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The New Mexico Department of Tourism has embarked upon a bold and progressive Ecotourism Initiative, one that offers a huge opportunity for New Mexico in the fastest growing segment in worldwide tourism today.

At the heart of this Initiative is a tourism objective that wholly supports the growth and economic vitality of sustainable ecotourism enterprises throughout the State while maintaining the delicate balance between the modern world and traditional cultural values. As a result, they will be increasing tourism, creating local employment, revitalizing rural communities, and ultimately protecting these areas for future generations. It will also build on the equity and add further dimension to their on-going “Land of Enchantment” positioning

With her recent arrival back in the States after a whirlwind tour of the top International Travel Trade Shows it’s official. The New Mexico Tourism Department’s Ecotourism Initiative is rolling! Deputy Secretary Jennifer Hobson was blown away by the receptivity to the program at the shows in London, Frankfurt, Tokyo and Marrakesh. “New Mexico is primed to be a world-class Ecotourism destination. What is essentially New Mexican is perfectly aligned with what travelers from all over the world are looking for: wild and scenic beauty and rich cultural heritage where hands on experiences can be realized. The launch of this program to overseas media only further confirmed the popularity and desire for America’s first statewide Ecotourism initiative.”

1 Primary Election Day Come out and vote and let your voice be heard!

1-4 AmBank Wild Wild West Pro Rodeo Southwest Horseman’s Rodeo Grounds, Silver City, NM

5 Cowboy Days Gough Park, Silver City 8:00 am A one day event following the Wild Wild West Rodeo. Vendors with a western flair, music and other entertainment. For more information contact the Chamber of Commerce. 575-538-3785 Silver City, NM, www.silvercity.org

5 Reserve, NM’s new American Legion Post 82 Meeting 10:00 AM, in Catron County Building Meetings to be held the first Saturday each month

5 Bayou Seco playing at Silver City Farmers Market in the morning, 9:30 – 11:30 and playing at The Buckhorn in Pinos Altos – 7:30-10:30 PM

6 Second Annual Jump Into Summer Family Fun Day 10:00 am, Silver City, Gough Park Sponsored by HMS LaVida and DOH focusing on fitness, health and nutrition for a healthy lifestyle for families and individuals. Games, fun fitness activities, food, dancing, rock wall climbing, obstacle course and more. Pick up your passport at anyone of the many activity booths and participate in at least four activities to get your name entered into a raffle drawing for great prizes provided by local merchants. All ages and abilities are encouraged to participate. Come join us for a free family friendly fitness filled day! *Rock wall requires signed liability release form for participation. 10:00 AM-2:00 PM 575-534-0248

6 Evergreen Garden Club Tour 1:00-4:00 PM. Silver City, New Mexico www.silvercity.org

8 Meeting, Catron County Grassroots Behavioral Health Committee Health council office in Reserve, NM @ 12 noon, first Tuesday each month. 575/533-6940

8 San Francisco Valley 4-H Club Meeting Glenwood, NM

9 Back Country Horsemen Meeting GRMC Conference Room at 7:00 P.M., Silver City Meets second Weds. Each month, Call 575-536-2953 as our meetings can change

10 Meeting, Grant County Rolling Stones Gem and Mineral Society Meets the second Thursday of the month at the Silver City Senior Center, located on Victoria St. Begins with a Potluck Dinner at 6:00 pm. At 6:45 we have our meeting, a rock draw and program. To join our society, contact Elaine Carlson at elaine_sc@comcast.net or 575-538-5630

12 Bucky’s Birthday Bash! Cowboy Dinner and Dance! Come wish Bucky Allred “Many Happy Returns” at the Glenwood Community Park! Music by Bucky, Joe Delk, Dee Ford, Ty Martin, and friends. Cowboy Dinner at 6:00 PM (bring a dessert!) Dance 8:00-12:00 This event is a fundraiser for APWE and Gila Livestock Growers: your contribution will be your admission to the dinner and dance!

12 Finer Limitz Car Show 9:00 am Gough Park, Silver City 575-590-4017

12 Second Annual Auction Fund Raiser for Datil Food Pantry at the parking lots of the Datil School and Presbyterian Church on Hwy 12,south of Hwy 60. TheDatil FoodPantry serves over 100 families every month plus emergency food when needed. With today’s economy, it is essential that we raise money to provide supplemental food for local families. 12 Fort Concho Frontier Day San Angelo, TX At Fort Concho 325-481-2646

12 Discount Rabies Vaccination Clinics Presented by High Desert Humane Society, Silver City Held second Saturday of each month from 9:00am to 12:00

14 Flag Day

21 Frisco CowBelles Meeting, Glenwood, NM

25-27 Reserve School Reunion Students, faculty, employees, and everyone associated with Reserve Schools is invited. Graduation is not a requirement. Registration forms available – 575-533-6599 or 575-533-6552. Total admission to all events is $15/single, $30/couple. After May 1, the price is $20/single, $35/couple. See you there! Reserve, New Mexico

26 2nd Annual Jump Into Summer Family Fun Day Silver City, Gough Park 10am to 2pm. This event focuses on fitness, health and nutrition for a healthy lifestyle for families and individuals. Games, fun fitness activities, food, dancing, *rock wall climbing, obstacle course and more. Pick up your passport at anyone of the many activity booths and participate in at least four activities to get your name entered into a raffle drawing for great prizes provided by local merchants. All agtes and abilities are encouraged to participate. Come join us for a free family friendly fitness filled day! * rock wall requires signed liability release form for participation. Interested in participating with an activity booth? Contact Marilyn or Crystal at phone number listed. (575) 534-0248 x 262

27 Painting a Sun Hat Workshop 11:00 am, Silver City In this 3-hour workshop you will paint a collapsible cotton sun hat in an inspiring garden setting using brush painting, heliographic printing, and salt techniques. Cost: $20 (SWFAC Members)/$25 (Nonmembers) plus $7.50 per hat materials fee. Includes an organic “u-pick” salad lunch. 816 E. Pine Street, Silver City 575-538-5733

Now you can check in on your neighbors in Ruidoso and see what the weather’s like before you come visit your fine piece of land (second home? vacation getaway? retirement home?) in Vera Cruz Mountain Ranch!

Located at Sudderth and Eagle Drives, this new, state-of-the-art weather station reports current temperature, the high and low temps for the day, current wind speed and high gust speed, humidity, rain and barometer. The weather station has a live feed on www.RuidosoWebCam.com so anyone, anywhere in the world can see midtown Ruidoso and accurate weather conditions.

In addition, thanks to Frank Potter of Imports, Etc.- this midtown weather information is now being fed to official weather stations for use on TV and radio forecasts.

Fed’s Beige Book: New Mexico region’s economy improved in March – New Mexico Business Weekly:.

Joan Park, Bruce and Beth DeFoor, Dawnn Moore, and  ENMU Ruidoso announce the:
4th ANNUAL RUIDOSO KITE FESTIVAL !!!

Please plan to come and share all your beautiful kites and your STERLING personalities with our little Village.  If you have been here before, you know how much fun it is and if you haven’t we especially want to invite you and make you feel welcome in our beautiful mountain resort.

Festival dates and times-
Friday, April  23       1 pm to 5 pm
Saturday, April 24   9 am to 5 pm  (Dinner together later at a restaurant yet to be named)
Sunday, April 25     12 to 4

We know it will be yet another cool experience.  If you can’t make all the days, just come for what you can.

If you have been here you know what a great flying field we have here.  It is the best I have ever flown at.  It is all green grass…It’s flat…no sagebrush…no cactus…no stickers…no fences…no highways…no highline wires…two good paved parking lots adjoining…

and best of all there is the beautiful snow capped Sierra Blanca Mountain right behind us.  It’s quite a sight to fly kites in front of that kind of a backdrop!  Looks like we will probably have to put up with a soccer practice just like last year, but they shouldn’t last long and the field is big.

Ruidoso is a tourist village and so there will be plenty of out-of-towner’s there.  The newspaper always does a big story and the local morning radio shows also promote the event.  The public schools are supporting it as well so there show be plenty of kids that want to make and fly kites.  We will have a kite making station set up so if that’s your thing, then we want you there to help too.  We have made up to 1,200 kites for kids during one three day festival.

We are trying hard to get free complimentary rooms for you professionals.  We can’t promise free rooms to everyone, but we will try if you let us know.  The first flyers who respond will be almost certain to stay in a free room.

This event promises to be bigger and better than ever.  We are looking forward to seeing you again and to meeting some new kite flying friends for the first time!

If you think you may be able to attend, please contact one of our team as soon as possible. When you contact us, please list your ALL your phone numbers, home address, and email addresses.  (this will help us update our list with current contact info.)

Please also send this to other flying friends you think would be interested.  We can’t promise all the new ones free rooms (since we have no way of knowing how many that might be!) but we will still try hard to see if we can!

TOP TEN REASONS TO ATTEND AND FLY IN RUIDOSO:

1. Ruidoso is a beautiful ski resort village
2. You will feel right at home, only better
3.  Flying in the mountains will increase your height
4.  You will get to see Ollie the Octopus again
5.  Kites prefer pine scented air
6.  Bruce’s kites miss your kites
7.  It won’t be the same without you
8.  Economy schmonomy
9.  If you don’t come, you will not be here!

…and the number one reason to come to the mountains and fly is…

10.  Anyone can fly on a beach!

Pending home sales rose in February, potentially signaling a second surge of home sales in response to the home buyer tax credit, according to the National Association of Realtors®.

The Pending Home Sales Index,* a forward-looking indicator based on contracts signed in February, rose 8.2 percent to 97.6 from a downwardly revised 90.2 in January, and remains 17.3 percent above February 2009 when it was 83.2. The data reflects contracts and not closings, which usually occur with a lag time of one or two months.

Lawrence Yun, NAR chief economist, said the improvement is another hopeful sign. “The rise in buyer contact activity may signal the early stages of a second surge of home sales this spring. The healthy gain hints home prices are continuing to flatten,” he said. “We need a second surge to meaningfully draw down inventory and definitively stabilize home values.”

The PHSI in the Northeast rose 9.0 percent to 77.7 in February and is 18.9 percent higher than February 2009. In the Midwest the index jumped 21.8 percent to 97.9 and is 18.7 percent above a year ago. Pending home sales in the South increased 9.2 percent to an index of 107.0, and the index is 17.5 percent higher than February 2009. In the West the index fell 4.8 percent to 98.0 but is 14.6 percent above a year ago.

“Anecdotally, we’re hearing about a rise of activity in recent weeks with ongoing reports of multiple offers in more markets, so the March data could demonstrate additional improvement from buyers responding to the tax credit,” Yun said.

The National Association of Realtors®, “The Voice for Real Estate,” is America’s largest trade association, representing 1.2 million members involved in all aspects of the residential and commercial real estate industries.

The temps may still be low, but there’s already much to look forward to this summer! With record snowfalls come record wildflower blooms, so be sure and bring our camera.

New Mexico Ski Resorts Make Summer Shine With Events, Activities – OnTheSnow.

For the first time, the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture/Laboratory of Anthropology presents a significant collection of Huichol art from the early part of the last century in Huichol Art and Culture: Balancing the World. The exhibition opens at the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture April 11, 2010 and will run through March 6, 2011.

There are important ties between Huichol work and Native American, prehispanic, and Hispanic art histories and cultures. Known today for colorful, decorative yarn paintings, the origins of modern Huichol art are found in the earlier Huichol religious arts of the Robert M. Zingg ethnographic collection at the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture.

Huichol Art and Culture: Balancing the World focuses on the Huichol, a Native American people of western Mexico who for many centuries have retained their unique culture and prehispanic religious beliefs. Their remote location in the rugged Sierra Madre Occidental mountains primarily in the states of Jalisco and Nayarit has allowed for greater resistance than any other indigenous group to the forces of Christianization and acculturation. The Huichol people today continue to create traditional art and practice ancient rituals that predate the time of Spanish contact.

From 1934-1935, Dr. Robert Mowry Zingg (1900–1957) was the first American anthropologist to conduct extended ethnographic fieldwork among the Huichol in the community of Tuxpan de Bolaños. Zingg lived with Huichol families and participated in everyday life, while studying their mythology and ceremonialism. Huichol Art and Culture: Balancing the World presents the collection of Huichol artifacts which Zingg collected on behalf of the Laboratory of Anthropology during the earliest years of its history as an institution.

In the past and today, Huichol art is made to communicate with a pantheon of ancestors and gods. When Zingg arrived in Tuxpan, he found that most Huichol adults were occupied with making art. As he observed, the Huichol constantly create offerings which serve as visual prayers to the gods. As part of the ceremonial cycle, the Huichol make pilgrimages to leave offerings at sacred sites.

Ceremonial offerings to the gods are the precursors to the art of modern Huichol yarn painting. Early Huichol votive art evolved into art produced for sale beginning in the 1950s, when artists adapted traditional techniques, designs, and materials to “paint” in yarn. Sophisticated and vibrant Huichol yarn paintings have now become renowned in the global art market.

Among the highlights of the Zingg collection are outstanding examples of ancient, symbolic textile designs that were intricately woven on backstrap looms by Huichol women. The collection features prayer arrows, richly decorated votive gourd bowls, and other offerings for the gods. Oversized shamans’ chairs and diminutive gods’ chairs are unique to Huichol ceremonies. Colorful macaw feathers, beaded jewelry, deerskin quivers, embroidered clothing, and hats adorned with feathers, squirrel tails, and ribbons all attest to a time and a culture where art objects were made for everyday and ceremonial use, not tourist consumption.

The concept of balance is central to Huichol art and culture. The balancing of opposites, such as the wet and dry seasons, or darkness and light, is a prevalent theme in Huichol art. Huichol ceremonies are performed and offerings are made to keep the world in balance, ensuring successful crops and hunting, fertility, and health. Today, the Huichol say that they continue to make art and perform the centuries-old rituals not just for their own people, but for the benefit of everyone in the world.

The concept of balancing opposites, so central to Huichol culture, is also basic to the Pueblo worldview and is seen in Pueblo architecture, government, and ceremony. A further connection to Pueblo culture can be found in the Uto-Aztecan language of the Huichol. It is related to the language of the ancient Aztecs of central Mexico, to the Cora, to the Tohono O’odham and Hopi of Arizona, and to the Tanoan languages of the Northern Rio Grande region of New Mexico.

Zingg, who spent his youth in northern New Mexico, noted a similarity in “the richness of the ceremonial life of both the Huichols and the Pueblos.” He and other scholars have drawn parallels between the two cultures, including the importance of the cardinal directions and elaborate religious symbolism in art and decoration involving the deer, fire, rain, corn, and concepts of growth and fertility.

Spring is a great time to enjoy skiing in New Mexico, longer warm days with great snow and affordable skiing. Spring breakers and everyone else are going to be able to take advantages lots of extensions to New Mexico skiing this Spring. Now is the time to plan your spring “winter” get a-way. “Come let our family take care of your family”

• Sipapu have extended their hours of operation(see below).
• Ski Apache has announced an extension to the season, they will now close on April 11 to accommodate the great response they have received due to exceptional snow.

Several other resorts are considering extending their seasons.

• Angel Fire has extended their “white sale” until the end of the season.
• Angel Fire has offered night skiing for the first time in the history of New Mexico skiing.
• Mother nature has extended “the amount of daylight” to allow warmer and better lighted days.
• The snow gods have blessed New Mexico with exceptional snow depth and quality.

Sipapu Ski and Summer Resort to Expand Operating Hours

Vadito, NM: On pace for yet another record-breaking season, Sipapu Ski and Summer Resort, New Mexico’s year-round destination for family-friendly, family fun, announced it will expand its lift operating hours beginning March 14 through the end of the season. From March 14-21 and again March 27-28, lifts will be open from 9 a.m. until 5 p.m., giving snow enthusiasts an extra hour every afternoon on the slopes.

Sipapu will continue to offer expanded afternoon hours through the rest of the season: from March 22-26 and April 3 until closing day (scheduled for April 11), lift operations will go from 9:30 a.m. until 4:30 p.m. The full-service rental shop and ticket office will open at 8:30 a.m. on March 14-21 and March 27-28; the rental shop and ticket office will resume their normal 8 a.m. opening time March 22-26 and April 3 until closing day.

Sipapu is scheduled to again be the last resort to close in New Mexico, with closing date set for April 11 weather and conditions permitting – visitors are encouraged to check SipapuNM.com for the latest updates.

WASHINGTON — There are currently 23 American Recovery & Reinvestment Act (ARRA)-financed highway construction projects underway or completed in New Mexico involving $160.2 million in funds, according to data released today by the Washington, D.C.-based American Road & Transportation Builders Association (ARTBA). The projects underway or completed have supported or are supporting 4,457 jobs in New Mexico that would otherwise not exist, says ARTBA Vice President of Economics & Research Dr. Bill Buechner.

ARRA, signed into law on February 17, 2009, provided $48 billion for transportation improvements over two years, including $27.5 billion for highway, bridge and related construction projects nationwide. The law is having significant impacts on the transportation construction industry in all 50 states.

ARRA provided $252.6 million to New Mexico for highway, bridge and related improvements. This one-time bonus added more than 81 percent to New Mexico’s regular federal highway funds under the current federal surface transportation law — Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users (SAFETEA-LU) — bringing the state’s total federal highway funding in 2009 to a record $562.8 million.

According to Buechner, a Harvard-trained economist, another 67 projects have been identified and are slated to be under construction shortly.

The following shows the number of ARRA-financed highway projects and amount obligated in each New Mexico congressional district.

   Congressional District Number of projects    Amount Obligated
   ---------------------- ------------------    ----------------
              1                              10          $33,340,343
             ---                            ---          -----------
              2                              42          $69,326,633
             ---                            ---          -----------
              3                              38         $146,608,216
             ---                            ---         ------------

A full report can be obtained by contacting ARTBA’s Jeff Solsby at jsolsby@artba.org or 202-289-4434.

For 108 years, ARTBA has represented the U.S. transportation design and construction industry before Congress, the White House, federal agencies, news media and general public.