Amber K is the nationally recognized author of True Magick: A Beginner’s Guide, Pagan Kids’ Activity Book, Heart of Tarot: An Intuitive Approach and several other books on Wicca. She has been a practitioner of the religion for more than 30 years and is the executive director of Ardantane, a nonprofit pagan learning center and seminary located near Jemez Springs, NM.

October is National Domestic Violence Awareness Month. Carol Horwitz has been the domestic violence and sexual assault liaison for the City of Santa Fe since March 2007. She worked for five years as a program manager at Peacekeepers Domestic Violence Program, treating women from Eight Northern Indian Pueblos. Horwitz also has led women’s and LGBT support groups at Esperanza Shelter for Battered Families, Inc. in Santa Fe.

Hardly the matronly, frumpy etiquette teacher of yore, Bizia Greene has taught etiquette classes in Santa Fe for three years. She recently opened the Etiquette School of Santa Fe, where she hopes to nurture a pleasant-mannered younger American generation to have modern sensibilities and a fresh outlook.

What do breasts and extraterrestrials have in common? For one, both contributed to the R-rating for the film Species. For another, local Raëlian guide Alaric Balibrera wants to give both more exposure in Santa Fe, figuratively and literally. The Raëlian movement is promoting a woman’s right to bear her chest in public. Balibrera organized a bare-breast demonstration on the Plaza in August

Henry Lewis is the owner of Gunstock Hill Books and one of the organizers of the second annual Santa Fe Antiquarian Book Show.

Dr. Evangeline Parsons-Yazzie teaches Navajo at Northern Arizona University. In July, New Mexico  became the first state to formally adopt a Navajo-language textbook for use in public schools, Dine Bizaad Binahoo’ahh, or Rediscovering the Navajo Language, written by Parsons-Yazzie.

Karyn Stockdale has been the vice president and executive director of the Randall Davey Audubon Center for 10 months. A national conservation organization, the Audubon Society is best known for its focus on birding; the Santa Fe chapter will celebrate its 25th anniversary from 1-4 pm, Saturday, Sept. 27 at its 135-acre preserve on Upper Canyon Road.

Jason Reed runs Santa Fe Brewing Company’s open mic night (myspace.com/sfbcopenmic) at 7 pm every Wednesday. (It’s on a two-week hiatus, set to resume Aug. 27.) He is in the process of recording his first album.

Rob Yaksich is the instructional coordinator for New Mexico State Parks outdoor classroom program.

If there’s one thing Eric Parnes has learned from his 25 years as a defensive driving instructor, it’s that everyone—city councilors, SFR writers and, yes, defensive driving instructors—eventually gets caught breaking a traffic law. A second lesson is that injecting comedy into court-ordered courses is like adding nitrous to a six-cylinder engine. OK, so it doesn’t actually make the classes go faster, but it sure makes it easier for offenders to stay in gear.