by Birdie Jaworski
The parking lot at University Avenue and 6th Street bursts with flavor each Wednesday and Saturday now that summer is upon us. Farmers drive from the outskirts of town, sometimes from Texas and Oklahoma, to share round lemon cucumbers, deep purple grapes, brown paper bags filled with spinach leaves. June at the Las Vegas Farmer’s Market means the …

by Birdie Jaworski
The road to Vida Encantada Nursing and Rehab twists past a subdivision littered with toddlers’ toys, past the great prairie’s golden summer grasses, past the long curved road of life that leads most of its residents home here. A walk through the facility follows the same quixotic curves. Residents congregate in the recreation room, indulging in community dinners, …

by Birdie Jaworski
The black locomotives of the first trains in New Mexico territory belched hot white steam into the tree-lined skies. The Mexican-American war had ended, had left deep distrust in the hearts of the territory citizens, many of whom had lost entire families in the bloody dispute. The largest city in the territory those days was Las Vegas, New …

by Birdie Jaworski

A string of large wire cages sits in the open sun next to a deserted lot covered in wood scrap and rusted debris. The dogs pace, eyes wary, sometimes dipping inside plastic igloos and beneath makeshift shelters to hide from June’s relentless solar rays. Electra, a boxer mix with wiry yellow fur, leans her pug nose through a …

by Birdie Jaworski
Paintings in WarDancer Gallery / Birdie Jaworski

An deliberately uneven row of paintings hangs against a colorful marbleized wall; traditional representations of Native American women and children in ochre and green, fantastic pointillist pieces in shades of the rainbow, mixed media depictions of moving dancers, of ristras swinging from adobe porches. Neita Fran Ward stands in the doorway of …

by Birdie Jaworski
A set of rustic chairs, His and Hers, each painted with the visage of artist Grant Wood’s famous coupling, “American Gothic,” rests in Carol Baldwin’s home art studio. The chairs seem to hold a conversation with one another, pitchforked farmer stern and willful against a quiet woman, her hair pulled back into a severe bun. A shorter chair …

by Birdie Jaworski

Bison at Wind River Ranch (photo by Birdie Jaworski)

Three hundred years ago, the storm and thunder of bison swarmed the pinon-laced hills outside of Las Vegas. The land looked different then. Beaver claimed the Rio Gallinas in numbers much larger than today. The river bent to nature’s whims, snaking around geological dips in the landscape, flooding the plains …