Emerging Themes: Taos: Song of the Loom

When we left Taos last Friday, these questions and themes came along:

1. What will anthropologist Justine Jenner, now entering the third novel in the Cairo Trilogy, find out about DH Lawrence that will inform her own sense of identity?
2. How will conversations among key Taos characters, including Lawrence, Mabel Dodge Luhan, Frieda Lawrence, Carl Jung and Lady Dorothy Brett, set in the ‘20’s and ‘40’s, tell us about today’s realities?
3. Can the case of the long-lost Lawrence will be revived in New Mexico—only if he had signed the deed for the Ranch that Mabel gave to his wife, Frieda? Did he?
4. When Justine assumes her new job with the NM Office of Archaeological Studies, can she and her new boss find out: “How do we see Community?” And what does this have to say about the diverse Taos community and the thousand-year-old Pueblo?
5. Did the peoples of the Four Corners, including Mesa Verde, migrate to the massive and long-abandoned Hupobi Pueblo?
6. How will the Taos Pueblo Indians—the Red Willow peoples—influence Justine’s emerging spirituality?
7. What struggles with the environment will challenge Justine’s strength and confidence in the shadow of personal tragedy?
8. When a troubled Indian girl whom Justine has mentored nearly dies, can she be saved by the first Indian saint, Kateri Tekakwitha (who is yet to be canonized)?
9. Will Amir El Shabry, Justine’s lover from Etruscan Evenings, survive the Egyptian revolution?  And what does Egypt have to do with Taos anyway?
10. How will the contextual issues of the history of Taos, drought, competition for water, suffering economy and the suffering art community inform this novel?

And much more….

Next: The Constructivist Leader redux, Linda

 

 

 

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 27th, 2011 at 10:16 am and is filed under Education, Fiction, Leadership, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.