Warehouse 21, Santa Fe, NM

spent an afternoon in santa fe watching "Mosquita y Mari", a sweet, sad film that was shown at Warehouse 21, a community center for under-21s, complete with a cluster of scruffy, skinny kids playing hacky sack outside the front door. Warehouse 21 offers arts programs for kids and has some great mural work (see below) on site. "M y M" stars a luminous 17-year-old (17!), Fenessa Pineda, playing a high school sophomore who perfectly captures the wide-eyed hopefulness of life at that time, maybe because she's at that point in her own life in reality. when i was that age, i was absolutely convinced that if i could manage to move out of home and get out on my own, my life would only get better. looking back, you could not pay me enough to be a kid living with my parents again, but for all the hurt of those years, it was the only time in my life where i felt like anything was possible if i worked hard enough. i guess i was lucky to have even had that feeling, no matter how brief- some kids have a hard time even picturing a life different from what they know. which is why places like Warehouse 21 are so critical for kids; check out their website!