Flashbacks and Flash Forwards

It’s a conversation not a lecture or reading!

On Friday, Sept. 22, tonight at 7 pm, Anita Rodriguez hosts a “Memory Microphone” at Quechua restaurant, adjacent to McCarthy Plaza in the Cantu building. The “salon” this month focuses on the life and culture of Taos, especially on the changes that occurred during the 60s and 70s. John Nichols, Maye Torres, and Bill Whaley will make brief introductions and discuss questions from the audience with the audience.

Though absent in person, Jim Wagner will be present in spirit.

Maye, the born and bred Taosena and artist, will discuss the effects of growing up in a local family and the invasion of the community by outsiders as well as the influence on her life by artists while coming of age during the sixties and seventies. Nichols promises to reveal the brutal secrets of local politics, the secret police, and how hippie mores at hot springs challenged his puritanical ethos. Whaley will discuss the atmosphere on the Plaza and in Los Cantinas. “The summer of 1969 was the best that ever was,” says the Gringo.

Though Whaley blames Wagner for serving the underage Gringo his first beer at the Los Conquistadores lounge in Nov. of 1966, he praises the peripatetic artist for introducing the neophyte to Café Society at La Cocina and a lifetime of adventure. Maye’s grandfather gave Whaley his start as an entrepreneur at the Living Room and he met Nichols at the Plaza Theatre in the summer of ’69.

You might hear “forbidden secrets,” which have not been published. Per Anita Rodriguez, Torres, Nichols, and Whaley say they are just doing what they are told.

Whaley says he hopes Arsenio Cordova and Sheila McCarthy show up to participate because they were sober and present then. Cordova, the food stamp worker for hippies, and McCarthy, Secretary to the legendary Paul Bernal at Taos Pueblo, have unique cultural insights into the times.

Besides it takes a community to tell the truth and lies. Whether friend or foe everyone is invited.