The cottonwoods are turning and the Rio Grande flows by. No place any prettier in the autumn than a walk along the Rio Grande through the bosque in Albuquerque.
Taken yesterday with my iPhone. Click each image for larger version. If you look closely there’s a horse and rider across the river. We saw a coyote just south of Paseo del Norte, but he wouldn’t pose for a photo.
The design for the 2009 New Mexico float in the Tournament of Roses Parade.
Click image for larger version.
Via Peter St. Cyr
One person was killed and three injured today in three separate balloon accidents as the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta enters its closing days.
In the fatal accident, the balloon hit a power line (often a culprit in accidents), which cut a fuel line. The gondola and envelope caught fire and were separated. The two men on board fell 45 and 60 feet to the ground, killing one and critically injuring the other.
Here’s the story on the accident and a photo sequence of the doomed balloon.
NewMexiKen likes the Balloon Fiesta and thinks it truly an event worth attending from time-to-time. That said, I still find ‘Burque Babble’s annual “Ten Reasons I Hate the Balloon Fiesta” amusing and point on. Here’s the 2008 Edition.
The original 2005 Edition.
It rained hard all night and both last night’s and this morning’s Balloon Fiesta events were cancelled. (About a 1/2-inch at Balloon Fiesta Park, more like an inch-and-a-half here at Casa NewMexiKen a thousand feet higher.) It was a very wet football game last night, but we held on until the fourth quarter, when very few were left at University Stadium. The Lobos won 24-0 and are now 3-3.
Speaking of Zozobra, as I did in the post about the State Fair just below, NewMexiKen made a small web album of so-so photos from this year’s burning of in Santa Fe.
[portfolio_slideshow size=large nav=bottom height=360 showdesc=true]
Life in the Land of Enchantment is … is … well enchanting. We’ve got the Zozobra, and UNM defeating Arizona in football, and the Balloon Fiesta coming up, and — of course, the New Mexico State Fair, the 70th edition of which began September 4th and runs through next Sunday.
NewMexiKen loves the fair and wrote about it here three years ago (with lots of photos). This year not so many photos, just three taken with my iPhone (click on each for a larger version).
| This is Primo (I think). I thought the longhorn steer was posing, but I was a little slow and I see now that what I thought was a grin might have been more of a grimace. Later this week Primo and some of the other longhorn steers (which can weigh 2,500 pounds) will actually be ridden. |  |
| Then I got to be a celebrity (I’ve already had more than my allotted 15 minutes, so I think this was extra celebrity time). At the Fair today they were constructing the world’s longest ristra. |  |
| Donna and I walked up just as they were finishing up and yours truly got to be the official very last person to add my three chiles (pictured here, only you can just see two) to the nearly 100 foot long ristra.
I was videotaped and interviewed by Channel 13 and everything — totally freezing and unable to say anything the least bit interesting or bright. |
 |
Though, when asked my name, I was coherent enough to say Ken. And when asked for my whole name, I said, proudly, “NewMexiKen.”
And when asked if I was having a good time at the fair I said, “It’s always a great day at the Fair.”
And it is!
The Fiesta de Santa Fe, celebrated annually since 1712, began Thursday night with the burning of Old Man Gloom before a crowd of 25,000.
Zozobra centers around the ritual burning in effigy of Old Man Gloom, or Zozobra, to dispel the hardships and travails of the past year. …
The effigy is a giant animated wooden and cloth marionette that waves its arms and growls ominously at the approach of its fate. A major highlight of the pageant is the fire spirit dancer, dressed in a flowing red costume, who appears at the top of the stage to drive away the white-sheeted “glooms” from the base of the giant Zozobra. …
Zozobra is a well crafted framework of preplanned and pre-cut sticks, covered with chicken wire and yards of muslin. It is stuffed with bushels of shredded paper, which traditionally includes obsolete police reports, paid off mortgage papers, and even personal divorce papers.
NewMexiKen deposited his gloomy thoughts in writing in the gloom box and I feel much better now that they’ve been burned along with the Zozobra. (It’s cheaper than a shrink, and probably as effective.)
This was the 84th burning of the Zozobra. The marionette was about 50-feet tall.
At ‘Burque Babble NewMexiKen learned there’s going to be a $50 (under $30,000) or $25 (under $70,000) rebate from the legislature because gasoline is so expensive. I agree with ‘Burque Babble’s reaction including:
• I wonder if we’ll get the same series of five separate mailers telling us: 1. Announcement: A rebate is coming; 2. Announcement: Here’s how you will get your rebate; 3. Announcement: Your rebate should be here any day now, really!; 4. Announcement: Did you get your rebate? Because we’re not so sure; 5. Apology: Here’s why your rebate wasn’t for as much as you thought it would be and the obscure office to file a grievance.
• I wonder if we’ll have that same stupid tax problem we had with the last lame “rebate” (remember that?);
The last time the “rebate” was taxable income. The state giveth and the state taketh away.
All this for $50 or $25. What a pandering group of wastrels in our legislature.
I love this rant from ‘Burque Babble first posted here two years ago. (This is just an excerpt, you should read it all.)
What’s this I hear about New Mexico going to two automobile license plates? If it ain’t bad enough that we’re gonna get more than one area code, now we gotta consider getting all cosmopolitan by stickin’ another license plate on the front of our cars. What’s next, High Occupancy Vehicles lanes? Light rail? Thai restaurants in the South Valley?
I’m afraid NM is losing that inefficient, podunk feel that brought many of us here in the first place. …
Thankfully, we haven’t turned all HOV lanes and pad thai yet. As I’ve mentioned before, NM has a stunningly high number of folks who not only don’t have two license plates on their car, they don’t even have one metal license plate. Instead, there is a piece of paper illegibly stuck inside their dark-tinted rear window.
Next weekend.
Each year the Santa Fe Indian Market includes 1,200 artists from about 100 tribes who show their work in over 600 booths. The event attracts an estimated 100,000 visitors to Santa Fe from all over the world. Buyers, collectors and gallery owners come to Indian Market to take advantage of the opportunity to buy directly from the artists. For many visitors, this is a rare opportunity to meet the artists and learn about contemporary Indian arts and cultures. Quality is the hallmark of the Santa Fe Indian Market.
New Mexico FBIHOP had an interesting essay late last night about bilingualism — and the harm the small-minded people can do. Read it.
And I learned the state song, or at least some of it. It’s bilingual just like New Mexico.
Under a sky of azure,
Where balmy breezes blow,
Kissed by the golden sunshine,
Is Nuevo Mejico.
Land of the Montezuma,
With firey hearts aglow,
Land of the deeds historic,
Is Nuevo Mejico.
Yesterday, the 31st, was officially the hottest day all month in Albuquerque, 97º. The average high for the month was a moderate 87.7º and the average low an A/C off, windows open, 65.4º.
It hasn’t reached 100º in Albuquerque in August since 1994. So 97º may be the official high this year (twice in June and yesterday).
Maybe. I see right now at Casa NewMexiKen it’s 96º with 9% humidity. Them’s June-like conditions.
By comparison, the high for July in Phoenix was 112º (on the first and last days of the month). The average high there was 105.7º (18 degrees higher than Albuquerque) and the average low 84º (nearly 19 degrees warmer than Albuquerque). It has reached 100º or more in Phoenix 55 out of the last 61 days. Ugly.
Lists of the Top 10 rafting trips and Top 10 city bike rides from Sunset Magazine. The Grand Canyon leads the former; Albuquerque’s Paseo del Bosque Trail the latter.
Reposted from a year ago.
“That boom echoing over ABQ was some sort of super-secret test at Sandia Labs. We can’t tell you what they’re blowing up, because they won’t tell us. It’s all a secret.”
Jeez John, I thought it was thunder (it being late July and all). It’s always a bit intimidating to know that a nuclear lab in your town is blowing up secret things.
How many of these enchanted places have you seen?
New Mexico Department of Tourism’s Top 10 Attractions:
Another ten enchanted places:
What’s worth seeing in New Mexico that isn’t listed? I’d include El Morro National Monument, Lincoln State Monument, Taos Pueblo, Acoma Sky City (the pueblo, not the casino), and a pueblo feast day.
NewMexiKen has been to 13 of the 20 listed and “sorta-kinda” to four more (been near, driven by, checked out the price of admission). And, obviously, I’ve been to those I would add to the lists.
This local TV news item bears notice:
“This is the second sighting in just two days in the community, and it’s near the Sandia Heights area where officers set a trap after a bear was on one man’s property last week.”
That would be NewMexiKen’s neighborhood.
“PNM won’t be ready to project what this winter’s bills will be until August, but they will be ‘significantly higher’.”
The Albuquerque Journal quoting PNM spokesperson Susan Sponar. PNM is New Mexico’s largest gas and electric provider. Your mileage may differ, but I’m thinking heating bills this coming winter are going to be scarier than Dick Cheney’s to-do list.
Thanks to jfleck at inkstain for the pointer.
Oh, and here’s another painful line, as if we didn’t know. This from CNN Money.
“Record gas and higher food prices drove inflation to the biggest annual jump since 1991 and fanned fears about growing pressures on consumers.”
It was on this day in 1945 that the first atomic bomb was exploded at 5:30 a.m., one hundred and twenty miles south of Albuquerque, New Mexico. It was the end result of the Manhattan Project, which had started in 1939. The bomb contained a ball of plutonium about the size of a baseball, surrounded by a ring of uranium and a series of detonators. Its main pieces were placed on the backseat of an army jeep and driven to the test site, where the bomb was assembled and positioned at the top of a hundred-foot steel tower for the test explosion.
At 2:00 a.m. on this day in 1945, a thunderstorm blew in from the Gulf of Mexico. The men assembling the bomb had to do so in the midst of a lightning storm, wondering what would happen if lightning struck the tower. But the weather cleared up just before dawn. They started the countdown fifteen seconds before 5:30 a.m. The physicists and military men watched from about 10,000 yards away. They all wore Welder’s glasses and suntan lotion.
One of the physicists who was there that day said, “We were lying there, very tense, in the early dawn, and there were just a few streaks of gold in the east; you could see your neighbor very dimly. … Suddenly, there was an enormous flash of light, the brightest light I have ever seen … it bored its way right through you. It was a vision which was seen with more than the eye. It was seen to last forever. … There was an enormous ball of fire which grew and grew and it rolled as it grew; it went up into the air, in yellow flashes and into scarlet and green. It looked menacing. It seemed to come toward one.”
The ball of fire rose rapidly, releasing four times the heat of the interior of the sun, followed by a mushroom cloud that extended forty thousand feet into the sky. Tests showed that it had released energy equal to 21,000 tons of TNT. The burst of light was so bright that it lit up the moon. An army captain in Albuquerque who knew about the test could see the explosion from his hotel room, more than a hundred miles away.
Later, when the scientists went to examine the site of the explosion, they found a crater in the ground 1200 feet in diameter. The ground was covered with a green, glassy substance, which was actually sand that had been fused into glass by the heat.
At the time, the military announced that an ammunitions dump had exploded, and a few weeks later the atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.
Source: The Writer’s Almanac from American Public Media (2006).
… that after two-and-a-half years without cable TV I’ve ordered DirecTV (and Qwest Fiber-optic internet). You’ll miss me when I’m a couch potato instead of a blogger.
I had to renew my vehicle registration this month. Every year I just renew for one year instead of two because I figure I’m due — now after seven years — for a new car. (I had the last one seven years before I got this one.) Anyway I went over to the air inspection place, got the necessary inspection, came home and registered the car online. Altogether, 30 minutes — it was 3:14 when I left and 3:44 when I started updating this post.
Registration in New Mexico is $51 a year (unless you have a special license plate). There are no other taxes or fees for cars that I know of. How much do you pay?
This plate is $37 extra. I think about it — and then figure, who cares.
The New York Times has a 9-slide show of New Deal Artists in Santa Fe. The slides depict work done by artists in 1934 for the Public Works of Art Project, a predecessor of the Works Progress Administration.
The exhibit at the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture has been on since April and runs through August 31.
Here’s background.
… was killed 127 years ago tonight.
Henry McCarty was born in New York City (or Brooklyn) in the fall of 1859. With his mother and brother he moved west — Indiana, Kansas, New Mexico. Mrs. McCarty married a man named William Antrim in Santa Fe. After she died in Silver City in 1874, the boy got into minor trouble, escaped jail to Arizona Territory, and used the name William Antrim. His size and age led to “Kid” or “Kid” Antrim.
Arrested for shooting and killing a blacksmith who was beating him in 1877, the Kid escaped back to New Mexico and assumed the name William H. Bonney. He enlisted in the range war in Lincoln County on the side of John Tunstall against Lawrence Murphy. After Tunstall was killed, the Kid rode with a group called the Regulators, a quasi-legal vigilante gang. The Regulators captured two of Tunstall’s killers and someone, most likely the Kid, killed both before they reached Lincoln and the jail. Later the Kid was among the group that killed Sheriff William Brady. The Kid was wounded in the fight at Blazer’s Mill with “Buckshot” Roberts. There were other gunfights between the warring parties. In July, the Kid was in the “five-day battle” in Lincoln where the leader of his group, Tunstall’s lawyer Alexander McSween, was killed. After that the war was considered over and the Kid lost any legitimacy. In August 1878, he was present when the clerk at the Mescalero Indian agency was killed.
Incoming New Mexico Territorial Governor Lew Wallace (the author of Ben Hur) issued a general pardon for the Lincoln County war, but it did not apply to Billy Bonney because he had been involved in the killing of Sheriff Brady. After another outburst of violence led to the killing of a lawyer named Chapman, Governor Wallace offered the Kid a full pardon if he’d testify against Chapman’s killers. Bonney agreed and was arrested in early 1879. Meanwhile Chapman’s killers escaped.
After waiting several months for the pardon, the Kid, who had some liberties, walked away from his guards, mounted a horse and escaped. He became a cattle thief, claiming it was owed him for back wages. He killed a saloon braggart whose gun misfired. Another man was killed in an attempt to capture Bonney.
The new Lincoln County sheriff, Pat Garrett, finally caught the Kid at Stinking Springs, 25 miles from Fort Sumner. After a gunfight the Kid was arrested. He was first charged in the murder of “Buckshot” Roberts, but eventually brought to trial and convicted for the murder of Sheriff Brady. Before Bonney could be hanged, he killed two deputies and escaped. Garrett located the Kid at Pete Maxwell’s ranch, waited in the dark bedroom, and shot him twice when he saw him outlined in the opened bedroom doorway. The Kid died without knowing who had killed him. He was 21 years old.
Among the best of the many books on Billy the Kid is Michael Wallis’s Billy the Kid: The Endless Ride.
It hasn’t reached 90º F. officially in Albuquerque since last Saturday — and not above 81º since Tuesday. No A/C or cooling at Casa NewMexiKen for three days. Cheap. Cheap.
Love the monsoon season — except when the lightning is near.
… was created on this date in 1954, when President Eisenhower signed a bill authorizing the Secretary of the Interior to acquire the site and remaining structures.
Fort Union was established in 1851 by Lieutenant Colonel Edwin V. Sumner as a guardian and protector of the Santa Fe Trail. During it’s forty-year history, three different forts were constructed close together. The third and final Fort Union was the largest in the American Southwest, and functioned as a military garrison, territorial arsenal, and military supply depot for the southwest. Today, visitors use a self-guided tour path to visit the second fort and the large, impressive ruins of the third Fort Union. The largest visible network of Santa Fe Trail ruts can be seen here.
… could get me on the New Mexico Rattler.
Yesterday NewMexiKen read about half of Evan S. Connell’s 422-page Son of the Morning Star: Custer and The Little Bighorn
Also yesterday I got a copy of the Field Guide to the Sandia Mountains
In other words, I have my work cut out for me today.