The first shopping day of the Christmas season is upon us, with the usual crowds, the frantic sales and the inevitable parking nightmare. Even the name—Black Friday—suggests that Americans are deeply ambivalent about this strange shopping holiday. But is it, perhaps, the most American day of the year? A spectacle of commerce and crowds, consumerism [...]
November 27, 2009
Thanks
In late November, the shade grows quickly over the landscape in the hills behind Albuquerque. From about 3 p.m. on, the shadows surge longer and longer, and if you’re hiking on the backside of the Sandia Mountains, it’s a chiaroscuro drama. But sometimes, as you walk up a gentle canyon, you come over a rise [...]
