Features

The Los Alamos Animal Shelter, 226 East Road, (505) 662-8179, has a great selection of adoptable pets just waiting for their forever home, so come adopt your new best friend today! All adoptable pets are micro-chipped, spayed or neutered, and up-to-date on vaccinations. Shelter hours are 12–6 p.m. Monday through Friday, 11 a.m. – 4 p.m. Saturday, and 12–3 p.m. Sunday.
Be sure to check out our website at lafos.org, where you can get more information about volunteering, adopting, and donating.
CATS
Mr. Whiskers—A big tabby cat that is about 4 years old. Changes are a bit stressful for him, so he will likely need a little bit of time to adjust to his new home. He can be independent, but he’s also very sweet and likes to snuggle when he’s in the mood! He is OK with mellow cats, but other dominant males sometimes bother him.
Wally—A handsome and regal 3-year-old tabby. He has beautiful, inquisitive eyes that draw in volunteers and shelter visitors, and he loves when volunteers open his kennel to pet him. Wally came to the shelter as a stray, so we don’t know much about his history, but he’s excited about finding a home that will keep him inside and make him part of the family.

Green thumbs moving to Los Alamos often get a shock. Not only is the soil difficult to work with, but the water situation is a little tough, too.
One can go all winter without a drop and a very expensive water bill, and then suddenly wake up to a deluge when the spring arrives. It can destroy all the hard work of nursing that flower or vegetable garden through yet another tough year. With the lowest annual precipitation count of six inches and a high of 30(!) inches, New Mexico is indeed a land of contrasts.
So.. what to do? The New Mexico State University Los Alamos County Cooperative Extension Office suggests the key to lessening water bills and frustrations is to just go with the flow. Instead of planting Touch Me Nots, Black-Eyed Susans and Spiderworts, try for something a little closer to home, plants native to New Mexico that are just as pretty and can thrive on little to no water.
For vegetable gardening, a little research into how the Native Americans thrived up here on the Pajarito Plateau can go a long way. They did it on just a little water and very little work. The Three Sisters technique has been used by the pueblo indians for centuries. They discovered that planting beans, squash and corn together results in a garden that’s virtually maintenance free, even in the driest and toughest of conditions.

TODAY
Astronomy Show: Star Stories - Color
at 7 p.m. at the Nature Center. Cost is  $6 for adults, $4 for children.

Fish Fry Friday from 5-7 p.m. at Immaculate Heart Mary Parish Hall, 3700 Canyon Road. Cost is $10 for Adults, $7 for children.

Middle-schoolers invited to participate in Dance For A Cure at 7:30 p.m. at the Los Alamos County Sheriff’s Posse Shack. Cost is $5. Pizza while supplies last. Benefits the American Cancer Society.
SATURDAY
Feature Film: “Sea Monsters, A Prehistoric Adventure” at 2 p.m. at the Nature Center. 
Cost is $6 for adults, $4 for children.
 
Coffee with the Warden
from 10:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m. at the Nature Center. Bring wildlife questions and talk with the local Game & Fish warden Amos Smith. Free.
SUNDAY
Feature Film: Sea Monsters, “A Prehistoric Adventure” at 2 p.m. at the Nature Center. See prehistoric sea creatures come to life, and follow fossil hunters to remote locations as they excavate the remains of some of the most awe-inspiring creatures of all time. Cost is $6 for adults, $4 for children. More information at peecnature.org.
 

This month’s Military Order of the World Wars Chapter 229 meeting will start at 6 p.m. Tuesday at the Los Alamos Research Park the second floor conference room.
The speaker will be Rep. Stephanie Garcia-Richard. She will be reporting on actions taken in this year’s annual New Mexico legislative session.
The meeting will begin with a social period, followed by a brief business meeting and dinner at 6:25 p.m. The presentation will begin at about 7:15 p.m.
The Military Order of the World Wars dinner meetings are open to interested citizens for the dinner and program with RSVP, or the program only at no cost. The Hot Rocks Java Café staff will be catering the dinner: Pork tenderloin and appropriate side dishes. Cost of the dinner is $25 per person. A dinner reservation made is a commitment to the chapter to pay for the reserved dinner(s). RSVP either with a yes or no for the dinner by Sunday.
Call LTC Gregg Giesler, USA Retired, Chapter Commander, 662-5574 (g.gieslercomputer.org) or Eleanor Pinyan, 672-3750 (email: depinyan@cybermesa.com).
 

Pajarito Environmental Education Center and the Reel Deal Theater will show “Racing Extinction,” an undercover documentary exposing the hidden world of endangered species and the race to protect them from mass extinction, at 7 p.m. Thursday.
This film is $10 for adults and $8 for seniors, students and children. Tickets are available at the Reel Deal Theater.
Produced by Oceanic Preservation Society, the group behind the Academy Award®-winning film The Cove, Racing Extinction brings a voice to the thousands of species teetering on the very edge of life. This highly charged, impassioned collective of activists sets out to expose the two major threats to endangered wild species across the globe. The first comes from the international wildlife trade, and the medicinal “cures” and tonics that are marketed to the public at the expense of rare creatures. The second threat is carbon emissions and acidified oceans that are incompatible with existing animal life. Both threats are made clear in “Racing Extinction” through investigative reporting, undercover photography and covert operations.
For more information about this and other programs offered by the Pajarito Environmental Education Center (PEEC), visit peecnature.org, email programs@peecnature.org, or call 662-0460.

Russ Gordon has released his list for the upcoming 2017 that promises to be his “best series yet.” This year will be his 28th year, and his last.
The free concerts are Fridays in Los Alamos from May 19 through Sept. 8. Shows are from 7- 10 p.m. Bring your lawn chairs.
The tentative lineup is:
May 19: Chuchito Valdes Afro-Cuban jazz from Havana, Cuba and Cancun, Mexico. Master of Cuban music including Son, Danzon, Cuban Timba and Guaguanco. Los Alamos Kite Festival Night.
May 26: Deke Dickerson. Alt-Indie Rock, Retro Swing, Rockabilly Revival, Roots-Rock, Hillbilly, Surf, Jump Blues and instrumental rock. The King of the Geek Guitar! From Los Angeles.
June 2: The Coral Creek Band. Americana/Country Rock, bluegrass, Cajun, fol and Island rock from Colorado. Some of the musicians and friends of Leftover Salmon, Yonder Mountain string Band and Railroad Earth.
June 9: Western Centuries Alt./Country-rock, with early R&B, Honky-Tonk twang. Reminiscent of the classic country rock bands like The Band, Flying Burrito Brothers and The Byrds. Los Alamos Chamber Fest Night.
June 16: The Red Elvises. Russian Rock ‘n’ Roll and Siberian Surf Rok. From Moscow and Santa Monica, California. Los Alamos’s favorite Rock ‘n’ Roll band!! LA Daily Post night.

Author Judy Hochberg lived in Los Alamos from 1989 to 2000 and recently published a book about Spanish with Bloomsbury Academic Press. Hochberg has a Ph.D. in linguistics from Stanford University and teaches Spanish at Fordham University, New York.
Although she has not been back to Los Alamos since she moved, the delicious breakfast burritos from Chili Works have not been forgotten.
Hochberg worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory as a research staff member with CCS-3 Information Sciences, working mostly on projects having to do with computers and language.
The project she was hired for involved training a neural net, which is a computer model loosely based on the workings of the brain, to make an association between the acoustics of speech and the movement of the lips and tongue.
Hochberg explained, “The idea was that this would sort of make speech visible and people who had hearing problems would be able to use this as a way to teach them how to articulate.”
Another project at LANL that utilized her linguistic skills was developing a program that would automatically identify the writing system used in a document, whether it was printed or hand written. “Of all the papers I published at the lab, those are the ones that get most cited,” she recalled.

The Unitarian Church of Los Alamos will host “Fractured Faiths: Spanish Judaism, The Inquisition & New World Identities,” a special lecture-recital on Ladino (Judeo-Spanish) Romanceros, Coplas and Kantigas at 3 p.m. on Saturday.

This program was previously presented at the New Mexico History Museum’s Fractured Faiths Symposium, as part of their six-month special exhibit in the fall of 2016.

The event features soprano Christina Martos and pianist Debra Ayers performing works by Ofer Ben-Amots, an Israeli-American composer and chair of the music department at Colorado College.

Ben-Amots will lecture about his recreations of musical settings for songs dating to the era of the Jewish diaspora in Spain, a time that gave rise to the unique hybrid of Hebrew and Spanish known as Ladino.

Los Alamos soprano Martos sang several seasons with Central City Opera in Colorado and the Washington National Opera, and most recently performed at the world premiere of Los Bufones by Santa Fe composer Ron Strauss at the National Hispanic Cultural Center.

Los Alamos native and poet Allison Cobb will return for a special event Sunday to celebrate National Poetry Month.
Cobb will read from her new poetry book, “After We All Died,” and an ongoing project, “Plastic: an autobiography,” both of which feature Los Alamos, at 1 p.m. Sunday at White Rock Branch Library in the multi-purpose room, 10 Sherwood Blvd., White Rock.
Cobb is the author of “Born 2” (Chax Press); “Green-Wood” (Factory School); “Plastic: an autobiography” (Essay Press EP series); and “After We All Died” (Ahsahta Press), which was a finalist for the National Poetry Series.
Cobb works for the Environmental Defense Fund and lives in Portland, Oregon, where she co-curates The Switch reading, art, and performance series.
Cobb’s work combines historical and scientific research, essay and poetry to address issues of landscape, politics and ecology.
She was a 2015 finalist for the National Poetry Series; a 2015 Djerassi Resident Artist; a 2014 Playa Resident Artist; received a 2011 Individual Artist Fellowship award from the Oregon Arts Commission; and was a 2009 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow.