Floyd beat Cliff but Cliff beat Tatum

The Floyd Lady Broncos defeated the Cliff Cowgirls to win the New Mexico 1A girls basketball championship.

The Cliff Cowboys defeated the Tatum Coyotes to win the New Mexico 1A boys basketball championship.

Floyd, New Mexico, has a population of 78.

Cliff, New Mexico, is unincorporated. The high school (7-12) has 155 students and 12 teachers.

Tatum, New Mexico, has a population of 683, a booming metropolis.

Cliff and Tatum are each about 270 miles from Albuquerque; Cliff west of Silver City, Tatum east of Roswell. Floyd is near Clovis, New Mexico.

Didn’t we just Spring forward?

10:24 AM: I realize it is too warm for this to last, but it is snowing — I mean really snowing — at Casa NewMexiKen.

11:24 AM Sun out, snow all gone.

You know what we call this kind of weather in Albuquerque?

March

Another March-Madness-isn’t-just-college line

The Texico Lady Wolverines defeated the Navajo Pine Lady Warriors last night to win the New Mexico 2AA girls state basketball championship. I was curious about Texico High School, knowing the town to be a tiny place on the Texas-New Mexico state line (population 1,065 in 2000 and I doubt it’s grown much). Anyway, here’s an announcement left over from yesterday on the high school web site:

Lady Wolverines are victorious over Penasco in the State Basketball Tournament. They will be playing at the Pit in Albuquerque at 4:00 pm on Friday 3/12/10 against Navajo Pine. Texico Schools will dismiss at 11:50 am with the buses running at 12:00 pm.

I wonder how many made the 464-mile round trip.

This was also on the website and struck me as a part of America that most of us left long ago.

Please keep Lucero family and the Anderson family in your prayers for the recent loss of their grandmothers.

The word Texico is a portmanteau. That’s a blending of two words.

[Navajo Pine High School is on the Arizona border. The two schools are more than 400 miles apart.]

Snow!

WTF, there’s snow on the ground.

Pancho Villa

… and his forces attacked Columbus, New Mexico, on this date in 1916.

Why Columbus? A series of circumstances and events: Columbus had a garrison of about 600 U.S. soldiers and the U.S. had taken sides against Villa and for Venustiano Carranza in the continuing Mexican revolutions. Villa had been sold blank ammunition by an arms dealer in the town. A few days earlier 10 Mexicans had been “accidentally” burned to death while in custody in El Paso during a “routine” delousing with gasoline.

The attack at dawn lasted about three hours before American troops chased Villa’s forces into Mexico. The town was burned and 17 Americans, mostly private citizens, were killed. About 100 of Villa’s troops were reportedly killed. The arms dealer was absent from Columbus that morning. He had a dental appointment in El Paso.

The next day President Wilson ordered General Jack Pershing and 5,000 America troops into Mexico to capture Villa. This “Punitive Expedition” was often mis-directed by Mexican citizens and Villa allegedly hid in the dust thrown up by Pershing’s vehicles. (The American Army used aircraft for reconnaissance for the first time. This is considered the beginning of the Army Air Corps.)

Unsuccessful in the hunt, by February 1917 the United States and Pershing turned their attention to the war in Europe. Minor clashes with Mexican irregulars continued to disturb the border from 1917 to 1919. Engagements took place near Buena Vista, Mexico, on 1 December 1917; in San Bernardino Canyon, Mexico, on 26 December 1917; near La Grulla, Texas, on 8-9 January 1918; at Pilares, Mexico, about 28 March 1918; at Nogales, Arizona, on 27 August 1918; and near El Paso, Texas, on 15-16 June 1919.

NewMexiKen’s very own grandfather served in Columbus during World War I, making him the first NewMexiKen.

Villa, born Doroteo Arango, surrendered to the Mexican Government in 1920 and retired on a general’s pay. He was assassinated in 1923.

Columbus photo via New Mexico Magazine.

It’s spring

Today is the first day since November 13th that the temperature has risen above 60ºF officially in Albuquerque. It’s 62 63 and sunny. Convertible weather.

The official low here this winter was 12ºF on December 4th, a record for the date. The temperature dropped into the teens just eight times; six of those mornings were in December.

(The all-time record low temperature for Albuquerque is minus 17ºF on January 6, 1971. Yikes!)

There has been exactly 1 inch of precipitation since Halloween; 2.6 inches of it as snow. (It takes about 10 inches of snow, on average, to equal one inch of precipitation.)

We probably had about eight or nine inches of snow altogether at Casa NewMexiKen a thousand feet above the valley. I don’t think any of it lasted more than a few hours except as patches in shady spots. A couple of times it snowed an inch or two, then melted, then snowed another inch or two, then melted, all on the same day. That’s ideal. I’ve always thought it was nice to watch snow fall, to admire its beauty when everything is covered, then to magically wish it away. More often than not, that’s snow in Albuquerque.

The bastards!

It was on this date in 1861 that Congress organized the Territory of Colorado and stole the Rio Grande headwaters, the San Luis Valley and a big chunk of plains from New Mexico.

Increasing the odds

You go into a New Mexico Indian casino in 2006 and play a progressive slot machine; one with a very big prize, say $1.6 million dollars. Amazingly, you win.

But the casino says, oh sorry, the slot machine malfunctioned. You only won $400.

You appeal to the tribe’s gaming commission. They deny your claim; the slot machine malfunctioned.

You want “your” $1.6 million, so you file suit in state court. But Indian tribes have sovereign immunity. You can’t sue an Indian tribe. Case dismissed; the court has no jurisdiction.

You appeal to a higher court. In January 2010 the appeals court affirms the lower court’s dismissal. You can’t sue an Indian tribe.

Moral of the story: The house always wins.

The above is a very brief version of a true incident. Meanwhile last July another individual “won” $2.5 million on a slot machine at another New Mexico casino. Guess what? Her slot machine malfunctioned, too.

Today’s Photos

The winter storm that passed through Albuquerque today had much more bark than bite — it did snow an inch to two twice today, but melted in-between and after.

Still, when the sun came out around 5, the Sandia Mountains had never been prettier. These two photos show the proximity of the mountains more than their beauty. They were taken at the nearby CVS, one from the parking lot and the other from inside while I waited for a cashier (it is CVS).

Click either photo for larger versions.

What's that? That noise?

Oh, it’s raindrops hitting the sunlights. I’d forgotten the sound.

When you’ve had only four one-hundredths of an inch of precipitation in five weeks you forget.

Yikes!

They’re suggesting a low temperature by morning of just a single digit.

That’ll make this morning’s 15 feel downright balmy by comparison. As it was, I got up around 5 to see why the furnace wasn’t working. It was worse than that. It WAS working!

Sh**iest line of the day

“Christopher Rains, indicted Wednesday in the gunshot death of his baby daughter, is one of many New Mexicans accused of killing nearly three dozen young children this year.”

KRQE News 13 New Mexico

Nearly. Three. Dozen. This. Year.

Have a nice day.

Farolitos

Those bags with sand and candles that are a New Mexico Christmas Eve tradition; the correct name for them is farolitos.

Often farolitos are called luminarias. Lumanarias traditionally were actually small bonfires.

Farolitos (literally “little lanterns”) replaced lumanarias (actual meaning is altar lamps) as towns became more densely populated. The purpose of both was to light the path to midnight mass.

Farolitos are the coolest Christmas decoration ever, especially when whole neighborhoods line their sidewalks, driveways and even roof-lines with them.

Buy some sand (for ballast), some votive candles and some lunch bags and bring a beautiful New Mexico tradition to your neighborhood this year. Get your neighbors to join you. You could become famous if it’s never been done in your area. And the kids love it.

[This one is for you, Anthony.]

When the sacred becomes toxic

From High Country News, a brief look at the fights over San Francisco Peak and Mount Taylor. An excerpt:

When the Spaniards returned, they were less heavy-handed in their proselytizing, fearful of a repeat. Still, cultural tensions between the Southwestern tribes and the European newcomers have not gone away. And more and more, it seems, that tension is finding its way into natural resource battles.

'I never wanted to kill anybody, but if a man had it in his mind to kill me, I made it my business to get him first.'

This Day in History at History.com tells a story from 125 years ago today.

Elfego Baca, legendary defender of southwestern Hispanos, manages to hold off a gang of 80 cowboys who are determined to kill him.

The trouble began the previous day, when Baca arrested Charles McCarthy, a cowboy who fired five shots at him in a Frisco (now Reserve), New Mexico, saloon. For months, a vicious band of Texan cowboys had terrorized the Hispanos of Frisco, brutally castrating one young Mexican man and using another for target practice. Outraged by these abuses, Baca gained a commission as deputy sheriff to try to end the terror. His arrest of McCarthy served notice to other Anglo cowboys that further abuses of the Hispanos would not be tolerated.

The Texans, however, were not easily intimidated. The morning after McCarthy’s arrest, a group of about 80 cowboys rode into town to free McCarthy and make an example of Baca for all Mexicans. Baca gathered the women and children of the town in a church for their safety and prepared to make a stand. When he saw how outnumbered he was, Baca retreated to an adobe house, where he killed one attacker and wounded several others. The irate cowboys peppered Baca’s tiny hideout with bullets, firing about 400 rounds into the flimsy structure. As night fell, they assumed they had killed the defiant deputy sheriff, but the next morning they awoke to the smell of beef stew and tortillas–Baca was fixing his breakfast.

A short while later, two lawmen and several of Baca’s friends came to his aid, and the cowboys retreated. Baca turned himself over to the officers, and he was charged with the murder of one of the cowboys. In his trial in Albuquerque, the jury found Baca not guilty because he had acted in self-defense, and he was released to a hero’s welcome among the Hispanos of New Mexico. Baca was adored because he had taken a stand against the abusive and racist Anglo newcomers. Hugely popular, Baca later enjoyed a successful career as a lawyer, private detective, and politician in Albuquerque.

Baca was 19 at the time of the shootout and lived until 1945. In 1958, Walt Disney Studios produced The Nine Lives of Elfego Baca. Robert Loggia played the title role, with a cast that included Annette Funicello (as Chiquita), James Coburn and Alan Hale, Jr. (Gilligan’s skipper).

A golf tournament of sorts, the annual Elfego Baca Golf Shoot in Socorro, New Mexico, celebrates the deputy — “competitors are loaded into four-wheel drive vehicles to ascend Socorro Peak, 7,243 feet above sea level. Here they will battle in a one-hole shoot. The hole, a fifty foot patch of dirt, is located on the New Mexico Tech campus, about 4 hours long, 2550 feet down, and almost three miles away.”

You can read more about Elfego Baca here.

The Santa Fe New Mexican

… was first published on this date in 1849. It bills itself as “The West’s Oldest Newspaper.”

One of our 50 is missing line of the day

“In less than six weeks, the federal government will be treating New Mexicans as foreigners, as your state driver’s license may no longer get you through airport security.”

KOAT Albuquerque

The Meadows

Keith Phipps visits Las Vegas — Las Vegas, New Mexico — as he retraces the Easy Rider road trip.

This is the fourth post in the series. The third was from Taos.

Las Vegas, NM, is a very cool place to visit. Great fun to stay at the Plaza Hotel, where Javier Bardem met up with Josh Brolin.

My view

Taken through the window from my chair at the iMac. 38 degrees, 50% humidity. Gorgeous.

It’s 3.3 miles as the GPS flies to the platform near the visitor center at the top of the Sandia Crest (the center and the towers are just visible if you click on the image and view the larger version). It’s 10,678 feet above sea level up there; just 6,070 where I sit.

Stuff

Banks 121, 122 and 123 of 2009 were taken over by the FDIC Friday. There are five New Mexico Banks on the unofficial problem bank list.

Rudolfo Carillo has a remembrance worth reading about Bruce King, the three-term governor of New Mexico who died yesterday. You don’t need to be a New Mexican to appreciate the story.

Elaine hasn’t posted this morning’s sunrise photo yet, but I’m guessing it’d be mostly grey (or is it gray?) and snowy. She lives in the foothills near Colorado Springs. The set of photos on her home page right now surely deserves your click.

And, again, I recommend you read Cameron Todd Willingham, Texas, and the death penalty.

I got home Thursday night after 22 days away. I missed clear blue skies, the smell of wood burning in the fall evening, lots of stars at night and New Mexican food. But you know what I missed most, don’t you? That little silver car in the garage.

Even so, I suppose that doesn’t justify 85 mph on Paseo del Norte when I took it out yesterday.

How would you have voted?

One-hundred-and-three years ago today the citizens of New Mexico and Arizona voted on whether to join the Union as one state.

The Territory of New Mexico included Arizona from 1850 until 1863 when Arizona was split off. (The original boundary proposal for the separation would have divided the two north (New Mexico) and south (Arizona), not east and west as it turned out.) In 1906, congress passed a bill stipulating one state for the two territories, but the act stated that the voters of either territory could veto joint statehood.

New Mexico was 50 percent Spanish-speaking; Arizona less than 20 percent. The Arizona legislature passed a resolution of protest; combining the territories in one state “would subject us to the domination of another commonwealth of different traditions, customs and aspirations.” A “Protest Against Union of Arizona with New Mexico” presented to Congress early in 1906 stated:

[T]he decided racial difference between the people of New Mexico, who are not only different in race and largely in language, but have entirely different customs, laws and ideals and would have but little prospect of successful amalgamation … [and] the objection of the people of Arizona, 95 percent of whom are Americans, to the probability of the control of public affairs by people of a different race, many of whom do not speak the English language, and who outnumber the people of Arizona two to one.

Joint statehood won in New Mexico, 26,195 to 14,735. It lost in Arizona, 16,265 to 3,141.

New Mexico entered the Union on January 6, 1912 (47th state), Arizona on February 14, 1912 (48th).

[Had the two states been one, that state would have been about 9/10ths the size of Texas.]

Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument (New Mexico)

… began as Gran Quivara National Monument in 1909, but evolved over the years and was renamed Salinas Pueblo Missions 21 years ago today.

Once, thriving American Indian trade communities of Tiwa and Tompiro speaking Puebloans inhabited this remote frontier area of central New Mexico. Early in the 17th-century Spanish Franciscans found the area ripe for their missionary efforts. However, by the late 1670s the entire Salinas District, as the Spanish had named it, was depopulated of both Indian and Spaniard. What remains today are austere yet beautiful reminders of this earliest contact between Pueblo Indians and Spanish Colonials: the ruins of four mission churches, at Quarai, Abó, and Gran Quivira and the partially excavated pueblo of Las Humanas or, as it is known today, Gran Quivira. Established in 1980 through the combination of two New Mexico State Monuments and the former Gran Quivira National Monument, the present Monument comprises a total of 1,100 acres.

Source: National Park Service

Best redux line of the day

Grandpa keeps telling The Sweeties they should move to New Mexico because we not only have Santa Claus, we also have Santa Fe.

(And, when you think about it, Santa Fe is a fantasy a lot like Santa Claus, only in earth tones.)

Rained Out

We’ve had about an inch and a third of rain here at Casa Ken. It’s snow less than 1000 feet above me and as the clouds lift, the Sandia Mountains are starting to look pretty in the season’s first white dress. Hope the sun comes out before it all melts.

This much rain is about 15% of the usual total for a year.

It's a Lota Burger

… but I guess they only want one customer at a time.