Category Archives: Sante Fe

Postal Purgatory

November 15, 2007 Simon

Before our trip to Santa Fe we heard an advertisement by the USPS (formerly the Post Office) about how you could go online and forward your mail. No muss no fuss. So we tried it and we have some good news and some bad news.

The good news is that everybody at the post office was really helpful. All of the staff were friendly and genuinely cared about our mail.

The bad news is that the system for forwarding mail is archaic, slow and failed miserably.

On about September 25 we put in a forwarding notice at our local post office. It turns out that it couldn’t be done online. We asked that the mail be forwarded to our address in Santa Fe for all of October. On the first of October Pete our local mail carrier stopped delivering to our house. It was more than a week before any of the mail started arriving in Santa Fe and a week after that before we started to get any of it. The second weeks delay was a result of our not having the key to the USPS mail delivery box at our rental house. After that we got some first class mail but not all of it and none of our magazines.

About mid October we decided to cancel the forwarding order and have our house sitter vet the mail and forward the important stuff. Every attempt we made failed. We failed at the Santa Fe Post Office and at the Pasadena Post Office. We filled out three forms and even got an acknowledgement. But the mail kept going into postal purgatory.
A few days after we got home we talked to Pete, our carrier. Yes he had two tubs of mail for us and he would bring it tomorrow. And he did.

My conclusion is that the people at the post office are very good at their jobs and they care a lot about the mail but the systems aren’t very good. The postal workers know this so they build alternative back door solutions to get the mail delivered.

My recommendation is that you get to know your carrier and be sure to communicate directly with them and don’t believe the ads.

Sante Fe

Tent Rocks

November 14, 2007 Simon

We went to Tent Rocks one very windy day in October.

It was cold but very clear and we had a nice scramble up the canyon and through the very different formations in the area.

Missy the dog was a trooper and only had to be lifted up a few of the highest ledges.

If your in Santa Fe and you are interested in geology be sure to visit this unusual natural formation.

More photos on Flickr

Sante Fe

Sojourning in Santa Fe

November 13, 2007 Simon

To sojourn means to “live temporarily.” Which is what we did in Santa Fe in October. Santa Fe was a particularly nice place to sojourn but to sojourn anywhere is a particularly nice state to be in. A sojourn is longer than a vacation so there is not a sense of urgency to see and do everything. But it is not taking up permanent residence so there is no need to think about things like house maintenance or the neighbors.

Riestras at La Fonda

So our Santa Fe stay was successful at two levels. We discovered the joy of sojourning and we confirmed our love of Santa Fe.

To see an album of pictures from our trip on Flickr follow this link:

Santa Fe Sojourn 2007

Sante Fe

Hebrew at the Cathedral Solved

November 7, 2007 Simon 1 Comment

Last month I posted a picture of the Hebrew inscription above the door of the Santa Fe cathedral and promised to find out “how it got there and why.”

I asked about it at Congregation Beit Tikva in Santa Fe when we attended services there and got a bit of an answer. Beit Tikva is the new temple in Santa Fe and it suited us the best. Later in the SCKML at PJTC I found the book Jewish Pioneers of New Mexico by Tomas Jaehn. According to the excellent book “Elizabeth Nordhaus remembers that …on three different occasions Grandfather loaned money to Bishop Lamy to construct the Church…In gratitude the Bishop put the Hebrew inscription above the door of the Cathedral.”

The Grandfather was Abraham Staab a merchant in Santa Fe from 1859 until his death about 1900. Among other thing he founded the Santa Fe Chamber of Commerce.
Another question answered.

Ideas, Sante Fe

An Adobe Idea

October 29, 2007 Simon

The title of this entry reminds me of the grammar rule “avoid alliteration always.”

Around the country new houses are wrapped in Tyvek before they a finished. Dupont the brands owner has convinced builder, code writers and the public that Tyvek will make houses more weather proof. It sounds true.

a new home near Santa Fe

Taken with my iphone

Here in the southwest almost all houses are colored adobe brown when they are finished. But for the few months during construction that they are in clad in Tyvek they are stark white.

The standard Santa Fe house color

Why can’t Dupont make an adobe colored Tyvek? This might be an opportunity for the maker of a competitive house wrap product to gain market share.

Ideas, Sante Fe

Public Drinking Fountains

October 28, 2007 Simon

It wasn’t many years ago that if you wanted a drink of water in public it was free at a drinking fountain. Now a store will sell you a bottle of water for a $1.00 and most of the fountains are gone.

A cause for concern?

What happened? Briefly it was the convergence of a few separate issues:

It was chic for those who could afford it to drink Evian (spelled backwards is naive!)
Immigrants from countries with bad public water systems demanded bottled water.
The worrying class started being concerned about the quality of tap water.

Within a decade most of the public water fountains were gone and we were all paying for something that used to be almost free.

A very old drinking fountain in Taos

Now the same worrying class whose motto is “I worry, therefore I am (better than you)” are concerned about all of the plastic bottles that they helped to cause. This article in National Geographic Traveler is an example.

We were laughing about this worrying class dilemma one night at dinner with Dahlia and Joel G and Rebecca and came up with a brilliant solution.

The companies who sell home water filtration systems, Brita, Pur and others could sell branded fountains to cities along with contracts to change the filters regularly. With this product everybody benefits: the environment because there are many less plastic bottles, the cities because they don’t have to clean up all of the bottles and they can be green and the public because they don’t have to buy expensive bottled water.

The way for Brita etal to start this sort of program would be to choose a few already green cities (Pasadena, Seattle, Madison for example) and give them some fountains to start the program. With a good public relations firm they wouldn’t even have to advertise. It would catch on quickly and they would have a new revenue stream.
Another good idea free from “Mr B”

Recommendations, Sante Fe

Dogs in Santa Fe

October 26, 2007 Simon

Missy, the dog, came to Santa Fe with us and so we take her places. Some of the places are not very dog friendly including some restaurant patios.

But at Counter Culture they accommodate nice dogs and have a sign about it:

Counter Culture has very nice sandwiches, matches and a generally nice laid back attitude. It is highly recommended with or without a dog.

This is the first photo taken with my new iphone

In Pasadena where we have a dog door in our house we don’t try to take Missy places other than on walks. My sample size is small and not fair so I can’t really judge, but of course I will. For a supposedly casual town, Santa Fe doesn’t seem to be very dog friendly.

Sante Fe

Oldest House in the USA

October 25, 2007 Simon

There has been a long dispute between St Augustine, Florida and Santa Fe, NM about which is the oldest European settlement in what is now the United States. West of the Mississippi we believe that it is Santa Fe and East of it they are convinced that it is St Augustine. Of course, to paraphrase Bill Clinton, it all depends on what “oldest” is. We found this house in Santa Fe that unequivocally claims to be “The Oldest House in the USA”

It sure looks old.

And of course now it is a gift shop with an ATM. To digress slightly, where in the USA is the oldest ATM?

It seems to me if the Oldest House is in Santa Fe then Santa Fe is the oldest European settled town in the USA.

In Hong Kong we went with our friends Jacky and Malcolm A to see “The Worlds Largest Outdoor Seated Bronze Buddha.” We have made it our Hyperbole Standard. I’ll post a picture of it someday.

Ideas, Sante Fe, Travel

Missy Stays at Home

October 24, 2007 Simon 4 Comments

Nurit and I had to fly back to Pasadena on Monday to see Gary D. who is still very ill. The trip meant we had to leave Acequia Madre at 5:45am and wouldn’t be home until midnight and because we were flying Missy, the dog, couldn’t go with us. Nurit googled (new verb) petsitters (new noun) and found NMpetsitters.com

Missy

A few phone calls led us to Sloan Cunningham of Pet Care by Sloan. We hired Sloan over the phone and she turned out to be extremely reliable, she loved animals and in all respects exceeded our expectations. We highly recommend her.