Category: New Mexico

An Unheralded Medium for Communication

During my recent visit to New Mexico, I got the chance to appreciate a good ol’ fashioned medium for blasting one’s special kind of crazy out to the world.

Look, I’m not talking about no Twitter, no kind of Facebook, no blog telling the world how I think about things. No!

I’m talking about full on signs attached to one’s vehicular mode of transportation.

Not bumper stickers. Signs.

Who knew?

My trip began with a journey from the airport on I-10 headed for Las Cruces. For a large part of the journey, I followed an eighteen wheeler with a rather large sign attached to the back.

As a matter of fact, this sign:



Photo source


I mean, I don’t know for sure, but I always thought The Big Guy had a better sense of humor than that. I’d like to think if he had a problem with my little nickname, well, he’d just tell me. Why’d I have to learn about this from the back of a semi?

Should I call the number on the sign and ask?

Later that same day, I stopped off for lunch. I had a quick bite at a place over by the mall in Las Cruces and when I came out to my rental car, I noted that the car parked next to me was covered with stickers, signs and slogans.

The one that caught my eye was a bright yellow number that said:

“What if Glenn Beck is Right?”

After I finished hurting my head pondering what that meant, I was reminded of the South Park episode where Cartman riffs on Glenn Beck.

Which makes me wonder if maybe the real question is…what if Cartman is right?

Huh? Huh?

“I’m just asking questions!”

So seeing those two signs got me thinking about Southern New Mexico. It seems things have taken a lean to the right since I lived there last.

But just like the old saying about my home state, “If you don’t like the weather, wait ten minutes” turns out it took only a couple days to bring things back into perspective.

As I drove back to the airport on Sunday, again on I-10, I followed a beat up old Subaru with a hand-lettered sign on the back.

This bit of typesetting said, and I quote: “If you are going to ride my ass, the least you can do is pull my hair.”

In big letters. Covering the entire rear window.

Which just made my eyes ping-zing around in my brain while the word “Tilt” flashed over my head….

Cruces is getting to be an odd place.




A Special Valentine

One of the most difficult and yet most rewarding jobs I’ve taken on in my life is being godmom to three beautiful kids. Of the three, two are the children of my best friend. They are amazing girls, the older is eleven and the younger is eight.

My older goddaughter is brilliant and strong and quite the tomboy, but she’s also a fantastically sweet young girl. She loves to give me little presents and show me stuff she’s got squirreled away in her room. My first day at the house is usually a parade of “hey Nina Karen! Look at this!”

She’ll show me books she’s read, or things she’s made, or something she got at school. Mostly, she wants me to see something she likes and say I like it too. It’s very affirming for her. For some reason, Nina Karen’s approval matters and I’m happy to give it away…or hold it back when she’s misbehaving. I can guilt that kid like no one’s business.

On this most recent trip back to New Mexico, as I sat in the kitchen catching up with my dearest friend in the world, my eleven-year-old godkid came into the kitchen with a shy grin.

“What’s up?” I asked, because I knew she was up to something. It’s that Nina intuition.

She held out her hand and grinned. There in her palm was a rock. A simple small dark volcanic rock. She looked very pleased.

“Hey, look at that!” I said, being encouraging all the while wondering why she was showing me a rock.

“It’s for you!” she said, very excited.

Well. Ok. So I took the rock while she bounced on the balls of her feet.

“It’s a heart, Nina Karen!” she said, now exasperated that I wasn’t getting it.

I looked a little closer. “Oh! You’re right, it sure is!” I said. I’m a little slow on the uptake sometimes. “Where’d you find it?”

Out tumbled the story. She had been cleaning up rocks from the pasture out back because they are going to plant oats to feed to the pigs they are going to get because she and her sister are in 4H and they are going to show pigs this year and when she found the heart shaped rock it made her think of me and she wanted me to have it.

Whew! It came out just like that. All one long sentence with hardly any punctuation.

It may not be the most fancy valentine I’ve ever received, but it is as dear to me as any gem.

A gift of a rock from a sweet eleven-year-old tomboy might just be the meaning of true love.

Happy Valentine’s Day!



An Ode to the Magical Wood Burning Stove

Yesterday afternoon when I arrived at the El Paso Airport, I was heartened to see sunny skies and no snow on the ground.

“Ah,” I thought to myself, “it’s back to normal.” After reading reports of New Mexico’s state of emergency last week, I didn’t know what to expect.

Feeling happy to be home, I gathered my things and walked off the plane. Just outside the door I discovered that gap between the jetway and the plane’s door when a cold gust of wind whipped through and made my eyes water.

Brr!

Once inside the airport, I checked the weather widget on my phone. It reported that at that very moment, it was thirty degrees in El Paso.

Thirty. A three followed by a zero. That’s all you get. Just 30 small degrees.

I’d just come from a connecting flight in San Diego where it was positively tropical.

Brr!

Today I’m at my best friend’s place somewhere in the rural land outside of Las Cruces. It was a frosty night and this morning I, like all of the animals they posses, am lingering close to their beautifully old fashioned source of heat, a wonderful, magical wood burning stove.



As I sit here, I am reminded of the many ways that life is easy peasy where I live now. I want heat, I work my thermostat and the heater kicks in.

Simple. No effort.

Today I have a great warmth in my heart (pun intended) for the curative powers of fire and the simply beauty of a wood burning stove.

As the fan behind the stove kicks in to send toasty air to all corners of the room, let me take you on a journey.

It takes a lot of work to make enough fire to heat a good sized home.

To start with, just building a fire takes the use of tools.

My goddaughters are expert fire builders. They start with this small hatchet, on the ground by the stove.



They use this to ease slivers off a log for kindling. That along with some bits of newspaper help get the flames started.

Then small logs are added. The logs, of course, come from here, the ubiquitous woodpile.



I remember well (and not especially fondly) the call for “Karen! Go get a load of wood for the fireplace.” Yeah, it’s *cold* out there. I didn’t wanna brave the cold and the spiders and the rasty roadrunner living in the woodpile to bring dirty splintery wood into the house.

But I did it because the payoff was hot chocolate in front of a fire (and the consequences too hefty to ignore).

A woodpile takes work. A lot of work.

Now here’s something you don’t see in the backyard of Bay Area homes…



(not to worry, it was not left that way, I laid the axe on a stump for photographic purposes)

Off to the side is a sledgehammer and a wedge for splitting logs.

And oh hey! A bucket of pecans!



Whoops, I digress.

Back to the wood splitting. My brother did the hard work of swinging the axe and sledge. My job was to take the newly split pieces of wood and pile them up in the corner.

This work was usually done in the heat of August or September. Bleah, who wants to think about fire in the summer?

But come December I was always glad we thought about fire in the summer.

And right now, I’m very, very grateful that my best friend, her husband and kids thought about fire during the summer.

Because me, two dogs and one chatty orange cat are relying on the heat.




Baby it’s cooooold outside! C’moooon Spring!



All photos by Karen Fayeth, taken with an iPhone and subject to a Creative Commons license. Details in the far right column of this blog.


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Unhinged

As you read this, I am somewhere overhead winging my way to the Great State of New Mexico. This is not so much a vacation as taking care of some personal business.

It’s a bit hard to leave seventy degree California for thirty degree New Mexico, you know? That said, as the weather works in my home state, by the end of my trip, it’s expected to be almost seventy in Las Cruces.

As a kid, I always did love that phenomenon of snow today, sixty eight and sunny tomorrow.

But right now, the day before my flight, all I can think about is…what am I going to eat?

I mean seriously, the green chile level in my blood stream is so low as to be critical.

This needs fixing the second I leap off the airplane.

I keep thinking of ALL the places and ALL the menu items I want to eat all in one big Cookie Monster-esque “ahm nom nom nom.”

If only I could unhinge my jaw the way my favorite blue monster does, then sweep in all the rellenos, enchiladas, carne adovada, and tacos al carbon I can get my arms around.

That would be great.

Of course, I’d qualify for extra baggage on my flight home.

Hoping to fit in reports from the road. Stay tuned!




Hey, Joe!

Been working some long days at the ol’ office this week, and it’s keeping me hopping.

Yesterday evening, I was asked to attend a corporate event in the place of my second level boss. He’s working even harder than I am right now, so I was happy to help him out.

This event was something of a schmoozy thing for a lot of corporate customers around the Bay Area.

Here’s where it gets interesting, this particular gathering was held at the San Francisco 49ers training facility down in Santa Clara.

Growing up in New Mexico with no professional sports teams affiliated with the state, we all adopted our teams from neighboring states. All the kids were either Denver or Dallas fans. Not so for me, I picked the 49ers early on as my team.

It was easy to be a 49ers fan back then. Joe Montana was the guy in charge and our chances of winning on any given Sunday were pretty darn good.

So yesterday I went to the training facility and walked out on the field and took my seat in the tent to sit through the corporate, work related stuff.

Blah blah this and blah blah that….and may we now introduce Jim Harbaugh, coach of the 49ers.

Well hey, that’s pretty cool. Harbaugh, fresh of Stanford’s win in the Orange Bowl, was just named head coach, so he’s got some media credibility.

Harbaugh did some motivational style speaking in the way only an old style football coach could. I mean heck, I was ready to hit the weight room and strap on the shoulder pads by the time he was done. Harrgggh!

But the finale of the night was the best. 49er helmets and footballs were given to a few attendees as prizes (I got a football) and then Joe Montana, Bay Area royalty, entered the room.

He gave a short talk about the company putting on the event, how great their product is, and then went to the back of the room for a meet and greet.

So, you know, here I am with my new friend Joe (he also signed my football).