“I wanted to get healthy again”, said Thelessia Hemstreet, CNM’s fitness classes helped her reach and maintain this goal.
Hemstreet is Liberal Arts graduate, Phlebotomy technician, full time Political Science student and a Jingle Dress/Fancy Shawl dancer, she started taking fitness classes over a year ago at CNM.
“Back in 2015 I got really sick and I almost died”, she said.
She lost 70 pounds after spending two months in the hospital, during her recovery Thelessia gained a lot of weight and she even had to learn to walk again.
“When I started it took me 15 minutes to run my first mile, I was so proud of myself when with their help I ran a mile in 9 minutes” she said.
The instructors really work with the students and motivate them throughout, some of the students run marathons and are trained athletes, she said.
When Thelessia first started the running conditioning class she was the one walking behind the group, she said, “everyone would run back and motivate me to keep going, it’s all about the people in the program, they still do that for everybody as long as you try.”
She says, the running drills build up her resistance and the cardio kickboxing has helped develop her footwork.
“I am getting back into Pow Wow dancing and I love it, being traditional puts me at peace and all these fitness classes are really helping me with that”, she said.
She also added her favorite quote by Narijo Moore, “Why we dance: To dance is to pray, to pray is to heal, to heal is to give, to give is to live, to live is to dance.”
“During fall and spring terms I take evening workout classes to let all the stress out”, she said.
Growing up on the reservation, her dad trained her to run in the open spaces and the hills, her brothers ran cross-country, and she always loved basketball and volley ball, she said.
The exercise labs have new equipment and new floors, the classes are combined with people of all ages and have ranges of intensity that work for everyone, she added.
“I love our instructors” said Thelessia, a lot of people don’t know about these classes but even some students from UNM come to take them because we have great instructors, and the price is really good. “My sister and I have set a goal for ourselves to run the hills in the reservation”.
Hemstreet’s personal health tip is to Drink Water, and lemons. This little trick helped her drop 10 pounds in a couple weeks. “I cut out the sodas in my diet and doing the running conditioning class”, Water and lemons 😉 , she said.
I’d like to see more people in the program and more sports classes like basketball for example said Thelessia.
CNM’s Fitness Elective Courses and full list of workout classes.
The Exercise Science and Wellness, Associate of Applied Science and Fitness certification
Sociology graduate and actor Heather Ashley, speaks of CNM’s theatre program, its top notch instructors, and the Coal Avenue Theatre.
Heather says, that even though her degree is in sociology, she did a lot of theatre courses at CNM because they have a really good program, the instructors are well known around town and they know their stuff.
Suzanne Erickson is known for writing and she’s a director as well, “being trained by her has benefitted me as an actor”, even in a class of 20 students it wasn’t generalized information it felt like a one on one class, said Heather.
Chad Brummett actor on film and television is known for the private classes he does, and we have him as an instructor at CNM. Heather said, she knows people who aren’t in any program at the college and will sign up just to take a class with him.
The teachers at CNM are really strong, the staff is not isolated to the campus, they are active in the theatre community here in Albuquerque, and are able to use that knowledge and experience to help the students, she said. Leonard Madrid is involved at Blackout company, Martin Andrews writes and direct around town.
It’s a great place to learn if you want to be on the stage or in film, but even if you want to be a veterinarian you should still take voice and movement, it’s worth your time to have that experience. It helps with having a better sense of who you are, how you use your body, and how you’re feeling inside and out, said Heather.
Taking an acting class really helps with self-confidence and public speaking. Heather said, she recommends the program even if you’re not a theatre major, even if you’re not interested in being on stage.
This is a small program which is really nice. Heather knows most of the instructors and said they work together which makes the program more cohesive, this has been a great way for her to get more acting training, she added “I know that the money I’m paying is going back into the school and the community.”
She said, the addition of the CAT has been huge for the program because its providing a space and lighting system for students to learn how to do the technical aspects of theatre, to perform and to act in.
Heather is stage managing this summer’s play Tragedy Plus Time at the Coal Avenue Theatre (CAT), she has been in three productions there. She did stage management in high school, and is having to relearn a lot of things but again, in her own words:
“I’m in a great program amongst friends, in a space that is very supportive and allows me to take risks, I felt comfortable taking this position because I know I’m amongst people that want me to succeed.” Said Heather.
Heather said, she appreciates the CAT because it does a lot of new plays and allows a lot of play writes to use this space as was recently done with the spring production Tortilla Sun which was adapted for stage by Leonard Madrid, and shown to the community casting CNM students.
Heather has been acting since she was eleven, she went to a performing arts high school in Minnesota. Getting the lead role in CNM’s play Trojan Women was her introduction to theater here in Albuquerque back in 2015. She added, it was directed by Joanne Camp Sobel who is fantastic and of high caliber, “she worked us as if we were professional actors.”
She said, even once you’ve graduated as a former student you are still included, the space is still available to us, the teachers still know and support our work. It’s such a caring environment, the teachers are there to support the students, and the students are there to grow and learn.
The point of art is self-expression and to connect with other people on an emotional level, and the best way to do that, is to be vulnerable and have space to feel safe enough to take risks and this program does that, said Heather.
She added her favorite quote, “I don’t want my life to imitate art, I want my life to be art.”
-Carrie Fisher (Princess Leia)
Heather Ashley will be on stage again at the Vortex Theatre in the fight cast of She Kills Monsters, which opens August 25th and runs through September 10th. She said, there’s a whole cast dedicated to the fighting because it’s a dungeons and dragons show. There’s hand to hand combat and sword combat, it has 19 instances of violence; which is a lot for a stage play.
CNM Instructor Jason Witter, Artist/Director/Writer/Actor/
Jason Witter teaches Theatre appreciation and Acting 1, “I love the academic part of art, and I also love to feel that I’m participating in what I’m teaching outside the classroom” said Witter, CNM instructor since 2008.
What CNM has to offer, is arguably just as strong as a four-year university, in the sense that the college might not have as many classes but, the classes that CNM does offer are taught by top notch instructors who encompass many aspects of theatre with very strong acting and performance backgrounds; and strong movement and voice backgrounds, as well, Witter added.
The Coal Avenue Theatre, (CAT), gives students the possibility of creating shows in an on campus theatre that is open to the public. Witter says, it is a fantastic opportunity for students to have a theatre that produces shows.
“Theatre becomes a real sense of community and family; I fell in love with it from the beginning, due to that sense of belonging”, said Witter.
After receiving his master’s in theatre in dramatic writing, Witter started a sketch comedy troop called Eat Drink and be Larry with some people from UNM. He says, we’d do parodies; horror classical comedies of the plays theatres were putting on in town. All the acting, directing, writing and producing shows in the community was a great learning experience that started at the Reptilian Lounge, part of Tricklock Theatre Company.
Witter’s got into theatre after going to Wales for an exchange program, upon his return to New Mexico he found auditions going on at the Vortex and got a small part, then another small part, then got cast in Hamlet at UNM, “that was super exciting, I really fell in love with theatre, the people, the atmosphere the comradery of it, everything about it was so vibrant and exciting”, said Witter.
Witter did a lot with children’s theatre in grad school. He found a lot of freedom writing for a younger audience. He said, you can create worlds and characters because expectations and barriers don’t exist in kids, you can express anything that comes to mind.
A couple years ago Jason Witter started writing silly little poems and doing drawings for them, he said, they’re geared towards kids with a lot of stuff that adults understand and kids still dig it. I always loved Shel Silverstein, he added.
Witter loves monsters, he’s a horror movie fan and his take on it is to create silly poems about monsters and making them silly because it takes the fear out of them. “I love being scared but I also love being able to laugh at it, so that’s what I try to do with the poems”, Said Witter.
He gave himself a challenge a couple years ago, to do a poem and a drawing every day and post them on Facebook starting sept 1st until October 31st; Witter added that although he doesn’t really like social media, it worked for this. He did 60 poems and got through it.
By Halloween he had a rough draft for his book, friends suggested that he do a Kickstarter for it as a way to get it out to people and it blew up. The Tiniest Vampire and Other Silly Things ended up being supported and shipped out to people in Ireland, Israel, Japan, Singapore, Australia, “it was super cool!”, said Witter.
The following year he did the same thing and put out the Monsters Eating Ice Cream and Other Silly Things. As part of the “Silly Things” series of books, Witter plans to do one more this fall for the trilogy and then focus on something else, he said. The seed from it was loving children’s theatre.
Witter drew comic books growing up, his father and brothers were artists; his mother was a writer, and this is something that he wanted to revisit. He said, he feels fortunate to have been supported with that.
He added, “I love the arts in general and I love dabbling, they’re all an important part of our existence. I’m fascinated by every aspect of it and all the arts go hand in hand. They work together to create the humanities”.
Witter is working on a series of short books called Classics Kind of, where it retells the story taking the classics and putting them in very simple terms, “Kind of” geared for kids. He said, his goal with these little books is that they be fun for everybody, that’s the way he learned Shakespeare, by understanding the basic story and going from there.
He is doing Hamlet, The Raven, The Odyssey, Dracula, and Moby Dick in a series of 5 books he called tiny versions of the classics with silly illustrations. Witter’s undergraduate degree was in literature and naturally he’s a huge literature fan. His love for the classics and putting them in simple terms has led him to basically doing hamlet in 16 pages with drawings to go along, he said.
Some people might disagree with this, but according to Witter, most of Shakespeare can be summarized in a few pages. They’re fairly simple stories brilliantly written, “there’s so much meat to them” he said. It’s the language that is so broad and immense that it can be intimidating. But when you understand the basic story you start to understand the text, he added.
In his off time Witter is reading and researching plays that have been around for 500 years, yet people keep doing them because they’re great stories that we like as human beings, he said he loves seeing what people do with it, Theatre being an ephemeral thing, you do it and its gone.
Witter added a classical quote by William Shakespeare,
“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women are merely players: they have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts.” – As you like it, Act II Scene VII
Witter’s is also directing a parody of Macbeth that he wrote for his Theatre Appreciation class to perform at the Reptilian Lounge Saturday June 24th
Jason Witter will be on stage at the South Broadway Cultural Center in Peter and The Star Catcher. “there are no small parts only small actors”
Between plays he’s producing or directing, classes he’s teaching, and books he’s writing and illustrating, CNM instructor Jason Witten sits down with The Chronicle. (Wade Faast/CNM Chronicle)
Sociology major Joseph Cante and biology and Chicano studies major Stefanie Olivas shared their experience growing food as part of Food Justice and as members of the South West Organizing Project (SWOP).
They are working on different gardens throughout the city of Albuquerque and each garden is located at a different elementary school, Cante said.
“We started with 4 pilot schools in Albuquerque and the idea is to build a bigger coalition with all the schools in the state thanks to resources and tools donated through SWOP and working closely with Agricultura Network, ” he said.
Stefanie Olivas made an open invitation to anyone interested in starting a food sustenance program and anyone that is interested can reach out to SWOP to petition for tools and seeds to start a huerta, she said.
Most people around here grew their own food so this project is about reintroducing farming into our lives and food justice is sovereignty over land and water, she said.
Food oppression, food apartheid, and poverty can all be addressed if people would become more proactive about farming, she said.
“More people need to be going back to their roots, going back to the life of the elders who worked in harmony with the land,” she said.
Joe Cantes makes a sincere call to bring back those aspects of New Mexican culture developed by the wise elders such as the concept of “resolano” which, he claims, is “a community exchange when people gather, and the problem solvers emerge, it’s when magic happens,” he said.
Everyday Lorenzo Candelaria works the farm that has been in his family since the 1600’s. Candelaria starts each day with the same breakfast, a cup of Atole made from blue corn flower grown on his farm. (Wade Faast/CNM Chronicle)
Like many other land owners in the South Valley, Mr. Lorenzo Candelaria has been farming the same plot of land his family has owned and operated near the mineral rich Rio Grande for the past 300 years, this piece of land was providing food for the area at least a thousand years before, he said.
Manuel Baldonado pulls weeds from a row of radishes. Because Cornelio Candelaria Organics is an organic farm they do not use herbicides or pesticides and require more physical work including having to weed each patch by hand. (Wade Faast/CNM Chronicle)
Candelaria describes the Acequia system he uses to irrigate his land, as an intelligent way of watering the plants because it restores the underground water tables.
He pointed out that many experts agree that a variety of produce and rotating crops is healthier for the land than farming only one crop which he claims has proven destructive to top soil fertility.
“Sacred reverence for the earth is important for the land like a women is scared, the more we learn to tend to her needs and treat her with love and respect the better we will be and longer we will live,” he said.
Candelaria said, “I am very excited about the food justice movement because it teaches children the profession of tending to the needs of mother earth for our collective survival.”
The food benefits extend to local restaurants that prefer fresh and local such as Los Poblanos, Artichoke Cafe, Farina Pizza, and Il Plato in Santa Fe all purchase from small farmers, said Candelaria.
The food donated by Cornelio Candelaria Organics provides a source of healthy, organic and nutritious produce to local programs such as Feed The Hood. Candelaria also sells his produce at local farmer’s markets and at his farm in southwest Albuquerque. (Wade Faast/CNM Chronicle)
