A Ripe Restaurant, Foot Massage and Mundy's Gap

El Paso, Texas is at once everything you expect - and nothing that you expect.  There is a fence that runs along the border. We'll get to that. And unless you've been off-planet, you've heard about the insanity that is Juarez, Mexico. We'll get to that, too. But over the years I've become a little miffed when I say that I'm going to El Paso and some smart-ass in the room says, "oh, I'm sorry." Nothing to be sorry about. I'm certainly not sorry. And I can provide some information for education and edification.

I left San Antonio at 6:30 a.m. It was still dark, and I was on a state highway until I reached I-10 in Boerne. While I cruised along dealing with my depth perception issues and a dark, freshly resurfaced highway, assertive pickups followed closely (read: rode my ass). And on this dark highway, there was the only wildlife casualty in 7,000 miles - I hit either an armadillo or a possum. Whatever it was, I now understand the term "mosey" , because whatever the creature, it was not moving fast. Probably worn out from a long night doing whatever possums or armadillos do. I haven't run over very many members of the wild kingdom in my lifetime, and whenever I do, I feel sick to my stomach knowing that I directly caused the death of another being. The thud was followed by, "oh, nonononononono...!" And, "oh, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry ..." I don't know who I was apologizing to, but I was truly so sorry. Not an auspicious beginning.

I-10 winds through hill country for awhile, and the drive was serene. Even the 18-wheelers seemed nicer.

Somewhere around Ft. Stockton, the hill country became desert. I was there for the transition, in my car, driving, looking. OK, maybe gapping out a little bit. But the actual moment snuck by me until there I was, looking at wind chargers in the desert, much like what's just north of Palm Springs on I-10. This great swath of the country from Montana all the way down to the border and even into the Southwest is one big wind tunnel.

It's not a short drive between San Antonio and El Paso; it's about 550 miles, eight hours. So it still took me until 2 p.m. to reach the city, and then I had to find my sister's place. Here is where technology failed me - my iphone map app. I drove easily ten miles out my way through the city. Why does this thing ignore shorter routes? Why does it always stick to major highways? Why can't I re-program it or choose my route? It was 3 p.m. by the time I got to the house. An extra hour finding my way through the city. It was not a simpler route. Apple - are you listening?

I consoled myself with the knowledge that my sister and her husband and I were going to dinner at a little restaurant called Ripe. Back in April we all ate there before the Nora Jones concert, and I had requested a return. Ripe is a funky little bistro set in a strip mall (everything is in a strip mall now, it seems). The main reason I wanted to return was for the sweet potato fries. And I'm not a huge fan of sweet potato fries, but these are done crispy and served with cilantro ranch dressing for dipping. Not a big ranch dressing fan, either, but this - this is not your typical ranch. The soy ginger calamari is also terrific, and I had the shrimp taco appetizer as an entree. Last time I was there, it was the barbecue salmon sandwich, which can feed a family of four. Visiting my sister in EP is always enjoyable, not only because she's cool and her husband is cool, but because there's usually some sort of food dysfunction that happens. In April, there was the brownie and ice cream dinner. This time, it was sweet potato fries at Ripe. I couldn't manage to scam a photograph from their website, but if you're heading to EP and want a fabulous meal, check out their site: www.eatripe.com.

I'm not good with food guilt, so the next day we went hiking at Mundys Gap. It's a nice out-and-back trail that runs about 3.5 miles and takes a couple hours to complete. Elevation gain is about 1300 feet, and at the top, there's a panoramic view of the entire valley.

Along the way, we encountered local wildlife. The lizard was posing, I swear. I kept getting closer and closer and he moved only to give me a better view. If I had brought a fan, he would have been working the wind.

Farther along, we saw a furry critter that I have never seen in its natural environment - a tarantula. It also posed. Clearly the Park Service is training the wildlife.

Although I'm old enough to know these things, I learned yet another lesson about the importance of sun screen. I thought I had put enough on, but I guess there's no such thing as too much SPF, because I got a good one and ended up peeling a week later.

Once we got showered up, we headed out to use up a gift certificate that sister had for foot massage. This was not your average foot massage. When the little lady saw that my jeans weren't going to fold up over my knees, she had  me remove them, tucking a towel around me and clucking. This place had giant recliners, and two-foot tall baskets in which to soak your feet and legs up to the crook of your knee in hot water. Until they started working over the tootsies. I was in a daze by the time we left. And since dinner was a nutrition conscious helping of fish and salad and other good things, we decamped to Dairy Queen afterward for a treat. Yes, there's much mention of Dairy Queen in this blog.

Next, El Corazon de El Paso.

Paseo del Rio

After remembering the Alamo, I headed past the Guinness World Records Museum, Ripley's Believe It or Not and the Plaza Wax Museum on Alamo Plaza, found the steps and ended up down by what's left of the San Antonio River, what is called the San Antonio River Walk.

I had been to the River Walk a few years back during a Christmas or Thanksgiving holiday with sisters and brothers-in-law and extended families.A whole pack of us got on one of the boats that cruise the waterways with a guide who rattled off all sorts of information and statistics and anecdotes. I did what I usually did at the time - absorbed very little and thought about the leftovers waiting in the frige. So I when I reached the walkway, I had a modicum of knowledge to draw upon besides - "oh, this looks kind of familiar."

According to the website thesanantonioriverwalk.com, the San Antonio River Walk is the number one tourist attraction in Texas.  Built as a flood control measure, it is essentially a canal system that winds through the city. The first construction of the waterway started in the 1920s, and the latest extension (to the San Antonio Museum of Art) was completed in 2009. My goal was to reach that museum, even though it was a little more than 1.5 miles one way. On the way there (or on the way back) I planned to stop at the Southwest School of Art and Craft to explore their gift shop and gallery. It was a good plan.

What really happened: I walked a quarter mile in the wrong direction, got turned back around in the right direction, asked directions again when my cute sundress became soaked through with girlsweat and I had decided to stop at the school first, and was sure I should have been there by now, then exited the River Walk too soon and had to consult the map on my i-phone to find the school, and when I reached the gallery I was told that the show had been taken down the day before and gosh, they were so sorry. So I found my way to the original campus and the little cafe and the gift shop. When in doubt, eat and spend money.

The Southwest School of Art and Craft resides in what was once a convent, established in 1851 when seven Catholic nuns arrived in San Antonio and founded the first school for girls in the city.  Buildings are elegant two-stories constructed of native limestone. The website notes that as the campus expanded, architecture was supervised by Francois Giraud, I assume to keep the look uniform. The site is included on the National Register of Historic Places.

By the time I walked in, I was desperate for only two things - air conditioning and a bathroom. Strolling along a canal that is one story below street level, I experienced little breeze. Did I mention is was about 95 with 85 percent humidity? (Not hyperbole.) Anything resembling a good hair day was in the distant past. And my dress was literally soaked through in some unbecoming places. Smile and walk fast.

I did order lunch, a turkey melt with a salad that was summarily disappointing. However, the gift shop was not. I spent at least an hour examining tiles, vases, earrings, charms, cards, coin purses, shoulder bags, ceramics, silk scarves, and more stuff I can't even remember. Considering my bank balance and my role in fiscal responsibility, I decided to explore the outer campus.

I'd like to tell you that I immersed myself in the history of the place, took a docent-led tour (they do have docents) asked lots of questions and absorbed all the information offered. But I did not. I was exhausted and still hot and dehydrated and worst of all, still hungry. So I sat down on a lovely stone bench (with a plaque attached stating just who donated the thing, or the money for the thing - more about ownership tags later) and stared at a fountain in the courtyard and the cat snoozing against the wall. The fountain was a stone and wrought iron trickling affair with much greenery surrounding it. Both the cat and I felt little compunction to move, so we didn't. After about half an hour, I asked directions once again to find my way back to the River Walk and returned the way I had come.

One of the best things about the River Walk to me is not the restaurants and bars - I don't drink and couldn't care less about mediocre bar food. I didn't have money to spend at the boutiques, either, although there were many and they clearly prospered. No, the best thing about the walk to me was the nice guys in bright yellow vests who, every time I got turned around, were available to point me in the right direction. I swear that they leaped from behind stone planters and bridge supports, or scooted out from under patio tables. Just as I turned around, there was a nice man (they were all men, funny enough) telling me where to go. Typically, I don't want any man telling me where to go. But in this case, it was appreciated. Especially if they were directing me to a place that had air conditioning. Maybe it was the sun dress and the movie star shades. No matter. They were immensely helpful. I found out later that the River Walk is actually a public city park, and helpers have been stationed there since 1957. Rangers were placed on the river before the walk was developed commercially because it was a dangerous place to be at night. Hence the development.

I left San Antonio the next day, headed for El Paso, Texas. I can just hear all of you saying "Oh, I'm so sorry ..." but I think you'll be surprised at what El Paso offered. More to come.

Remembering the Alamo

And now, a word about humidity.

Oy.

If I thought Dallas/Ft. Worth in the aftermath of Hermione was a soup, that oppressiveness was temperate compared to the bad-hair-day-making-shirt-clinging-sweat-dripping-down-my-back-to-unmentionables variety of humidity I encountered in San Antonio. I grew up in the Midwest where the summers are full of hazy mornings and damp evenings. (When Curly sang, "there's a bright golden haze on the meadow," just what do you think that haze was?) I had the least of it up near the Canadian border where the mosquitoes grow large and threatening. When I was a child, I recall begging, pleading for air-conditioning to be installed in the old farmhouse that, incidentally, had no ducts, only a gravity furnace. Needless to say, air conditioning was not installed (while I lived there) and now I look back and laugh because there was about three weeks of what we considered unbearable.

Then I moved to Kansas City, which I referred to as the Banana Belt of the Midwest, convinced that if there was a hybrid of that fruit adapted to a shorter growing season, bunches could be cultivated in Jackson County, Missouri.

Now I reside in the southern California desert, the Palm Springs area, which is like Death Valley with golf courses. For years I've heard people proclaim "but it's a dry heat!" My response is "just like hell!" After five years in the desert, I forgot about humidity. Sure, we get the monsoons moving through in August from Arizona's Sonoran desert, made worse by the evaporating swimming pools that belong to folks who leave in May when the temperature starts edging toward triple digits. But that's fleeting and comes close to the end of the hot season.

Humidity aside, the drive from D/FW to SA was through what is referred to as the hill country. It is a landscape which is little like the rest of Texas. Rolling hills crowded with trees under a sky full of fluffy clouds that sail in and out like tides. Outcroppings of limestone covered with mere inches of topsoil. I'm not sure the photograph does it justice, but ...

San Antonio. Oh, the humidity of it. But what a beautiful place. Canyon Lake - gorgeous. See below.

And the systems that come up from the Gulf spawning these fabulous cumulo nimbi - better and better.

So I donned a sun dress and headed out to Remember the Alamo. Funny to hear the interpretive talk from a volunteer speaking of "Texians." Not "Texans." At first I thought he just had an odd variation of Texas twang. But that's really how they refer to the individuals who settled the area when there was still a Mexican flag flying over it. The battle of the Alamo was nearly the culmination of what is referred to as The Texas Revolution.

The Alamo was originally named Mission San Antonio de Valero, one of the many missions built to force Native Americans' conversion to Christianity. About 70 years later, in the late 18th century, the Spanish secularized the mission and the lands were ceded to the Indians. Then, in the early 1800s, the place was occupied by a Spanish cavalry unit. During those years in the early 19th century, both royalists and revolutionaries occupied the Alamo (Spanish for "cottonwood" in honor of a village in Mexico) during the war for Mexican independence. 

The important thing to remember in all of this is that, once Mexico won its independence from Spain, Texas was part of Mexico and U.S. citizens who settled there (lured by land grants) were subject to Mexican laws. Settlers wanted to raise cotton for big profit - Mexico dictated that corn, grains and beef be raised. Settlers were accustom to freedom of religion; immigrants were required to swear fidelity to Roman Catholicism. Settlers were also encouraged to form their own militias to protect themselves from Indian attacks because Mexico won their independence but exhausted their resources  - the country was, quite simply, broke.

In 1835 Ben Milam routed Mexican troops and his forces occupied the Alamo. A couple months later, in February 1836, Santa Anna and his men showed up and we know the rest. Texians held out for 13 days; on day eight got some reinforcements, bringing their numbers up to about 200 troops against 1500. On March 6, the real battle ensued and just about all were killed including William Travis, David Crockett and Jim Bowie. But even though fewer than 50 Texians survived, somewhere between 400 and 600 Mexican troops were killed in the battle. Those Texians kicked some serious butt.

But now they were in full blown retreat, led by Sam Houston. It wasn't until April 6, the battle of San Jacinto, that Santa Anna was defeated. And here's yet another clue into Texas character - 900 of Houston's troops finally got tired of retreating, and decided to turn around and meet the Mexican force. Houston had no choice but to follow. Mutiny wins revolution.

That's what I know about the Alamo. The grounds are lovely, and obviously the place is a much visited attraction. The building that we typically see pictured is called the shrine. No photography, cell phone use or loud conversation is allowed. This is where men literally fought and died. There are other buildings as well, the Low Barrack, which was used alternately as a hospital, a barrack, a barn, etc. There is also a large combination museum and gift shop, which is pictured immediately above.

After that, I headed to the River Walk, which we will discuss in the next installment.

Nasher Sculpture Center and the Dallas Museum of Art's Stupidity

Put rather crassly, the Nasher Sculpture Center is yet another example of rich people collecting a whole bunch of incredible art and then building a museum for it. While that sounds at least flippant and at worst condescending, I am grateful for these wealthy citizens as I am a patron of estates made accessible to the public.

I learned of the Nasher not through my sister, but because I worked at the Palm Springs Art Museum when the board hired Steve Nash to be the executive director. Nash came to Palm Springs from the Nasher, where he helped bring Ray and Patsy Nasher's vision to fruition by first serving as a consultant and then as the first  executive director of the Center starting in 2001. So I thought I'd go see what all the fuss was about. And since the Dallas Museum of Art sits conveniently right next door, we availed ourselves of that opportunity as well.

While the Nasher had some fabulous work in the inside galleries, it was the sculpture garden area that was so arresting, despite a level of heat and humidity that should be illegal.

Barbara Hepworth, Squares with Two Circles (Monolith) 1963 (cast 1964) photo from Nasher web site

I can always tell a Hepworth because it usually has a couple holes through it. She is British, but that doesn't explain the holes, I know. Hepworth's early work was naturalistic, but by the 1930s she was making abstract shapes and was interested in what she called "abstract negative space." Thus, the holes. By enabling the viewer to see through the object, she allowed the viewer to see the object differently, bringing what is outside the piece into the piece and reforming it. Cool, right? And this is a fabulous setting for the piece.

Henry Moore, Working Model for Three Piece No. 3 (Vertebrae), 1968, bronze

I like Henry Moore's work. If you look at the "I (heart) KC" blog entry, there's a photo on their of one of his works displayed at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art's sculpture garden, called "Sheep Piece," which I refer to as The Humping Sheep. There is something about his abstracted shapes, the smoothness of the bronze, and what I perceive as a compassion and kindness toward the images he sculpts. Also a Brit, he was actually a contemporary of Hepworth's and attended the same art school, the Leeds School of Art. I've seen charcoal sketches that Moore did during air raids in London down in the tube tunnels. Eerie stuff, but it shows the same treatment of form even then, even in that situation.

Magdalena Abakanowicz, Polish, born 1930 "Bronze Crowd" 1990-91

You'll notice from Abakanowicz's birth date above that she was a child during WWII, which means that she witnessed many of the atrocities inflicted by the German's. There are thirty-six larger-than-life-size figures that comprise this sculpture, and although all of them appear identical from a distance, each one has subtle differences. The fact that they are headless suggests what happens with group  mentality. Abakanowicz has said, "A crowd is the most cruel because it begins to act like a brainless organism."

After feeding the parking meter, we went to the Dallas Museum of Art. I had been to the DMA one time before, and remembered one piece in particular that I was hoping to see again. "Stake Hitch" by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, the same artists who did "Shuttlecocks" for the Nelson-Atkins in KC. What's interesting is that, like at the N-A, Oldenberg was commissioned to create something for a specific location, in this case, a large gallery with a barrel vaulted ceiling. The artists created something that I thought and still think is perfect for Dallas. Unfortunately, after 18 years, Jack Lane who was then the director of the DMA, removed the work. He promised to bring it back in a decade, but it hasn't shown up yet. Too bad. It was a 5,500 lb icon of the city, and had a lot of "wow" in it. And even with all the wonderful work on display, the DMA is flat without this piece. Next, remembering the Alamo.

Stake: aluminum, steel, resin, painted with polyeurethane enamel. Rope: polyeurethane foam, plastic materials, fiberglass reinforced plastics, painted with latex. Total height, including upper and lower floor: 53 ft. 6 in. Installed 1984. Image copied from Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Buggen's web site without permission.