Posted 5/1/2012

Many, many years ago.....long before my time, a Neanderthal walking through the forest primeval, stopped and bent over, picked up a wrench from Home Depot, scratched his head and spent hours trying to figure out just what in the world this strange object could be. I suspect it was the beginning of "folk wisdom". Over the centuries we have developed a vast complex system of folk wisdom such as "a penny saved is a penny earned". Some of them never did make a lot of sense to me, like, walking down the street on a sidewalk, kids used to say, "step on a crack, break your mother's back". Where in the world did that come from? There now appears to have been some validity to the old wives tale about eating chicken soup when you have a cold.

Fast forward to last night when Frontline on PBS aired a documentary on the almost total lack of science in the gathering and reporting of evidence in criminal trials. It even includes the age old holy grail of fingerprints. There were several examples of top fingerprint experts testifying as to how they were 100% positive 2 sets of fingerprints were a match when they were purposely mis-matched for the test. When the big bombing of the commuter train in Spain (which is mainly on the plain), investigators found a partial finger print on one of the bags that had contained the detonators of the bombs. The prints were forwarded to our venerable FBI for identification. It was matched to an attorney on the West Coast by prints obtained when he was in the military. Even though he was able to prove he was no where near the bombing, had never been to Spain, and had no previous record, he was convicted by those prints alone.

I don't know about you, but I find that very very scary. I want to believe that when some "expert" gets up on the stand and testifies that this or that matches or could not belong to anyone except the accused. There is one popular organization that "certifies" most of the forensic scientists in this country. Frontline had one of their staff members apply to get certified in one of the various disciplines. She sent in a check for the required amount ($1,500 I think). They sent her a booklet on the field, had her take an online test, and sent her a signed ornate certificate ready for framing. Think of the thousand of judges and many many thousands of lawyers who have bought into this whole bogus idea for so many years. Think about the number of people who have had their lives torn asunder and sent to prison because some joker who got a piece of paper was able to convince a judge and/or jury that someone was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. There were dozens of "experts" that testified how Casey Anthony must have murdered her daughter but her team of lawyers were able to dispute each and every one because ABC news had paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to the defense team for exclusive rights to photos they had in their possession. What about the poor guy who doesn't have that kind of money? Have we reached the stage of the best justice money can buy?


The one bright light at the end of the tunnel is DNA testing. It is the first bona fide scientific process to come forth in forensic field and is being used to free wrongly convicted people every day, but what about all the thousands who will never get the chance to make use of this new technology? All the people who have been put to death that just might have not been pulling our legs when they proclaimed their innocence. Aren't you glad you're not one of them?

Posted 5/1/2012

It has been more than the usual casual interest that I've watched the news this week. The most recent scandal involving he Secret Service has mentioned the five guys who are part of the "military attachment" being involved. That is my old unit at the White House and remembering just how sensitive they are about such matters makes the story all that more gleeful.
There have been plenty of other potential scandals that never quite made it to the press. I kept up with the group off and on during the Kennedy years and they were a lot more merry than during Eisenhower's term. In fact I recall reading excerpts from the Warren Report (official investigation into the Kennedy assassination) that several of the Secret Service were brought on the carpet for having been out drinking the night before in Fort Worth the night before he was shot in Dallas.


It also brought back a memory I have of when Eisenhower went to Columbia late into his second term. A friend of mine who was very quiet shy fellow was traveling with the President and met and fell madly in love with a Bogota prostitute. He wanted to bring her back with him but the Secret Service put the quietus on that real quick and got the State Department to deny her a visa. He kept pursuing the issue to where we thought they were going to transfer him to Korea if he didn't stop. Finally, after a couple of months, he took leave, flew back to Columbia and married the lady. They had to let her in then and it was real tense around our office for a while but eventually died down as there followed some other problem that took their minds off that one. I was often astonished at the change that came over this guy. He rarely ever talked to anyone other than strictly business matters (not an uncommon personality trait around the White House) but after a few months of married life he became absolutely bubbly, and relished telling all of us antidotes about his new wife. I've never seen anyone so happily married. It was the strangest thing and obviously one I never forgot.


If you are lonely when you're alone, you are in bad company.
-Jean-Paul Sartre

Posted 4/10/2012

You have to be blind, deaf, and unconscious today to not be aware of the increasing plight of the homeless. We don't have the problem with the homeless here that many cities are experiencing, probably because of the fact that we are so out of the usual traffic routes and have the extreme temperatures in the summer. The news medias spend a token amount of time addressing the problem from time to time. They were ecstatic recently when they found a young pretty girl that was a finalist in a national science fair but lived in a car with her parents. She cleaned up and brushed her teeth in a public restroom. Well healed liberals ran to her aid and found the family a place to live and some clean clothes. That's wonderful. How about the thousands of others who aren't so lucky?

I see various news stories about how different towns are passing laws to harass the homeless and make their already painful existence even worse. They are taking up park benches, making it against the law to offer food or money to anyone in public, and putting spikes and barriers on places they may try to lay on and rest. I also read that Luna County has the highest unemployment rate in the state. Thank goodness the economy is beginning to turn around. Maybe some of these poor folks will start to find work and a decent place to live.

Many of them live in dismal conditions because they bought into the Great American Dream and the banks lured them in with cheap easy mortgages on homes they could not afford. Now they are being humiliated and living in filth because they didn't understand lending laws or capable of seeing how those well dressed and groomed shysters operating in stately glass cathedrals they call banks were selling them a bill of goods. So who are the guilty? What price have the deceptive banks paid? Congress slapped some of them on the wrist after bailing them out to the tune of billions of dollars. It's amazing though, most bank executives have not skipped a beat in getting astronomical bonuses. What are the Wall Streeters doing? I hear they are buying up all the thousands of cheap repossessed houses and renting them out to the same folks who were once trying to buy them, but will most likely never be able to buy a home again.

So why should we care? What can we do about it? Most religions espouse goodness of societies by how they care for the least of their fellow citizens. I can't speak for you but I can write articles like this and let who ever will listen as to how much it saddens me and how much I care. I moved my meager bank account from Wells Fargo to First New Mexico this week and it felt pretty good, even though I have no guarantee they are any better. They just seem nicer, more friendly, and appear to be local folks with names. One thing you can do is offer to help Lupe at the Sanchez Center in any way you can. She deserves sainthood for the way she cares for the disenfranchised.

Posted 4/3/2012

I got called on the carpet by more than one reader about my "missing" Eddie and rightly so. I meant in no way to condone his despicable actions and if I lived in the Village I too would be highly indignant what he and his regime did to the place. What I was trying to say was that even nice, friendly, lovable types can go off the deep end and commit some really wretched crimes. I'm waiting for some Truman Capote type to wander into the area and quietly start taking notes. It's all here, and what we missed, Sunland Park is providing a treasure trove of riotous scandal. Of course we at City of the Sun are never able to just sit back and observe. We have our own little scandal brewing even as I type away but ours, as usual, are petty by comparison, and fueled by stupidity and naivety, but can't that pretty much be said for all crime?

It will take the perspective of a couple hundred years to really know the truth but I think historians will see a causal relationship between bad economic times and crime waves......and the rich keep getting richer. I tend to be of the Marie Antonette camp.... off with their heads! Being a boat nutt, I'm always interested in what's new on the waterfront (Yes, Virgina, that's why I live in the desert!). The other day I saw a story about some new mega-yacht one of the new billionaires is building complete with waterfalls, helipads, and far too many bathrooms.....real sailors call them heads but that gets confusing to narco types today. This boat, if you could call it that, was several blocks long. I can only imagine what size crew it will take to run it. When I was growing up I never even heard of the term billion. Then again I had never heard of a nano-second either. Is humankind advancing here? And where the heck are the Charles Schultz's, and who killed the comic strips is what I want to know?

Posted 3/20/2012

All I have to do is walk out my front door and usually the first thought that comes to mind is, “Man, this is some rugged country”. Usually, it is about like I expect it to be. In the summer it is like hitting a wall of hot. In winter I know it is going to be somewhere between cool to cold. It can be real cold. Cold enough that I imagine an Eskimo would feel comfortable. I sit at my computer so that I can also glance out the front window. Yesterday I looked up and saw that it was raining (actually, I could hear the rain on my tin roof), it was snowing (I couldn't hear that but big beautiful flakes were coming down), and it was also sleeting....or was it hail? I've never known what the difference is between hail and sleet. Maybe hail is more rounded than sleet. Kind of like I'm more rounded than my neighbor.

It was one of those periodic weeks we seem to have to endure when the whole earth seems to go to hell in a hand basket. My good friend Ruth tried to knock down the post office. She almost did it too. I haven't had a chance to talk to her since then to find out what she was so mad about but I can imagine several possibilities. Postage keeps going up and gets slower. Actually, I don't think it was anything personal and it sure couldn't be anything against the greatest postal clerk in the whole world, Todd. Isn't he great? We are sure lucky to have him. It must have scared the heck out of him seeing Ruth coming in the side way.

This was also the week that the wind blew a bit. For a while I thought I was back down on the Texas Coast and a hurricane was blowing through. As if that wasn't bad enough the propane company had to catch fire. “Man, this is some rugged country”.

It was also the week we learned about a soldier massacred a bunch of civilians in Afghanistan. Many of them were children. When something horrible like this happens we tend to find our selves asking how someone could do such a thing. I suspect that the answer is closer to all of us could possibly do such a dastardly deed under the right circumstances. Before you raise your hands and say, “Not Me!” think about if you have ever looked at someone who you think wronged you in some way and for a moment had a fleeting thought of how you'd like to blow that person to kingdom come. Like the guy who cut in front of you and took your parking place at Walmart. It usually passes as fast as it entered and we think about something else and go about our daily business with never a look back. The fact is we as human beings survived as a species by being cold blooded killers. As much as we would all like to think we are closer to Bambi grazing contentedly in the meadow....it ain't necessarily so. There is a reason Billy the Kid was a folk hero and it isn't because he ate at Baskin Robbins either. John Calvin thought babies were born depraved and he wasn't far off. It is generally accepted that the most violent age in humans is age two. They are terrible!

All of which brings to mind how difficult it is to be comfortable with the idea the tragedy involving our recent mayor. I've heard all kinds of explanations of how he could have done such a thing. Some think he was being used and abused by one of the Mexican cartels. Some thought it was more like, “Well, everyone is doing it”. I didn't know Eddie all that well but every once in a while I, like everyone else around here, got to visit with him and I've got to say, “I really liked the guy”. That is usually followed by the thought of, “how could he do such a thing?” I mean he pleaded guilty to some pretty bad crimes so he must be a really bad guy, huh? It's easy to say, “Yea, he was a real rotten egg”, but then I remember some lunch we shared and got to laughing about some silly thing going on around town or other.....and you know what? I sometimes miss the guy.

Posted 2/23/2101

You know your getting old when....... you realize you have spent more time in doctor's offices last year than in movie theaters. I want to tell you about my latest visit to my favorite hospital. It was to the Army's Wm. Beaumont in El Paso. Three or four years ago I had a bout with kidney stones. The doctor who did the ultrasound said I also had Gallstones. Yes, Virginia, it has come to that. He also said I should probably have them out in four or five years so I mentioned it to my VA health care provider who promptly made me an appointment with the stone specialist at Beaumont. Now this guy is a type A if there ever was one. Intense eyes that double as an x-ray machine. He probably has had several tours in Iraq and Afghanistan in MASH units. He is so intense that he counts his days in nano-seconds instead of hours. I imagine they have parallel operating tables set up for him so he can do two at a time. Talk about being ambidextrous! Any way the good doctor explains to me that over a third of the people walking around have gallstones and only a third of them ever have complications. He thought I would probably die with them still inside..... At my age you appreciate any little positive thought wherever you find them. He shoves a brochure in my hands that explains every thing (and more) you ever wanted to know about gallstones. I never knew.... actually my grandmother is the only person I ever knew that talked about her gallbladder operation. It is probably one of those "unmentionables'. I grew up thinking those were what they called women's underwear . This was in the ancient times before Victoria's Secret. Isn't that kind of a misnomer now? I think the secret is out. You can't turn on the TV without seeing tall skinny gals waltzing across the screen in panties and bras. When I was a kid you had to pay good money to see things like that. I don't know about you but I've pretty much had enough of reality shows. They have destroyed just about every fantasy I ever held.

Have you ever noticed that most of the people who complain about "Obama Care" are usually people in the prime of their lives dressed in matching jogging outfits? Sure, every once in a while they trot out some old geezer bent over a white cane, but that guy used to be a used car salesman in Deming. Another thing! Who was the idiot that decided lawyers should be able to advertise on TV? I think that's stretching free speech just a tad too far. And while I'm at it, can you imagine anything more gross than what all these young people covered in tattoos are going to look like when they get my age?


Have a nice day Y'all!

Posted 2/10/2012

I get the feeling we have somehow entered the age of the universal spelling bee. Everyone seems to awaken to the fascination that they are in such a hurry that they no longer have time to use words. What with NBC, BSF (I'm afraid to ask anyone I know what the "S" stands for), WSO, IBM, FYI, CEO, IPO, A.D., MST, DSL, BCC, RBI, JFK,TGIF, Of course for people like me who can't spell for s**t it is a great salvation. My spelling is so bad, the other day I misspelled APO. It makes you wonder just where the next generation of poets will come from. If this keeps up pretty soon there won't be any need for TV......script writers will just text stories direct to the audience. I wonder what Madonna will wear to the Emmy's?

Does this mean I'll have to throw away my English/Spanish dictionary?

It kind of reminds me about an old joke about the guy who went to prison for bank fraud (I told you it was a joke). No more had they locked the door to his cell when someone down the cat walk yelled out "34". All the inmates busted out laughing. A few minutes later another prisoner screamed "28". Again, a roar of laughter erupted though out the wing. Being a curious kind of guy, he turned to his cell mate and asked what that was all about? The cell mate says, "We have heard all the jokes so many times, we now just number them". Since the new con wanted to fit in and be one of the guys, he puts his head to the bars and loudly proclaims, "42". Not a peep out of anyone. Perplexed, he turned to his new roommate and said "why didn't anyone laugh?" The guy, reading a comic book, looked up and said, "You didn't tell it right".

Watching the weather last week sure makes me glad some pioneers decided to stop in Columbus. Did you see all that snow up North? Wow! The desert never looked so good. When I first turned on the set, I thought I was watching a re-run of the story about the Donner party. Speaking of those guys, at least they never had to face having to go to a Kiwanis banquet at Cattleman's Steak House.

Posted 2/7/2012

Sixty Minutes had a feature tonight about Texas ranches that raise endangered African species. I would imagine that it is also practiced here in New Mexico. Almost 150 different breeds have been introduced and most have thrived and multiplied even though some of them are now extinct in their native lands. The success is entirely due to the fact that they are raised for profit by letting sportsmen shoot up to 10% of the herds at very high fees. Some animal rights groups are fighting the practice and the Dept of Interior has passed a rule making it almost impossible to continue the practice. I think it hits at the very foundation of morality, survival of the species, capitalism, states rights, and a lot of other basic questions of humanity. The very term of hunter-gatherers is ingrained in the survival of humans on this planet, for better or worse. Even if the ranchers didn't allow this practice, the herds would still have to be culled to maintain a healthy stock.

One of the featured ranchers was David Bamburger who's ranch is located in the Texas Hill Country North of San Antonio. Mr. Bamburger made a small fortune in the fast food business and bought a derelict 5,500 acre plot of land. He sat about cleaning up the overgrown brush, cleaning out long dried up springs, planting native grasses, planting numerous trees, increasing the heard of cattle, and turning it into a showcase property. It was my privilege to spend a day touring the ranch with David and to see what he had done with a worn out piece of land. There were probably 20 species of deer, antelope, zebra, long horns, geese, turkeys, and a wide variety of birds. At the time I was living in Port Aransas which was making a concerted effort to attract birders. David had noticed the presence of bats, being on the flyway to Mexico. He had built a large dome like structure to house over 5 million bats including a glassed in segment where scientists and observers could watch and study the bats without disturbing them. Due to being close to Austin, he had observed their efforts at raising the consciousness of the public on the virtues of bats, including the fact that a pregnant female will eat up to twice her weight in bugs and insects in a single night. Port Aransas was spraying insecticide every night in the summer to kill an abundance of mosquitoes. I thought the bat cave was a wonderful win/win solution but the town's people were obviously turned off by the thought of encouraging such a dreaded mammal. I think too many people have been turned against bats by horror movies.

Ranchers are in business to make money. They can raise cows to slaughter in order to feed a hamburger crazed public. It is a hazardous occupation fraught with potential disastrous results due to weather, disease, and regulations. Africa is slowly but surely killing off their natural wildlife in a struggle to survive war, famine, and greed. Is it right for hunters to kill these lovely animals even though their efforts may well mean the very survival of the species? I love hamburgers, and chicken, turkey, lamb, and pork. Having said that, it saddens me to see any animal slaughtered. Do I want to see these majestic animals disappear from the face of the earth? No. Life is full of compromises and if this is what it takes to preserve these endangered species I have to reluctantly support it.

Our neighbors to the South have slaughtered from 34,000 to 40,000 of their own in a war brought on by our insatiable dependence on illegal drugs. Where does questions' of morality end and insanity begin?

Posted  2/5/2012

By far, most Americans live in metropolitan areas. They are covered with lights, cameras, and traffic. You are lucky to see maybe 100 stars on any given night. We can even see in the early hours of night and endless procession of jets making their way West. Up there are thousands of passengers looking out at the empty darkness. When they land in L.A., San Diego, or San Francisco, they will change into their defensive mode and scramble to pick up their luggage. I was just outside and saw a shooting star and it reminded me of some of the things I like about living in a small town in the desert. Where else can you hear cars entering and leaving town as they hit the cattle guard? Years ago while having breakfast in the Patio Cafe, a group of Border Patrol came in for a morning break. A young Kim Spriggs, in her inevitable bubbly manor, ask them if they had been out hunting illegal's. They presented a blank look, not sure how to answer her. She went on, “All you have to do is follow the barking dogs”. It's true. You can follow peoples foot steps by listening to the procession as dogs warn passer by's. How many places can you hear dogs bark in the North end of town as well as the South end at the same time?

Every time I go to El Paso I reflect on what it must have been like to cross that barren desert landscape in a covered wagon. My grandparents came to the Oklahoma Territory from Missouri in a covered wagon and often told me the hardships they endured. About forty-five years ago I listened to a nephew of Wyatt Earp relate tales of his famous uncle while taking people on a tour of the OK Coral in Tombstone. I think about the many cold nights pioneers must have suffered in the winter or the sweltering heat in the summer. On one trip while changing a flat tire, I had to think how much easier it must be than to change or repair a wagon wheel. The whole train would have had to sit there until the task was completed before advancing some more of the seemingly endless miles ahead. The paved road is a quantum leap from the rutted rock strung cross-country path. All of which brings to mind the progression of generations. Go from what that life heading West must have been like to someone sitting in Starbucks with their latest electronic tablet, connected to the world faster than you can blink your eye. A common complaint today is if you can't figure out how to do something on a computer, then ask a kid. There are some things that just take the span of generations for humanity to develop the expertise to take the next step. Imagine Leif Ericsson sailing along a Scandinavian coast in a gentle breeze contemplating being able to split the atom. In 48 B.C. Julius Caesar set fire to his ships in the harbor of Alexandria Egypt which in turn accidentally (supposedly) burned down the local library. I've heard that that fire set back science for hundreds if not a thousand years, since it held most of the thoughts and results of scientific thinking up to that time. At my advanced age I sometimes get discouraged at how I see the youngest generation acting. It seems they are heading rapidly towards uselessness but then to get a clearer picture of the future I should probably ask a kid.

Posted 1/31/2012

What a great language is English. You can bash it, split it, spit it, dissect it, chop it up, butcher it, whisper it, dangle it (but just the participles), wring it, spin it, sing it, talk it, read it, and write it, Will says you can tear it. You can encrypt it, dig it, wear it, spread it, and yell it. You can tell someone how much you love them with it or tell your enemies to shove it. It can make you laugh, cry, giggle, wonder, think, or ponder. Think how many people make their living with it. There are writers, lawyers, teachers, and preachers. You can put it on walls, stalls, tombstones, and paper. You can even write in the sky or put it in a bottle and float it around the world. Of course you can probably do that with French and Russian, but it's all Greek to me.


No more had I picked myself up off the floor laughing about all the mass hysteria that came out of the audition call for a movie about to be made up in Silver City (two days later Disney canceled the project), when a dear friend from Santa Fe sent me an email that she had been called for a fitting in the movie Lone Ranger. I think she is already planning her acceptance speech for the Oscar. It gave me pause to reflect on how deeply attached we still are to film. I put that together with the strange phenomena we observe of tourist driving great distances, across empty, often sweltering desert to see our little village. Viola! Everyone is hoping and looking for the magic bullet to get our town back on track financially. We sure could use a quick infusion of money and jobs. Why not go after getting film companies to make their celluloid fantasies right here in Baghdad on the Border? We have grand vistas, it's usually quiet as church mouse, lots of rainbows, and everyone knows we have an abundant supply of characters. I think Nichole in her spare time should appoint a Columbus Film Commission to go after that particular pot of gold.


"The Media is the Message" - Marshall McCulen. It's so hard to keep up with every thing going on these days. What with Wifi and Hi-Fives. Then there is the three stooges of the 21st Century: Micro, Mini, and Maxi. I didn't even realize they had lowered the standards for President until I turned on the Republican debates the other night. I can just imagine the record turnouts we will have this election year.

Posted 1/26/2012

Looking out at the millions of stars tonight I was reminded of a line in a Beat poem from my youth, Howl. "I've seen the best minds of my generation destroyed". Also, I reflect on the often similar incidences that happen by both Columbus and City of the Sun. Writers like Addison and I sometimes resort to outrageous prose to shock and hopefully open minds to condemn and warn of outrageous behavior. Some readers get incensed, some cheer us on, but most stop and think about the particular situation. Both of our social communities have taken some serious hits lately. It seems terribly discouraging at times and makes one wonder if things will ever return to "normal". Probably not, but when you're deep in the jungle there is only one way out of the quagmire. It is picking yourself up, taking that first step, and put each foot in front of the other until you start to emerge into a clearing.


Two personal encounters that best show to me where we are. I often go up to Deming on the first Saturday to an auction. It is entertaining and some times I come home with a lot of bargains that I sorely need. At one recent auction, I found myself next to a quite attractive lady who had bid on and won a nice guitar and rifle. Intrigued by her and the combination of items, I struck up a conversation. She relayed how she had recently moved to the area and was staying in her camper on a friends ranch. She said she was looking for an inexpensive plot of land to build her dream house. I asked her if she had visited City of the Sun. She looked shocked and said, "Yes, they should bomb that place flat. Those people just build any thing they feel like". Needless to say I didn't brag about living there.


Another friend in San Antonio was at a cocktail party. Something they tend to do there. This was at the height of the Eddie and Company making national headlines. My friend related to the group around her that she had a close friend who lived in Columbus. She said there was an immediate outcry of astonishment that anyone would want to live is such a place.

These are the same people that voice deep concern when I let them know I still go to the Pink Store for lunch every Sunday.


How do you change that kind of perception? What does it take to turn those kind of impressions around? I see the solution in the kind of things that we seem to do best. It is an art opening at the library. It is the lunches served at the Sanchez Center. It is the cross border efforts to provide warm clothes to those in need, and the efforts to help local women make and sell crafts. The continuing efforts to establish an animal rescue mission. At City of the Sun, slowly a new green space is taking shape. There is an effort by some to clean up their yards and surroundings. It's the one step at a time.


For classical media inspiration may I suggest the current run of "Downtown Abby" on PBS - Sunday evening at 8:00 pm.

Posted 1/24/2012

So how's your neck? Ah, you don't drink. That's okay. I understand. Most of my best friends go to AA but that's another story. It's 3:00 am and the Big Dipper is directly overhead. Another crick. I want to tell you about another treasure. In fact he is a treasurer's treasure. His name is John and he is the Village Treasurer. We often do lunch at the Sanchez Center and what a delightful person he is. (don't end your sentences in a preposition!, Mrs. O'Mally used to say) He is a distant cousin of Mitt Romney so when you go into pay your water bill don't be making any Morman jokes. I think he must be the first Morman I ever sat down and talked with more than 5 minutes, except for a couple of nice guys in white shirts and ties that came to the door one day, but that's another story. So usually I just try to pump info out of John about having multiple wives, how to get tickets to go hear the choir, and how it is living in a cult. That last is kind of a joke between us because I live in a cult (City of the Sun)..... now THERE'S a cult for you. On any given Solstice, if you drive slowly down Altura you might catch some of us dancing naked in the moonlight, beating bongo drums. Thank goodness the Village finally paved Altura and now John is trying to figure out how to pay for it. John's family goes wayyyyy back. In fact I think if you look on the manifest of the Mayflower you will probably spot some of them. I'm glad your watching our money John! Well, technically it isn't MY money but he knows that....(Sorry Mrs. O'mally).

Posted 1/22/2012

So how did you make out with the Big Dipper? Good, that means you found the North Star. It never moves so if your GPS goes out in the middle of the night you can always find your way to Deming. Conversely, if it goes out on your way to Palomas, you can follow same star but you will probably get a crick in your neck looking back. That's okay... have a Margarita at the Pink Store and it will go away. Speaking of which, I want to tell you about a Mexican treasure. She is a small (in height) lady who often open's the door at the Pink Store. She is a Tarra Mara and makes purses for the ladies. She starts by weaving her ropes out of potato chip bags. She integrates pop top tabs into the design. I take her all the ones from the Sprites I drink....which is way too many but that's another story. We don't converse as I don't speak Tarra Mara and she speaks very little English but when I hand her a baggie full of tabs I get the warmest softest smile that is worth all the Peso's ever printed. Believe me when I say, that's a bunch. So, save your tabs, put them aside and the next time you go across for lunch, give them to her and have a smile on me. Better yet, buy one of her purses. You will treasure it for years, if the mice don't eat it.

Posted 1/17/2012

One of the benefits of living in Columbus is star watching. Some places have an abundance of bird watching, surf watching, or a variety of sports watching. A friend recently sent me a satellite photograph taken at night and most of the Eastern US and the West Coast was almost solid lights. West of El Paso was pitch dark. That is why we can see the Milky Way most every night. Not many others can. My favorite is the Big Dipper. It can become a real recognizable friend once you can spot it and get to know it's rotating path. And yes, Virgina, it does more or less point to the North Star. Look up high and towards Deming.... these nights it will be slightly to the East and it will rise and rotate around the North Star.

Cruising the Internet:
Sick People Smell Bad: Why dogs sniff dogs, humans sniff humans, and dogs sometimes sniff humans
http://news.yahoo.com/sick-people-smell-bad-why-dogs-sniff-dogs-170100915.html

Posted 1/16/2012

The close association we enjoy with military history in our little village has always been a source of pride with me. It was no small disappointment to learn this week that a few marines had brought disgrace to the service by desecrating the dead bodies of our honorable Taliban enemy.

Now people have long known what an harrowing experience is war. You could almost say war is heck, but the reality is we need oil. If we didn't want petroleum in such huge amounts then we too could live like those cute little Swiss people. I suspect those Marines were just a few ruffians who should never have been allowed into combat in the first place. They are probably burning the midnight oil in the Pentagon trying to find a way to prevent such tragedies happening again in the future. I would like to offer the following solution, so listen up Generals. In future wars the military should offer schools of etiquette and only let warriors who are bona fide gentlemen participate.

Sempre Fi, Y'all.