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I got anxious waiting at home for editors to send acceptances of my stories and decided to go down to Albuquerque this month to research background info I need for another novel to homestead the the slush piles of NY publishers.

We hit the UNM campus, including a stopover at UNM Press for info on their chock-full spring catalogue pubs I mentioned before. Suddenly, there, in the center of campus, my wife and I were assailed by the huge statue Fiesta Jarabe, done by the late Luis Jimenez.

To be clear, I like at least one Jimenez, El Reflejo del Chuco, so I don't hate his work. (Check videos of his talking about his work here.) And the tejano did bequeath a huge body of work on his interpretion of mestizaje. But Chicanos shouldn't be expected to like everything Chicano anymore than Anglos should be about their works. (You want they should be proud of the Battle of the Alamo? How 'bout Sleepy Lagoon?)

So, I'll say that the Fiesta Jarabe sculpture "impresses" almost as much as the Mustang, Mesteño 32-foot-tall cast-fiberglass sculpture--the largest Jimenez ever did--that challenges tourists to try to forget it after driving in or out of the Denver airport. Experiencing that bright blue, upright mustang with gleaming red eyes can never be replaced by looking at a mere photo. But, back to Albu.

A highlight of the trip was visiting the National Hispanic Cultural Center. A read of their info suggests the "Hispanos" of NM decided they'd had enuf of O'Keefe et al getting all the museum space in town, and must have "suggested" to city fathers it was time to give the Spanish-speaking their own dedicated space, which is better than having not much space at all. And it's a great one--an impressive-looking, vast, concrete spread of culture-centered buildings, with "Arte, Idioma, Cultura & Comunidad" as their slogan.

None of my ancestors were nuevomexicano, nor old ones in the territory's past, so I didn't check out their Biblioteca y Centro Genealógico, but you might want to.

Since I also love creating furniture that doesn't sell--only because I can never get it just-right so it doesn't land in museums--the "