By HALLIE HARRIS
Daily Press Correspondent
Artistic practice can build community, and the human form is beautiful.
That’s the message that Joel Armstrong hopes to spread the word to the community at large through his life drawing sessions at Light Art Space in Silver City. The weekly studio session is approaching its third consistent year, and Armstrong is looking for more models and artists for the classes.
Armstrong moved to Silver City in 2019, after retiring from teaching drawing and illustration at John Brown University in Arkansas. He taught a figure drawing class at Light Art Space, where he also shows his artwork, in 2020, before COVID restrictions shut down in-person gatherings.
“At Light Art Space, I had a show that opened the day that everything closed for COVID,” he said. “I finally got a show! Please come see it — oh, never mind.”
The classes had to go on hiatus as well.
In August 2021, Armstrong started drop-in life drawing sessions — not as a formal class, but as a drop-in studio space where artists could continually develop their craft.
Armstrong has a background as a professional illustrator and art director, as well as a fine artist, having exhibited his work since 1977. In addition to his tenure as an associate professor at John Brown University, he has taught at Colorado State University, the University of Arkansas and the Dallas Art Institute. His work ranges from photo-realistic colored pencil drawings and portraiture to wire art and immersive installations.
He began drawing seriously in junior high, but has spent much of his artistic career fascinated by the human form.
“By the time I got to college, it seemed like figures were a natural way to go,” Armstrong said. “I’ve just been doing the figure for such a long time.”
As an illustrator, he often used the figure to create a sense of human connection or tell stories.
“I was an architectural illustrator too, and they would say, ‘Here’s the blueprints. Make it look real,’” Armstrong said. “‘Here’s a condominium that’s being built, and we want it to look engaging.’ So I would put people fishing in the lake in front, swans, people playing on a jungle gym. … It’s all storytelling. You want people to relate.”
Later, when he pursued his graduate degree, a Master of Fine Arts at Colorado State University, his instructors encouraged him to branch out into working with wire, which he shapes into flattened figures and narratives.
“They looked at my illustrations and said, ‘These are nice, but you’re not going to do them here,’” Armstrong recalled, adding that working with wire challenged him to see differently.
His evolution as an artist continues today, even in the figure drawing classes he facilitates.
“I’m trying to learn to loosen up a lot,” Armstrong said. “I’m working diligently to loosen up every time.”
What would that look like?
“‘Free, uninhibited,’ as opposed to ‘tight and rigid,’” Armstrong said. “I’m also trying to get the feel of the model, the weight of the model, the shading. Put a scribble to define a head and a shadow behind it and I’ve defined a figure.”
He said that art requires practice, which people get at these life drawing sessions.
“This is like going to the gym. Art gym,” Armstrong said.
Participants bring their own materials to the Thursday evening sessions, spending two hours sketching nude figures from life as the models move through various poses. Artists use a variety of media — pencils, charcoal, conte crayons, watercolors, and oils — and take time at the end of the two-hour session.
Armstrong offers the classes to build community.
“It’s been a part of my life, and I thought it would be good to share with others to make that opportunity available. It’s a discipline,” he said. “We have such a great art community. The people that are drawing are from my age down to 20. There’s students from the college that come.”
The artists who attend Armstrong’s class speak highly of the experience. Many say that they appreciate the supportive community he has fostered.
One attends both a life drawing class at nearby Western New Mexico University and Armstrong’s sessions at Light Art Space. Sally Tilton, a retired nurse, also studied art at the University of Alaska and has used art to heal from personal tragedy — the recent losses of a son, sculptor Cyrus Tilton, a sister, and her husband — as well as to work on herself.
“I’m reinventing myself,” Tilton said. “I’ve always loved art, but then I was inspired to become a nurse. I continued to stay creative, but not so much with fine art.”
She opened her first solo show Friday night at the Grant County Art Guild Studio on Texas Street.
“Now I’m not just surviving,” Tilton said. “I’m thriving, and I connect with my deceased loved ones through my art.”
She said the life drawing practice in Armstrong’s class draws her in.
“For me [life drawing] is the most challenging,” Tilton said. “[Art] is everything to me. It’s my first love right now.
“I like the form. I like the figure. All shapes and sizes I love,” she continued. “I guess I just love the figure. When it comes to trying, I prefer figurative, and then I like to go way out there into the abstract of arts. I’m in the exploration stage of my art and will be there for the rest of my life.”
Another student is Erika Burleigh, a Silver City artist who distinguished herself at a young age with her mural work, which can be seen throughout the Southwest, including inside the Daily Press building and in some of the devotional murals in the Silver City Lotus Center.
“I started off modeling for the group, and then started drawing, and now I model and draw,” Burleigh said. “There’s a bunch of people in the class that model and draw. It has such a nice community vibe.
“Life drawing is kind of different from drawing off of a photo,” she continued. “Translating what you see in front of your eyes onto paper is different than what you see in a picture. … I oftentimes would use photo references for work, and so it’s really good for me to draw from life. It’s just a different practice and it feels good.”
Burleigh says she has enjoyed the consistency of the sessions.
“Some of it is just the practice,” she said. “Having two hours to practice every week is really good for me,”
Burleigh says she finds a challenge in each drawing session.
“I’m always trying to just fit it on the page,” she said. “It’s amazingly hard to scale it. The main thing I’m trying to do is get the proportions right. Make the pieces connect to each other in a way that is anatomically — maybe not accurate, but likely? Anatomically possible? So that’s one thing, and the other thing is trying to capture the moments of beauty, which is what I think is more important. Maybe just the hands or face and the rest of it doesn’t have to be filled out, so long as I can get something beautiful out of it.
“The human form is really beautiful,” Burleigh continued. “It’s such a good body-image experience. I model and draw, and it’s really fun to see the drawings people have made from my poses and my body. It kind of removes any judgment from what it should be, and makes it — this is a beautiful material. This is a beautiful thing sitting in front of me.”
Amy Maule is an environmental consultant who recently moved to Silver City from the Pacific Northwest, and plans to open a pottery studio. She is another artist who takes turns modeling when she’s not drawing.
“Three-quarters of the time I go to draw, and when he needs a model to fill in, I’ll model every couple of months or so,” she said. “I had taken some drawing classes, like community college-type classes, and they had a figure drawing element to them, but they were kind of all types of drawing. So I had done some figure drawing but not a specific group like this.”
Maule says that art has always been an important part of her life, although she’s never pursued it professionally. She said she didn’t feel objectified or criticized as a nude model — far from it.
“More of a tool,” she said of her role. “Ideally, an inspiration. It’s a learning process. So I would say as models we’re tools for people to hone their craft, develop ideas. No, I can’t say that I’ve felt scrutinized — which isn’t to say that people wouldn’t — but I don’t think that I have.
“I’m not a person who likes being in the spotlight, so it’s interesting that modeling for figure drawing is comfortable for me,” Maule continued. “I hear a lot of people talk about how it really leaves you feeling good about yourself, and good about your body, which I think is something we all need more of.”
Some models find the experience fun.
“It’s pretty invigorating,” Lucien Shephard said. “How can I put it? I guess it’s just kind of liberating just to stand there and have people draw you like that. I guess I just enjoy being the center of attention — plus it pays, too, and I enjoy the people I’m working with.”
Bland says it was her mother who inspired her to try nude modeling.
“My mom had done it when she was younger and had talked to me about how she really loved figure drawing,” she said. “Hearing her experiences always made me want to do it. And because of her, too, I think I’ve always been very OK with the naked form.”
Bland encouraged people to try modeling, regardless of their experience or body shape.
“I really enjoy it — I’ve done it dozens of times,” she said. “I think the biggest thing is just learning to be confident with your body and knowing that it’s for art — no one’s judging you.”
“I would love to see more variety of model types for the group,” Maule said. “I think it would be fantastic if we had older models. I think sometimes older bodies are sometimes much more interesting to draw. For me, people who are very fit and uninfluenced by gravity are sort of boring, because they don’t have the lines and the shadows. I think that people who are heavier and have more lines, maybe a little bit more weather-beaten, can be much more interesting to draw, because you get more contours, light and shadow and just more visual interest than you see on people that are more young and firm. I think when you’re looking at people from an artistic perspective, you appreciate their beauty in a really different way.”
Drop-in figure drawing classes are held most Thursdays at Light Art Space, 209 W. Broadway in Silver City, from 6-8 p.m. Cost is $20 per class. Contact facilitator Joel Armstrong for current offerings at jart56@gmail.com, or Light Art Space at 520-240-7075.
The gallery is open Thursday through Saturday from 11 a.m to 4 p.m. and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

By HALLIE HARRIS
Daily Press Correspondent
Jason Quintana, owner of the Silver Barbell gym, attended the United States Powerlifting Association Nationals competition earlier this month, placing second in his class and lifting more than two times his bodyweight.
“There’s so many gyms that are doing it, but doing it correctly, through sanctioned federations, is the way to go,” Quintana said. “Competing at a national level through the USPA is a huge credit.”
He said he has been competing for about 10 years, attending regional competitions. Last December, he competed in the USPA state championship and set state records in bench press and deadlift for his class. Quintana said he was looking at his scores and realized he qualified to go on to the national competition.
“I didn’t realize that I was able to qualify until after, and I was like, ‘Shoot, let’s go to nationals!’” he said.
Quintana signed up for nationals in January and started training right away, timing his regimens in eight-week blocks that included a de-load, or taper, week to allow his body to recover and store up energy.
“It’s just kind of weaning off all that heavy weight — more stretching and stuff like that,” Quintana said.
He flew to Niagara Falls, N.Y., earlier this month, and on Thursday, his first day there, he took time to see the famous waterfall.
“It was really nice, really beautiful, but at the same time I was there for a mission,” Quintana said. “I just wanted to go rest.”
Friday he was sure to rest and not put too much stress on his body before the competition Saturday.
“The day prior to the meet I just rest,” he said. “I don’t do anything. It’s mostly just eat, rest and just chill. That’s all I do. I’ll just get some eggs. Eggs, sausage, whatever’s at the hotel — some bananas, nothing too crazy. Energizing is the biggest thing.
“I don’t want to be in [the competition] with a full stomach, because I’ll be in the mindset that, like, I’ll throw up or something,” Quintana laughed.
On Saturday, June 15, Quintana weighed in at 226 pounds. In a powerlifting competition, athletes perform three activities: squat, bench press and deadlift. Each activity is performed three times, with the highest weight counting toward their overall score. The total weight is measured against the athlete’s bodyweight to achieve the score which is used for the rankings.
Quintana squatted 518.1 pounds, pressed 380.3 pounds and lifted 562.1 pounds, for a total of 1,460.5 pounds. It was enough to secure him a second place medal in his class.
There wasn’t much time to celebrate after the competition, however.
“By the time we got to the hotel, it was 8 o’clock so … just eat,” Quintana said. “Then we had a 5:40 flight, so we had to be there at 4 in the morning. The whole travel thing — that was rough.”
He said he was only able to do it because of the support of the community, including sponsors like Copper Country Senior Olympics and Eric Vreeland of Peace of Heaven Granite and Memorial and his regular gym and training clients who contributed money for travel expenses because they believed he could succeed.
Quintana said he began the sport as a way to deal with the stress of working as an emergency room technician.
“It was more a lifestyle change,” Quintana recalled. “Working in surgery, I was getting called at odd hours of the night. I think I got kind of burnt out. Powerlifting helped with the stress and anxiety … it was a coping mechanism for me. Mostly everybody that comes into the gym has a reason — a health reason or issues at home, or if it’s just that overall they want to get fit.”
Quintana discovered a love for competition early on, first with the Natural Athlete Strength Association powerlifting group in Gallup, N.M. Over time, he got into bigger federations.
“Knowing USPA is a really big, well-known federation, I ended up trying it out,” he said. “My numbers just continued to climb, so after a while you practice, you want to persevere, you want to do better.”
Quintana said he is proud to have met his goal of competing at nationals, but has even bigger plans. Last year, he qualified for an international meet in Mexico, but was unable to attend.
“I still want to do an international meet,” he said. “That’s still a goal. For right now, though, my goal is to make sure my people here at this gym are good and that they’re all taken care of.”
Quintana was quick to point out successes of others, from high school students who come into the gym on their off time to community members who compete in regional powerlifting events themselves. In his gym, he has the usual weights and machines, but also offers a hot sauna for recovery and relaxation, a turf area for sled workouts, and a large wall that is adorned with chalk markings from members’ personal bests.
“Your personal goal is what it is,” Quintana said. “I want the gym to strive more. Anybody can be a bum — it’s super easy. There are days where we’ve got to push.”
He says that working out and fitness are a great way to feel accomplished.
“It keeps people on a mindset of being goal oriented,” Quintana said. “People come to the gym for reasons, and they hit those goals. Having powerlifting — and it’s on paper and you have state records and national records — you have something to show for it as an achievement in life.”
While weightlifting is a very old sport and one of the original sports of the modern Olympics, powerlifting competitions are relatively new. The first state NMAA powerlifting championship for New Mexico high schools was added in 2021. Quintana has coached and mentored high school students from Silver, Cobre, Deming and Hatch.
“What this brings me is being able to show the kids that there’s more out there,” he said. “There’s scholarships these kids can get with powerlifting, they can win money at meets, there’s travel — I competed in Niagara Falls, right on the falls, at the convention center. That’s an opportunity that’s huge.”
Quintana also credits a competing gym in town, Ironworks, with the growth in powerlifting in the community.
“I give a lot of credit to that gym because of their whole strength process,” he said. “If you want to go competitive weightlifting, we’re probably the only two gyms in town.”
Quintana opened Silver Barbell in 2020 with the help of his father, Arthur Quintana, after spending years leading fitness camps for kids and other fitness side hustles. He admits that opening a gym during COVID had its challenges, but he didn’t let that deter him from his dream.
“I was like, ‘Well, what’s the worst that’s going to happen? I’m going to be out and I’m going to have a lot of weights?’” he laughed. “They did the closures and stuff like that. And at that time, I didn’t have that much equipment in my gym, and honestly I think there were a lot of people that thought that I would fail more than I would succeed … just because of the fact that people want all these different kinds of equipment and I just couldn’t offer that.”
Quintana was able to grow the business steadily over the years, however, and recently acquired surplus machines sold by Western New Mexico University.
When the Daily Press visited the gym this week, there was a woman with short, silver hair using a weight machine and a young man working out on the ergometer, or rowing machine.
“Anybody can do powerlifting,” Quintana said. “From 14 all the way to 80 up. I do a lot of the Senior Olympics, too, in Silver City. … We host it here in my gym.
“Powerlifting is for anybody,” he continued. “At the end of the day, it’s all mindset. You’re not going to do it if you say you’re going to fail.”
He said that showing up and building the mindset for fitness are equally important.
“Life sometimes sucks, for sure,” Quintana said. “You’ve got to continue to push. Some days are better than others, but in a sense, you’ve always got to keep pushing forward.”
It’s a lesson that he lives by, working to beat new records and learn from his experiences.
“You’ve got to better yourself first,” Quintana said. “I want to be in here, trying to be better every day. I’m the one that has to look at myself every day in that mirror, you know. It’s like I always tell myself: ‘Do better, be better.’ Yeah. That’s all you can do.”

By HALLIE HARRIS
Daily Press Correspondent
As we approach the longest day of the year and official start of summer at next week’s solstice, everyone is looking for ways to enjoy the sunshine but also beat the heat. Summer is the time for lazy afternoons and making beautiful memories of time spent with friends and nature.
Here in southwest New Mexico, we enjoy getting outdoors in the cooler parts of the day, seeking out water, and we know to stay inside when it’s hot. How do you help the whole family cool off?
“Going to Bill Evans Lake, splashing in the Gila River and early morning hikes. We love going to the splash pad, too, in Santa Clara,” said Allison Bjerke, who teaches third grade at Harrison Schmitt Elementary in Silver City. “The family matinees at the Silco have been a lifesaver for me and my kids.”
Outdoors, the breeze and the sounds of the birds and insects in the trees will surely brighten your day. Be mindful of the harsh environment and time your outdoor activities for cooler hours, cover up with long clothing and don’t be too dignified to get your hat wet! Evaporative cooling is the most effective way to stay cool, according to Jessica Laurel Reese, an occupational nurse practitioner with Gila Health Resources.
“Wear an overshirt and dip that in water, and wear a wide-brimmed hat and also dip that in water,” she said. “An overshirt doubles the sun protection. As the wetness evaporates, just like a swamp cooler, that will cool your skin.”
Plus, you’re protecting your skin from the sun, she pointed out.
“At 6,000 feet, we’ve got less of that atmosphere [to protect us], so we burn really quickly,” Reese added.
We have lots of creeks and streams to hop this time of year under shady cottonwood canopies. If you’re heading up to the Cliff Dwellings, stop off at the Forks Campground to dip your toes, or go for a longer hike into the Gila River Canyon. Reese recommends sunscreen, especially when you’re on the water.
“The top of the water is like a mirror [that reflects UV rays], which is where putting some sunblock on your face is recommended, even if you’re wearing a hat,” she said. “The best is zinc oxide that actually reflects.”
The downside, according to Reese? “You might look a little bit like a ghost for a little bit.”
Chemical sunscreens contain ingredients like oxo- and avo-benzenes, but don’t leave a cast on your skin.
“The benzenes neutralize the UV rays in your skin,” Reese said. “So now your liver has to conjugate all that toxicity. Your body systems have to deal with all of that.”
If you’re interested in trying some paddling or other outdoor activities, you can pick up a boat or two at Chuck’s Folly on U.S. 180 in Cliff. They have a paddleboard, a couple of kayaks and a paddleboat which you can rent for a modest $35 to $50 per day. While they will provide life vests, you’ll need to bring your own trailer or way of transporting the gear.
The WNMU Outdoor Program’s “Outpost” offers a more extensive list of equipment with everything from camping to boating to rock-climbing gear. Prices are extraordinarily low for students and university staff, but other community members will need to pay a bit more, and most gear requires a deposit. During summer break, hours are more limited, but you can browse the gear on offer and make reservations online: outdoor.wnmu.edu/rent-gear-hours-of-operation. 
While the Lake Roberts General Store is no longer renting boats and water toys, they do still sell drinks and snacks, including local ice cream from Living Harvest made in the Mimbres Valley.
Where should you try out your new-to-you vessel? Lake Roberts, near the intersection of N.M. 15 and N.M. 35, offers a boat ramp and cabin rentals, as well as two campgrounds operated by the U.S. Forest Service. Southwest of Silver City, Bill Evans Lake is a popular reservoir for kayaking and paddleboarding. Turkey Creek and Mogollon Creek have access near the village of Gila, but you’ll want to check the seasonal water flow levels at waterdata.USGS.gov to make sure you’ll be able to spend more time paddling than portaging — hauling your boat on your back!
If you like your water chlorinated and would rather not make the drive away from town, check out a public pool. The Silver City Municipal Pool has free swims on Saturdays, night swims Tuesday through Thursday and offers a punch card or a season pass for the truly dedicated. The Roger T. Silva Family Splash Park on Fort Bayard Street in Santa Clara is a popular place for young folks to cool off.

Watch your health
Heat-related illnesses are serious business that many of us ignore. Folks who go straight from a week of indoor work to a weekend drinking on the lake?
“Those people are often medical emergencies that need to be airlifted,” Reese said. “Keeping cool is paramount, and hydration is a paramount part of that puzzle.
“Yes, there is water in your beer,” she continued, but “it’s stressful for your body to get rid of that alcohol effectively.”
Coconut water, and water mixed with fruits like cucumber and lime are flavorful ways to hydrate you and replace electrolytes that your body loses from evaporation in the desert and needs to function. Reese offered some tips on staying safer in the summer heat, including timing outdoor activities around dusk and dawn, seeking shade and cool spaces, cooling clothes, and getting enough fluids to stay hydrated.
“Hydration is absolutely paramount,” she said. “I treat a lot of people, and have seen immense amounts of people in the desert be chronically dehydrated.” 
What happens when your body loses too much water? Your body moves it to where it’s most needed for your essential survival — not for playing outdoors or processing alcohol. 
“It’s going to shunt your hydration to your organs,” Reese said. “Your vital organs need to have fluid more than the tissues in your toes, but if your muscles or your ligaments are constantly being deprived of that liquid, because you have so little that it’s got to go to your organs, [then] you’re looking at tendon tears, muscle ruptures … you have a greater risk of injury because your tissues are chronically dehydrated and they’re not as flexible and pliable.
“It’s like beef jerky versus a fresh steak,” Reese said. “Thirst usually means you are [already] well-dehydrated.”
She said that in the desert, with relative humidity of 8 percent to 15 percent common this time of year, the air is so dry and our tissues are so wet that we lose liquid just from breathing and blinking.
“The primary tissues we lose fluid from are our eyeballs and our lungs,” Reese said. “So breathing and blinking alone, existing in the desert, you are getting water ripped away from you — but you don’t realize it. The only time we think we’re losing water is when we sweat. When the humidity is this low, our sweat evaporates so swiftly we don’t even notice it.” 
If you think you’re drinking enough, think again.
“Eight cups of water is totally insufficient in the desert,” Reese cautioned. “You need 10 to 16.”
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, outdoor workers, or anyone outside in the heat, should consume 8 ounces, or one full cup of water, every 15 to 20 minutes.
In rare cases, people can overhydrate, however, usually from drinking large (over 48 ounces per hour) amounts of water without eating. This can flush essential minerals from your body, known as electrolytes, that help your vital organs function. But you don’t need to drink special electrolytes mixes or eat salt tablets, all of which can stress your kidneys. 
“If you’re eating adequately throughout the day, you should have enough electrolytes,” Reese said.
High-liquid foods include cucumbers, celery, tomatoes and apples.

“Fruits and veggies that have a lot of water in them inherently are going to help assist your hydration,” she said. “If you’re feeling dizzy, confused, or like your muscles are cramping, you need to get into a cooler environment. [That] usually means our body temperature is dangerously high, and you are literally cooking your brain. Do not cook your brain. Seek places that are naturally cooling like rivers, lakes. Seek shade. If you have to be in the sun, wet your clothes, wet your hair, wet your hat.”

Cool activities abound

Here are some tips for keeping cool — outdoor rentals, fun summer offerings and ways to avoid heat sickness this summer.

Get out of the sun
There are plenty of indoor activities to take up, too. After being cooped up indoors all winter, sure, we want to get outside, but it’s possible to stay cool in the afternoons, the hottest part of the day, by seeking out the great indoors. 
For younger folks, enjoy the AC and afternoon concerts at area public libraries, including the Silver City Public Library’s offerings of Pint-Sized Polka this afternoon and Andy Mason on Tuesday.

Take a class 
Area recreation centers offer crafts and fitness. There are lots of options for kids available this time of year, but adults can also benefit from the many social clubs and organizations, as well as places like the Silver City Makerspace and the Western Institute for Lifelong Learning to broaden their horizons.

See a movie
No, you don’t have to stay parked on the couch all summer. That new season of “Bridgerton” is only eight episodes long, after all. Check out one of the movie showings at the Silco Theatre and at Fort Bayard. Or bring your picnic blanket to weekly showings in Viola Stone Park in Santa Clara on Saturdays.

Get some culture
We all pay for our public universities and libraries — why not take advantage of their many cultural offerings? Sure, there’s also an art gallery or nine in the area. If the art isn’t pretty or doesn’t evoke a sense of wonder, it might still get you fired up or even just make you laugh. The Virus Theater will be offering another no-doubt wacky and joyful ensemble-devised piece in July at their El Sol Theatre in downtown Silver City.

Visit a tasting room
Open Space Brewing at the Santa Clara Armory and Little Toad Creek Brewery and Distillery downtown are popular options for brews that often host entertainment once the sun goes down, but if you’re up for a drive, La Esperanza Winery in the Mimbres Valley is a beautiful weekend destination. While Black Range Vineyards’ tasting room has closed, they still make appearances at Hillsboro events in the summer.

Go out after dark
We’re blessed to have many fine music venues still standing after the crazy COVID years. The quirky metal/klezmer- influenced Flicker plays at the Toad on June 28, home-grown talent DJ Mischievous returns to Silver City to lay down old-school and contemporary danceable R&B tracks June 29, and it seems like there’s always plenty of new and alternative country at Whiskey Creek Zócalo in Arenas Valley.
The whole family will enjoy the offerings from the Santa Clara Music in the Park series on Fridays. Check the calendars for more. Think like a bat and get out once the sun goes down!

Go out at
‘Golden Hour’
Yes, the so-called “Golden Hours” around dusk and dawn make your face look better in photos; they also tend to be cooler. Plan your outdoor activities around sunup and sundown, when the air is cooler and the angle of the sun will protect you more from its rays. Oh and if you’re intent on incorporating the area’s many murals into your selfies, you’ll get softer, more flattering light at that time.

Dine al fresco
Have some friends over for a nice meal outside after the sun goes down. Turn on some tunes or just listen to the crickets and cicadas. If you make your own aguas frescas, you can dress them up with sparkling water or with booze to suit different tastes.
Be sure to plan enough time to clean up food waste so you don’t end up with another bear family in the neighborhood!

By HALLIE HARRIS
Daily Press Correspondent
Grant County libraries began their summer reading programs last week, and Bayard, Silver City, Gila and Hurley are all offering special events to provide a safe place for youth and adults to socialize and (re)discover the joys of reading.
On Friday, volunteers from the Rolling Stones Gem and Mineral Society introduced young people to the joys of rockhounding at the Bayard Library as part of their “Adventure Awaits at Your Library”-themed enrichment events for kids.
“Show up. Plan to have fun,” said Bayard Library Director Sonya Dixon. “It’s a nice cool place to go in the afternoon after lunch. A good place to make new friends.”
Each day, kids actively engage with new subjects led by volunteer docents from 1 to 3 p.m. They also take a free book home, and can complete reading logs for prizes.
The idea is “just to encourage them to keep reading throughout the summer,” said program coordinator Allison Bjerke, who teaches third grade at Harrison Schmitt Elementary in Silver City. She’s returning for her second year of leading the two-week summer program. At the end of this week, they’ll have a party and take home school supplies.
The kids will plant with the Frontier Food Hub on Wednesday and encounter desert plants and animals on Thursday with the Asombro Institute for Science Education, the nonprofit which runs the 935-acre Chihuahuan Desert Nature Park, an outdoor experiential classroom northeast of Las Cruces. 
Dixon said she was happy to see the kids having fun at the library and impressed by the different summer programs on offer this year.
“They could be at the pool, but they’re here and it’s awesome,” she said.
Other area libraries are also offering programs. Gila is offering a STEAM Camp on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9 a.m. to noon this month, with an end-of-camp party set for July 2. It is free to the public and has been well-attended in the past.
“We average 25 kids a day, which isn’t bad for a town of 300,” said Pam Conway of the Gila Library.
The new Hurley Library is also offering enrichment programs like music and craft activities, which can be found on their Facebook page or by contacting the library.
The Silver City Public Library is also offering prizes for reading logs and lots of fun programming for youth and adults this summer.
It’s “a safe space to hang out,” said Lillian Galloway of the Silver City Library, which has a special youth lounge area. “We’re hopefully the place where kids fall in love with reading and also a place for really fun activities.”
Galloway said she was pleased to see the many community partnerships that had developed over the years and were apparent in the library’s summer programming, including with the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish, the Southwest Women’s Fiber Arts Collective, the New Mexico State University Cooperative Extension Service, local musicians and the Silver City Museum, which sends a puppet show. 
Galloway also pointed out that the Silver City Public Library, along with G.W. Stout Elementary School and Gough Park, is a location for the Silver Schools’ Summer Lunch Program.
Summer reading fun isn’t limited to kids in Silver City, either. Adults wanting a reminder to relax with a book this summer can also pick up a dark green tote bag and a raft of reading-related activities that can earn them modest prizes.
In Bayard on Friday, kids spent an hour doing identification testing for minerals’ unique chemical and physical properties — scraping stones against different surfaces, applying UV flashlights to check for fluorescence and dropping weak acid onto various rocks.
They seemed especially enthused with fluorite, a mineral that fluoresces or glows under UV light, and limestone, which fizzes when exposed to even weak solutions of acids.
“I really like the fizz,” said Jerred, 6. 
“I’m glad I didn’t bring more; they’ve used up all of my acid! This poor rock, I can’t put it in my garden again,” said docent Brenda Holzinger with a laugh. 
“It’ll start decrepitating,” said Doug Newman, another Rolling Stones volunteer, who expressed surprise that the scientific tests had been so popular: “They’re having a lot of fun with it.”
The acids involved are “pretty dilute, they’re pretty mild,” he said, adding that parents can encourage their kids to explore the natural world and learn about the rocks and minerals in their environment. 
Kids were encouraged to go out into the field to collect stones. After filling their collections, they traded minerals and then proceeded to test them to identify them.
“Prepare to be amazed!” said Stephen, 8. When asked if he would continue to look for rocks in the wild after the program, he said: “I already have some, but when I get home I’m going to look for more.”
“Let them go to the creek beds and pick up rocks,” Newman said.
“Azurite is my favorite,” said Betty Lambert of Bayard, another Rolling Stones volunteer, adding that you can find this deep blue mineral, formed by weathered copper ore deposits, near dry creek beds. “It’s hard to find, but it’s beautiful — it’s sort of a purple-blue and it sparkles.”
Jerek, another 6-year-old, said he enjoyed the chemical reactions and had been returning day after day to the Bayard program.
“He’s liked it. He wants to come back. He goes to school in Silver, so he has met new people,” said his great-grandmother, Socorro Santa Maria, of Bayard, who comes and reads while Jerek enjoys the library programming.
Jerek shows off a book he is taking home, “My Journey to the Stars,” by astronaut Scott Kelly, explaining that he doesn’t want to be an astronaut when he grows up, but he thinks he knows what he’ll be.
“It’s a secret,” he said, holding that dream and the book close.

By HALLIE HARRIS
Daily Press Correspondent
Grant County theater-going audiences have the opportunity to catch two very different shows this weekend.
“Steel Magnolias” will be finishing its run at the Starlight Theater on Sunday night, giving audiences just five performances before it closes, but “Thom Pain (based on nothing),” a one-man show performed by precocious up-and-comer Montelius Valenzuela, will continue to run through June 30 at the Buckhorn Opera House. Both shows are well worth a watch.
“Steel Magnolias” is a heartwarming comedy set in the late 1980s about a group of women who meet in a hair salon and use humor to find community and support in the midst of life’s changes. The director, Joe Navan, said it was a joy to bring to the stage.
It has “great writing,” he said. “You don’t have to do much [as a director]. Once the characters get into it, they become it. I was around in the ’80s, and kind of in the beauty business back then.”
Navan got his license to cut hair during a high school work-study program and later used those skills in theater and for CBS broadcast events. He also has a talent for interior design, evident in the production’s sets.
“We did everything we could to get everything from 1987 or before,” he said, pointing out that the fabric on the walls was vintage, as were the salon chairs donated by a local business.
The attention to detail in the production extends to Navan’s mentorship of the actors and the need to respect the intelligence of the audience. He created a “mini beauty boot camp” for the actresses to learn the skills necessary to pull off their roles.
“You know there will be hairdressers that will come to the show,” he said, adding that he hopes they’ll say, “Wow, she knows how to do hair!”
“Steel Magnolias” had a seemingly ill-fated start, as it was originally planned for the Starlight’s 2020-21 season but was shut down due to the COVID pandemic. It was recast before being postponed again a year later due to illness.
“The third time was definitely the charm,” Navan said.
However, all was still not perfect. Early in rehearsals this time around, one of the performers dropped out. Last year, Kandyce Hughes, a friend of Navan’s from the Phoenix theater scene, had toured a one-woman show which included performances at the Starlight. This year, Hughes had plans to tour another show, “The Lady with All the Answers,” about Ann Landers, but Navan asked her to step in to play Truvy, a role she had played before, and she put her other show on hold.
Commuting from Phoenix was not without its challenges. Hughes watched the rehearsals in Silver City over Zoom, the ubiquitous videoconferencing app, and had to rush through the final weeks of rehearsal in-person in Silver City, learning to navigate the stage and move around the other actors. 
“The community should be really proud of the caliber of actors here,” said Hughes, a strong proponent of community theater. “Theater is one of the best activities possible [to get involved in]. It requires teamwork, a group of people banding together. You really need to get out and do it because it may be your next favorite thing.”
Hughes also cautioned against people thinking they’re “too” anything to be onstage, especially for people later in life.
“It’s never too late,” she said. “It doesn’t matter. Just get up and do it!” 
She spoke of the emotional connection between the audience and performers.
“A lot of people don’t realize the audience is part of the show — when they respond, when they laugh, or cry, or gasp — the better the actors perform,” Hughes said. “[The audience is] an integral part of the performance and you don’t get that in a movie.”
“The audiences have been amazing,” Navan said. “They’re crying. They’re laughing. Everyone who comes out the doors says, ‘Oh, it’s fantastic.’”
Meanwhile, “Thom Pain (based on nothing)” takes what is at times a more adversarial stance with its audience. The main character, Thom, played by Montelius Valenzuela, alternates between beautiful imagistic language and raw profanity, telling stories about formative events in his life and engaging the audience in a sometimes playful, sometimes adversarial and sometimes deeply vulnerable and heartfelt manner.
This one-man show by Will Eno was a Pulitzer Prize finalist when it premiered in 2005, and has received critical acclaim during its many revivals in fringe and professional theaters across the world. 
In contrast to the vibrant maximalist set of “Steel Magnolias,” director Scott Plate said he wanted to “keep the footprint small and the content rich.” Valenzuela wanders the Buckhorn Opera House stage with minimal lighting effects. The show asks the audience to follow the story and connect with the performer in a more intimate way, without relying on spectacle.
“The words are very beautiful,” Valenzuela said. 
The young actor encountered the script a couple of years ago, and Plate said, “He’s really right for the part — he’s just young for it” at the time. Valenzuela then spent two years studying at the prestigious Ruskin Conservatory, an acting school known for creating deep emotional connections and truthfulness, before embarking on this project, which he financed himself with loans from family to pay for the rights and his own manual labor.
The result is a truly inspiring effort well worth the support of the community, and Plate says the response has been extraordinary.
“I’d do anything for that kid,” Plate recalled people saying when asked to help with the production. “His work ethic goes along with a civility that I really admire.”
“Thom Pain (based on nothing)” is playing through June 30 at the Buckhorn Opera House, located at 32 Main St. in Pinos Altos. Drinks and dinner are available next door in the saloon before the show. Showtimes are at 7 p.m., with additional 2 p.m. matinees Saturday and Sunday. Doors open half an hour before showtime. Tickets are $12 available at the door, and only cash is accepted. Reservations can be made by texting or calling 575-956-7249 up to two hours before showtimes.
The show is recommended for adult audiences only due to language and themes.

“Steel Magnolias” is playing through June 9 at the Starlight Theater, located at 1915 N. Gold St. in Silver City. Showtimes are at 7 p.m., with an additional 2 p.m. matinee on Sunday. Reservations can be made by texting or calling 480-291-3686 up to two hours before showtime. The show is recommended for adult audiences only due to its themes.

By HALLIE HARRIS
Daily Press Correspondent
Santa Clara Village Administrator Sheila Hudman welcomed the AmeriCorps Earth 2 Crew on Sunday — eight young adult volunteers from two separate crews who will spend the next six weeks in Bayard and Santa Clara restoring two historic buildings: Santa Clara’s Bradley Hotel and Bayard’s “Mine Mill” Hall.
Southwest New Mexico Arts, Culture and Tourism secured AmeriCorps support as part of its Five Points Plan to revitalize five culturally and historically significant buildings across Grant County. Dr. John Bell and wife Cecilia Bell of the Fort Bayard Historic Preservation Society also attended Sunday, inviting the crews to tour the Fort Bayard Museum. 
The Mine Mill Hall has degraded due in part to stormwater runoff, and part of its restoration will include construction of culverts designed to capture and divert rainwater from the building. Rohan Stites of Adobe Techniques and Kristen Lundren will be supervising and mentoring the crews. Ten Youth Conservation Corps crew members will also join in the Mine Mill Hall work in Bayard.
“This is particularly exciting for me to see the two of them [AmeriCorps and YCC] working alongside each other,” said Bridgette Johns, project coordinator for swnmACT. She wants area high school students and other youth to be aware of different opportunities for education, job training and travel, and said she views AmeriCorps as one such important opportunity for community youth.
The AmeriCorps program provides job training, educational stipends and a formative experience for young adults 18-26 years of age, regardless of education. Some of this year’s crew are fresh out of high school, while others have already completed bachelor’s degrees. Crews work together for months at a time, building community with each other and with locals in the areas where they serve.
“Our AmeriCorps group started last October — we’re part of the AmeriCorps southwest region, which is based out of Denver,” said Samuel, a volunteer from New Jersey, adding that they received on-the-job training for each assignment. “We did our first project in the fall in Kansas doing different outdoors work … helping out around the facilities. And then after that, we were in Pueblo, Colorado, which is in southern Colorado, helping with free tax prep for low- and middle-income families in that area. And then after that we were in Arizona, which is the farthest west we’ve been, and we were doing environmental stewardship work there.”
While most of this year’s AmeriCorps members come from east of the Rockies, they have spent the last six months in the Southwest, most recently in Patagonia, Ariz. They will bunk together in the old Santa Clara Armory while they complete the round of projects here.
“I think it’s important our communities stop by and say thank you to honor and recognize their labor,” Johns said.
“Usually the community reaches out. We hope people will come out to music in the park and the ice cream social” to make connections and meet the volunteers, Hudman said. “Come visit at the site — just don’t interfere with their work.”
The Five Points Plan recently upgraded the Old Waterworks building in Silver City and also plans to revitalize the Hurley train depot.

By HALLIE HARRIS
Daily Press Correspondent
Amid this week’s — and really, this year’s — Gila Wilderness centennial celebration, the Daily Press met up Wednesday with Wendel Hann, a retired Forest Service ecologist and now proprietor of Gila River Ranch, a meat producer in Gila that uses regenerative agriculture on land leased from The Nature Conservancy.
Hann discussed the evolution of the Forest Service and our understanding of wilderness over the last 100 years. His 34-year tenure with the federal agency and later consulting work with them saw many changes, including an impressive turnaround in strategies for managing fire and natural resources.
Hann grew up in Washington state on a farm, and said from a young age, he dreamed of working for the Forest Service.
“I love wild country,” he said, noting how the writings of Aldo Leopold had influenced him throughout his life. “People, just as a core value, love solitude and wild natural places, and I think that was something growing up that I was so used to, living out on a farm and everything, and then my folks taking me camping and fishing and hiking.”
When he was 14, Hann was invited to take a string of pack mules deep into the Cascade Wilderness of western Washington with a couple of neighbors, a packer for the Forest Service and a veterinarian who became mentors to him. The trip “embedded in me that love for wild places,” he said.
As a young man, he found work on a fire crew and as a packer, stringing mule trains across some of the least accessible trails of the Cascade Mountain Range before attending school at Washington State University on the other side of the state. There, he studied natural resources management and later soils and watershed management, taking a variety of courses he thought would give him the best chances of a career working in nature. 
“On the Forest Service side there were all these emerging issues coming to a head in the ’80s, ’90s … even now, that have provided the avenue for my training to be desired, and then I think I just learned how to interact with people and not try to drive the decision,” Hann said. “How to lay out the pluses and minuses, the benefits and the costs of different approaches — and it seems like everybody likes that, whether it’s the agency people or whether it’s the public or the special interest groups, they like being told just the facts. I always listened to the local people first. I learned the hard way that the best way to get lost is by not listening to someone who knows the country. You can be as smart as you want, but it’s still easy to get lost.”
His experience in the wilderness gave him plenty of memories, from a yearling cub black bear who’d become habituated to camp life by people feeding it treats to a young Boy Scout whose buddy had hooked his eyelid with a fishhook.
The work was sometimes dangerous. Once, a fellow mule packer had a life-threatening injury. 
“He was riding a string up the road, and he never remembered what happened, but somehow he got bucked off on that narrow gravel road and ended up downhill,” Hann remembered. “We found him and actually had to get a lifeflight to get him out. I packed the rest of that season for him, but he was back the next season.
“They thought he had a cracked spine, but it turned out he didn’t — although it was a very severe trauma,” he continued. “He’d been with the last of the cavalry mule packing divisions in WWII. He was in Italy, packing mules in the mountains, and so he was incredibly knowledgeable. He could shoe horses, pack mules, do just about anything, and so he taught me a lot.”
Hann said he still has great love for the mule train.
“It goes from hours of enjoyed boredom looking at the country as you’re leading your string to split seconds of pure terror when things go to heck: Somebody slips off the trail, or you and your riding animals slip off the trail,” he said. “Most of the time it was very, very enjoyable.”
As he drives Box Canyon Road, he looks over lush cottonwoods and sycamore arching along the banks of the Gila River, pointing out places of interest.
“This place right here is the Woodrow Ranch — he was the first district ranger on this side,” Hann said. “His main thing was to start controlling all of the livestock grazing that was happening.”
He was referring to Henry Woodrow, who managed the sheep count in 1912 for the McKenna District with laudable diplomacy, considering the fact that accounts from the time detail gunfights over more trivial things than land use.
“Those first district rangers, most of them were packing pistols,” Hann said. “It was a tough job.“
He recounted how fires helped to gain support for a cadre of Forest Service workers, after the Great Fire of 1910 burned 3 million acres of timberland in only two days, mostly in Montana and Idaho. It was a national tragedy that showed the nation a need to better manage and understand fire, and led to a system, called the 10 a.m. policy, under which all fires were put out as soon as they were spotted. 
“Gifford Pinchot, [the first Forest Service chief,] saw a fire back then as being an answer. ‘This is how I can build an organization based on getting people behind me to fight fire,’” Hann said. “Fire kind of fell into the wayside as timber dominated and grazing dominated through the 1900s, and then really fire didn’t emerge again until the 1988 fires.” 
Fire has been an important part of Hann’s career, a tenure that spanned the end of the 10 a.m. policy and saw the evolution of the current regime of prescribed burns and fuel management. He points out that fire plays an important role not just in the shape of forests or in the types of plant life, but for water resources as well.
“Interesting story related to water — when you have a high fuel load on the surface of the soil up in the mountains and then you get a fire, we often have what’s called hydrophobic [or water-repelling] conditions,” Hann said. “It basically heats the crust of the soil and that organic matter to where it forms an impermeable layer on the surface. The fires are often put out by the summer monsoon rain, and so you get a lot of sheet erosion and some gully erosion and some landslides that come off steep slopes.”
It’s a story that might sound familiar to some residents of Cliff and Gila, who saw massive flooding two years ago in the wake of fires many miles to the east of those communities. But nature bounces back.
“What happens is you get frost action over the winter, and in the soil there is a seed bank, and in that seed bank is grass seed from decades before,” Hann said. “Then the grass reestablishes, and then what we often see is right after the fire for a couple of years, increased flow of a lot of ash and sediment and stuff like that. And then as the grass establishes, all of a sudden the major flow is decreased — but you have more water coming throughout the year, because its permeating down through the soil and being absorbed by all the grasses. 
“That’s what we’re seeing now. We’re seeing water permeating up in the wilderness and then coming out in springs and flowing much later into the season. It’s a pretty cool relationship,” he added. “What goes on way up there in those mountains at 9,000 feet has a major effect down here in the valley at 4,500 feet, as far as water goes.”
Those relationships are key in the arid Southwest, he said.
“We could go horseback out of Sandy Point and up to Mogollon Baldy, which is the lookout up there, 10,700 feet,” Hann said. “When you’re up there, you have this incredible view of southwest New Mexico, and you can’t even see the river. You can’t even see the green of the river — it’s just all brown. It just really emphasizes how really important these little, narrow riparian corridors are, not only from an ecological perspective to the diversity of species, but to people.
“This is where all the people are,” he continued. “This is where they’re producing their food. So we have 1 percent of the ground that’s riparian that’s just incredibly important.”
Hann was eager to point out not just the interconnectedness of natural systems — fire, wildlife, water and soil carbon — but also of the agencies and groups the Forest Service works with, lauding the agency for its cooperation with public and private interests. He points out that environmentalists have had to evolve their policies just as the Forest Service has, as better data emerges about fire and ecosystems. He sees wilderness as an important “laboratory” for ecologists to develop that data.
“For [wilderness areas] to be a working laboratory, they have to be large enough to contain natural processes,” Hann said. “[The Gila] is large enough, if the surrounding areas are managed with natural processes. I have a lot of hope. I see more and more work over the decades between the national forest, [Bureau of Land Management] and private individuals. A lot of the old hurt feelings are getting left behind.” 
He said that fires have also ignited nature groups and environmental groups and science-based environmentalists.
“Climate change has exacerbated the situation, but really it’s fuel,” Hann said. “If the fuel is there, it will eventually burn.”
He called out dispersed homes where people don’t manage fuel on their property, allowing shrubs to take over the grasslands. He said he suspects grassland restoration may become a big issue for the BLM, especially in the coming decades.
As he travels toward Mogollon Creek, he points east, beyond the Gila, to some prominences.
“What you’re looking at due to your right, that’s called Hell’s Half Acre, and that’s BLM, those mountains down there, and that’s just a wonderful area. It’s grasslands, shrublands, not even much piñon-juniper. It’s wild,” Hann said with a delighted smile. “It is wild. They’re nothing but cow trails back there, and no people, outside of a little bit of hunting pressure in the fall — but generally, you know, the animals they hunt aren’t there. In the fall, they’re still up in the pine country. But it is … it is just wild.
“Even the valley here is just a wild place. It’s not wild when you’re driving down the highway here, but as soon as you walk across the pasture and end up in the river bottom, it’s pretty wild,” he continued. “There’s cougars coming down there, and there’s bears coming down there.”
Hann laughed, and a sense of wonder lit up his face as he talked about sharing space with these animals.
“Cougars are usually scared,” he said. “I’ve actually treed them. They’ll tree from just seeing a human, and they’ll get up there up above you and then yowl down at you.
“Yeah, I think solitude’s important.”

By HALLIE HARRIS
Daily Press Correspondent
The Silver City Blues Festival this past Memorial Day weekend saw the return of a second day to the event for the first time since 2019, and clear skies and warm weather contributed to a happy crowd of festivalgoers. Organizers estimated that 15,000 people entered Gough Park over the two days of the event, with nearly 10,500 of those attending Saturday.
This year’s festival lineup included favorite acts from the area, including Connie Brannock, Felix y Los Gatos and Silver City’s own Illusion Band, as well as touring acts from around the country. 
Jessica Laurel Reese, a Grant County metal artist and nurse practitioner, described the festival.
“I’ve seen a lot of awesome vendors with very cool, creative things for sale. I’ve seen some fabulously talented musicians grace our stage, and I didn’t have to pay to get in here and I’m grateful for that,” she said. “I would easily pay 20 bucks to get into a concert, a festival like this. Each day!
“I went to the Zócalo [on Friday] for their kick-off, and that was a whole lot of fun; also fabulously entertaining dance floor and fabulous music,” she continued. “I’ll probably go down to the Toad tonight and bring my pool cue and my darts and — work my magic!”
Vendors added to the festive atmosphere, selling an array of goods including Japanese fish prints, rocks and minerals, jewelry, hats, tie-dye, sculptural felted dancing figures, clothing, and pop-art lino prints from a group of Los Angeles artists visiting family here in Silver City.
Suki Aubrey, fiber artist and dyer, offered upcycled natural fiber clothes imprinted with natural plant dyes, set by boiling them in an old iron washtub. She explained that the iron in the water helps the natural pigments in the plants to bite into the fibers of the garment, so they can be washed without losing the dye.
“I like to extend the life of the plant — they live on forever through clothes,” she said.
Aubrey, a recent transplant to the Mimbres, raved about the festival organizers and volunteers.
“It’s the best,” she said. “I’ve just been really supported — volunteers come by to make sure everything’s going all right and ask ‘do you have change?’”
Aubrey said that, along with the application process, made it one of the best festivals she’d attended as a vendor.
“About 70 percent of vendors are [from the Makers Market],” said Festival Coordinator Mary Stone, explaining that those vendors offer exclusively homemade and handcrafted wares, although the festival also had booths for commercial vendors and sponsors.
Stone has been coordinating the festival for the past two years with partner Stephen Lindsey. The two of them are founders of the Silver City Makers Market and Future Forge Makerspace and, having hosted the Makers Market at the 2022 festival, were asked to step up as festival coordinators the following year.
“Now we have to do food vendors, beer garden vendors — you know, we’ve got to do everything: getting the bands, getting their contracts made, the green rooms and the portapotties, the electrical and the parking,” Lindsey said.
Their work is apparent in happy vendors, artists, volunteers and attendees at this year’s festival. Stone said that a more comprehensive vendor application process helped them map out the venue and ensure the vendors had what they needed to thrive at the event. While the extra day on Sunday did require more volunteer hours, Stone noted that the setup and tear-down of the festival is a large part of the work.
Missy Andersen volunteered at the gate on Pope Street.
“It’s my first year [as a volunteer],” she said. “It’s great. I need to come out more. When I stand here, I see a lot of people I know and even people I’ve seen in other places, so I think Tucson comes here a lot. We love it here.”
Andersen is also a professional blues singer who has played the festival in the past. She said the experience helped her and her partner make the decision to relocate here.
“We did not come here by accident,” she said.
Andersen said she loves seeing familiar faces and connecting with fellow musicians like Connie Brannock and Hurricane Ruth.
What’s best about volunteering?
“First of all, just the people,” she said. “Everybody just loves blues and that’s the best thing; the whole community.”
There was plenty of food and drink on hand to fuel the dancing and enjoyment of the attendees. An old Piaggio Ape trike was used by Alex Mackenzie and his family to sell flavored lemonades and Italian sandwiches. Mackenzie, who builds and converts trucks as a hobby, uses the Ape (“bee” in Italian) for fundraisers. Las Comadres returned with fruit bowls decorated with fun candies, Tajin and other spicy seasonings, joined by other vendors offering barbecue, tacos, and many types of aguas frescas. 
Attendees sported casual, bizarre and festive attire. One Silver City resident, Jan Alexander, brought and wore a grinning gorilla mask and a tutu.
Dancing is “what keeps me going,” he said. “I do yoga and dancing. It hits everything: physical fitness, social experience, aesthetics, gets you moving — move it or lose it, honey!”
The bands sounded crisp and clear and the crowds were dancing. KW Sound/Hubbard’s Music from Las Cruces returned, supporting the bands with live sound reinforcement.
“They’re amazing,” Stone said. “They’re professionals, and they know exactly what they’re doing. They make the festival.”
Alastair Greene, an Austin, Texas, artist, closed the day Saturday with a high-energy blues/rock set.
“This was my first time playing this festival and it was fantastic,” he said. “I have not been to Silver City before, and I don’t know what’s going to top this experience unless I come back and do it again next year. This has been great. We showed up and everything was laid out. They treated us really great, and we’re hoping we can come back and do it again, man. This was awesome. This was a lot of fun.”
Other musicians at the event also expressed their gratitude for the festival, the coordinators and the crowds.
“They are over the moon with the private bathroom,” said Victoria Reece, who organized the “green room” where the performers rest and prepare for the show, pointing to a bright orange portajohn labeled “for musicians and performers only.” “They are extremely happy. We’ve got wonderful food [donated] from the [Silver City Food] Co-op — beautiful veggie trays and sandwiches. They are so excited when they come in and look at this stuff. Javalina always does coffee, and they are wonderful!”
Those donations are what make the event work, organizers said.
“We were able to get a lot of good sponsors this year, raising about $65,000 in sponsorships,” Lindsey said. “We hope to supplement with the donations that come in, so we can break even and then hopefully make a little more money so we can continue to put that into expanding the festival.”
He told the Daily Press on Tuesday that about $13,500 in donations had been raised from attendees over the two days of the festival.
“Donate to MRAC, the Mimbres Region Arts Council,” Stone said. “They’re always accepting donations — their office is in the visitors’ center.”
Donations are also accepted online at SilverCityBluesFes tival.org

By HALLIE HARRIS
Daily Press Correspondent
The Mimbres Region Arts Council is dedicating the 2024 Silver City Blues Festival to Linda Gray, a longtime employee, volunteer and community organizer who died suddenly of a brain hemorrhage earlier this month.
According to her extensive network of friends and colleagues, Gray’s history of public service and stellar personality have left a lasting impact on the town of Silver City, including many fond memories.
“MRAC is devastated by the sudden loss of Linda Gray, who served the organization selflessly as its chief volunteer for as long as anyone can remember — and in many ways was not only the most familiar and consistent representative of the organization but also its main operations assistant, archivist and liaison to countless partners in Grant County,” acting Arts Council President Manda Clair Jost said. “To say that she will be missed as a reliable team member and trusted friend would be a severe understatement. Since it would not be happening without the months of dedication she gave to it this year, as in all prior years, the Mimbres Region Arts Council has dedicated the 2024 Silver City Blues Festival to her memory and honor.”
Gray served as office manager at the Arts Council for the past 12 years, where she also spearheaded projects, volunteered her time and coordinated “an army of volunteers” for Blues Fest, the Southwest Print Fiesta, Pickamania and other events. She oversaw the removal of the Arts Council’s offices from the Wells Fargo building into the Murray Ryan Visitor Center.
In 2021, after the COVID pandemic left many businesses and nonprofits reeling, the Arts Council decided to furlough its staff in order to preserve the organization. Gray, however, continued as office administrator in a “volunteer capacity,” according to the Grant County Beat’s reporting that year.
She “pretty much single-handedly ran the office and kept the organization afloat,” recalled Shanon Muehlhausen, the current Arts Council treasurer.
“Linda believed in this town. She believed in the idea of a community, and I believe that is really special,” Muehlhausen said.
“The whole thing wouldn’t exist without her,” said Alexandra Tager, who worked with Gray at the Mimbres Region Arts Council, referring to Linda’s consistency and dedication throughout the organization’s changes.
“Linda was the heart and soul of MRAC,” said Melody Collins of the Silver City Museum.
Many community members recall Gray’s smiling face and reserved, dry sense of humor through her public-facing service in the community. She volunteered at the Visitor Center, and spent five years serving as a greeter at the Silver City Museum and many more with the Friends of the Library, where she succeeded her friend Jeannie Miller as president and later served as the membership chairperson.
Gray was “complex, intelligent, witty — she had a very wry sense of humor, and she was a very dear friend,” Miller told the Daily Press in a phone interview earlier this week. “She was just really unique. … She kept me in line. I will miss her very much.”
Recalling her volunteerism at the Visitor Center, “She got me to volunteer there,” Miller added.
Everywhere she worked, the people she served with enjoyed her presence. Bart Roselli, who has helmed the Silver City Museum as director for the past six years, recalls Gray had “always a warm and friendly greeting; she had a great sense of humor,” adding that she also was invaluable behind the scenes, collating visitor demographic data.
She was “great to work with, fun to socialize with, very professional,” he said.
Gray was born May 26, 1945, in Philadelphia and grew up in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, where she attended Rosemont College and the University of Pennsylvania. She earned a master’s in biochemistry, according to her longtime partner, Kam Zarrabi. She worked as an office manager for most of her life, retiring from a financial management company in Southern California before moving to Silver City, Zarrabi said.
The couple met in 2000 in San Diego before moving to Silver City in 2012, where Linda began working with the Silver City Grant County Chamber of Commerce before her tenure at the Arts Council.
“Her passion was to contribute,” Zarrabi said in a phone interview, recalling work she did with a theater guild in San Diego. “She was a giver.”
While Gray had no children of her own, Zarrabi said she was a loving mother to his children and grandchildren. In Silver City, she was known for her dedicated service to the causes and organizations she championed, supporting the arts and the life of the mind and serving as a dear friend to many.
While her colleagues celebrated her work ethic and personality, they also indicated that she knew how to enjoy life.
“I have very fond memories of Linda,” said Teresa Dahl-Bredine, owner of Little Toad Creek Brewery and Distillery and founder of the Virus Theater. “She was a big supporter of the arts and donated generously to Virus Theater. She was also a regular at the Toad and was adored by all our staff. She was such a kind and generous person. We’ll miss her smiling face enjoying a glass of champagne.“
That love of champagne is remembered by her friends and loved ones.
“There is hardly a picture of her without a glass of champagne,” Zarrabi said.
“I would give it to her for her birthday,” Collins recalled. “We toast you, Linda!”

A memorial service to celebrate Gray’s life is planned for June 1, for those who knew her to share memories of her life and a champagne toast. For details, reach out to Muehlhausen at 575-313-7348 or Melody Collins at the Silver City Museum, 575-597-0223 or store@silver citymuseum.org.