Moving to newspaper nirvana

By S. Derrickson Moore dmoore@lcsun-news.com LAS CRUCES — For someone who’s done a lot of moving, I’ve never quite gotten it down to a science, but this time, I’m rested, ready … and eager. Generally, I hate moving, almost as much as I love Las Cruces. I resolved to settle down and roam no more, once I’d found my querencia, that place on the planet where one’s soul feels at home. I’ve now been here almost two decades, longer than I’ve ever lived in one city before, but that didn’t mean an end to the moving, alas. I was content to stay long-term in the same job and household. But premises seemed to have their own rambling determination to keep moving on their own, something I might have expected in my previous homes in earthquake, volcanic and hurricane zones, but not here. I started out in a cute apartment complex on Madrid. From there, I landed in a house in Picacho Hills with a great view and a resident roadrunner in the eaves. My landlady and then-colleague Verlaine Davies was in a rambling mode back then, and my tenancy involved four moves — between two wings of the Picacho house, and then, to two duplexes in Las Alturas. I decided it was time to buy my own semi-adobe abode, and there I have remained since 1999, though the neighborhood has changed around me, as fave neighbors have moved in and out and vacant lots have filled in with new homes and a sprawling apartment complex. I thought the Las Cruces Sun-News would be a counterbalancing constant. Journalists are an itinerant lot, and I’ve seen a lot of employees and editors and managers and publishers come and go, and even the paper’s ownership has changed a couple of times. But the building remained the same. Every few years, brave but ineffectual spruce-ups were attempted. Technological advances were more successful. When I moved in, in 1994, we had serviceable computers, but no e-mail or reliable Internet access. We had a whole department waxing and pasting the components of the daily paper and another large department printing the paper and putting the news and advertising inserts together. Eventually, we began to edit copy and lay out pages online. The roaring presses moved out and the building seemed very quiet. But we never felt alone. In fact, we sometimes joked that the old Safeway building was a kind of urban wildlife preserve. In the years when I started work at 5 a.m., there was a cute little burrowing owl who, like my resident Picacho Hills roadrunner, grumbled at me for disturbing his sleep every morning. (Despite their early-riser reps, I’ve irked a lot of birds for being earlier-than-thou.) None of us — or the professional exterminators — were able to terminally daunt a coven of bats, and cucarachas that somehow survived an onslaught of pesticides to thrive and prosper. Every now and again, a mouse would be spotted, scurrying across the newsroom, trying to make some kind of important rodent deadline, we presumed. Sometimes, we’d spot a raven, a sparrow or a neighborhood dog or cat who’d found a way into the echoing expanses of the deserted room where the presses once roared. Things have been much tamer in our interim, post-fire headquarters for the last two years, first in the Ramada Palms ballrooms and most recently on Idaho Avenue. But soon, we’ll make the ultimate move, to media nirvana: a state-of-the-art new building with actual windows, skylights and Organ Mountain views. We’ll have studios and community meeting places where we’ll have more space and tools to tell your stories, online and in print. And best of all, we’ll be back in my favorite ‘hood, which has also changed remarkably in the past two decades — and what’s more, for the better. I feel very fortunate in 2013, heading back to my neighborhood, in the corazon of my querencia. S. Derrickson Moore can be reached at dmoore@lcsun-news.com; (575) 541-5450. Follow her on Twitter @DerricksonMoore