As appeared in the Albuquerque Journal Rio Rancho section July 30, 2011
The other day I was packing up my eldest daughter to go and spend the weekend with her aunt, uncle and cousins in Nevada. As I was reminding her to remember her manners, and to pack a sweater, even though it is summer, I started to think what sort of thank you gift I could send along with her, something that says “New Mexico.”
New Mexico Piñon Coffee in the bright red package is many people’s favorite coffee around here. Having earned the title “Best Selling Coffee” at the New Mexico State Fair seven years in a row and “A Top 24 Gourmet Food Company” by the New York Times, well, I can’t be the only one who loves this morning brew.
El Pinto salsa is always a great idea. Famous and delicious, there is the chipotle salsa, the fire-roasted green chile salsa, or even their enchilada sauce would make a great gift. But with the strict airline regulations, I wasn’t sure if salsa was considered a liquid and would it be confiscated at security and put on display with the bottles of shampoo and mouthwash? I pressed on for the perfect gift.
There’s nothing like a cool Santa Fe evening with the smell of fireplaces burning in the air to scream New Mexico.
That is why my favorite local gift has to be piñon incense. Available at many stores around town, they even sell the little kivas to burn the incense in for the full effect.
I didn’t have time to drive all over town, and the one store I went to didn’t have it, so I pressed on.
Another favorite scented gift worth mentioning is the cedar wood scented incense and spray from the Hyatt Tamaya Resort. Yes, the scent you smell as you walk in the front door is available for purchase in their gift shop. I bought some once as a birthday gift for a friend who lives back East as a little reminder of how beautiful the sunset was from the patio.
A book of ghost stories by Albuquerque author Antonio R. Garcez always makes a great gift. “New Mexico Ghost Stories” is a collection of first-hand recollections of ghostly encounters that happened in different parts of the state. His newest, “American Indian Ghost Stories of the West” is by far the most chilling of them all. I warn you: Do not read it alone at night.
I ended up buying the old standby: candles. But these came tied in raffia ribbon with a Mexican tile and scents that were named Jemez morning and purple sage. I think that little touch of the Land of Enchantment will be just fine.
Did I miss any? What is your favorite gift to send to out-of-state friends and relatives?
Quote of the Week: “Casey also saw this same shadow walk from the bedroom to the bathroom one night. In the kitchen, knifes would be removed from the wood knife block, and in the morning, I would find them spread out in the sink!” – excerpt from “New Mexico Ghost Stories” by Antonio R. Garcez.
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
America’s Fascination With Space Won’t End
As appeared in the Albuquerque Journal Rio Rancho section July 23, 2011
I remember where I was when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon in 1969. I remember where I was when the Challenger disaster happened on that fateful morning in 1986.
I would bet we were all a little melancholy Thursday when the Atlantis space shuttle’s landing marked an historic end of NASA’s 30-year-long space shuttle program. Seems Americans have a fascination with space, and rightly so.
NASA’s Apollo program ran from 1961 until 1975. The shuttle program ran from 1981 to 2011.
President Obama has now ordered NASA to focus its resources on sending people to an asteroid by 2013 and to Mars by 2030. Onward and upward we go.
The shuttle program milestone this week was a good excuse for me to dig out the column I wrote two years ago marking the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11’s moon landing, and which I submit in honor of the closing of another chapter in NASA’s book.
Where were you when you watched Armstrong’s boot touch the lunar surface? I was sitting with my mother on our couch in the living room. I still remember to this day feeling so nervous for the astronauts wondering if they were going to sink into a quicksand-like surface or land safely on hard ground. But that’s an 8-year-old girl for you; a mother in the making even then.
Landing on the moon made us one with the world, and it was like magic. But watching the space geeks at Mission Control in Houston riding an emotional roller coaster had to have been one of the high points. These young baby boomers brought home the human element. When they looked worried, we were worried. When they threw their arms up in the air in victory, we cried.
Apollo 11: The Untold Story, an article on www.popularmechanics.com, is filled with quotes from the young men who were part of history; sleepless news correspondents and operations engineers, flight directors and even astronauts themselves telling their personal tales of those historical days in the summer of ’69.
Robert Sieck, spacecraft test and launch operations engineer, Kennedy Space Center: “Since I was the backup engineer, I was not out at the Cape. I could watch the launch with my wife and my 1-year-old daughter. The highway was absolute gridlock, and the cars and trucks weren’t trying to move. Everyone was there to watch history. The vendors were sold out of everything — no more T-shirts, caps, buttons or pins. People were pulling plugs of grass from the side of the road and stuffing them in zip-lock bags as souvenirs,” Sieck said.
“Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed,” Armstrong announces, breaking the tension in the control room as a controller tells the crew, “You got a bunch of guys about to turn blue, we’re breathing again.”
Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin would spend two hours on the moon July 19, collecting souvenirs and leaving a few of their own; an American flag and a plaque that reads, “Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the moon. July 1969 A.D. We came in peace for all mankind.”
I would be fortunate enough to see two of the souvenirs in my lifetime: a moon rock at Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry and the actual space capsule at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. Much smaller than I expected, I might add.
Quote of the Week: “There is a photograph that shows splashdown inside the control room. There’s a guy standing by the console with a huge piece of paper. That’s me. I got the signatures of everybody in that room and in the back room. Every time I did that I would ask them their age. Well, I sat down and ran it out. The average age the night we had splashdown was 28. When Space Shuttle Atlantis left Earth on May 11, 2009, the average NASA civil servant’s age was 47.” — H. David Reed, a flight dynamics officer during Apollo 11.
I remember where I was when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon in 1969. I remember where I was when the Challenger disaster happened on that fateful morning in 1986.
I would bet we were all a little melancholy Thursday when the Atlantis space shuttle’s landing marked an historic end of NASA’s 30-year-long space shuttle program. Seems Americans have a fascination with space, and rightly so.
NASA’s Apollo program ran from 1961 until 1975. The shuttle program ran from 1981 to 2011.
President Obama has now ordered NASA to focus its resources on sending people to an asteroid by 2013 and to Mars by 2030. Onward and upward we go.
The shuttle program milestone this week was a good excuse for me to dig out the column I wrote two years ago marking the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11’s moon landing, and which I submit in honor of the closing of another chapter in NASA’s book.
Where were you when you watched Armstrong’s boot touch the lunar surface? I was sitting with my mother on our couch in the living room. I still remember to this day feeling so nervous for the astronauts wondering if they were going to sink into a quicksand-like surface or land safely on hard ground. But that’s an 8-year-old girl for you; a mother in the making even then.
Landing on the moon made us one with the world, and it was like magic. But watching the space geeks at Mission Control in Houston riding an emotional roller coaster had to have been one of the high points. These young baby boomers brought home the human element. When they looked worried, we were worried. When they threw their arms up in the air in victory, we cried.
Apollo 11: The Untold Story, an article on www.popularmechanics.com, is filled with quotes from the young men who were part of history; sleepless news correspondents and operations engineers, flight directors and even astronauts themselves telling their personal tales of those historical days in the summer of ’69.
Robert Sieck, spacecraft test and launch operations engineer, Kennedy Space Center: “Since I was the backup engineer, I was not out at the Cape. I could watch the launch with my wife and my 1-year-old daughter. The highway was absolute gridlock, and the cars and trucks weren’t trying to move. Everyone was there to watch history. The vendors were sold out of everything — no more T-shirts, caps, buttons or pins. People were pulling plugs of grass from the side of the road and stuffing them in zip-lock bags as souvenirs,” Sieck said.
“Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed,” Armstrong announces, breaking the tension in the control room as a controller tells the crew, “You got a bunch of guys about to turn blue, we’re breathing again.”
Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin would spend two hours on the moon July 19, collecting souvenirs and leaving a few of their own; an American flag and a plaque that reads, “Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the moon. July 1969 A.D. We came in peace for all mankind.”
I would be fortunate enough to see two of the souvenirs in my lifetime: a moon rock at Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry and the actual space capsule at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. Much smaller than I expected, I might add.
Quote of the Week: “There is a photograph that shows splashdown inside the control room. There’s a guy standing by the console with a huge piece of paper. That’s me. I got the signatures of everybody in that room and in the back room. Every time I did that I would ask them their age. Well, I sat down and ran it out. The average age the night we had splashdown was 28. When Space Shuttle Atlantis left Earth on May 11, 2009, the average NASA civil servant’s age was 47.” — H. David Reed, a flight dynamics officer during Apollo 11.
Potter Premiere Was Way Past My Bedtime
As appeared in the Albuquerque Journal Rio Rancho section July 16, 2011
Pottermania came to town Thursday night, and I was smack dab in the middle of it, having been dragged to the midnight premiere of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2″ by my two daughters.
This was the final installment in J.K. Rowling’s magical Hogwarts franchise and those who were much younger were at fever pitch. Oh sure it’s bittersweet, if you know what Dumbledore means. But for the rest of us, it was a late night out that could be spent in bed. Don’t get me wrong, it was fun to be out with my girls and I’m glad they wanted me along.
We knew we had to get to the theater early since my eldest had been to the midnight premiere of one of the “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies and knew the ropes. We arrived 2 1/2 hours early to a costumed crowd of Potter fans all eager to see if Harry lives or dies.
I’ve been to three midnight movies in my life: Led Zeppelin’s “The Song Remains the Same,” the Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shelter” and “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” Now if that doesn’t date me, nothing does.
We followed the line as it snaked down the parking lot and up the other side to the end ready to begin the wait. But before I could reprimand any kids for cutting in line, the security guards told anyone who had tickets to Theater 8 could go inside. I thought I had died and gone to heaven.
We were whisked inside to the air-conditioned theater and got to wait for the show sitting comfortably in our recliner seats.
I had seen a few of the other Happy Potter movies and thought I was with it and up on the characters until I tried to clarify something with my eldest.
“Is the snake going to be in this one?” I confidently asked.
“Oh, mother,” was her response. You would have thought I asked if the Wicked Witch of the West really was going to take Toto to the river and drown him.
I didn’t ask any more questions after that.
Prior to midnight, I knew I had better get a cappuccino from the concession stand so I wouldn’t fall asleep.
Either the cappuccino was spiked with brandy or the film was in another language or it was simply past my bedtime, but I couldn’t keep my eyes open until the last half hour of the movie.
No spoiler alert here, I won’t give away any secrets other than to say the movie was great; people snickered, giggled, cried and cheered at the end.
We laid our heads down on our pillows at 2:45 a.m., when the coffee finally kicked in and I watched infomercials until 5 a.m.
J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series has sold more than 400 million copies and her books turned into 8 feature films. All I know is that I wish I had the imagination and vocabulary that J.K. Rowling has. Oh, and the money wouldn’t hurt either.
Quote of the Week: “I just write what I wanted to write. I write what amuses me. It’s totally for myself.”- J.K. Rowling.
Pottermania came to town Thursday night, and I was smack dab in the middle of it, having been dragged to the midnight premiere of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2″ by my two daughters.
This was the final installment in J.K. Rowling’s magical Hogwarts franchise and those who were much younger were at fever pitch. Oh sure it’s bittersweet, if you know what Dumbledore means. But for the rest of us, it was a late night out that could be spent in bed. Don’t get me wrong, it was fun to be out with my girls and I’m glad they wanted me along.
We knew we had to get to the theater early since my eldest had been to the midnight premiere of one of the “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies and knew the ropes. We arrived 2 1/2 hours early to a costumed crowd of Potter fans all eager to see if Harry lives or dies.
I’ve been to three midnight movies in my life: Led Zeppelin’s “The Song Remains the Same,” the Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shelter” and “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” Now if that doesn’t date me, nothing does.
We followed the line as it snaked down the parking lot and up the other side to the end ready to begin the wait. But before I could reprimand any kids for cutting in line, the security guards told anyone who had tickets to Theater 8 could go inside. I thought I had died and gone to heaven.
We were whisked inside to the air-conditioned theater and got to wait for the show sitting comfortably in our recliner seats.
I had seen a few of the other Happy Potter movies and thought I was with it and up on the characters until I tried to clarify something with my eldest.
“Is the snake going to be in this one?” I confidently asked.
“Oh, mother,” was her response. You would have thought I asked if the Wicked Witch of the West really was going to take Toto to the river and drown him.
I didn’t ask any more questions after that.
Prior to midnight, I knew I had better get a cappuccino from the concession stand so I wouldn’t fall asleep.
Either the cappuccino was spiked with brandy or the film was in another language or it was simply past my bedtime, but I couldn’t keep my eyes open until the last half hour of the movie.
No spoiler alert here, I won’t give away any secrets other than to say the movie was great; people snickered, giggled, cried and cheered at the end.
We laid our heads down on our pillows at 2:45 a.m., when the coffee finally kicked in and I watched infomercials until 5 a.m.
J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series has sold more than 400 million copies and her books turned into 8 feature films. All I know is that I wish I had the imagination and vocabulary that J.K. Rowling has. Oh, and the money wouldn’t hurt either.
Quote of the Week: “I just write what I wanted to write. I write what amuses me. It’s totally for myself.”- J.K. Rowling.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)