Meet the Commoners
Anna Mae is a gardener, fiber-artist, singer, community chorus music story-teller (historian), gamester, traveler and reader. She is thrilled and looking forward to the neighbors and friendships of Valverde Commons and animals of all sizes.
Thirty-seven years ago Kristin and Ross moved here to open the Abominable Snowmansion Skiers Hostel. While earning a living as an elementary school teacher, a ski valley hotel worker, and a retail shop owner, much of her passion has gone to volunteering -- mostly in our public schools. She has been a Girl Scout leader and camp director, developed solar curriculum, started the gifted program, and supported music, performing arts, and environmental education. Play times are spent camping, practicing yoga, traveling, and cross-country skiing. Why Valverde Commons? She loves Taos and our mountains and the friendly, open, diverse town. After decades enjoying our rural owner-built home (they even made the adobes), she is eager to live IN town and IN community.
Ross comes to Valverde Commons after living the last 30+ years in an owner-built, solar adobe house, on six acres north of Taos. He will miss his small kingdom but is ready to live among good neighbors and life in town. Ross is retired after a varied work life--school teaching, construction, creator of a ski hostel, work in hospitality industry, surveying, and GIS mapping. He is a contented husband and father. His current interests include volunteering for environmental causes, Buddhist meditation practice, and various outdoor pursuits. He is happiest hiking deep in the mountains, sleeping under the stars.
Bob is an interesting combination of science and musical performance. He loves all kinds of music (he started the Taos Community Chorus) from opera to boogie woogie. When he is not working as the owner of Phoenix Mechanical, the premier plumbing and heating company in Taos, he is tutoring math, hiking, gardening and enjoying fellowship and family. He is at the heart of Valverde Commons as one of the developers who is giving his all for this project.
Isabella might be recognized as the woman with birds flocking around my head. She loves all animals. She is a budding artist (Capricorns
are notorious late bloomers) She is strong and fit and eager to garden, do yoga, cook, go birding and frolic in general with her neighbors and friends.
Carolyn came from the Bronx, NY to Taos, NM With a stop in aquamarine Miami Beach. How’s that for a shift in consciousness? As a little girl she loved to go to the bungalow colony in the Catskill Mountains. Valverde Commons is her grown up bungalow colony and she feels giddy at the prospect of making a home there. She is a single painter, glass artist, illustrator, author and mile-a-day swimmer. Anyone want to teach a Bronx girl to garden?
Joe is a retired clinical psychologist, married, father of two daughters with three grandchildren. His hobbies are probably reading and yakking with friends. He and his wife have travelled and camped the west for years, returning to the southwest more than any other place. They've visited Taos for over twenty-five years. Housesitting for friends in Taos gave them the chance to see that Taos could also feel like home. No doubt, meeting the other Valverde Commoners, with their sincere vision statement for a neighborhood, contributed greatly. After meeting the other commoners, he was just grateful they found this place.
Ann grew up in Colorado and Utah but has lived in California since the late 50s. Traveling the West with its beauty, history and people, Taos has drawn her since the first time she saw it in1985. She loves to garden, be outside, walk, quilt, read, camp everywhere (use a slide-in pop up camper now). They are trading country property (had horses around for 25 years) for town living; close to everything and things in walking distance. Valverde Commons drew them for the wonderful people they’ve met, the sense of community and neighborliness it embodies and the beauty of the setting. They are thrilled to be moving toward moving in!
Ganesh is only one of the adorable dogs that will live with us at Valverde Commons. He is known for stealing freshly baked pies.
Baily, loves to dress up and makes friends with everyone.
Loveable friend of Joe and Ann
Barbara is a professional artist- painter and printer- who moved to Taos in 1973 and hopes she never has to leave. Her husband, Stephen, has gotten her and their now grown sons to go on many whacky adventures including living on a sailboat in the Bahamas, skiing to huts in the mountains and going to the Galapagos. She also enjoys yoga, tai chi, hiking, meditation, music and reading. She and Stephen are two of the developers of Valverde Commons and hope to begin their home in early fall.
Stephen is a recovering attorney who has lived in Taos since the mid 70’s. He is the instigator of the whacky adventures Barbara mentioned. Devoted to his community, he co-founded Habitat for Humanity here and has served on many boards for the environment, children and the arts. He enjoys nature, gardening, mentoring, meditation, hiking, backpacking, sailing and skiing. Acting as developers, he and Bob are the main reason we have Valverde Commons
Madeleine is an avid sportswoman. In fact, she was a hurdler at the World Games in Budapest, 1949. She loves being outdoors, hiking and discovering beautiful landscapes. Originally she came from France on a scholarship and met her husband here in the U.S.A.; they had four children.
She taught French for thirty years and has been a writer for the last 20 years. She wrote "Partita", a psychological mystery, to discover the causes of her husband's mysterious death amd it has been well received. Ever vivacious, among her many accomplishments, she is an excellent cook.
Hank—Hank built lumpy, organic furniture in the 60’s with a little company called Home Hewn. Chairs and tables had walking legs and a sense of movement. When it came time to design his first house, the building took on some of that same animation. By the 1980’s he got an MFA at the University of Colorado and began painting more seriously and making artists books. In the last twenty years Hank seems to have settled on painting and sculpture between scuptural house building projects. The house that he and Gaia now live in is a curvaceous, energy efficient collection of ideas from their many earlier homes. It’s called crab nebula.
Gaia says:
I'm a retired psychologist and teacher - worked at the University of Colorado, Boulder for many years. I've also been a peace and social justice activist most of those years, and had the good fortune to teach young people who were preparing themselves to become effective social change workers. I'm very interested in community building, community health and dialogue facilitation. Here in Taos I have become involved in some community organizing efforts. I have also been exploring poetry writing - Taos has an active and talented writing community. I have a regular (body-centered) Buddhist meditation practice. I'm working on growing lots of food here at Valverde, and hope others will want to do a greenhouse and maybe chickens someday.
Jim and Carol live in Seattle, Jim a transport from California, and Carol from Northern New England. Jim is a graduate from Pomona College in Chemistry and has a PhD from the University of Washington. He currently is working as a contractor (or as he says intellectual day laborer). He likes to work with his hands and build. Together with Carol, he enjoys camping, studying ecological systems, and trips to Nicaragua and Mexico where we stay with the Sisters of Guadulpana in their missions.
Carol’s first career was in community planning and development. Her second as an Episcopal priest who was ordained in the the Pike Place Public Market where she began a ministry with farmers, craftspeople and residents. Carol is best described as an idea person, a good organizer and is a “people person.”