Tales of the Southwest

It’s been two weeks since Gilda and I returned from New Mexico. I guess it’s time I wrote about our adventures there.

New Mexico calls itself the Land of Enchantment but a more apt moniker might be Land of Casinos. In a state with just over two million citizens there are 28 legal casinos. By comparison, Pennsylvania’s nearly 13 million residents get to place their bets in just 12 casinos. Arizona sports 23 casinos for its 6.5 million population.

How the New Mexico casinos can make money on an average 75,000 state residents—that includes minors—is a testament to low overhead or very unlucky bettors. Or probably both. 

Getting back to the Land of Enchantment tagline, New Mexico surely does have some beautiful landscapes. But it also has vast stretches of flat desolation. 

We set out for New Mexico from Tucson after attending our grandniece’s bat-mitzvah. Our son Dan advised us to stop at White Sands National Monument (for those who may not know, as I didn’t until recently, a national monument does not mean it’s a statue. Rather, it is any location designated for preservation by the president should Congress, in its infinite wisdom, choose not to ascribe to it national park or landmark status).  

As its name implies, the surface of the national monument are dunes of what appears to be white sand but is in reality cool-to-the-touch particles of gypsum that water and wind erosion have granulated. It’s the largest gypsum dune field in the world, more than 275 square miles. It was easy to think of the sands of Arabia as we drove through White Sands, an image made all the more real when we spotted a camel and its driver sitting passively atop one of the dunes.

White Sands in south-central New Mexico is distinguished for another reason. In the adjacent White Sands Missile Range, on July 16, 1945, the world entered the atomic age with the detonation of the first nuclear bomb at the Trinity Test Site. It’s open to the public just one day a year, April 5 in 2014.

In nearby Alamogordo, Gilda and I experienced our first “pay it forward.” When we went to the cashier to pay for our dinner at the local IHOP (we were desperate for some place to eat at 8 pm) we were told an anonymous person had covered our bill. I didn’t think we looked destitute, but maybe we did appear a little bedraggled after a day blasted by wind laden with 90 degrees of heat. It might have been “dry heat” but it was still plenty hot.

The five hour ride north to Santa Fe was not very picturesque, but we had a great audio book that kept us at the edge of our seats—“Unbroken” by Laura Hillenbrand, the story of Louis Zamperini’s life from troubled youngster to Olympic runner and status as a premier miler, his service in World War II, his survival after a plane crash in the Pacific, his capture and internment by sadistic Japanese guards, through his life after the war. (Hillenbrand also is the author of “Seabiscuit.”)

Santa Fe was serene. By contrast, our visit to the nearby Puye Cliffs, the ancient ancestral home of the Santa Clara Pueblo, literally turned our knees to rubber. The literature advises the cliff dwellings tour involves “walking on steep slopes (paved) at high elevations.” Trust me, it is waaaay more challenging.

We descended from the top of the cliffs two ways. First, we very carefully negotiated a rock passage no wide than 18 inches. A false step and we would have tumbled hundreds of feet. Next we climbed down a ladder, but not an ordinary ladder. Its rungs were spaced further apart than any ladder I had ever used. I had difficulty planting my feet on each rung. I have no idea how my much shorter wife was able to find her footing without missing a level. 

For the next two days both of us experienced charley horses in our legs. Still, it was worth the hair-raising effort to learn about the culture and heritage of the people who lived in New Mexico before Western Europeans arrived. 

A day trip to Taos revealed some spectacular scenery. The next day we went south to Albuquerque including a ride on the Sandia Peak Tramway, the world’s third longest single span. Sandia Peak is more than 10,000 feet high.

So here are some interesting observations and facts about New Mexico I didn’t know or realize before our trip:

·     New Mexico is the fifth largest state in total square miles.

·     My concept of the Rio Grande was that it separated part of Texas from Mexico. But the Rio Grande is much more. It begins in Colorado and flows through central New Mexico. It is the fourth or fifth longest river in America.

·     As I don’t fly as often as I used to I was amazed by the technology conveniences airports in Albuquerque and Denver provide travelers—plentiful and free outlets and charging stations for phones and laptops, plus comfortable club chairs and tables. 

·     It seemed almost every merchant we met came from back East and had a connection to us. In a Nambé store in Taos, the manager originated from Naugatuck, Conn., just north of Seymour where we lived when I was a reporter for The New Haven Register. What’s more, he said the customer before us also hailed from White Plains. In Albuquerque, the balloon store owner grew up in North Chatham, NY, not far from Gilda’s home town of Saratoga Springs.

·     Many of the soldiers captured in the Philippines at the beginning of Word War II came from New Mexico.

Learning the Difference Between New Mexico and Arizona

If there is one thought you come away with after driving 1,100 miles across the southwest desert from Phoenix through Tucson, eastward to Alomogordo, NM, then northward to Santa Fe and Taos and back down to Albuquerque, as Gilda and I did last week, it is that pioneer men and women had grit uncommon to most humans. 

What took us just some 20 hours of driving in air-conditioned comfort over a week’s time probably took as much as 73 days in a covered wagon averaging 15 miles per day. If the pioneers arrived after late spring when temperatures hover for months between 85 and 106 degrees Fahrenheit, depending on the location, you had to wonder what made any of them want to stay in this natural convection oven. Forget that hooey about it being “dry heat.” A furnace blast of hot, 100 degree air is hot, hot, hot.

Yes, there are points of breathtaking beauty. But even now, with air conditioning universally available in your home, your car, your place of business unless it is outdoors, the heat is oppressive. Weighty. Energy sapping. What could have tempted the early settlers who did not have the benefit of air conditioning? Surely the local Native Americans did not weave a welcome mat for them.

Time out. Let’s take a step back. Most of you, no doubt. have a Western European orientation. And by Western European I mean Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy and North Sea and Baltic Sea countries. When I wrote “early settlers” you probably thought of Americans and immigrants of European heritage heading west in wagon trains. 

Yet the reality is the southwest was colonized by the Spanish almost a hundred years before the first successful English settlement in Jamestown,VA. In elementary school my teachers barely taught the history of western America. For us, the history of the American Frontier began with the Louisiana Purchase of 1803 and Lewis and Clark. But that same frontier was largely a Spanish and then Mexican territory until the United States captured it in the Mexican-American War of 1848.

We didn’t covet all that we took. Sure, California had gold. But Arizona and New Mexico had lots of Catholic, Spanish speaking residents. Our white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant Congress had no desire to extend citizenship to that type of resident. The U.S. Congress denied New Mexico’s repeated applications to be admitted to the Union from 1850 until 1912 when New Mexico and Arizona finally matriculated from territory to statehood.

Given the current debate on immigration and the antipathy of many toward Hispanic newcomers, it is enlightening to note New Mexico’s and Arizona’s respective attitudes toward their Spanish-speaking residents as embodied in their state constitutions.

New Mexico includes two specific sections I’ll reproduce here:

“Text of Section 8: 

“Teachers to Learn English and Spanish 

“The legislature shall provide for the training of teachers in the normal schools or otherwise so that they may become proficient in both the English and Spanish languages, to qualify them to teach Spanish-speaking pupils and students in the public schools and educational institutions of the state, and shall provide proper means and methods to facilitate the teaching of the English language and other branches of learning to such pupils and students.”

“Text of Section 10: 

“Educational Rights of Children of Spanish Descent 

“Children of Spanish descent in the state of New Mexico shall never be denied the right and privilege of admission and attendance in the public schools or other public educational institutions of the state, and they shall never be classed in separate schools, but shall forever enjoy perfect equality with other children in all public schools and educational institutions of the state, and the legislature shall provide penalties for the violation of this section. This section shall never be amended except upon a vote of the people of this state, in an election at which at least three-fourths of the electors voting in the whole state and at least two-thirds of those voting in each county in the state shall vote for such amendment.” 

Arizona’s constitution is silent on both areas.

Look to the News for Inspiration

Whenever I lack inspiration for a blog post all I need do is read the newspaper or listen to the news on TV or radio. Some cases in point:

Watching CBS Sunday Morning on Sunday I couldn’t help but be thrilled by the show’s choice of Santa Fe as the backdrop for its annual special edition on design. Gilda and I will shortly be visiting the colorful capital of New Mexico, though not as a replacement for our previously planned and now scrapped cruise of the Black Sea with stops in Odessa, Yalta, Sevastopol and Sochi. 

CBS Sunday Morning also ran a feature on tennis great Venus Williams and her apparel company. She named it “Eleven,” a number dear to Gilda’s and my heart (among other reasons, we were born 11 days apart 65 years ago and our house number is 11). I liked Williams’ reasoning behind her name choice: “Eleven stands for being better than a 10.”

A third tie-in appeared, courtesy of a piece on treadmill desks (for the uninformed, these are raised desks you work at while walking on a treadmill underneath at roughly two miles per hour). 

Joanna Coles, editor in chief of Cosmopolitan, shown in the segment walking on her treadmill desk, said, “I’m more contemplative on the treadmill desk. I find the action of walking helps me think better.”

Steelcase manager of health and wellness Carlene Stevens explained, “As we exercise we send endorphins to our brain which then kind of increases our innovation, creativity and it could increase productivity, as well.”

Which might explain why some of my best ideas came to me as I walked up and down Park Avenue on my way to and from Grand Central Terminal and work.

Road Trip: The Travel section of the Sunday New York Times carried an article entitled “To Campuses Without a Campus.” I was hooked by the first sentence: “The last thing a dad gets to really teach his daughter is how to drive a car.” (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/18/travel/to-campuses-without-a-compass.html?_r=0)

It reminded me of a trip Ellie and I took to Oberlin College in Ohio when she was 16 and recently licensed to drive. On our way home along Interstate 80, I felt sufficiently comfortable to let her drive across half of Pennsylvania and all of New Jersey while I dozed in the shotgun seat. Before nodding off I told her, just go straight, no turns. 

I awoke as we passed the toll booth for the George Washington Bridge. I panicked as I realized Ellie had never crossed a bridge and as soon as she entered Manhattan she would be an illegal, underage driver on a highway. The alternatives were frightening—proceed straight onto the heavily trafficked Cross Bronx Expressway or take the exit ramp from the bridge onto the Henry Hudson Parkway North, with some of the most belly-churning curves in the region. 

We chose the latter with Ellie trying to calm me down. Only, we didn’t go north, we wound up going south, while all I could do was loudly tell her to get off at the first exit. Ellie successfully maneuvered us off the highway. 

Ellie chose not to apply to Oberlin.

Recycling: The Sunday Business section depicted how cities and companies are trying to minimize food waste by encouraging composting (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/17/business/cities-and-companies-tackle-the-food-waste-problem.html). 

Gilda and I have been doing our fair share. For the last 18 months we’ve been placing uncooked organic waste in a countertop compost bin. When full, we dump the contents into an outdoor plastic garbage can aerated by holes I drilled into the sides and cover. The food is mixed with dry leaves I process in the fall in a leaf shredder I purchased for $25 off of Craig’s List.  

When the garbage can is full we transfer the contents to an outdoor compost heap. Last weekend we went to Croton Point Park for Earth Day celebration and picked up a plastic compost bin. 

Gilda the Gardener is thrilled. She considers her home made compost to be black gold.

In case you’re wondering, the organic compost does not smell.

Nail-Biting Time: Finally, the Workologist column of The Times dealt with a thorny problem of office etiquette, namely, what to do when co-workers cut their fingernails in public.

True confession time—until I was 28 I bit my nails. I couldn’t stop. Like smoking, I was addicted. But the day I started working in Manhattan 37 years ago I stopped. Cold turkey. 

That day I also began carrying a nail clipper wherever I went. It turned out to be among the most useful tools I could ever imagine. I prefer a nail clipper with a small file, the kind the Transportation Security Administration at first deemed a weapon and wouldn’t permit you to carry onto a plane in the months after September 11. I’ve used a nail clipper to cut those pesky strings that tie shoes together in stores. To slice through package wrappings. To cut a nail that I would otherwise bite off.  

But I try to never cut my nails in public.