New Mexico Trip

I took a long weekend to visit my family in NM. My father has been ill, derived from many years of smoking. The experience makes me sad about the terrible damage that cigarette smoking has caused and continues to cause in our society. My father spends all day working on trying to breathe - something we all tend to take for granted! If you smoke, you will likely do the same at some point!

On Monday, my sister Michelle, her son Aaron, and I travelled to Corrales, to see our old childhood haunts. So strange! Many changes there. The trees are all taller, for the most part, except for the really big cottonwoods, that are now dying out. Lots of new homes and shops, and fewer open fields.

I did not recognize our childhood home! The people who own the adobe house have done many things with it, to the point where we could just walk past and not feel a sense of connection to it. In a way, my father's expansive vision for the place was eventually realized, by these new people. They are to be congratulated!

Weird stuff these days in Corrales. For example, the Milagro Winery, established next door to classmate Wesley's old house, on what I had always thought of as bad soil.

We visited the San Ysidro Cemetery, and looked at the numerous graves of our classmates. So many school chums already slammed six feet under, with deteriorating headstones and crosses on the ground above. And here we are, still walking around!

We drove to Corrales' north end and went to see the llama trotting track (looks underutilized these days): we saw only one llama.

We drove up into the River's Edge II subdivision of Rio Rancho. A suburban land, weird, even obscene, and alien to the landscape we all grew up in Corrales. Still, not all is lost: the bizarre contiguity of freestyle home sites popping up on the freely-held lots, and severe suburban plat development, may create an interesting schizophrenia among the young inhabitants of these newfound places. A new generation of suburbanites has arisen, where there should be none in a rational universe, but will they be like the old suburbanites of Rio Rancho, like the people in Corrales Heights, like my classmates living on streets like 'Sabana Grande'? Time will tell!

Back in Corrales, we first tried to eat at Tijuana Bar (established 1935), but they were closed on Monday. Instead, we ate at Village Pizza, formerly Drink, Inc. when I was young. Good food! Upon leaving the place, on the radio, we heard the outcome of the Michael Jackson trial.

I was trying not to pay much attention to the Jackson trial, on general principle, but I felt the case against Jackson was seriously compromised by the money at stake. I wasn't surprised by the verdict.

My sister was upset with the verdict: she wanted the jury to send a clear message to molesters everywhere that money and fame are not enough to protect you against the wrath of parents everywhere for crossing the line. That wasn't the jury's mandate, though, as even she recognized. If the case had been stronger, then maybe the message would have been clearer. It should be absolutely clear to Jackson, however, that he is vulnerable and has real enemies, and he MUST change his ways to avoid bankruptcy and prison.