Ceremonial site named to Register

A 1,200-year-old Native American ceremonial site in nor thern New Mexico and the post office that ser ved scientists at the Manhattan Project are among the latest locations to make the National Register of Historic Places.

Six of the more than three dozen sites added to the list are in New Mexico, aptly illustrating the state’s diversity and highlighting its histor y in transpor tation, education, religion and architecture. Other sites added include the campus of St. John’s College, the oldest bridge designed for motor vehicle traffic in Santa Fe, a flight station in Grants that provided radio communications and weather data for transcontinental flights and the Gutierrez-Hubbell House in Albuquerque, which was once an impor tant stop along El Camino Real.

Pojoaque Pueblo residents are direct descendants of those who lived at K’uuyemugeh more than 1,000 years ago. The settlement was also home to one of the region’s earliest kivas, where puebloan ancestors gathered for religious and ceremonial purposes. Archaeology at the site has revealed unusual ceremonial animal burials, indicating the site’s importance as a religious center.

The Los Alamos post office is not much different from when it was built in 1946 as par t of a multimillion-dollar civic complex funded by the Atomic Energy Commission to replace wartime housing used by people working on the top-secret bomb-making project.

Details: www.nps.gov/nr and www.newmexico.org.

From the outside, it looks like any other house — except for the “G” logo on a brick section of structure’s exterior.

That oval-shaped G is very familiar to football fans; it is the same G on the helmets of the Green Bay Packers. And this house sits catty corner to Lambeau Field, historic residence of the Packers and home to many a pigskin memory.

This is not just some hardcore Packer fan’s house. Oh, Debbie Jacques is, to be sure, a big Packers fan, and she lives in one of the house’s two side-by-side living units. The other side, though, is her business — Under the Lights of Lambeau.

It is packed from floor to ceiling with all things Packers — everything from throw pillows and blankets to a cookie jar and a shower curtain bearing the team logo and/or name. There’s even a sign in the bathroom with a Packers logo that reads, “EVERY VOICE COUNTS,” because, well, why not?

Think of it as the ultimate bed and breakfast for a group of Packers faithful, be that a family or a bunch of friends.

For a good chunk of change — about $2,500 during the regular season — up to eight folks can check into Under the Lights of Lambeau at noon on the Friday of a weekend game. There you can hang out and have a good old time leading up to Sunday, when Jacques will cater your pregame party.

“Our philosophy is we really want you to enjoy football,” she tells a group of journalists touring the property, “and we want y’all to come back.”

(And we wanted to come back — if only for more of the delicious football playershaped, f r osting- covered sugar cookies she’d prepared for us. They were insanely delicious.)

Under the Lights of Lambeau is a prime example of the way Packers football permeates seemingly all facets of life in the Wisconsin city of a little more than 100,000 people — easily the smallest city to be home to an NFL team.

Green Bay is at the head of a sub-basin of Lake Michigan called Green Bay, at the mouth of the Fox River. It’s nearly a two-hour drive along Lake Michigan to the state’s biggest city, Milwaukee.

That Green Bay is so small and relatively isolated helps to explain why the Packers are such a big deal to the people there. Playing into that is the Packers are the country’s only major-league team that is nonprofit and community-owned.

Seriously, you think the Browns are big deal in Cleveland? You ain’t seen nothing.

On an August weekend when the team would be playing a preseason game — a meaningless exhibition — you couldn’t go anywhere without seeing people in Packers jerseys and shirts. I don’t know what percentage of folks browsing stands at the sprawling Saturday Farmers Market downtown were wearing team shirts or jackets, but it was high. (I imagine if you don’t own any Packers gear, you might have to explain it to some city council subcommittee that looks into certain types of odd behavior.)

You start to get what it’s all about on a tour of Lambeau Field, which opened nearly 60 years ago as City Stadium, later adopting the last name of Packers founder, player and head coach Earl Louis “Curly” Lambeau. (I expected to hear the names Vince Lombardi, Bart Starr, Brett Favre and Aaron Rodgers several times during my visit — and I did — but “Curly” may have been talked about more than any of them.)

Designed after Michigan Stadium in Ann Arbor, aka