Kids at the Four Corners Monument
“Tourists who want to put a hand or foot in each of four states at the Four Corners area are apparently are way off the mark. According to readings by the National Geodetic Survey, the Four Corners marker showing the intersection of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah is about 2.5 miles west of where it should be.” [Link]
Gas prices have risen a bit in the last week or so. The Las Cruces Sun News had a front page story on the hike: “About midday Wednesday, motorists could only stand and watch as the price of gas climbed from $1.29 to $1.46 at Sav-O-Mat, on El Paseo. The station typically charges among the lowest prices in Las Cruces.” [More] I won’t pretend to understand everything behind the rise and fall of gas prices. Politics and money make my head hurt. What I do know is that I’m thankful for the gas prices, even if they are a little higher. I’ll gladly pay $1.49 [the price today] rather than the $4.00 of a few months ago!
Perspective is a funny thing. There is a gas station that is closed and the prices read around $2.00. When gas was double that amount, I would drive by and laugh, “It must be closed with that price!” Now that gas is fifty cents less, I do the same thing but for a different reason.
“Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.” Marcus Aurelius
Check the price of gas around New Mexico at NewMexicoGasPrices.com!
Gas on flickr: set | slideshow
Mayfield vs. Las Cruces
Tonight is the night. The two teams will meet in one of the biggest football games of the year. In case you think I am exaggerating, Rivals.com has ranked the match up as one of the top ten in the country. Last year, 27,000 people showed up for the game. That is twenty seven THOUSAND people. For a high school football game.
Mike and I took Mikal Jade to an assembly at the high school yesterday. The coach recognized the cross country teams. The fact that the girls took district for the third year in a row and the boys won for the first time in 25 years didn’t impress the crowd. The skit featuring the football moms dancing to hip hop in the football uniforms brought the house down! One recurring theme of the day was that 9th place is not good enough. Twenty seven thousand people? Not good enough.
We won’t be there to support the Trojans because we’ll be in Albuquerque, cheering on Mia as she tries to break the top ten at state. You can bet that the whole cross country team will be crowded around the computer in the lobby though, watching the game online.
Cross Country Update
Mia is leaving today to compete in the state tournament on Saturday. On Sunday, all three girls were supposed to run in the New Mexico Junior Olympic Cross Country Championships. If they qualify for regionals, they will advance to the Region X meet the following weekend. If they do well, Nationals will be in Virginia on December 13th. Unfortunately, Mica won’t be able to participate. She was running to a group of friends yesterday when a boy tripped her. On purpose. We spent three hours in the emergency room and now her badly sprained and very swollen ankle is sporting a brace. She also has crutches. Bummer.
Juarez
On a more serious note, the violence in Juarez is escalating. Juarez shares the border with El Paso and is a little less than an hour’s drive from here. There is a drug war going on and the gangs are running wild. On October 24, four men were shot in a crowded amusement park. The same day, a businessman who led a protest against kidnapping and extortion was gunned down. On Tuesday, a man was killed and hung from bars on a window next to a school. He was wearing a pig mask and a sign warning the Aztecas [a local gang] was posted near the body. It was discovered by kids on their way to school. On Wednesday, a man who had been shot drove himself to the hospital. While in the ER, two men came in and shot him to death. There were thirteen rounds found at the scene. Yesterday, a man was beheaded and hung from an overpass. Crazy scary.
On October 23 a house behind A mountain exploded. Gone. Completely. Why? What happened? The entire community is speculating. I took this picture on the 23rd. Mike and I drove by to see the damage. We heard about it on the news. He painted many of the houses on this street so he wanted to see which one was involved. At the time, there were road blocks preventing access to the street in front of the house. The house is at the end of a road that loops around so it was fairly simple to block the roads without restricting access to other homes. News crews were camped out, taking pictures and interviewing residents.
Yesterday, Butterfly wanted to go for a ride. We had about an hour before we had to pick up the rest of the kids. Mike was working in the same area, so I told her we could drive by the house and then go see Daddy. The roads weren’t blocked and there wasn’t any traffic. I pulled over to the side of the road and took ONE picture. As I drove off, a police car came out of nowhere and pulled me over. Another car with a detective stopped by the van.
They were giving me the third degree about taking pictures, trying to intimidate me. They ran my license, looking for warrants. One of the officers said that I looked like a man because my hair is short and surely I could understand how a man in a van taking pictures would be suspicious, right? They were vaguely threatening, pointing out my broken light and the fact that my registration expired a few weeks ago. The van is still in Mike’s sister’s name because we were waiting for her to sign the title over. I told them I would be happy to take a ticket for the light/registration but that they couldn’t tell me not to take pictures. They told me not to be driving around in neighborhoods where I didn’t belong.
The detective called me a looky-loo. How funny is that? I believe it is a ‘technical’ term for someone that wants to be nosy?! I don’t know. I’m not up to date with all the ‘police lingo’. It may be true, but the last time I checked it wasn’t against the law to take pictures or to be curious. I didn’t get out of the van. I didn’t go on the crime scene. I didn’t sit there and stalk the investigators. Here is the offending photo and here are the pictures posted by the newspaper. I guess they haven’t heard of citizen journalism. It’s too bad I didn’t have the new Polaroid printer to make myself a press pass!
I wanted to take a picture of the officers, but Butterfly was scared and I didn’t want to make a bad situation worse. Echo, in the back seat, wasn’t scared at all. He was shaking his fist out the window chanting “Take my mom to JAIL! She took a PICTURE! Take my mom to JAIL! I’m FREEEEEEEEEEE!”
The bottom line is that photography is not a crime. Download and print this handy guide to the photographer’s rights.
When it comes to politics, I generally agree to disagree. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. But it seems there should be a certain level of accountability. A letter to the editor published in the Alamogordo paper called Barack Obama a ‘Muslim socialist’. It was written by a prominent local Republican. When her remarks were questioned, she said of Muslims: ”I don’t trust them at all. They’ve sworn across the world that they are our enemies. Why we’re trying to elect one is beside me.”
And when did being Muslim become so terrible? Would we tolerate this sort of attitude toward Jews or Catholics or Mormons? Hate is an ugly, ugly thing. This article is a few years old, but it is worth reading: Why Do Americans Hate Muslims?
I’ll post the article from the local paper in the extended entry for those interested.
The Las Cruces Sun News ran an interview with Mia in today’s paper. I was a little shocked because cross country/track and field doesn’t get the coverage the other sports enjoy. Mia was happy, but a bit embarrassed. Click here to see the article.
