Last week, for the first time in too long, I stood outside at night, far from the city, under a swollen belly of bright stars. Even the few lights of a little city like Santa Fe obscure more night sky than can possibly be good for us.
Standing just off I-25 at the exit for Colmor, New Mexico, almost exactly on the line between Mora and Colfax counties, Orion was rising on the horizon and each cold breath was beautiful but sad. A bit so because standing under the stars in dark open country fills my bones with regret that I don't do it more often, and heartbreaking because my wife's grandmother had just died.
Virginia spent pretty much all of her adult life in Denver, living for more than 60 years in the same modest, sturdy house. In the same way that people are lured to the Southwest to soak in some indefinable beauty, she lived in Colorado to be as close as possible to Rocky Mountain National Park, never losing her absolute glee for high-elevation vistas, glacial-hewn granite and strange tundra. Her house was full and fresh with her spirit, something I could only watch her children and grandchildren seek peace and acceptance with.
As a bystander operating mostly in a supporting role, I was amazed at how much Virginia's history and home also was part of the story of Denver and, in a way, other parts of the country, including Santa Fe. Her home, in a pleasant tree-lined neighborhood, once sat on the edge of town with a view toward eastern plains and tall grasses, but is now surrounded increasingly by McMansions and "village" developments, half-hearted ghosts of urbanist ideals. Her husband, deceased for many years now, had been a "company man" back when the corporate family was part of a utopian future of atomic energy, space exploration and happy children. That utopia has disappeared as corporations realized they don't have significant need of individuals or personality. Much of the growth in Denver and the shift in the cultural climate, Virginia had told me on previous visits, did not please her greatly, but she accepted change and had some appreciation for the conveniences of modern life. Supermarkets were handy, mobile telephones less so. In a dynamic that is too close to dying out with people like Virginia, she was friendly with all her neighbors. Watching her children dread telling each neighbor in succession that she'd passed away, I felt a particular flush of guilt; who would tell my neighbors if I died? What reason, beyond real estate speculation, would they have to care?
Denver and Santa Fe are both in the process of identity adjustment. Santa Fe can't quite decide whether to remain a quaint adobe Disneyland or to become a capital of progressive contemporary culture. Santa Fe can't quite decide whether to promote small business or suck up to Super Wal-Mart. Santa Fe can't quite decide if it's different because it's all the same or if it's just the same as anywhere because it's trying so hard to be different. Denver has it a little easier in that it doesn't have to live up to a dubious adobe history and is free to take a little risk, especially with architecture. The Denver Public Library was recently redone by Michael Graves, a big deal, though the result is a bit ho-hum and alarmingly totalitarian to my eye. Fentress Bradburn Architects created an extension for the convention center; giant and impressive, but as bland in an urban-steel-and-glass way as Santa Fe's future convention center looks to be in a fauxdobe-and-viga way. The Denver Art Museum is just wrapping up its new digs, a titanium-clad, exploding atom of a building, designed by Daniel Libeskind, which is just the kind of thing I'd like to see dropped into Santa Fe instead of the current design for the new state history museum or the convention center. Virginia, though, I think would have disagreed with me on that one and, if I talked to my neighbors more, I'd probably find out that many of them would side with her. Now, titanium siding is sort of the new black, so we wouldn't really want that. And chasing starchitecture is certainly no way to be different at this point, but the city and state could have done better by encouraging local architects to think outside of the pueblo.
Still, roaming Denver with Virginia on my mind, I saw that there's a third way. The convention center extension (bland, remember?) is, despite itself, a universally popular place. The reason? Not the building, but an exceptional piece of public art. Artist Lawrence Argent stuck, inexplicably, a giant blue bear peering into the windows of the center, incredibly changing the entire architectural sense of the place with one deft, ridiculous art swoop. And Virginia loved it. Partly because blue was her favorite color, but really, I like to think, because she was her city and she knew what it needed. When she looked at Libeskind's art museum, she saw only ego and gratuitousness, when she looked at the bear she could see that it was silly, but serious, appalling but historically and environmentally germane, absurd but poignant, imposing but cute. Virginia had her priorities straight, wasn't fooled by bells and whistles and was skeptical but willing, so long as the change was for the better, to have a good time in the midst of it. Here's hoping, in honor of Virginias everywhere, that Santa Fe-and anywhere else that needs it-finds its own "blue bear."
