new mexico

Snapshots Sunday: New Mexico

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This is somewhat of a companion piece to Walsenburg and Fort Sumner. These were shots taken after we left Fort Sumner and were on our way to Walsenburg. We passed by the Raton-Clayton volcanic field, which includes the Capulin Volcano National Monument. The Marine was in a hurry to head north and wasn’t interested in stopping for a volcano. ~Vic

NM Mountain Image One
Heading north on I-25
December 2008
Click for a larger view.
NM Mountain Image Two
Click for a larger view.
NM Mountain Image Three
Click for a larger view.
NM Mountain Image Four
Click for a larger view.

Wayback Wednesday: New Mexico 1912

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New Mexico Wikipedia Flag Image
Flag of New Mexico
Image Credit: Wikipedia & Wikimedia

One hundred, nine years ago, today, New Mexico was admitted to the Union, becoming the 47th state. In Spanish, it is Nuevo México and in Navajo, it is Yootó Hahoodzo. It’s capital city is Santa Fe, founded in 1610 as the capital of Nuevo México, a province of New Spain. It’s largest city is Albuquerque and it is part of the Four Corners area of the southwest US. It is the fifth largest state and has a thriving film industry. It is home to the Los Alamos Lab, the White Sands Missile Range and the Sandia Lab. It is home to part of the Navajo Nation, Puebloan Peoples and Apache tribes. At one time, prehistorically, it was home to Ancestral Puebloans, Mogollon, Comanche and Ute Peoples. It has the the highest percentage of Hispanic & Latino Americans and the second-highest percentage of Native Americans, as a population, after Alaska. National New Mexico Day is June 14. Salute!

Snapshots Sunday: Walsenburg

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Walsenburg Sign Image One
Photo Credit: Acts & Tracks (Radio Ronin WordPress Site)

As a companion piece to the Fort Sumner post, my ex-Marine and I headed north, still on our way to Liar’s Lodge. We headed into snow and landed in Walsenburg, Colorado, in Huerfano County, a town smaller than the one I am living in and, as of 2019, continues to hemorrhage people from a peak of 5,855 in 1940. We arrived after dark and stopped to eat. There’s not much there, back then or now. ~Vic

New Mexico Mountains Image Two
Driving north on I-25 through New Mexico.
Click for a larger view.
Mileage Sign Image Three
Las Vegas, New Mexico, by the way…
Driving Into Snow Image Four
The snow showed up.
Click for a larger view.
Snowy Road Image Five
Continuing north.
Click for a larger view.
Empty Diner Image Six
This is from December 2008 but,
the diner looks like it’s from 1974.
Alpine Rose Cafe
Click for a larger view.
Deserted Diner Image Seven
It was open but, deserted.
We had a decent meal.
It’s still there as of 2018.
Click for a larger view.
Radio Station Image Eight
KSPK
It appears to still be there.
It is the only home of Colorado Rockies Baseball
in Southern Colorado.
Huerfano Courthouse Image Nine
County courthouse and jail all lit up.
The lights in the windows are odd.
Click for a larger view.
Snowing Image Ten
It started to snow, again,
while I was attempting another picture.

Additional Reading:
Returning to the Place I’d Never Been (Acts & Tracks/radioronin.wordpress.com)
City of Walsenburg (colorado.gov)
Walsenburg (colorado.com)
Walsenburg (Uncover Colorado)

Shutterbug Saturday: Old Fort Sumner Museum

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I lived in Texas for nearly a decade. My ex-Marine and I did some traveling through the west when we had opportunities. I’ve been digging around in some old stuff and found some photos from a visit to the Old Fort Sumner Museum in New Mexico in December of 2008. We were on our way to Liar’s Lodge. The museum closed in 2017. ~Vic

Old Fort Sumner Museum Image One
A terrible shot of the front of the museum.
It was so overcast.
It never occurred to me to take pictures inside.
Historic Marker Image Two
Official Marker
Lucien Maxwell
Fort Sumner
Bosque Redondo
Elusive Tombstone Image Three
They kept stealing it.
Joe Bowlin
Notice the reference to Texas International Airlines
Jarvis P. Garrett is Pat’s son.
UPI Article on the 1981 Recovery
Stone Marker Image Four
Group death record.
Charlie Bowdre December 23, 1880
Tom O’Folliard December 19, 1880
Billy's Tombstone Image Five
Henry McCarty
AKA William H. Bonney
AKA Billy The Kid
July 14, 1881
“The boy bandit king,
he died as he lived.”

Late Add:

Fort Sumner Cemetery Panorama Image Six
Fort Sumner Cemetery
Photo Credit: Erans World
02-11-2014
Click to view full picture.

Additional Reading:
BTKOG (Billy the Kid Outlaw Gang Site)
Whiskey and the Devil: Taiban, New Mexico (City of Dust Blogspot January 10, 2012)
Billy the Kid’s Two Graves (Roadside America August 15, 2020)
Caught With His Pants Down: Billy the Kid vs Pat Garrett (True West Magazine August 1, 2010)
Brushy Bill Roberts (Wikipedia)

Throwback Thursday: SN 1054

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Crab Nebula Image One
Image Credit: astronomy.ohio-state.edu

While my nation celebrates its Independence Day (and twenty-six other nations in the month of July), nine-hundred & sixty-five years ago, today, Supernova 1054 was discovered.

SN 1054 is a supernova that was first observed on 4 July 1054 and remained visible for around two years. The event was recorded in contemporary Chinese astronomy [..]. [There is] a pictograph associated with the Ancestral Puebloan (Anasazi) culture found near the Peñasco Blanco site in New Mexico. The remnant of SN 1054, which consists of debris ejected during the explosion, is known as the Crab Nebula (M1). It is located in the sky near the star Zeta Tauri (ζ Tauri) The core of the exploding star formed a pulsar called the Crab Pulsar. When the French astronomer Charles Messier watched for the return of Halley’s Comet in 1758, he confused the nebula for the comet as he was unaware of the former’s existence. Motivated by this error, he created his catalogue of non-cometary nebulous objects, the Messier Catalogue, to avoid such mistakes in the future. The nebula is catalogued as the first Messier object […].

[Source]

Crab Nebula Image Two
Image Credit: Jay’s Astronomical Observing Blog

Chinese astronomers watching the sky on July 4, 1054, noted the appearance of a new or guest star just above the southern horn of Taurus. Other observations of the explosion were recorded by Japanese, Arabic and Native American stargazers. In 1731, British astronomer John Bevis observed a cloudy blob in the sky and added it to his star atlas. Although [Messier] credited himself with its discovery in his first publication of the Messier Catalog, he acknowledged Bevis’ original finding in subsequent versions after receiving a letter from the astronomer. Around 1844, [Irish] astronomer William Parsons, the third Earl of Rosse, sketched the nebula. The resemblance of the image to a crustacean led to M1’s other name, the Crab Nebula. In the early 20th century, astronomers (Carl Lampland/1921 & Edwin Hubble/1928, included) were able to take more detailed measurements of M1 and determined that it is expanding. Working backwards, they determined its origination date and matched the explosion up with observations from Chinese and Native American records.

[Source]

Anasazi Image Three
Photo Credit:
Alex Marentes
flickr.com
earthsky.org

It is likely that skywatchers of the Anasazi People in the American Southwest also viewed the bright new star in 1054. Historic research shows that a crescent moon was visible in the sky very near the new star on the morning of July 5, the day following the observations by the Chinese. The pictograph above, from Chaco Canyon in New Mexico, is believed to depict the event. The multi-spiked star to the left represents the supernova near the crescent moon. The handprint above may signify the importance of the event, or may be the artist’s “signature.”

[Source]

Happy 4th, everyone! ~Vic

Story Sunday: The Roswell Incident 1947

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Roswell Daily Record Photo
Photo Credit: wikipedia & wikimedia

Seventy-one years ago, today, something happened in Roswell, New Mexico. The Roswell Daily Record printed the story of the crash of a flying saucer on a ranch roughly 30 miles outside of Roswell proper. The Sacramento Bee picked up the story and printed statements from the Roswell Army Air Field.

Over the years, I’ve seen documentaries and read accounts of the initial debris field pieces that were retrieved from the owner of the land. I’ve seen the interviewees on camera and read their statements. I also know that there was a concerted effort by our military to keep what they found out of any more newspapers and, to quickly change the narrative to the weather balloon story.

I’ve actually been to Roswell, NM, spending the night in a local motel just for the complete experience in September of 2002. It’s cattle ranch territory and it smells that way especially in the morning. I’ve been to the Roswell UFO Museum. It is really quite fascinating to walk through it. Some of it is tongue-in-cheek but, there is a lot of information despite the government’s desire to make it “a joke”. A local waitress in a diner, where my *then* husband and I went for breakfast, said that the whole thing was a blessing and a curse. It brought in tourism dollars but, it was also a sore point for some of the older residents whom, at that time, still remembered the events when they happened. As she poured our coffee, she leaned over and told us that there were many locals that swore it was a craft…information passed quietly from neighbor to neighbor, family descendant to family descendant, much like Native American verbal history, handed down through time. Frankly, I never believed the official story. There were too many questions left unanswered and too many things that didn’t add up. Plus, our government lies to us all the time. Why should this be any different.

Fast forward to October of 2013… I stumble across Chris Thomas, his books, his interviews, his videos and, his articles and essays. Well, well, well… Guess what? ~Vic

From The Universal Soul, pages 82 & 83 (an excerpt):

[…] these were a race we have come to call The Greys. The Greys originate on a star system many galaxies distant from us. […] their own name for themselves does not translate into anything pronounceable by the human voice box. These beings have been observing Earth for many centuries […] The Greys behave a little like human teenagers in that they have a certain level of knowledge but, cannot quite put it into context. The first real contact we had with these beings was with the Roswell crash in New Mexico in 1948 [sic]. This was an event where a Grey ship malfunctioned and crashed into the desert near the town of Roswell. As with just about anything that happens in America, the military took control. The crash provided them with an alien ship and three survivors. The Greys were reluctant to become involved in human affairs but, the American military had three of their beings. So began a relationship […] The American military looking for ‘advanced’ technology to give them global military advantage and, in return, the Greys received free access to the genetic material available on Earth.

[Note: Chris Thomas is many things but, not the best typist. His books have a few typos.]

From The Human Soul: Universal Soul 2, pages 125 & 126 (an excerpt):

Their home galaxy is too far distant for us to have a name for it. This race is responsible for some of the human and animal abductions that have taken place on Earth in the past 40 years. As they were causing some disruption to human plans, they have, effectively, been banned from our solar system since 2000. This race has been working with the American miliary since the Roswell crash in 1947 and has given over a great deal of its technology in exchange for permission to carry out some animal experimentation and medical examinations of people.

From Project Human Extinction: The Ultimate Conspiracy, pages 128-131 (an excerpt):

During the Second World War, a great many ‘unidentified’ flying craft were observed as the skies were watched with far more zeal than was previously necessary. Several of these craft were shot down but, because it was war time and it was known that Hitler was developing many innovative weapons, it was assumed that crashed UFOs were Nazi in origin. During the war, the American military began to experiment with many forms of weapons and energy devices and, in particular, energy devices that would help shield ships or aircraft from the newly developed enemy radar. […] the technology was kept for later experiments which the American military began in the late 1940s. In 1948 [sic], the experiments began in a region of New Mexico, although this time, the machinery was land based […] They ran experiments for three days and each day at least one UFO fell out of the sky, the most famous one being the crash at Roswell. There is so much disinformation spread about this race that the only way of finding out any form of truth is to look to the Akashic. In exchange for new ‘alien’ technology, the American military ‘granted’ the Greys permission to abduct and study human physiology. Since 2000, the Greys have been asked not to travel to our solar system, a request with which they have generally been happy to comply.

From Synthesis, page 40:

Their first real contact with Earth was the Roswell crash […] The military have mainly been interested in Grey technology which the military mainly use for psychic attack purposes. The Greys are very interested in human physiology and are responsible for some human and animal abductions. Please note: the vast majority of human and animal abductions, and mutilations, have been carried out by the military.

Still believe our government? Still believe our military? If you are unsure of what the Akashic is, that will be for another post. ~Vic