My brief ramblings on "Ashiwi Country" in Pyramid #74 aren't even a little game-useful, but: It's oddly appropriate for me that this article shows up in the around-Christmas issue. After getting married and earning his PhD, my father was in the Air Force for a while, a consequence of going to school on Uncle Sam's bill via ROTC. He was stationed at Kirtland AFB (next door to a Navy base, apparently, which has always seemed a bit odd to me) near Albuquerque and absolutely loved the place. My parents moved away shortly before I was born, but my father retained a certain amount of New Mexican bric-a-brac, which was most visible in the form of Christmas ornaments. As a result, I've always associated Christmas, to some extent, with the desert Southwest. I didn't get to see the Southwest until many years later, when I was part of a summer of archaeological work on the Zuni reservation. I gotta say, the people are lovely and the scenery is pretty spectacul...