“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.”
Category: Albuquerque & New Mexico
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.
Hanging on for Dear Life
Teamwork
The Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta is billed as the world’s largest community sponsored event. That world’s largest is a bit of local boosterism hyperbole for sure, but it is a community event. Donna sent this photo taken within the last hour. It’s a school holiday here and neighborhood kids were eager to help Frank and Brian and their crew pack up.
I love Albuquerque.
Best redux post of the day
From this date three years ago:
“If you really want to get a taste of it, come out and go with us.”
— Mike Krepfl, owner of AAA Pumping Service, which provides 401 porta-potties to the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta. He’s offering a free ride-along if you want to look into the business. From story in The Albuquerque Tribune.
Money quote: “[Fiesta field manager Sam] Baxter says he received a letter from a lady from the East Coast ‘thanking us immensely for providing a little ledge [in the porta-potty] for her purse,’ not knowing what the urinal was for.”
It was dark in one of those porta-potties last night after the glow and fireworks. Good thing I knew where everything was.
Idle thoughts about the Balloon Fiesta
Update: Karen has photos of two of the best of the special shape balloons.
If you ever want to attend the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta — and everyone should see it at least once — it runs from the first Saturday each October through the following weekend. The very best time — weather notwithstanding — is from Thursday morning through Saturday morning (today, tomorrow and Saturday this year).
In addition to mass ascensions each morning (500+ balloons), there are glows (where the balloons remain on the ground but are lit by their burners) and fireworks Thursday and Friday evenings.
And Thursday is when they break out the special shape balloons!
Take a look at this year’s poster.
Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta | Mass Happiness
Alas the winds picked up after launch this morning and there were six reported crashes, with one broken leg suffered by a woman who fell out of the gondola. I love calling a wicker basket a gondola.
Balloon Mishaps Cause Injuries
One of the many reasons I don’t ride in hot air balloons
Click link above for the story and to see a larger version of the photo.
What most people fail to realize is that the Balloon Fiesta is primarily an excuse for a 9-day tailgate party. Having to take the balloons up for 20 minutes and chase after them is the price balloon pilots and their crews pay to attend the party.
Balloon Quilt
An image of the 2009 Balloon Fiesta Raffle Quilt mentioned by Ephraim.
One of Our 50 is Missing
Since moving to New Mexico in the late 1950s, Susyn Blair-Hunt, of Albuquerque, says she’s gotten used to mail-order companies refusing to ship “out of the country” to New Mexico. But still she was surprised when, recently, she encountered this problem with beverage giant Coca-Cola Co. “When I went online to claim my Coke Rewards and started to register, I saw that in the state dropdown menu, New Mexico was nowhere to be found,” Blair-Hunt says. “They had Puerto Rico, they had Guam, but no New Mexico.”
When Blair-Hunt hurriedly contacted Coca-Cola for some clarity, she was referred to a link on the website that handles requests from foreign countries. “Maybe that’s why so many call centers are ending up in New Mexico—we fall into the same category as India or Malaysia,” she says.
“One of Our 50 is Missing ” is a regular feature of New Mexico Magazine.
¡Fiesta!
The Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta opened this morning — when they start launching balloons on warm, sunny afternoons instead of cold, damp mornings, I’ll go. The Albuquerque Journal Online does have some cool photos on its home page this morning.
Route 66
U.S. Highway 66 — popularly known as Route 66 or the Mother Road — holds a special place in American consciousness and evokes images of simpler times, mom and pop businesses, and the icons of a mobile nation on the road. This travel itinerary aids the public to visit the historic places that recall those images and experiences that are reminders of our past and evidence of the influence of the automobile.
Route 66: A Discover Our Shared Heritage Travel Itinerary from the National Park Service.
Whoa!
I’ve been putting seed out for the birdies and a whole flock of sparrows was chowing down when I noticed something swoop down that was noticeably larger. Damn, if it wasn’t a big ol’ hawk come to see what the noise was about.
Alas, he didn’t stay long enough for me to snap a photo — he/she was less than 10 feet from this keyboard
And now a jay has arrived. Much smaller, but even more of a bully than the hawk.
Trail Dust
Preeminent New Mexico historian Marc Simmons describes briefly the two Civil War battles that took place in New Mexico Territory in 1862 — Valverde and Glorieta.
Carpe mañana
Clipped this morning, Sunday, September 13, 2009, from the web site of the New Mexico State Fair.
Best redux paragraph of the day
“I love America and I love New Mexico and I love the New Mexico State Fair. Could there be anything more American than the fair with its crazy food, and horses barrel racing, and street entertainers, and bands, and high school students reciting their own poems, and FFA displays? And blue ribbons everywhere — pottery, Indian bead work, photographs, Lego projects, paintings, cookies, scrapbook pages, woodworking, quilts.”
NewMexiKen (2007)
The New Mexico State Fair opens today and runs through September 27th.
Best line of the day, so far
“And in a statement of faint praise right up there with ‘well, he is the smartest Dallas Cowboy fan in the world’, the Journal certainly outperforms the local TV stations (and their websites).”
Chillin’
For 36 out of the previous 44 days the temperature officially in Albuquerque had gotten to 90º F (once to 100º).
Yesterday the high was 79º.
Fall is in the air.
Follow up on Santa Fe commemorative plate
Here’s the plate that was selected. The black design is supposed to represent pottery — an odd choice to commemorate the Spanish pushing aside the Indians, but who knows any history anymore?
This plate is $25 extra (other special plates vary from $25 to $37).
The turquoise plate I showed yesterday will be the standard issue plate. The yellow plate, by the way, has been around since 1980.