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Thanksgiving 2011

For Thanksgiving, Krista’s family – her parents Keith and Gail and her sister Erika – came to Cleveland to celebrate with my family. We visited the Cleveland Art Museum and various places downtown.

Posted 4 months, 3 weeks ago at 12:58 pm.
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New Mexico has its fair share of boogeymen: La Llorona, the wailing woman; Zozobra, ”Old Man Gloom”; the Chupacabra, the goat sucker; and El Kookooee, the Boogeyman. These supernatural apparitions bring with them bad luck and ill will. New Mexicans respond by burning them in effigy.

The burning of Zozobra, marking the beginning of Fiestas in Santa Fe, has grown into a major event that draws thousands. El Kookooee, though much smaller, has grown quickly in recent years. The event takes place on the last weekend of October, deep in the south valley of Albuquerque. Schoolchildren design the effigy each year, and each year local artists construct the boogey man per the children’s specifications.

El Kookooee, like Zozobra, is blamed for the ills of the world, and people are eager to place their fears and worries at his feet to kindle his flame.

I, though, think of Kookooee less as a demon and more as a vessel, a sacrificial lamb. As he ascends to the night sky as embers and ash, he carries our worst habits away with him.

Thanks, Kookooee, for bearing our burdens for us. We will meet again next year, when we Burqueños have amassed another heap of problems to unload onto your fiery altar.