew that I loved ballet, and that I had yearned to see Soto. All three of us (Soto, my friend and I) had Southwest legacies, and Soto, so early in his career, was already legendary. The performance showed us why.

During a crisis, our minds tend to journey back to earlier fears and earlier joys. I have been thinking of that gorgeous 1980s performance because New York at that time was experiencing another hurricane . . . AIDS, displacement, a struggle to recover after headwinds of mismanagement and neglect brought the city to its knees. 

Jock as a young ballet student in Phoenix, AZ, where he was spotted by a New York scout.

Jock Soto had arrived in New York in the late seventies, when the city was probably at its most down and out (until now). He was 13 years old. He’d been scouted by the School of American Ballet after being spotted in a class in Phoenix. His family had moved there specifically to give him a chance to fulfill his dream of becoming a ballet dancer, a dream he developed at the age of 5 after seeing the great Edward Villella on television.

His family’s journeys were centered on artistic dreams . . . Jock’s as a dancer, his brother’s as an actor. His parents’ self-appointed role was to keep the doors to dream fulfillment open. Jock tells his story eloquently in his memoir Every Step You Take (told with Leslie Marshall, Harper Collins, 2011).

Soto helping young dancers fulfill their potential, a legacy modeled by his own parents and mentors. (Photo from alchetron.com, the Free Social Encyclopedia)

Though he started out in New York with his family in 1978, life in New York became too much for them, and he was left there at 14 to manage on his own. He became a principal dancer of the company six years later, which tells you how he managed. Many, many ballets were choreographed based on his capacity to do just about anything that a choreographer could conceive of. And unlike some of the other superstars of his era, such as Baryshnikov, Jock had the reputation as one of the best ballet partners in the world. The greatest of ballerinas relied on him to catch them, support them, make possible the otherwise impossible, to let them shine. As a dancer, Jock is a rare combination of greatness without ego. What came through in his performances was not only his unparalleled skill, but generosity beyond measure.

Jock’s Navajo clan is To’aheedliinii, which means Water Flowing Together (there’s a documentary about Jock with this title. It’s nearly impossible to obtain, but a clip is available on YouTube).

The photo to the right (from danceviewtimes.com) shows Soto and ballerina Wendy Whelan flowing together in choreographer Christopher Wheeldon’s “After the Rain.” The year was 2005, Jock’s last year on the New York City Ballet stage.

I read somewhere that members of the Water Flowing Together clan are joyous, sexy, outgoing and dominant . . . all things that Jock conveyed when I saw him dance all those years ago.

Now Jock teaches dancers at all levels. Perhaps most notably, he teaches master classes in partnering . . . a skill that demands perfection lest everything fall apart, a skill that demands that ego be tucked away to showcase another’s ability to spin and fly.

For ten years, Jock taught a 4-week course in ballet to indigenous students in Banff and Toronto, students who never knew a ballet position before his class and at the end knew enough to perform admirably for an audience. Jock told me that it was his mother’s dream that he teach ballet to indigenous peoples. Who better than Jock, who started dancing the hoop dance at the age of 3 and became a principal dancer of NYCB at age 20, to point the way to the beauty and empowerment of movement? 

Jock Soto has much to teach.

Jock’s mother Josephine , a pow wow dancer, was his first dance teacher. She taught him the hoop dance when he was 3 years old, before ballet stole his heart at the age of 5. (Photo courtesy of Jock Soto)

Last year, the LGBT group Dine Pride gave Jock Soto their Dine Pride Champion Award, and he had a message for the audience in Window Rock, the Navajo capital: “What my mother always said was, ‘Pursue your dreams and walk in beauty’.” 

I envision a poster with his picture and his words, with the added directive “Move!”, displayed in every chapter house on the Navajo Nation, where diabetes and heart disease are rampant. 

As the streets of American cities are filled with citizens pleading for change, as the Navajo Nation copes with the worst COVID statistics in the United States, messages like Jock Soto’s can become drowned out by cries of despair and anger. But his are words that all of us need to remember. And Jock can teach all of us something else: flowing together, partnering, is a skill that we all will we need if, at the end of COVID, we are going to fight our way back from disaster and do our damnedest to walk in beauty out of the storm.

A clip from from a 1990s episode of Sesame Street, where Jock and ballerina Lourdes Lopez partner in dance to teach the word “Cooperate.”

Gallup: A Small Town Closes while a New Mayor Takes the Reins

Postcard of Gallup, New Mexico, sometimes known as the Indian Capital of the World.

Almost precisely at the moment when businessman Louie Bonaguidi took up the reins as the newly elected mayor of Gallup, New Mexico, the state’s Governor Grisham granted his request to use the Riot Control Act to lock down the town due to the “uninhibited” spread of COVID-19. For now, traffic along heavily traveled Interstate 40 can’t enter the town of 22,000 people famously featured in the song Get Your Kicks on Route 66 (originating with Nat King Cole and covered by artists as varied as Nancy Sinatra and Glenn Frey). Residents of the town can’t leave. Vehicles within the town can have no more than 2 passengers.

Gallup is the seat of McKinley County, which as of this writing has about 1030 coronavirus cases and 19 deaths. The outbreak started in a detox center and spread to the streets, from the streets to nursing homes and the population at large. Gallup already has many nicknames: The Indian Capital of the World, Drunk Town, and The Most Patriotic Small Town in America. Now a new nickname can be added: The COVID-19 Capital of New Mexico.

Pedestrians on Highway 66, Gallup, NM in 1976, 44 years before anyone heard of social distancing.

I lived outside of Gallup in the mid-1970s, arriving two years after a notorious incident where an angry young activist named Larry Casuse kidnapped the mayor of the town. In 1973, Gallup’s mayor Emmett Garcia had been named to the New Mexico Board of Regents and announced an intention to open an alcohol rehab program. Casuse was enraged not only at the Board of Regents post, but also at Garcia’s hypocrisy in planning a rehab program while being part owner of an infamous bar/liquor store named the Navajo Inn that was situated one mile east of the Navajo Nation border.

Late activist Larry Casuse, who was killed in a police shootout after kidnapping Gallup mayor Emmett Garcia in 1973. Photo from EBwiki.

The kidnapping of the mayor ended with Garcia escaping and being superficially wounded by gunfire from a startled policeman’s pistol. Police then opened fire on the building where Casuse and his accomplice were holed up. Casuse’s accomplice surrendered, but Casuse was dead at the scene. After the incident, Garcia took his place on the Board of Regents and bought out his Navajo Inn partners. Then Garcia lost his reelection bid, and ultimately the Navajo Inn lost its lease and the building was obliterated.

I’ve been reading about Gallup’s new mayor, tipping my hat to him in taking on town leadership at this horrific moment in time. Bonaguidi is the owner of the City Electric Shoe Store. The name of the store stems from the time when the Bonaguidi family settled in Gallup in 1924 and opened a shoe repair enterprise that promised fast quality repair, especially cowboy boot repair, by using state-of-the-art electric equipment (see article on Bonaguidi’s shoe store).

Photo of City Electric Shoe store display. Copied from store’s Facebook page.

Now Mayor Bonaguidi’s shoe store is on the map of must-visit shoe stores in the American West and ranking Number 4 on one publication’s list of best shoe stores in New Mexico (beating out the Santa Fe shop where Jane Fonda buys her boots).

The store makes belts and moccasins on site and is stocked with so much cowboy-meets-pow-wow-dancer merchandise that you couldn’t dream it up in your wildest western fantasy.

To give you an idea of the “not-too-shabby” nature of Bonaguidi’s store, here’s a quote from a review on Yelp: “Hippest men’s boot store in existence with inventory from nothing but the best American-made footwear . . .  Raw hides!  The entire hide!! Whips!!! Chaps to go, animal pelts, custom leather work and more exotic Italian and Spanish shoe leather to reline those Louboutins than you can shake a pinon walking stick at. . . .” The store also has a website selling its in-house made moccasins and belts (https://nativeleather.com/)

Louie Bonaguidi won the office of mayor in an April runoff election against Sammy Chioda (affectionately known in Gallup as Sammy C) by a mere 41 votes. Bonaguidi’s opponent is a former sports broadcaster who owns a namesake establishment called  Sammy C’s Rockin’ Sports Bar, Pub and Grille, which, per Sammy C’s website, is ranked as one of the top 101 best sports bars in the United States by CNN.

Sammy C, who lost his bid to be mayor of Gallup, greets customers at his Sammy C’s Rock N’ Sports Bar, Pub and Grille. Photo copied from Yelp.

Even by 41 votes, the town chose the guy with the business that is helping to put Gallup on the map in a good way. The native and other citizens of Gallup chose boots and moccasins over sports memorabilia and craft beer.

All this to say that Gallup’s taste in mayors has improved a lot in the last 47 years, which, even in the midst of the COVID-19 horror show taking place within its borders right now, indicates there is hope . . .

Gallup is a town whose economy relies on Navajos and Zunis converging on weekends to buy needed supplies, everything from groceries to hay to livestock. It also relies on truckers, tourists, hikers and other assorted travelers stopping for a meal or a warm bed. It depends on Native art lovers cruising its Indian jewelry stores or stores like the mayor’s or attending the Inter-Tribal Indian Ceremonial held every year to feature the best in Native arts and dance. There are also bloodsucking businesses:  payday lenders who suck the working poor into an eddy of crippling debt, the alcohol establishments that have no problem plying the already inebriated with liquor or sending them off drunk to terrorize the highways, the homeless and itinerants who panhandle or turn tricks or sell their plasma for change to feed their habits.

The Gallup Inter-Tribal Indian Ceremonial is an annual event that draws an international audience who marvel at Native dances and arts and crafts. COVID-19 will likely threaten the ability to hold the event this year. Photo from www.newmexico.org

I wish Mayor Bonaguidi all the luck and hope in the world. I hope that he and Governor Grisham and Navajo President Jonathan Nez can put their heads together to come up with a COVID-19 battle strategy, like emergency medical teams and testing for the population and for visitors that will allow the city to open (with 100 Abbott portable devices processing 5-minute tests, half the population could be tested in a day). And after the battle is over, Mayor Bonaguidi, you can move on to the next more lasting one: fulfilling Gallup’s potential as a city that thrives not on exploitation of its native citizens and patrons, but instead thrives as an example of a city that honors and sustains the natives on which its economy and soul depend.

Joining Hands: Navajo Town Makes Sterile Gloves for New York First Responders

The old trading post at Church Rock, New Mexico, the town where I had my first post-college job.

When you have an interest that you pursue on Google, the Google gods remember, and sometimes they surprise you with related news items that pop up on your Google home page.

The Google gods know that I have an interest in a small town named Church Rock (population per 2010 census: 1,128). Church Rock lies in Navajo territory on the outskirts of Gallup, New Mexico.

Google probably doesn’t know (but maybe does) that my interest in Church Rock stems from my having taught in the town my first year out of college, but no matter. Google knew I would be intrigued by an article that came out in the Navajo Times this week. The article’s subject is a nitrile glove factory in Church Rock that is now manufacturing medical gloves and shipping them to health care facilities in the Navajo Nation and other US locales struggling to cope with COVID-19. The locales include my home state of New York. (See Navajo Times article on Navajo glove facility.)

Navajo workers make sterile gloves for the medical front lines in the fight against COVID-19 in Navajoland, New York State and other impacted regions. Photo by Donovan Quintero saved from Navajo Times.

Phase One of a joint venture between the Navajo Nation and a company called Rhino Health, LLC, is primed to make 60 million pairs of blue nitrile gloves a year. Per the Navajo Times piece by reporter Donovan Quintero, the Church Rock factory is now churning out 8,000 pairs of gloves an hour and running around the clock. They are striving to keep up with demand while dealing with a shortage of raw material. (Materials have to be shipped from South Korea, home of Rhino Health’s parent company.)

If gloves could talk: In the Beatles’ 1968 film Yellow Submarine, a blue glove (once a weapon on the side of evil) learns how to join hands in the fight against destruction.

When Phase Two is completed, adding significantly more manufacturing space, Church Rock will be generating 1.3 billion pairs of blue sterile gloves a year for medical use.

Because of the Navajo Times article, I Googled keywords “nitrile” and “Church Rock” and found that in 2018, about two years before anyone had ever heard of COVID-19, the Navajo Nation invested $19 million for Rhino Health LLC to build its Church Rock facility that will eventually employ 350 Navajo workers (the state of New Mexico kicked in another $3 million).

News about the Navajo-Rhino Health joint venture was reported in the Albuquerque Journal, and later in the Navajo-Hopi Observer, but never leaked beyond regional boundaries. In the event other media don’t report how Navajo workers in Church Rock are helping first responders face the battle against the virus by providing protective gloves, I feel compelled to leak it here.

The “Church Rock” that gives the town its name. When I first saw the rock formation when I arrived as a teacher, I thought it looked more like a hand than a church. And while America paid no attention when the town encountered devastation from a uranium mine accident forty years ago, Church Rock is now really lending a hand in the COVID-19 crisis. Photo from TripAdvisor credited to 44dave56.

You may not know this about the Navajo town of Church Rock, but in July 1979, a few months after the famous Three Mile Island nuclear incident, Church Rock suffered a devastating radioactive contamination event courtesy of the United Nuclear Mine Corporation.

In 1979, the dam holding back tailings at United Nuclear’s Church Rock mine ruptured, sending 1100 tons of solid radioactive waste and 94 million gallons of radioactive solution into the local water sources and beyond (as far away as 50 miles downstream).

The spill resulted in the largest release of radioactive material in US history (see US government reports, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Rock_uranium_mill_spill).

In the world at large, the Church Rock United Nuclear incident is second only to Chernobyl in terms of long-lasting devastation.

Today, if you ask the Google gods “What’s the worst nuclear disaster?” your search result will likely bring up a Business Insider article that describes the incidents in Chernobyl and Fukushima, the latter caused by the 2011 Tohuku earthquake and tsunami. The article says that Three Mile Island was not nearly as devastating as those two calamities (see: https://www.businessinsider.com/chernobyl-fukushima-three-mile-island-nuclear-disasters-2019-6).

Warning signs mark contaminated Church Rock areas. Photo saved from www.vice.com article “Church Rock, America’s Forgotten Nuclear Disaster, Is Still Poisoning Navajo Lands 40 Years Later.” Will Ford also wrote a followup story for The Washington Post in January of this year.

The Business Insider article doesn’t once mention what happened in Church Rock, New Mexico forty years ago. In Church Rock, the effects of the accident (effects that include kidney disease, cancer, fear of having children . . . ) are being felt to this day (see August 2019 VICE article on lasting impact of Church Rock mine disaster).

A central tenet of Navajo belief is the uniting principle of K’e, or kinship. It begins with caring for the immediate family, extends to the clan, and from there extends to the community as a whole. K’e, in essence, is the concept of how we are all related and thus responsible for each other.

In 1979, when it came to nuclear disasters creating a sense of community, a sense of K’e, the whole country fretted about the dangers facing Americans who lived near Three Mile Island. But what happened in Church Rock four months later didn’t penetrate the country’s consciousness at all. The national media barely mentioned the accident back in the day. It seemed that the people of Church Rock, who faced overwhelming devastation–dead livestock, contaminated water, early mortality–were outside the realm of Americans’ concern. Today, forty years later, the media is paying more attention. But while HBO’s Chernobyl won a slew of Emmy Awards, I haven’t read that there’s any series planned on what happened at Church Rock within our own nation’s borders.

A group of my 5th graders at Church Rock Elementary School, 1976, three years before the United Nuclear accident turned Church Rock into America’s Chernobyl.

In 2020, we are united in our knowledge that COVID-19 is affecting all of us, that the virus is shaping our immediate if not distant future. New York State may be the US epicenter of the virus, but we know that no region of the country is immune, especially not the Navajo Nation.

On the Navajo reservation, a territory of 27,425 square miles where about 40% of the population have to drive a great distance to get a supply of water, COVID-19 cases are spiking (see LA Times on Navajo COVID-19 crisis and NPR article on COVID-19 and Navajo Nation). Nonetheless, the people of Church Rock are working hard to ensure that the folks on the front lines as far away as New York State are safe.

I just thought you should know.

COVID-19 Report: Vulnerable? Who Me?

Italy in better days, when Italians were allowed to be Italian.

At 66, I find myself branded with a category I never expected at my age. In the days of COVID-19, I feel like I have a sign pinned on my back that says, “over 60 and vulnerable.” I am healthy. I live in a suburban home in a New York State county that as of today has only 63 confirmed cases of the virus (that’s an old news number; 3/27 update: 160), while New York City, where a lot of my family live, has over 9,000 (that’s an old news number; 3/27 update: about 23,000). And let’s not even mention Italy, where a thousand vulnerable citizens died in a day, in part because Italians couldn’t grasp the meaning of social distancing.

My health club is closed on orders from Albany, but I walk 2-4 miles daily. I practice yoga. I confess that I did have a cold this winter, but I can’t remember the last time I had one before that. In short, I certainly don’t feel vulnerable, despite what Dr. Fauci says. (But don’t get me wrong; I thank God for Dr. Fauci.)

Then there’s my husband. His profile checks all the boxes of COVID-19 vulnerability. He’s over 80, diabetic, with a couple of arteries held open by stents. One of his Sunday jobs is organizing his medications for the week. But there he is, taking his daily walks along the nearby canal, cherishing the site of herons diving for fish, the scampering of small dogs on these bright mornings of early spring. He’s not feeling very vulnerable either. Yesterday he got a call from our supermarket pharmacy, which is about a half mile from our house. They called to ask how he was feeling, did he need any medications delivered to our door? “I’m okay,” he said. “I’m really okay.” My husband is from the former Soviet Union. When the call from the pharmacy ended, he said, “Wow. America.”

New York City was different a few weeks ago . . .

The State of New York is essentially under lockdown now. I talk to family and friends often . . . those who live here, in New York, LA, London, North Carolina . . . They’re all okay.

But I’ve been worried about a Navajo friend of mine who also has all the vulnerability boxes checked. Even before COVID-19 took over the news cycle, where I suppose it will remain for the foreseeable future, my friend was in poor health. She’s over eighty, has diabetes, high blood pressure. She lives alone on the rez, and recently, when she’s called for an ambulance for various non-COVID-19 health crises, she was told an ambulance couldn’t reach her due to road conditions. She lives off US Rte. 64 on a road that I’d experienced a couple of years ago on a good weather day. For fans of bumper cars and pogo sticks, the ride to her house is a rollicking good time. Navajo roads are notoriously awful, preventing kids from getting to school, and, in my friend’s case, the sick from getting to a clinic that could help them get well. You can bet that, regardless of her age and underlying health conditions, my friend is not getting any calls from a pharmacy offering to deliver necessary meds to her door.

A solitary steer in Canyon de Chelly. Social distancing is part of the very fabric of being in the Navajo desert.

I check on my friend by email, text or phone from time to time to see how she’s doing, if she has help, if she might be considering accepting care of relatives off the rez. I checked last week as the COVID-19 collective consciousness swelled, and I didn’t hear from her, and so I fretted. When I read that I am “vulnerable,” I want to shout, “Don’t tell me I’m vulnerable! I know who’s vulnerable!”

Social distancing at Costco, standing 6 ft. behind the person in front of me at the checkout line.

I know Britain toyed with ordering “vulnerable seniors” to stay home until July. Then Governor Gavin Newsom mandated that most Californians stay home. My millennial son is coping with this. Our own Governor Cuomo followed Newsom’s lead. And I’m happy to fall in line and stay home (save trips to buy groceries), maintain social distancing, take my walks and do yoga to free videos on YouTube.

But I think about my Navajo friend. Who’s buying her groceries? I wonder. Who’s making sure she’s safe?

Today, my questions were answered, because my friend replied to my text. She is feeling better and is being careful. She has a mask. She wears gloves when she shops. I had asked her if she was alone. She replied that she had too much company, which she defined as “crows that scold . . . hawks that smirk . . . dogs that beg . . . cats that remind her she forgot milk.” With all the frenzy around social distancing in these days, it’s easy to overlook that living a solitary life is not anathema to many who live in the desert, or in the mountains, or maybe around the corner.

My house is situated near an expressway, where there is usually a rush of traffic that, if I can wax romantic, sounds like ocean waves. But there’s very little traffic now. Now, when I step outside, I can hear the chirping of birds . . . every single chirp. So let’s take stock, breathe the fresh air, pitch our ears to sounds we couldn’t hear before, stay connected while living apart. When we eat through our supply of pasta, we can take heart that we’re not in Italy. We’ll adjust. We’ll give virtual hugs and blow virtual kisses. We’ll get through this.

If this is lockdown, I’m ok with it.

R. C. Gorman: Artistic Shoes Left Behind

Walking Women (from Homage to Navajo Women Suite) by R.C. Gorman

A while ago I’d learned that one of my former employers, Northland Press in Flagstaff, AZ, closed its doors after shifting focus from books on the art and culture of the American West to children’s books.

I’d worked at Northland in the 1970s, first as assistant editor under Rick Stetter, who went on to a great future in regional publishing. When Rick left, I took his place as editor under the direction of Northland’s founder, Paul Weaver.

Cover of Scholder/Indians, Northland Press, 1971.



The artists covered in Northland’s books included a long roster of Native American painters, sculptors, potters and jewelry designers: Fritz Scholder, R.C. Gorman, Charles Loloma, Allan Houser, Helen Cordero, Grace Medicine Flower . . . Weaver and company presented the depth and scope of these artists vibrantly, on pages of fine-coated paper stitched together between clothbound, embossed covers.

Cover of R.C. Gorman: The Lithographs, Northland Press, 1978

The last book I worked on at Northland before heading out the door was R.C. Gorman: The Lithographs by Doris Monthan, published in 1978.

I have mixed feelings about R.C. Gorman, a prolific Navajo artist who seemed to churn out images of women in his sleep. He died in 2005 at age 74.

When I lived in New Mexico, Gorman ran his art enterprise from his Taos spread and threw lavish parties there. (I’d missed the boat on another Northland-Gorman outing: Nudes and Foods: Gorman Goes Gourmet, published in 1981. ) Gorman’s legacy is tainted by an ultimately dropped FBI investigation into his possible involvement in a pedophile ring, but that’s for someone else to discuss.

My own reservations about Gorman aside, my late mother adored his work, which is why I gave her my copy of the Gorman lithograph book, a parting gift from Northland that’s now back on my shelf.

My parents had purchased and framed a poster of one of Gorman’s ubiquitous Navajo women to decorate a wall of their old condo outside of Fort Lauderdale, FL. And when I saw it hanging there so many years ago, I wondered how many other Florida condos featured a blissful Gorman female, soft-hued, serene, drawn in simple lines (but barely any on the face), hands and feet large but neither calloused nor veiny.

Gorman’s Young Navajo Woman: No shoes — a feature of his Homage to Navajo Women suite.



My problem with Gorman’s work is that there’s no grit, no irony, not a lot that’s honest when it comes to his portrayals of Navajo women, of the toughness it takes to run a sheep and horse ranch off the power grid, in a land of harsh sun and wind, with no running water. Like, none of Gorman’s women cover their feet. What’s with bare feet in the desert?

A younger Navajo contemporary of Gorman, artist Ed Singer nails the character of the Navajo matriarch, and Navajo life generally, in many of his works. (You can query about Ed’s work at artjuicestudio@gmail.com. Disclosure: Singer is a friend of mine).

Woman in Chair by Ed Singer. Note the woman has her feet covered and clearly dominates her space though seated in a folding chair.

I don’t know if anyone asked Gorman back in his heyday, but after being raised on the rez, did Gorman believe his depictions of Navajo women truly paid them homage or was it that they proved so ideal for his bank account that he couldn’t stop them coming?

Even today, many Florida, Scottsdale, and suburban homes have a poster of the “native woman ideal by Gorman” on the wall, or on coasters under a served round of drinks. I wonder, if he were alive today, would Gorman be like Peter Max, compulsively striving to keep the coffers filled by churning out his pretty women to be auctioned off on cruise ships?

Last week, I pulled R.C. Gorman: The Lithographs off my bookshelf and browsed its pages. I’d forgotten that it included not only the lithographs with women as subject matter, but also a few rug designs, a few male nudes and other assorted “native life” images. But the eyeopener for me was this quote from R.C. Gorman in the biography section:

Said Gorman: “I have been using the design motifs of Indian rugs and pottery for my paintings because one day these things are going to be no more. They are going to be lost, and it is going to happen soon. It’ll be a white America by A.D. 2000. The Indian art that people are enjoying—the rugs and pottery—are no longer going to be there. . .  I am amused that I sell my rug paintings for more than the rug sells for; perhaps the paintings are worth more in the long run. Moths hate polymers.”

Hubris R.C. Gorman had aplenty, prescience not so much.

The above-mentioned quote prompted me to do a web search. There’s a gorgeous 36” by 23” rug by contemporary Navajo weaver Ruby Watchman for sale on navajorug.com for $3765.

Navajo weaver Ruby Watchman displays her “Mini-Serape” on sale for $3765 at navajorug.com

There’s a 27.5” x 30.25” Gorman lithograph of naked woman sprawled out on a Navajo rug for $1200 on herndonfineart.com.

Navajo Rug by R.C. Gorman, hand-signed and numbered lithograph for sale on herndonfineart.com

A.D. 2000: a “white America “. . . “Indian art that people are enjoying . . .  no longer going to be there. ” . . . Well, R.C., too bad you weren’t able to stick around for Ruby Watchman, Cleo Johnson, Donald Yazzie, Sadie Charlie . . . and so many more contemporary Navajo weavers in full and glorious view on Pinterest.

Apsáalooke Feminist #3, Apsáalooke Feminist Series, 2016, by Wendy Red Star. Photo Courtesy of Vogue.com



And too bad you didn’t live to see the heights where native women like Wendy Red Star (see wendyredstar.com) and Teri Greeves (see terigreevesbeadwork.com) are taking things in terms of craft and native female presence.

It’s 2020 now. R.C. Gorman, wherever you are, you may want to start covering women’s feet with these:

Beaded basketball shoes by Kiowa artist Teri Greeves. Image Courtesy of terigreevesbeadwork.com

Night Chant at the Opera: Healing Harmonies

Winter Dawn Ceremony Inside the Tepee by Virgil Nez. (Photo of the work on itmonline.org)

I am looking out at my snow covered yard in suburban upstate New York, remembering an event from over forty years ago that winks from the shadows, coaxing me out of the winter blues. Here it is:

Car Trouble En Route to a Night Chant

I was driving alone in pitch darkness of winter on the Navajo rez when suddenly the undercarriage of my Toyota sedan got hung up on the sand.

I’d been trying to make my way to a Navajo Night Chant ceremony taking place somewhere I now cannot name. I’d been following the sporadically placed signs that pointed the way to the ceremony with growing confidence, until that moment when my car succumbed to the relentless grip of soft earth. (For an eye-opening report on Navajo roadways, see Amy Linn’s piece The Navajo Nation’s horrendous roads keep killing people and holding students hostage, but nothing changes on centerforhealthjounalism.org).

A young woman alone in the desert that night, with a car that wouldn’t budge . . . What could I do? I sat on the cold desert ground certainly feeling vulnerable (though the reservation crime stats then were not as dire as they are now). But at the same time I was hopeful that someone would come along, and that the someone would reinforce my faith in humanity as so many Navajo people had done during my time on the rez.

I awaited rescue on a Navajo desert road in winter. Photo by Conner Baker on unsplash.com

It wasn’t long before I saw headlights in the distance . . . an approaching pickup likely headed to the same ceremony I still yearned to witness. I stood up and waved my arms. The headlights blinked, signaling me to step out of the way. Then the truck slowed to a crawl and pulled right up to touch the rear of my car. The driver motioned with his hands for me to get back behind the wheel. When I turned on the engine and shifted into neutral, the pickup gently pushed me out of the sand trap, freeing me up to continue on my way. I waved a thank you as the pickup passed me, and I followed my rescuer all the way to where the Night Chant was taking place.

I’d hoped to more strongly express my gratitude when we reached what I thought was our mutual destination, but the pickup sped forward and away into the night when we hit the parking area, its passengers having folks to meet, I supposed.

My rescuer and I never exchanged a word.

Grace, Fires and Chanting Warm the Night

With this rescuer who’d emerged from darkness only to suddenly disappear from view, I was beholden to spiritual forces even before I entered the Night Chant circle with a hogan at its zenith, the doings inside of it shrouded in mystery. I stepped into the realm of pinon scented air, warm fires, strong coffee, bubbling stew, and a gracious vibe that emanated from the folks who’d gathered to participate in the winter ceremony.

When the Yei Bi Cheii (Grandfather Gods) dancers emerged into the firelight and began to chant, I was sitting beside a family that had made room for me, again through wordless gesture. Like my gracious hosts, I was bundled up in blankets and, though struggling to stay warm, I was feeling perhaps as peaceful as I’d ever felt in my twenty odd years. At one point, I was lulled to sleep by the smoke and the cold. My hosts awakened me in time to join them in wishing the Grandfather Gods farewell at dawn.

Yei Bi Cheii chants recorded by ethnomusicologist Laura Boulton (b.1899, d. 1980)

A New Kind of Chanting

Flash forward to my senior self in winter, now yearning for bygone days while living in the land of my snowbelt roots. Like my late mother, I’m an opera fan. When I was a girl, my mom and I used to listen to opera broadcasts when we found ourselves at home together on a winter weekend afternoon. These days, I hit the Met from time to time if a New York City visit coincides with something I want to see, or I’ll sometimes go to a movie theatre to watch a Met broadcast “live in HD”.

So, as a semi opera buff with fondest memories of Navajoland, I was intrigued when I learned that, about ten years ago, a work called Enemy Slayer, billed as a Navajo oratorio, premiered in Phoenix as part of the Phoenix Symphony Orchestra’s 60th anniversary celebration.

The oratorio features a libretto by poet Laura Tohe, who was recently named poet laureate of the Navajo Nation (for more information about Ms. Tohe, see https://www.lauratohe.com/).

NAXOS CD Recording of Enemy Slayer: A Navajo Oratorio

The story of Enemy Slayer concerns a soldier haunted by events of war who is guided into healing by the chanting of ancient Navajo prayer. (Note: The actual Navajo ceremony for returning warriors, the Enemy Way, is a warmer weather event that involves feasting and dancing and other community activity to bring a spiritually wounded warrior back into balance.)

I ordered the oratorio Enemy Slayer once I learned it was obtainable on CD, and I anticipated that in listening, I might be drawn back into that memory of getting unstuck by grace and chanting on a desert night in the middle of winter so long ago.

I was in for a bit of disappointment. I had expected to hear an oratorio in the Navajo language, but Laura Tohe composed the libretto in English, with only a smattering of Navajo sprinkled here and there. The text, filled with Navajo prayer refrains (e.g., “Child of dawn/Child of daylight/Child of evening twilight/Child of darkness”), portrays the trauma and confusion of the universal soldier: “I’m in a world of pain/I’m hard core/I seek and destroy the enemy/This is my war horse/I charge the enemy/I am the hometown hero!/I am a child of war/I am lost . . . “

Navajo warriors from another time: Photo courtesy of the Navajo Times

Tohe’s text was translated into Navajo by Jennifer Wheele, but you have to go online to see the translation ( see https://www.naxos.com/sharedfiles/PDF/8.559604_sungtext.pdf# for full libretto in English and Navajo).

Will the oratorio one day be performed in Navajo? I wish it could be so, but who knows? When Enemy Slayer was performed in Phoenix, photographs of Navajoland by Deborah O’Grady were projected for the audience to provide the sense of place as the chorus sang in the concert hall.

Tohe told me that a Navajo woman in the audience remarked that “the performance was like a ceremony, with the conductor as the medicine man, the baritone singer as the patient and the chorus as the extended family singing for the patient.” Tohe had also asked that the women chorus members be seated on one side and the men on the other side of the stage “per seating in the hogan during a ceremony.”

Laura Tohe, named Navajo Nation Poet Laureate in 2015. Photo courtesy Arizona Highways (arizonahighways.com)

Laura Tohe’s latest project is Nahasdzaan (Mother Earth) in the Glittering World, a cutting edge dance oratorio with music composed by Thierry Pécou, choreography by Luc Petton. The premiere performance (sung in English with French subtitles) last year at Normandy’s Opera de Rouen received overwhelming praise from the international press. The work will be performed in Grenoble, France on April 17 this year (4/17/20 UPDATE: due to COVID-19, the premiere is delayed until 2021. Here’s a glimpse on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hI8pkLWO7o4).

In an interview on Pécou’s website (Ensemble Variances) Tohe summed up her hope for the work, which presents the Navajo creation story via music and dance, and with live animals performing onstage: “Like any artist,” said Tohe, “my hope is that the audience will appreciate the work as a hybrid that takes a Navajo story and classical music as a way to create a statement about healing.

Ceremonial fare: Mutton Stew and Fry Bread to be accompanied by cups of strong coffee

I began this piece by conveying a memory of being physically and spiritually transported on the rez when no words were spoken at all. And I’ve landed here, with this wish regarding  the performance of a new Laura Tohe opera: that coffee and stew be served during intermission.

Cultural Appropriation Police Report, 1975

A white New Mexico State Trooper teaching Indian Painting inspired the New Yorker in me

In 1975, when I taught on the Navajo rez outside of Gallup, the state of New Mexico didn’t fund kindergarten, let alone art education. If I wanted my kids to paint, weave, sculpt, then it was up to me to add art to the list of subjects I was hired to teach in my classroom. It is worth noting without too much emphasis that I landed my teaching job on the rez after graduating from Vassar, where I never took a fine art class and would have been an idiot to think I belonged in the college’s creative arts talent pool.

Though I wasn’t an anthropology major (and Native Studies didn’t exist back then) I knew that art and craft loomed large in Navajo culture. So not wanting to be a total fraud, I signed up for a night class called “Indian Painting” at the University of New Mexico Gallup Branch.

It turned out I was one of the few female students in the class as well as one of the youngest. I was not the only white person, however. There was one other, that being our instructor, whose name I remember to this day. I will refer to him by his initials, LS, so as not to disturb his ghost.

1975 UNM Gallup Art Instructor Seal of Approval

LS was a New Mexico state trooper. He looked like he could be an extra in a Hollywood film about Texas Rangers. But LS was an ARTIST. You could tell because he dressed all in black—black jeans, black shirt, black cowboy boots. And he had a shiny Navajo silver buckle on his black belt, which I guess advertised his cred for teaching art to a class of mostly Navajos and Zunis. His stride and swagger, though, spoke of his true profession.

LS had a formula he wanted all of his students to copy. His formula was simple: Paint four images of Pueblo pots, one in each corner of your canvas. And in the middle of the space, paint an “Indian” sun symbol (e.g., the emblem of the State of New Mexico). Toss in some corn and lightning symbols in the rest of the space, and voila: surefire Indian painting success! LS showed us his many Indian paintings and boasted that he made up to $75 a piece. If he could do it, we could too!!

LS Indian Painting Element #1: Pueblo Pot
LS Indian Painting Element #2: Sun Symbol
LS Indian Painting Element #3: Corn or other symbols

I was seated at a worktable (no easels needed apply) with three males, one of whom was my age. The other two seemed to be in their late thirties or early forties.

As I said, I was a young graduate of Vassar College, and though I was the lone female and lone white at the table, I said to my tablemates: “Are you going to put up with this??” Everyone laughed, and we made a communal decision: No, we weren’t. We decided to start a new art movement, a Navajo take on Dada (my age mate at the table, who would eventually become a renowned non-traditional silversmith, knew all about Dada). We called it DOODA (pronounced doh’dah’), which is Navajo for NO. An older tablemate had a buddy at the table in front of us and roped him into our DOODA movement.

DOODA used in modern Navajo resistance: This graphic says “No Uranium”

We churned out paintings that made LS speechless, shaking his head in disappointment. When he strutted around giving tours of the assembly line he called “Indian painting,” LS brusquely guided his guests past our tables without a pause.

My tablemates and I painted masterpieces of anything we wanted. Images of Navajo Yei figures as electrical towers, of horses that flew into the heavens, of sheep lying shot and dead in the desert said DOODA to our State Trooper art instructor. While we painted, we discussed topics of the day, circa 1975: Lynette Squeaky Fromme, Sarah Jane Moore (female would-be assassins of Gerald Ford). We told jokes, named favorite comedians (one tablemate said he prayed that George Burns would live to at least his 100th birthday).

My final art project as a 22 year old Jewish transplant from the East Coast? Well, this was 1975, and New York City was on the brink of default, which is one reason why I came to the rez in the first place. New York City laid off 2000 teachers when I graduated from college, and I had decided that if I couldn’t teach in New York, I didn’t want to teach in any city at all.

New York City Mayor Abe Beame

So as an adios to LS, I painted “Grandfather Gods Take Manhattan,” a New York cityscape lit by a Navajo moon and shrouded in clouds of doom, with Navajo Grandfather Gods (Yeibicheii) flying overhead with their healing bundles to the rescue (see above). I’d also cut out and attached a photo of New York Mayor Abe Beame, but the mayor somehow disappeared from the work during my many moves years hence.

LS gave my rudimentary work a B+, with no comments.

Loving Basketball with Reservations

When I was a novice teacher on the Navajo Nation way back in the day, I was concerned about a particular student who rarely showed up in my fifth grade classroom. Our school principal offered this encouragement without a hint of irony: “Don’t worry about him,” he said. “That kid’s a good basketball player. He won’t miss a game.” The kid in question was ten years old.

Basketball is beloved on the Navajo rez. When played in a large high school arena the game is a community magnet. In an expansive desert homeland where one’s closest neighbor could be miles away on unpaved and rutted roads, community gatherings are a challenge, especially in the winter. In the old days during the months that now define basketball season, relatives would come together to play the Shoe Game and tell the ancient Navajo creation stories, stories of ancestral emergence through past worlds into this, the “Glittering World” of today. The Shoe Game, a sort of shell game where a small ball is hidden inside one of many moccasins, is seeing a revival, but basketball is the thing that really pulls in a crowd from far and wide.

NY Times sportswriter views life on the Navajo rez from the vantage point of high school basketball

Canyon Dreams: A Basketball Season on the Navajo Nation, a new book by NY Times sportswriter Michael Powell (Blue Rider Press) (https://www.amazon.com/Canyon-Dreams-Basketball-Season-Navajo/ ) and the Netflix Original docuseries Basketball or Nothing developed by pro golfer Rickie Fowler both poignantly portray the trials and triumphs of the Chinle High School Wildcats, a Navajo Nation basketball team coached by Raul Mendoza. The team’s brand of basketball is rez ball. When played at its best, rez ball spectacularly coalesces skill, speed and mind meld into a force as mystical and uplifting as the Navajo landscape. With all these elements in sync, players of slight build can put away more muscular, towering challengers, especially under Mendoza’s direction.

Both Powell’s book and the Netflix series juxtapose the young Chinle players and their coach against the too familiar tropes of reservation despair. Alcohol and substance abuse, joblessness, broken families, transgenerational trauma form the backdrop of many players’ lives. The game gives them a chance to control their destiny for 32 minutes of play while living in a land that, though magnificent and awesome, threatens to be devoid of promise for many if not most of them.

Part Navajo pro golfer Rickie Fowler developed the popular Netflix series

Between Powell’s book and the Netflix series, Basketball or Nothing may be the more cynical of the two titles, but it’s not far off. Because what doors will open for the kids of Chinle, AZ (area population about 5000; poverty rate 50%) when high school basketball days are over? For the academically talented, good colleges await if the kids are helped to navigate the scholarship application process and their families don’t dissuade them from leaving the rez and their roots. One player featured by both Powell and Netflix gets a free ride to ASU, but not to play basketball (he’s only five feet six). He’s a good, solid student aiming to study electrical engineering, and he’s also good at track and field.

Michael Powell writes about one Harvard-bound kid, Keanu, an avid learner with superhuman drive. Keanu lives in a trailer with his grandmother and writes his essays on his cellphone due to a lack of internet connection. He opens all of his college admission responses on his laptop when on break from his cashier job at Burger King. Besides Harvard, Keanu was accepted at Dartmouth, Brown, Columbia, Swarthmore and Case Western Reserve. Here’s the thing: he never played basketball, but he’s a devoted fan. Per the Netflix series, two players who landed actual basketball scholarships are headed to a place called Southwest Indian Assembly of God University, where the majors offered on campus are countable on one hand (Ministry is one of them).

Back to that ten-year-old student of mine who rarely showed up in class but wouldn’t miss a game. The summer before school started, his grandparents and his father all perished in a single car accident that involved their two vehicles in a head on collision.

For many years of Raul Mendoza’s long career of coaching high school basketball, he was also a guidance counselor. Coach Mendoza, a septuagenarian master almost Buddha like in wisdom and patience, told this to Michael Powell: “Do you know what I’m proudest of in this life? Not a single one of those teenagers I counseled committed suicide. They lived, every single one of them.”

The Navajo Times recently reported that Basketball or Nothing will be filming its second season. Let’s hope that the Chinle Wildcats and all young basketball players on the vast Navajo Nation will realize many dreams in their upcoming seasons on and off the court, on or off the rez, within or outside of the canyons where they dwell. Let’s hope their futures will be blessed with lots of good somethings beyond basketball.

Denny’s is the Best Restaurant in Town

Rock formation in Canyon de Chelly kissing the midday sun
Canyon de Chelly: A Light Shines on the Navajo Past and Present

When we saw “Salisbury Steak” listed on the cafeteria “Specials” board at the Thunderbird Lodge near Canyon de Chelly, my sister logged into Trip Advisor for restaurant recommendations.

This wasn’t my first time in Chinle, so I was rather amused at the oxymoronic concept that Chinle appeared in the headline of  anyone’s “Best Restaurants” list. The last time I was in this small town in Navajoland, the restaurant of choice for the locals was the A&W.

Based on Trip Advisor ranking, my sister, niece and I went to The Junction, and we ate what we ordered until our hunger subsided. We’d had a full breakfast in Cortez, been on the road since morning, and it was now after 7 PM. There isn’t much to say about the restaurant Trip Advisor designated as No. 1 in Chinle except for one remarkable thing. Earlier in the day, a friend had read us a poem about the disappearance of black hairnets, but it was clear at The Junction that black hairnets hadn’t disappeared at all from Navajoland. Rather, they had swarmed onto the heads of the restaurant’s busy servers like delegates at a national hairnet convention.

In the morning, Dave Wilson, our Navajo guide into Canyon de Chelly, pointed out the new Denny’s sign on the way to the park. Denny’s  beamed out its shiny red and yellow welcome high above the essential emptiness that is Chinle.

“It opened last year,” Dave Wilson said. Though his tone betrayed no excitement, the fact that he mentioned it at all gave us a clue that perhaps we should go there before leaving town.

Exterior photo of Denny's in Chinle, Navajoland
Denny’s in Chinle, Navajoland

“You know, the good Mexican place closed down,” Dave said, and I wondered if the Mexican place he was talking about was where I had a Navajo taco back in 1980.

Dave Wilson and his family have a long history in Chinle and in the Canyon. They were the cultural consultants on the video shown at the Canyon de Chelly Visitor Center. Dave still nurtures fruit trees on the canyon floor—“peaches, pears, apples . . .couldn’t do grapefruit or oranges, though. Not enough year round heat.” He pointed out his house on a small rise in town.

Dave’s father lived to the ripe old age of 102. Dave sighed after he told us this, betraying that reaching a milestone like that didn’t happen much anymore. “We didn’t know about drugs back then. Drugs and alcohol . . . that’s what the kids know.” In the canyon, Dave explained that the tribe had to take down the wooden ladders that tourists used to climb to the ruins in the rocks. “We got to protect,” he said. “There’s vandalism. We got to protect the homes of the ancients.”

My niece asked Dave about Kit Carson and the atrocities he led against the Navajo in the canyon in the 1860s. “He was a friend to a lot of tribes,” Dave said. “Cheyenne, Arapaho. He was a scout. Then the US government paid him a lot of money to round us up. He starved us. He blocked us off in the winter with boulders.”

I tried to wrap my head around the fact that Canyon de Chelly, one of the most spectacular and spiritual places on earth, had been the Navajos’ Warsaw Ghetto.

“He retired comfortably up in Taos, you know,” Dave continued about old Kit. “He settled down, had fun, watched his videos.”

Petroglyphs on a sunlit rock in Canyon de Chelly
The rocks with tell their tales long after we’re gone

The Navajo signed a treaty and made it back to their borders marked by the four sacred mountains in 1868.

And now there’s a Denny’s as bright as day in Chinle. We had lunch there. Its hostess was cheerful and cheering. “I need to tell you it may take 30 minutes for your food to come out, because we’re so busy,” she said. We assured her that was fine.

The patrons were mostly Navajo. A health care worker sat at the table across from us. She wore a crisp, colorful uniform designed to brighten a patient’s mood. She was wearing a red ribbon HIV awareness pin. The health center in Chinle is a big employer. “160 beds,” Dave told us.

Our Denny’s server was energetic and eager to please. I had a club sandwich, and, compared to my hamburger at The Junction, my Denny’s sandwich was a piece of heaven. Make note: Denny’s now sits at No. 4 on the Trip Advisor’s “Chinle’s Best” list.

Red Beautyway Tours jeep and my niece in Canyon de Chelly
My niece ponders the dramatic history of the canyon

Gloria, Shiprock Spirit Woman

The Shiprock--Tsé Bit’a’í--literally, the Rock that has Wings
The Shiprock. In Navajo, Tsé Bit’a’í–literally, the Rock that has Wings.

Gloria Emerson, Navajo artist, poet, educator, entrepreneur, hired me in the late 1970s to work on Navajo school curricula for reasons that remain out of grasp. When I visited with her last week for the first time in over 30 years near Shiprock in the Navajo Nation, neither of us could remember what brought us together all those eons ago. Since our long gone days as boss and employee, we have traveled many roads. We each published a book. Mine is now passé; Gloria’s is a timeless and bountiful collection of color, wit and humility.

Gloria’s book “At the Hems of the Lowest Clouds” is filled with  poetry and paintings she created after the age of 50, when she decided to go to art school. She took this path after leaving the curriculum gig to serve as director of a school for unwed teen mothers, and then as head of a community service organization in Navajoland.  Gloria says that at 50, she was viewed by the much younger student body at art school with suspicion. “They never saw me with my protest signs,” she said.

Gloria Emerson's painting of horses loping through the seasons
Gloria’s pastel, “Four Seasons.”

Gloria is around 80 now. She likes to joke. Her humor is dry, like the land she lives in. If you’re not sure she’s joking, the sparkle in her eye gives her away. She lives alone, some eight miles from Shiprock, in a home as open and welcoming as the spirit of the woman who lives there. She recently sold eight paintings at a show in Farmington. She’s sticking with poetry now, saying that painting has gotten harder. Her house is alive with the works of her past, paintings and ceramics, and with objects acquired by a sharp and whimsical eye.

Gloria once had a café cum gallery off New Mexico Rte. 491 that she’d opened after leaving Santa Fe. Her cafe had boasted the only espresso for miles, and she’d made a go of it by putting up a sign saying “Espresso.” The road through her community is flat, and the sign could be seen from miles away. “I got lots of tourist business,” said Gloria. But the cafe was robbed too many times and so she shut the doors.

It is grey with foreboding, the landscape where Gloria lives. The waste water spill from the Gold King Mine in 2015 hit her neighbors hard. Shiprock, the closest town, has an undercurrent of rage at a hopelessness that rears up to strike its own.

Gloria lost her younger brother to cancer last year. Her brother helped shape the family home where Gloria now dwells and writes and entertains. Folks come, give impromptu barbecues. During our visit, my niece gave her impromptu tech help on her new computer, with its all new operating system.

My sister fell in love with one of her paintings, and Gloria sold it to her, naming a price that underestimated its value. It’s hanging like a ray of sunshine at my niece’s in Colorado now.

Outdoor display of Gloria Emerson's wood and stone collectibles
Touches of a desert poet

Gloria’s home had a recent break in, but she can still joke in the face of it all. She writes her poetry, reads it to her audience with a playful wink. She read us this poem on our visit:

Blackbirds in Shiprock

Grace put her black hairnet on her dresser before she left.

No one wears black hairnets anymore.

The old women who used to wear them

Seem to have all left Shiprock.

But the black hairnets return every winter,

Stretched out, twirling in the sky…

Forming cylinders, diving, bouncing onto brown farmlands,

And just as suddenly

Bouncing back into the cold blue sky,

Diving, playing

Perhaps remembering the old women who wore them

When the women were young and joyful

Laughing and dancing even in the coldest winters in Shiprock.

Gloria herself doesn’t wear a hairnet. Her gray hair falls gently down her neck, her long, still agile fingers fold gracefully in her lap as she tells her stories.

The world should listen.

Gloria Emerson sitting at her table
Gloria at Home