March 28, 2026
March 29, 2026
Álvaro Lorenzo y uno de los muletazos de la temporada (Vídeo)
(mundotoro.com March 28, 2026)
Dos orejas cortó Álvaro Lorenzo en el quinto, al que recibió a la verónica de rodillas y de hinojos también inauguró un trasteo, que llegó con mucha fuerza a los tendidos. El toledano se abandonó con un toro de El Freixo de categórico embroque, supremo pitón izquierdo y un comportamiento complejo que la división entre mansedumbre y bravura se queda corto. Aunque buscó las tablas, las embestidas fueron de enorme flexibilidad con el pitón de dentro. Varios naturales en redondo -uno de ellos uno de los muletazos de la temporada-, quedarán grabados en la memoria de una faena de emotividad por su imperfección. Media estocada en buen sitio.
link to Mundotoro to watch video
They are calling it on of the "muletazos of the season", the pass made by Álvaro Lorenzo on a bull from El Juli's ranch, el Freixo.
Álvaro Lorenzo fought six bulls from different ranches in Toledo yesterday, all part of a charity bullfight to raise money for a hospital in Toledo.
Check out the link above watch the quick 16 second video and enjoy.
America's official mammal, the bison, gets a bronze tribute for the country's 250th birthday
(ksl.com March, 22, 2026)
The national mammal of the United States is getting in on America's 250th birthday celebration.
Three bison statues cast in bronze have taken up a permanent display outside the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History in Washington. The pieces — which are larger than real-life bison — made their public debut in the nation's capital on Friday.
The bison earned its official status as the nation's mammal under a law signed by former President Barack Obama in 2016. Millions of bison once roamed the Great Plains but were nearly driven to extinction in the 1800s.
"It's a wonderful story of conservation working, it's a story of people seeing a need and getting behind that to conserve an animal that is specific to North America," said Gary Staab, a paleoartist who made the statues.
Staab designed and sculpted the statues in Kearney, Missouri, where he works full-time to create sculptures of animals and historical artifacts for museums around the world. For the bison, Staab sculpted the full-size statues in foam and clay before they were cast in bronze and assembled at a foundry in Colorado. The three statues depict a bull, a cow and a calf.
He said it took about four months to complete the sculptures — a time frame he called "lighting fast" given the size of the pieces.
"They really represent a really unbelievably beautiful and unique thing about North America," Staab said.
March 22, 2026
The season has begun in Madrid
March 22, 2026
First bull of the year, Curandero from the Celestino Cuadri ranch. 668 kilos!
Above are photos of Curandero on the ranch, in the corrals, and then en la plaza.
As you can see this bull gave el torero Pepe Moral trouble, and as usual it seems like the first corrida of the year in Madrid never lives up to all the hype. No ears were cut, I don't think there was even much applause.
Maybe next week.
March 18, 2026
Toros de La Quinta en el campo
My dream job, un ganadero.
Getting in my SUV or truck and heading out early in the day to check on the bulls.
March 8, 2026
Antonio Ferrera, Manuel Escribano, y El Fandi en Morón de la Frontera
March 7, 2026
Morón de la Frontera (Sevilla)
This was billed as El cartel de ‘Banderilleros de Oro’
March 1, 2026
The Magic of Chimayó
(newmexicomagazine.org April 16, 2025)
Magical realism was not simply a literary genre when I spent summers in Chimayó during my youth. It was a lived experience. I’d venture into the hills behind my grandmother’s home, just a stone’s throw from where she was born in 1898, to find every rock glowing with color—and I took pocketfuls home. The acequia below her 1929 adobe sparkled like diamonds as I wound through orchards and among aged buildings. At night, Grandma recounted old-world stories of kings, queens, and castles in a land far away.
Walking from her Plaza del Cerro house now, I’m struck by how Chimayó has changed and how my youthful imagination has dimmed. And yet, I still find magic in the place. It’s there in the landscape, dominated by a thousand-foot-high hill whose rocky crags cast a spine-tingling glow over the valley. It’s in the wild foothills rolling steeply up to snowcapped summits of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains and the patchwork of irrigated fields, stitched together by myriad acequias, stretching west down the Santa Cruz Valley.
No wonder the Tewa Pueblo people, who inhabited this place for centuries before Europeans arrived, revered this landscape. They called the hill Tsi Mayoh, one of four sacred hills circumscribing their world. In their cosmology, supernatural beings dwelt on the hill, and a spring at its base yielded earth said to have curative properties.
The mythologization of the landscape continued after Spanish colonization. The name became Chimayó and referred not only to the hill but also to the colonial town. The supernatural beings, named Kokoman and El Chivato, took on a new shape as scary denizens of the hill. The site of the spring became known as the pocito, a small pit in the ground bearing healing earth located at the place where my fifth great-grandfather Bernardo Abeyta had an epiphany in 1811 that changed his life and the future of Chimayó.
Versions of Abeyta’s story abound, but they all agree that he found a buried crucifix and took it to the nearest church, 10 miles away, only to have it reappear—three times. Seeing this as divine inspiration, he and the community built a church on the site, and word spread of miraculous cures happening there.
The fame of El Santuario de Chimayó grew, and it holds a special place in the hearts of New Mexicans. I remember a few years ago on Good Friday, when 30,000 people arrived in this courtyard, walking in a pilgrimage from miles around. I watched them stagger in, sweaty and worn, some pushing wheelchairs or strollers, some bent under the weight of crosses they’d carried across arid miles. There was a festive atmosphere as people shared in the joy and relief of completing the journey, whether it was 100 miles or one. But near the church’s entrance, the crowd quieted to a murmur as everyone filed inside.
I followed into the church, shuffling with the throngs in subdued light past painted retablos and carved bultos depicting holy figures made by 19th-century master santeros. We paused before the altar screen bearing a crucifix with a dark-skinned Christ, first revered in Guatemala’s Basilica of Esquipulas, where people also make pilgrimages for healing earth.
We continued to a small room to the side of the nave where, one by one, the faithful scooped tierra sagrada (holy earth) from the pocito to ingest; spread on their bodies to alleviate physical ailments or moral suffering; or bring back home to loved ones. Some have left mementos in the room—including stacks of crutches and portraits of family members—that tell of personal revelations and outright healing.
As I stroll near the church on a midwinter day to watch the Santa Cruz River rush past grassland fields, I realize you don’t have to believe in miracles to feel inspired at the santuario.
There’s wonder in simply admiring the 1816 church’s graceful lines and pitched roof, placed over the flat-roofed original in the 1920s; arched adobe entryway; twin bell towers; doors carved by the 19th-century carpenter Pedro Domínguez; and tombstone-filled courtyard. The interior holds some of the most refined folk art pieces to be found in all of New Mexico.
To see how those art forms exist today, I make a visit to Chavez Gallery, just up an alleyway near the santuario. I zero in on a sign proclaiming “Chimayó Latte—spicy!” and others bearing religious motifs, including a mural of the santuario and one that reads “Retablos, Bultos, Paintings.” This is not your typical tourist shop. Here in what was his grandfather’s home, artists Patricio and Shawna Chavez show their finely crafted retablos and bultos alongside historic family photos.
“They taught us how to live,” Patricio says of his ancestors. “We do this because we want to keep our traditions alive,” adds Shawna, who, besides turning out exquisite retablos, teaches children the techniques of traditional santero art.
That longstanding tradition also includes commerce. An 1818 inventory of the santuario describes a stockpile of locally produced woven goods for pilgrims, suggesting that Chimayó weavers saw opportunity in the stream of visitors to the church. By 1900, when my great-grandfather Reyes Ortega opened a weaving shop a mile from the santuario, Chimayó’s weavers had already developed a distinctive style using design motifs from Mexican Saltillo weavers combined with striped patterns long familiar in New Mexico. The result was the Chimayó blanket, much sought-after in the tourist trade and among collectors.
Tapping into a burgeoning interest in Southwestern folk art and textiles, Ortega and other weavers transformed their longtime household practice into a livelihood as they shipped out rugs, blankets, and other woven goods across the U.S. They innovated, creating new, more portable products—purses, pillows, jackets, vests, and runners. Weaving enterprises multiplied and, although the number has dwindled, several remain as a mainstay of the local economy.
The eighth-generation Ortega’s Weaving Shop, opened by Reyes’s brother Nicasio, has been around the longest. In my teen years, I wove there as a summer job. Dropping in now, the smell of wool and the sight of stacks of dazzling Chimayó blankets and rugs brings me back. My cousin Robert Ortega is busy closing a deal on some handmade jewelry from Santo Domingo Pueblo, which reminds me that the store is also well stocked with fine Southwestern jewelry and ceramics.
Centinela Traditional Arts, a much younger weaving outlet belonging to another primo of mine, Irvin Trujillo, and his wife, Lisa, riffs on the model for Chimayó weaving establishments. Here, skeins of subtly hued, naturally dyed yarn from Navajo-Churro sheep hang on the backroom wall, and the showroom is filled with colorful weavings, including one-of-a-kind pieces that push traditional styles into a distinctly modern dimension.
In Chimayó, weaving has always been a family affair. At Trujillo’s Weaving Shop, Carlos Trujillo stands at the well-worn, handmade floor loom his grandfather Encarnación built 120 years ago. Carlos recalls when he started working in the family business, which opened in 1950 in the Trujillos’ humble, two-room adobe.
“My dad put me on loom when I was five years old, a little loom strung for pieces just two inches wide,” he says. “When I was weaving, I was doing it on my knees. I was making headbands back in the early ’60s, when the hippie movement was going on, and the hippies from the Hog Farm [commune] would stop here in their buses and buy them.”
As with the weavers, the late 19th-century economic prospects pushed Chimayó chile farmers to turn a subsistence activity into a business. Their chile was a valuable commodity in the barter economy, but growers began to export it outside the region when the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad reached Española in 1880. The effort put whole families to work, planting, hoeing, and irrigating, and then tying the red peppers into ristras that each fall draped nearly every Chimayó home. Railcar loads of chiles were shipped out on the Chile Line. Chimayó gained a reputation for growing an exceptionally flavorful variety of chile—so much so that Chimayó chile became synonymous with the good stuff.
While there are many strong opinions about who grows New Mexico’s best chile, I put the question to one of Chimayó’s largest chile dealers, my cousin Raymond Bal, proprietor of El Potrero Trading Post. Opened in 1921 by Bal’s grandmother as a small grocery, El Potrero sells real Chimayó chile, as well as chile imported from elsewhere in New Mexico. His store, once the site of Chimayó’s dance hall, is well stocked with a dizzying potpourri of goods, including milagros, rosaries, tinwork crosses, holy earth, holy water, and just about anything a pilgrim or Southwest folk art enthusiast could want.
“I haven’t found any chile that tastes better than Chimayó’s,” Bal says while standing in front of stacks of bagged red chile powder. But to meet with demand, he acquires most of his chile from bigger producers in southern New Mexico—and, he avers, it’s “very good chile too.”
Chile lovers can also find their fill at Rancho de Chimayó restaurant, nestled up against the hill just down the road from the santuario. In 1965, Arturo Jaramillo and his wife, Florence, founded the restaurant in his grandparents’ home and quickly developed it into a beloved community institution and popular eatery for residents and visitors.
“We wanted to make sure the local community felt welcome here,” says Florence, the 94-year-old matriarch and manager of the restaurant, which earned the James Beard Foundation’s America’s Classics Award in 2016. “We wanted to offer traditional New Mexican dishes in a homelike setting.”
Chimayó is one of the few rural communities in northern New Mexico that has a museum to preserve the region’s rich history and culture. The Chimayó Museum, a project of the nonprofit Chimayó Cultural Preservation Association, is located on the Plaza del Cerro, named in deference to Tsi Mayoh itself. Away from the main thoroughfares, this plaza escapes notice by most visitors, and many Chimayó residents don’t know where to find it. Its unpaved roadway, crumbling buildings, and quiet, off-the-path isolation resonate with an incomparable sense of history unadorned. Historians recognize the rectangular cluster of adjoined homes as the most intact Spanish colonial plaza in the Southwest.
The plaza is but a shadow of its prosperous past, when every home was occupied, the interior space was lovingly cultivated, and the general store and adjacent post office invited Chimayosos to congregate. The Chimayó Museum recalls this history with a remarkable collection of photos: people at work in fields of wheat and among rows of chile; houses loaded with ristras; schoolchildren lined up in front of a one-room, adobe classroom. The museum also showcases historic textiles and a loom on which they were made, as well as well-worn household and farm tools, books, a piano that was hauled to Chimayó in a wagon in 1900, and historic maps and documents.
When I was a child at my grandmother’s in Chimayó, just off the plaza, I awoke every day to see the sun rising over the great hill of Tsi Mayoh, a sight that has impressed countless generations of people—and impresses me still. Although I no longer live there, I, like so many New Mexicans, return at every opportunity.
https://www.newmexicomagazine.org/blog/post/magic-of-chimayo/
February 17, 2026
What I am reading now
So, I picked this book up at my local Barnes and Noble a couple of weeks ago. I hadn't heard of this book before but I saw it there and took a chance on it and I am so glad I did, it has been a great book so far. I am only about 60 pages into it (the book has a total of 459 pages) but it has been incredibly interesting.
I had heard of Joaquin Murrieta before, and I knew he was the inspiration for the character of Zorro, and I knew he was kind of a bandit, but other than that I knew nothing. Looks like I am in for an education though because there is much more to the story, and it has been a great read so far.
Violent too, I had no idea of the violence that was in the gold camps in California around the gold rush of 1849. That is where the story begins with Joaquin and his family coming up from Mexico once they heard of gold being found in California, as did thousands of other Mexicans, as well as Chileans and Peruvians as well.
Mix in a bunch of Anglos, and convicts from Australia, and basically no law and you have a recipe for violence.
Anyway, can't wait to read more, I just have to find a few minutes here and there in my daily schedule.
Oh, and the book has already mentioned bullfighting once. I guess in the heavily Mexican camps they would hold bullfights along with other fiestas and drinking and gambling. Sounds like a wild time.
Stay tuned for more.
February 8, 2026
February 4, 2026
January 16, 2026
January 11, 2026
San Antonio Texas - October 2010
Back in October of 2010 by wife and I took a trip to San Antonio Texas. We had not taken a trip since our honeymoon to Hawaii in February of 2008, and we decided to go to San Antonio since we really didn't have much money (we were still trying to pay off the wedding reception and such) and I had done some research and came up with the idea of exploring San Antonio's "mission trail" since it looked fun and ..... entrance to all the missions was free!
Keep in mind this was before the days of apps, iPhones, and Google maps. So I had a map of all the missions with some information printed out on paper. Yes, paper! Oh, it was the good old days for sure.
Here are some photos and some brief information that I have had saved on another site for quite some time, well, since 2010 anyway.
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The first night in San Antonio, after getting settled into the hotel, we made our way down to the Alamo. Since it was later at night there was hardly anyone there and it was peaceful and reflective.
The Alamo
First morning after breakfast we headed straight to the Alamo.
More than a couple of people told us not to get our hopes up with the Alamo, that we would be disappointed because it is not as big as everyone thinks. However, my wife and I were both blown away with the Alamo. It was much more interesting, enjoyable, and moving than we were expecting. We spent close to two hours just walking around and taking it all in. The Alamo alone made the whole trip worthwhile.
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After visiting the Alamo we were ready for some lunch so we headed to the Riverwalk. I wasn't as impressed with the Riverwalk as others, maybe the fact that I almost fell into the river had something to do with that.
Mission Concepcion
After lunch we headed out to explore the Mission Trail. Mission Concepcion was the first mission outside of the city. The information I had printed out said it is the oldest un-renovated mission in the United States. It was pretty impressive on the inside however due to some maintanence going on on the outside we couldn't get a very good picture of the face of the church. Oh well, we pressed on.
Mission San Jose
According to my information Mission San Jose is known as the "Queen of the Missions" and I would have to agree. This one was very well taken care of and the grounds and area around the church were huge. On the inside of the mission walls were all of these little rooms with small doors and windows were the native Americans would live while the missionaries taught them skills and such. This one was pretty impressive.
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