One thing you quickly conclude visiting Santa Fe, N.M., the New Age capital of America, is it ain’t cheap supporting a community dedicated to peace, love and harmony, not to mention eradicating world hunger and poverty and living eco-friendly.

My cup of coffee and two over-medium eggs, served with pinto beans, hash browns, salsa and a dollop of sour cream and guacamole, at the counter of The Famous Plaza Café in historic downtown Santa Fe this morning came to $11.82 before tip.

I just thank goodness I’m not a souvenir-hunter. Refrigerator magnets inside the newsstand of the popular La Fonda Hotel went for $7.99 Simple painted wooden Indian ornaments at a corner gift shop started at $18.

Another storefront shop on the main drag had in its display window black balls of obsidian volcanic glass for $229-$999. The most expensive one looked like a bigger-than-regulation-sized bowling ball.

Propped up in the background was the book Encyclopedia of Crystal, Gem and Metal Magic. Next to it was Hematite with quartz for $3300. White alabaster from Ft. Collins, Colo., cost $4499.

Stopping in one of the many, many stores selling elaborate metal and wooden Buddhas and Hindu gods, the most modest Buddha I could find was $29.99.

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When I first drove into Santa Fe last evening, I switched from my car’s CD player to FM radio and the station I happened to be tuned into (leftover from when I first headed out of mountainous Silverton, Colo., that afternoon) was playing what they called the “chicken dance.”

The radio deejay broadcast three different “chicken dances” in a row, all of which sounded almost exactly alike to men, before lamenting how an announced guest for the afternoon program, who didn’t show and didn’t give any excuse, was supposed to have addressed the issue of why there weren’t more awards for Native American music at the Grammy’s.

All my ears heard was a lot of discordant sounds and human screaming. I thought, “How could you bear to be an employee of that radio station and listen to that stuff all day, every day?!!!”

I was reminded me of the passage in Exodus 32 where Moses comes back down the mountain from getting the Ten Commandments and the children of Israel are engaged in Baal worship.

As the classic account goes, “And when Joshua heard the noise of the people as they shouted, he said unto Moses, There is a noise of war in the camp.
[18] And he said, It is not the voice of them that shout for mastery, neither is it the voice of them that cry for being overcome: but the noise of them that sing do I hear.
[19] And it came to pass, as soon as he came nigh unto the camp, that he saw the calf, and the dancing: and Moses' anger waxed hot, and he cast the tables out of his hands, and brake them beneath the mount.”

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Just below the flag above the fold on the front cover of today’s Sunday The Santa Fe New Mexican paper was a serious story about a woman in nearby El Rito, N.M., who’s celebrating Holy Week by commemorating how dramatically her life has changed in the four months since the “miraculous” appearance of an image of the Virgin Mary at the base of her backyard crabapple tree.

“I feel—how can I say it?—so pure,” testified Bertha Silva Martinez in the second paragraph of the article, headlined A Sign of Comfort; El Rito woman sees shape of Virgin Mary in crabapple tree bark. “When I used to come to church, I could never sit in the front. I’d always sit in the back. And now, I help in the church. I clean the altar just because I want to do charity. When I’m there, I feel the presence.”

Martinez says that when she originally discovered the Virgin Mary image—

which has now been mostly eroded away by wind and rain—the next few days were followed by “weeping for no apparent reason, feeling faint and having difficulty breathing.”

She called upon the Rev. Patrick Chavez at the San Juan Nepomuceno Church of El Rito, who came over to her house, had dinner with her and then blessed the image.

The article went on, “Martinez recalled how images of Jesus appeared on a plastered wall of an abandoned building in Holman, N.M., near Mora, in 1975, and in a freshly grilled tortilla in Lake Arthur, N.M., near Roswell, in 1977. She said she even went to Holman 33 years ago to see the image, but couldn’t make it out.”

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Just as appropriately, the cover story for the newspaper’s Sunday newsmagazine was “Doggy-centric yoga,” complete with a large color photograph of a German Shepherd comfortably laying down, his front paws crossed.

“While yoga classes throughout the nation have been letting dogs join their companions of the mat, doga offers yoga from a dog’s perspective,” the article informed. “Unlike traditional obedience classes, with an emphasis on the end result, doga happens naturally.”

So-called “Doguru” Mary Leatherberry, a local dog trainer, reasoned in the story, “I think they (canines) pick up on us. In a traditional class, the whole atmosphere is high energy. Everybody’s revved up. And you’re supposed to do this and that. Here we just sort of move and the dogs follow us.”