Lore

 There was a time when I often taught courses on random stuff in churches.  I like teaching, but usually don't like schools, so  churches are perfect.  Everything is voluntary, and there are few rules and no grading.  I hate grades.  So (one of Lore's favourite words0, once upon a time about 1990 i was teaching a class about something at St. Bede;s Episcopal Church in Santa Fe, and I mentioned an essay published by the Anthropology Lab written by a young woman whose name I have long forgotten, along with the subject.  After the class, an elfin-like woman draped in Peruvian cotton and Navajo turquoise came up and asked me if she might borrow the journal, because the young woman  had stayed with her while she was working on the paper.  Of course.  As the class sessions continued, so did usually insightful if random questions from the elf.  We exchanged names and phone numbers.  A bit later, Lore Guldbeck called to invite me to dinner.  It was the first of many fascinating experiences I would have with Lore.

Lore's living room was full, nay over-stuffed, in the way of rooms of many people who have lived long and collected much and don't want to lose anything.  Little did I know.  When I asked her if she had enjoyed the essay, she confessed she hadn't read it yet.  Could she keep it a little longer?  Of course.  Meanwhile I was intrigued by her collections of stuff, which ranged from paintings by some of the most famous Santa Fe painters and autographed books by some of the most famous New Mexican photographers to cheap paper-mache Christmas decorations. There was a piano buried in  sheet music becoming paper mache.  

It would be a while before I saw any parts of Lore's house except the living room and kitchen.  They never seemed overly clean, but then she was getting up was rather up in years and probably didn't see all the detritus.  But after we had known each other for a while, she called to ask if I could help her.  Of course, how?  It seems that the house in which she lived was run by a foundation providing homes to elderly people with limited incomes who could still care for themselves, and they occasionally made inspections to be sure the residents could indeed care for themselves.   It was then I saw the other rooms of the house.  They were full.  I mean, really full. 

One Lore called 'my Mary's room', and we started in it..  Mary had started living in the house when 'my Mary' was ill, and she was Mary's caretaker.  I had little idea at the time that in the last months of Lore's life, I would play a similar role for her, and live in that room.  Then I just knew it needed to be cleaned, and I convinced Lore to let me take ten  truck loads of stuff to the dump and piles of stuff to a local charity thrift shop, as well as to give a bunch of stuff away.  Under one pile in 'my Mary's room', I found the journal I had loaned Lore when we first met.

She passed inspection.   She went to the thrift shop and bought back a lot of the things we had taken there.  She would ask me to 'rescue her' several other times before inspections.  I would come to understand why she was such a hoarder as I came to know her better.  There are many aspects of Lore's life that made her certainly one of the most remarkable of all the folks I have met. , so I expect to post more about her.  But this little introduction I will close with an explanation of the photo above.

Lore was a great fan and supporter of Christ in the Desert Monastery, which she had begun visiting and supporting since it was first started.  (She knew everyone, as I would come to learn, so of course she knew Aelred Wall.)  She kept telling me that I had to go there.  I kept resisting, because she seemed to overhype it.  Finally, I went.  She had underhyped it.  Our and my excursions to Christ in the Desert would be some of my favourite experiences.  I took that photo of Lore sitting by the Chama River on one of our trips.  She had a little backpack full of knitting, always. And, she had style.