Stocking Stuffers: Water, Sex and Flying, A Gentle Job-Seeker

Books by Local Authors

Kay Mathews: ¡No Se Vende! Water as a Right
 of the Commons
 By
 Kay Matthews
. Book Reading and Signing
 Saturday, December 1, 4:00 pm
 Cultural Energy, 112 Civic Plaza Drive, 
Taos, New Mexico

Fred Fair: SURVIVING MYSELF: The True-Life Adventures of a Lucky, Risk-Taking Voluptuary”

Catherine Naylor: Working My Way Home, A Taos Story

Kay Mathews

All the authors above are friends of mine whether they like it or not. I admire Kay, the activist extraordinaire, enormously for her dedication to all things La Gente in El Norte, whether tales of acequias, forest encroachment by enviros, or her knowledge and expression of the complex Abeyta and Aamodt Settlement issues. Unlike the politicos, or other vested interests, Kay brings a scholarly neutrality to the facts and worldly experience to complicated topics in a clear and eloquent voice. You’ll learn much from reading or listening to Kay read from “No Se Vende.”

On a side note, I just finished up reading Frank Waters’ “To Possess the Land,” about Arthur Manby with my Culture Class III, filled with both yearners and curiosity seekers. You might think of Manby as the Black Saint of Taos for realtors, developers, vendidos politicos. Read Kay’s book for the rest of the story.

Fred Fair

If ever an adventurer arrived in Taos as the paradigmatic adrenalin junkie, surely Fred Fair epitomizes all that any young man might want to emulate (at least prior to the concept of the “sensitive” man). From planes to boats, from VWs to LLCs and land sales, Fred Fair led the way, smuggler (rum and Mary J), builder (adobe and perlite innovations), skier (both closed and unclosed powder slopes), flyer (over and under bridges and saint of near misses). The man challenged death and death lost the bet.

Nor will I mention the X-rated beauties and blow jobs administered at high speed in various motorized vehicles: Anything for a thrill. If you, my old friends, have not read “Surviving Myself” you haven’t read about an authentic action hero, the most intense boy’s adventure book ever experienced because a “true” story about a man who grew up to be his own self-indulgent sybaritic self .

Catherine Naylor

Naylor’s gentle tale of survival couldn’t be more different from the above for she floated on the good will of lyrical breezes as she garnered nickels and dimes for survival, thanks to the good will of strangers who became friends. Her tale of Taos exudes a kind of sympatico air only available to the empathetic and those who can see and hear the vibrations resonating in the glorious Cottonwoods and Aspens on a breezy fall day on a dirt road in Canon. She catches the motion and repose that enchanted us newcomers when we slowed down to catch the very best of Taos, the place and the people.

In Catherine’s days, there were two signs at the south and north side of Taos. One said to people like me, “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”

But the other one that Catherine writes about, said “Give me your tired, your poor, your frustrated and alienated, give me the drop-out who yearns to breathe and drink from the forbidden springs of liberty; for we accept the rejects of mainstream society and refuse of teeming cities. Send these, the yearners, the wind-tossed to me and I will lift them up next to the Hollyhocks and the Aspens beside the golden Cantinas of yore.