hi there,
new to all of this, so please bear with me.

i would like to make it so that my "home" page is static, but that "recent posts" will show up on the right sidebar.

those recent posts would be "news" posts that would also appear in order on a "news" page that was one of the items in the menu (the rest of them will be pages)

it would be a 2 column design

does that make sense?

thank you in advance for any wisdom

H ind,
sure this makes sense, and should be easy to do, but non of this is a 'theme' issue, this is just wordpress.
1) Create your static page
2) In the dashboard SETTINGS->READING->Front Page Display, select static page and point at your Home page.
3) In the dashboard APPEARANCE->Widgets on the right side of the screen (this is in WP 2.7.1) under 'Current Widgets' select 'Right Sidebar' and click on 'Show. Add the 'Recent Posts' to your right sidebar and press 'Save Changes'

Now since the Atahualpa theme is normally a 3 column theme, you do have to make a change to the theme options so

4) In the dashboard Appearance->Atahualpa Theme Options->Sidebars->Left Sidebar:Display on: just uncheck all the pages.

That should do it