Lucky Page 13
The June issue of New Mexico Magazine is on newsstands now! I got my copy in the mail this week and found a few more copies at my local Borders.
Yippee!!
Here’s the cover, in case you’re looking for it. I’m on page 13!
Category: media
I’ve Got A Secret
In one of those weird things that sticks with you over the years…
I remember that some dear friends of our family always subscribed to New Mexico Magazine. We’d go visit their beautiful adobe home in the Valley, and when the adult conversation would bore me, I’d pick up that magazine and flip through the pages.
New Mexico Magazine gave me a view on my home state that was much different than what I knew. I’d stare and stare at those amazing full color photographs of Native American jewelry, or locations around the state, or blue sky and clouds.
It was like my New Mexico, only better. I used to devour that magazine cover to cover.
When I became an adult, I started subscribing to New Mexico Magazine for myself. After my move to California, the magazine helped me get through pangs of homesickness. I’d dog ear pages of photos and articles that made me happy.
New Mexico Magazine has been a fixture in my life as long as I can remember. Today, I know something that the kid sitting on the floor in a beautiful adobe home in the Valley didn’t know.
I’ve been keeping a secret. I didn’t want to say too much in case it didn’t work out.
Now the secret can be told. I have permission to share my Very Big News:
I wrote three articles that have been accepted for publication in New Mexico Magazine.
Let me just pause here before I pass out.
Ok, I’m back.
The first article is slated for the June issue. Due out soon!
The other two are planned for the September/October timeframe. Since the magazine is undergoing some changes to the editorial staff, it’s a bit up in the air. I hope to know more soon.
All gratitude to Associate Editor Ashley Biggers (@ambiggers on Twitter) for opening the conversation and working with me through this process. She has a talent for developing writers, and I’m grateful for her patience.
I’m already working on a couple more ideas for upcoming articles. There is so much to know and explore about New Mexico that I’m excited to share.
This is a pretty big honor for a little girl from New Mexico.
Join me now in an epic rendition of the Happy Dance!
To properly celebrate, I wore my Fat Babies to work today. New Mexico in da hoouuuse! Image from Yippee Farms
Theme Thursday: Television
Ah but she was a beauty. With a light gray case, she sat upon a wobbly stand, gold tone painted spindly legs that ended in little plastic wheels. The early definition of “portable.”
The dial to change the channels was made of actual metal. It had saw tooth ridges on it. All the better for gripping and turning, I suppose.
The on-off button was also the volume knob. Tug that knob, and give ‘er a few minutes while the tube warmed up.
Soon a clear bright black and white picture emerged from a small dot in the middle of the screen. All three channels plus PBS!
“Karen! Change the channel!” Click, click, click. Turning the channel knob was a tactile experience.
That black and white Zenith was a purchase from the early years of my parent’s marriage. We’re talking 1950’s here. As a child in the seventies, it became a fixture in our living room.
One of my very, very early memories is from being toddler age. I would stand right in front of that television and grip its gray plastic bezel for balance. I didn’t grip too hard, because it would slide off, but just tight enough to keep gravity from winning.
I remember Walter Cronkite. He was giving a news update and showed a fairly clear film clip of soldiers carrying guns. This wasn’t a movie, it was the news.
I didn’t know what it was then, but it seemed bad. Walter’s face was serious. I stared at those men with guns rather intently. This image is still fresh in my memory. It took until adulthood to think back on it, on the timeframe that this must have occurred, to realize it was a news update on the war in Vietnam. I would have been three or so.
That Zenith with the stylized logo, the Z like a lightening flash, electricity zooming through the letters bring pictures to my screen, was where I stood too close to the screen and watched Dick Knipfing present the news of Albuquerque and New Mexico.
It was where I watched Sesame Street and soap operas and the Not Ready For Primetime Players on the first seasons of Saturday Night Live.
In the early 1980’s, my mom made a bold decision. It was time to invest in a color TV. This was long after most of our friends and neighbors had long since brought color screens into their lives.
Mom shopped and compared and finally she and Dad decided on a model from Sears. It had this fancy way of changing channels, you simply touched this little metal nub by the number of the channel you wanted! No turning a knob, simply a quick touch.
It was splendiferous!
And with the incoming color TV, the old Zenith black and white had to find a new home. So we carted it to our “Lake House,” really a single-wide trailer on a permanent concrete pad on a patch of land in Logan, New Mexico.
Logan is on the east side of the state, so the antenna on top of that trailer picked up the stations out of Amarillo. The Zenith black and white now reported ranch stock futures and the market price for pork and sides of beef. It entertained us after a day out swimming in the lake.
In fact, when my folks sold the place in Logan, that Zenith TV went with it. It still worked, by the way, though it took a heck of a long time for that tube to warm up.
They sure don’t make ’em like they used to.
Today’s Theme Thursday is: Television
In Defense of Frank Burns
Lately, I have been subjected to a series of long and longwinded meetings.
When my latent child brain is subject to boredom, fascinating things happen.
So, when someone in a boring meeting made a comment that reminded me of an episode of M*A*S*H, it got me thinking about the characters which led me to…
Maybe over the years, we haven’t given Frank Burns a fair shake.
Stay with me here. I have a reasoned argument to present.
Changing the point of view on this to second person to make it more impactful, here is my defense of Frank Burns and why we shouldn’t hate, but have empathy.
Here we go:
Take the characters and situation and place them in the real world. Imagine if you will:
1) You work a job that is both dangerous and complex, and you are responsible for human lives. Being a doctor is actually very important to you. That said, your two coworkers (who you are also forced to live with) are not only arrogant and disrespectful, they are also complete alcoholics.
And yet, despite being drunk a fair percentage of the time, including while at work, they are viewed as the fair haired boys. Your boss overlooks their obvious addiction and goes so far as to tell you to get over it when you bring their questionable behavior to his attention. And you outrank those two buffoons!
Deep down you know that you, sober as a judge, will never be as good a surgeon as they are while drunk on homemade gin. That knowledge chips away at your self-esteem every single day.
2) You date one of the hottest chicks in camp, which is a good thing. But as I’m fond of telling my guy friends, “dating a very beautiful woman comes with challenges.”
I mean, she IS smoking hot. Fer chrissakes, they call her “hot lips”…the trouble is, there’s been plenty of guys who have sampled those hot lips. Your va-va-voom girlfriend is a notorious flirt and will openly discuss her partying with generals and colonels around the globe, and you’re expected to just take it with a smile.
She expects you to be a good military man and constantly compares you to her legendary father. Then she lets your roommates slide on their non-military behavior because, she reasons, they are so good at what they do.
And you become acutely aware that this chick is WAY out of your league. A little neurosis sets in as you try to hang on to the hottest girl you’ll ever lay a hand on in your entire life.
3) You get zero support at home. Ok, yes, there’s that cheating with Hot Lips issue which means you are not without some blame. And yet, a nice word in the mail from the spouse would be nice. You’d like to think your own wife would be in your corner, but she’s not.
Neither are your parents. And you don’t have any friends. It’s a lonely old world stuck in a grimy tent with two hotshot lunkheads mocking your inadequacies on a daily basis.
4) People call you Ferret Face. To your face. It’s not your fault you were the big loser in the genetic Olympics and wound up with a weak chin.
5) Your hot girlfriend pressures you all the time about getting married. This, despite the fact that you told her from the start you weren’t looking to leave your wife. It’s a constant nagging pressure.
Then she goes off on R&R one day and comes back engaged so some big, tall, athletic bohunk with a strong chin and suddenly your only friend in the world is now off limits.
And this causes you to slip off your nut. You really do love the girl, but maintaining the girl has been more than a weak-chinned man can take.
6) If you can’t have love or respect, then it sure would be great to be promoted to Lt. Colonel. People would be forced to respect a Lt. Colonel. A Medal of Honor would be nice too. That would really shut them up.
7) You are probably an undiagnosed case of Aspergers, or at the very least are prone to vicious bouts of OCD. But you get zero sympathy. Meanwhile, the chronic addicts are lauded and celebrated.
It’s a pretty solid case. The more I think on it, the more I feel a little bad for hating Frank all of those years. Perhaps time has been kind to ol’ Frank.
You know, no matter what Hollywood would have us believe, in life, it’s never as easy as “that guy is the good guy” and “that guy is the bad guy.” We’re all the bad guy. And the good guy.
And Frank Burns is misunderstood.
Photo found several places on the net but unable to find attribution. Will include attribution or remove at the request of the owner.
It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane! No, wait…it’s not that at all.
Today in the San Francisco Chronicle‘s online edition, the SFGate, there was a very brief story on the front page for a few hours.
Here’s the headline:
Pot-firing catapult found at Arizona-Mexico border
Ok, in a nutshell, the story is:
“Drug smugglers trying to get marijuana across the Arizona-Mexico border apparently are trying a new approach — a catapult.
National Guard troops operating a remote video surveillance system at the Naco Border Patrol Station say they observed several people preparing a catapult and launching packages over the International Border fence last Friday evening.”
Blah, blah, blah, the Border Patrol and National Guard seized the catapult and about 4 pounds of the green stuff.
A fairly amusing story, all in. But that’s not the best part.
SFGate allows readers to comment on articles, and that’s where it gets good.
Here’s a selection of the best of what SFGate readers had to say:
“The catapult has been held without bail”
“Time for US to spend a few billion dollars to develop counter-catapult technology.”
“When trebuchets are outlawed, only outlaws will have trebuchets.”
“Total distance traveled by projectile: Over the border;
Time to impact from launch: 2.5 seconds;
Angle of launch: 45 degrees;
Temperature at time of launch: 65 degrees Fahrenheit;
Dimensions of projectile: 8 inch wide x 12 inch long cannabis;
Force of gravity: 32.15223 ft/s/s;
Muy bueno!”
(that’s geeky goodness)
“OMG it’s raining pot!”
“sounds pretty half baked.”
“No doubt these guys got the idea for their new delivery method from playing Angry Birds on their stolen iPhones.”
“They left this part of the story off:
‘Shortly after the seizure, the Mexican troops contacted the Americans and offerred to capapult 10 kilos of marijuana to the American side of the border in exchange for 10 large combination pizzas and a case of Doritos.'”
“Sophisticated criminals use a trebuchet.”
“Green Express. When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight.”
“This is what you get when the smugglers trade pot to an engineer for design work…”
“Save the bales!”
“The free Mexican Air Force is flying tonight
Flying so high yi hiyeeeeee!!”
I guess I should expect no less from the Bay Area, a place notoriously in favor of the use of the same stuff that is being lobbed over the wall.
Buncha smartasses. *grin*
Image from Icanhazcheeseburger