By S. Derrickson Moore
dmoore@lcsun-news.com
LAS CRUCES— This year, we really need FTFS (Full-Tilt Fiesta Season).
Maybe it was the weird global weather and disasters (including unprecedented calamities like Japan’s tsunami-nuclear plant double whammy) that struck before spring even had a chance to get started. Nature’s handiwork was further aggravated by a summer of manmade (or more accurately, politician-made and triggered) political and economic shenanigans, plus riots and global governmental overthrow attempts and continuing conflicts that had most of us on edge for much of the summer.
By the time we got around to contemplating vacation and a silly summery pursuit or two, our absurdly early school year had begun … and after this summer, we wonder if we should spend the money, anyway, with worldwide famines and needy friends and relatives out of work or marginally employed.
Whatever the origins of our summer of discontent, stress and misery, it’s clear that we have been deprived of our traditional silly season this year.
We may have to abandon all hopes of escapist pursuits for Summer 2011, and move on.
Luckily, the good news is that we live in southern New Mexico, Full-tilt Fiesta Season and chile capital of the world … maybe the universe.
And the even better news is that FTFS is bigger from the get-go in 2011. It starts this week, and there will be more chile-enhanced activities than ever before to help rev up our endorphin systems, cheer us up and strengthen our will to live, dance and party hearty. We can nurture our inner fiesta animals knowing that the festivities are a boon to our economy, our relationships, and a variety of regional causes and community organizations.
Appropriately, our official 2012 New Mexico statehood centennial celebrations kick off, not in the ancient City Different (Santa Fe) nor the Duke City (Albuquerque) but where a major 100-year state fiesta should rightfully begin, at FTFS ground zero, the city of festive moods and fiesta attitudes: Las Cruces! And in our neighboring communities, too.
You’ll have to do some careful party planning to get everything in, with the Centennial’s kickoff, the Main Street Centennial SalsaFest, the White Sands International Film Festival and Deming Duck races all starting with events this next week and running through Aug. 28.
And there will be no let-up, with more big bashes over the three-day Labor Day weekend, featuring must-go fiesta choices that include the 40th Hatch Chile Festival, New Mexico Wine Harvest Wine Festival, Franciscan Festival of Fine Arts and a super-festive Downtown Ramble.
Even the always-festive Las Cruces Convention Center seems to have been jolted into a new level of FTFS hyperbolic overdrive, billing our next big fiesta periods as “Superweekend” and “Super Labor Day Weekend.”
Get in training this weekend. Stock up on therapeutic doses of chile, practice your salsa moves, and get in touch with your amigos near and far to plan some rendezvous. Prepare to celebrate surviving a tough summer with your best FTFS ever!
S. Derrickson Moore can be reached at (575) 541-5450
(breakout on jump)
Full-Tilt Fiesta Season Highlights
For more events information, visit www.lascrucescvb.org.
Aug. 25-28: White Sands Film Fest
Aug. 25-28: Great American Duck Race
Aug. 28: Centennial ¡SalsaFest!
Sept. 3 & 4: 40th Hatch Chile Festival
Sept. 3 to 5: New Mexico Wine Harvest Wine Festival
Sept. 3 & 4: Franciscan Festival of Fine Arts
Sept. 5: Labor Day Wine Fest, Franciscan Fest
Sept. 9 to 11: Color Las Cruces: Plein Air Art Competition & Community Arts Fest Sept. 9 to 11
Sept. 10 & 11: Fort Selden Frontier Days
Sept. 11: 5,000 Flowers and other commemorations
Sept. 16 to 18: White Sands Hot Air Balloon Invitational
Sept. 17 & 18: Mesilla’s Diez y Seis de Septiembre
Sept. 23 to 25: The Whole Enchilada Fiesta
Sept. 27 to Oct. 2: SNM State Fair
Oct. 1 & 2: Mesilla Jazz Happening
Oct. 8: New Mexico Pumpkin Fest, Mesilla Valley Maze
Oct. 8 & 9: La Viña Harvest Fest
Oct. 27-29 NMSU Homecomng
Oct. 28 to 31, Nov. 2: Dia de Los Muertos in Mesilla, plus parade float, processions, art shows September through November.
Oct. 31: Halloween
Nov. 5 & 6: Renaissance ArtsFaire
Nov. 11: Mesilla Veteran’s Day Ceremony
Nov. 12: City of Las Cruces Veterans Day Parade
Nov. 11 to 13: Las Cruces International Mariachi Conference, workshops, Student Showcase Spectacular Concert, Mariachi Mass
Nov. 12: El Tratado de La Mesilla Reenactment of 1854 of Gadsden Purchase ratification
Nov. 20: Toys for Kids Motorcycle Parade
Nov. 26 & 27: St. Genevieve Holiday Antique & Craft Show
Dec. 2 to 4: La Casa Holiday Bazaar
Dec. 2 to 18: LCCB Nutcracker
Dec: 2: 8th Annual Trail of Lights Fiesta, City Xmas Tree Lighting
Dec. 9: Mesilla Xmas Tree Lighting
Dec. 10: Fort Selden Luminaria Tour
Dec. 10 to 12: Our Lady of Guadalupe Fiesta at Tortugas & St. Gen, Tortugas “A” Mountain Pilgrimage
Dec. 24: Mesilla Plaza Christmas Eve, Luminarias
Thursday, August 18, 2011
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Harold’s spirit lives and grows
By S. Derrickson Moore
dmoore@lcsun-news.com
LAS CRUCES — Maybe it was writing about the Great American Duck Races that reminded me to bring Harold back to the newsroom last week.
“Harold” is what I christened a long-lived green amigo named in honor of Harold Cousland, our beloved editor-in-chief who departed for that great newsroom in the sky in 2001. He left shortly after rallying us to produce an “extra” edition, just hours after the Sept. 11 attacks, the only such special print edition I’ve seen in my many decades in the news biz — and almost certainly the last, in this era of instant online updates, tweets, texts and social media postings.
He went too soon, at 58, but very likely the way he would have wanted to go, with his boots on, so to speak, watching the news.
Harold, for those of you not lucky enough to get to know him, was a nationally-respected journalist with a steel-trap mind, a penchant for puns, and a dedication to journalism and freedom of the press that made his commitment to the news biz seem more like a vocation than a mere job.
It took at least three memorial services, here and in his native Deming, to make his colleagues feel like he’d had something like a proper send-off. The truth is, we didn’t want to let him go.
With the permission of his next of kin, I kept a small plant that was part of a floral tribute sent to a newsroom in mourning. As I put it in its own little pot of soil, I remembered hearing that a soul needed someplace to perch: a bush, a tree or a rock, as it prepared to depart from its Earth home to the next plain. I think it was a legend from my days in Santa Fe, where Harold and I both had worked with the Santa Fe New Mexican, though at different times.
We first met years later, on the phone in 1994, when I was in Jupiter (Fla., not the planet) and missing New Mexico, and he had become editor of the Sun-News. I’d sent a résumé and a few clips and told him I’d realized I belonged in the land of green chile and racing ducks.
He’d offered me a job before I realized that Harold himself had hatched the Great American Duck Race concept, with a group of fun-loving friends, back in 1980, reportedly over a few beers in a bar in Deming.
Harold’s fiesta has grown into an internationally-renowned institution in the past three decades.
Harold the plant flourished in our window-less, stuffy old newsroom, eventually filling a windowbox container and several annex pots as I pruned and subdivided over the years. Several overflow pots of Harold plant puppies went home with friends and colleagues as the staff expanded and space contracted.
When the presses left the building, the Harold parent plant waned a bit, actually seeming to miss the grungy mist of ubiquitous printers’ ink that lingered in the air for so many years. The plant seemed to perk up as political candidates streamed through for editorial conferences, and during various paint jobs, new carpets and attempted renovations of the old building. I was contemplating yet another root division and soliciting adoptions to good homes just before the January fire.
As we moved to interim digs, “Harold” got lost in the shuffle. A few weeks later, I finally found the sole survivor of what was once a flourishing green family. There were a few pathetic brown-tipped grayish leaves. I took the remains home, repotted with fresh soil and propped the stems up with some of my grandson’s old wooden darts.
And last week I brought a bright green, three-foot-high, happy Harold to our interim newsroom on Idaho Ave.
Practical souls would say it’s the windows. Cynics might cite the hot air and copious CO2 emitted by loquacious journalists. I’ll spare you my own theories and sentiments about the spirit of journalism and undying quests for truth, justice and the American Way … the way it ought to be.
But I’d swear “Harold” has grown half a foot and sprouted new leaves in a couple of days.
S. Derrickson Moore can be reached at dmoore@lcsun-news.com; (575) 541-5450. To share comments, go to www.lcsun-news.com and click on Blogzone and Las Cruces Style.
dmoore@lcsun-news.com
LAS CRUCES — Maybe it was writing about the Great American Duck Races that reminded me to bring Harold back to the newsroom last week.
“Harold” is what I christened a long-lived green amigo named in honor of Harold Cousland, our beloved editor-in-chief who departed for that great newsroom in the sky in 2001. He left shortly after rallying us to produce an “extra” edition, just hours after the Sept. 11 attacks, the only such special print edition I’ve seen in my many decades in the news biz — and almost certainly the last, in this era of instant online updates, tweets, texts and social media postings.
He went too soon, at 58, but very likely the way he would have wanted to go, with his boots on, so to speak, watching the news.
Harold, for those of you not lucky enough to get to know him, was a nationally-respected journalist with a steel-trap mind, a penchant for puns, and a dedication to journalism and freedom of the press that made his commitment to the news biz seem more like a vocation than a mere job.
It took at least three memorial services, here and in his native Deming, to make his colleagues feel like he’d had something like a proper send-off. The truth is, we didn’t want to let him go.
With the permission of his next of kin, I kept a small plant that was part of a floral tribute sent to a newsroom in mourning. As I put it in its own little pot of soil, I remembered hearing that a soul needed someplace to perch: a bush, a tree or a rock, as it prepared to depart from its Earth home to the next plain. I think it was a legend from my days in Santa Fe, where Harold and I both had worked with the Santa Fe New Mexican, though at different times.
We first met years later, on the phone in 1994, when I was in Jupiter (Fla., not the planet) and missing New Mexico, and he had become editor of the Sun-News. I’d sent a résumé and a few clips and told him I’d realized I belonged in the land of green chile and racing ducks.
He’d offered me a job before I realized that Harold himself had hatched the Great American Duck Race concept, with a group of fun-loving friends, back in 1980, reportedly over a few beers in a bar in Deming.
Harold’s fiesta has grown into an internationally-renowned institution in the past three decades.
Harold the plant flourished in our window-less, stuffy old newsroom, eventually filling a windowbox container and several annex pots as I pruned and subdivided over the years. Several overflow pots of Harold plant puppies went home with friends and colleagues as the staff expanded and space contracted.
When the presses left the building, the Harold parent plant waned a bit, actually seeming to miss the grungy mist of ubiquitous printers’ ink that lingered in the air for so many years. The plant seemed to perk up as political candidates streamed through for editorial conferences, and during various paint jobs, new carpets and attempted renovations of the old building. I was contemplating yet another root division and soliciting adoptions to good homes just before the January fire.
As we moved to interim digs, “Harold” got lost in the shuffle. A few weeks later, I finally found the sole survivor of what was once a flourishing green family. There were a few pathetic brown-tipped grayish leaves. I took the remains home, repotted with fresh soil and propped the stems up with some of my grandson’s old wooden darts.
And last week I brought a bright green, three-foot-high, happy Harold to our interim newsroom on Idaho Ave.
Practical souls would say it’s the windows. Cynics might cite the hot air and copious CO2 emitted by loquacious journalists. I’ll spare you my own theories and sentiments about the spirit of journalism and undying quests for truth, justice and the American Way … the way it ought to be.
But I’d swear “Harold” has grown half a foot and sprouted new leaves in a couple of days.
S. Derrickson Moore can be reached at dmoore@lcsun-news.com; (575) 541-5450. To share comments, go to www.lcsun-news.com and click on Blogzone and Las Cruces Style.
Thursday, August 4, 2011
Your chance to be in a movie...
Want to be in the movies? If you’re available, get ready for your potential closeup. Award-winning movie producer, director and screenwriter Rod McCall is looking for men and women to appear in a trailer for his new feature-length comedy “Traveling Salesman.”
Try to look Midwestern. “It’s heavily Anglo, because the story is set in Iowa,” said McCall, who also teaches at NMSU’s Creative Media Institute, which is co-producing the project.
Men only are asked to show up at New Mexico State University’s Activity Center next to the natatorium at Stewart Street and Breland Drive between 7 and 11 p.m. Sunday Aug. 7.
“We’re looking for guys 18 to 60. Wear whatever you wear to work. It’s a town meeting scene,” McCall said.
Women only are asked to report for a shoot from 9:30 to 10:30 a.m. Monday Aug. 8 at the Bosque Bridge, also known as the Mesilla Bridge. Take Calle De Norte 1.7 miles west of Avenida de Mesilla to the bridge on the Rio Grande.
“We’re looking for women 18 to 55. They can wear dresses, or blouses with skirts, jeans or shorts. They will be chasing an ice cream truck across the bridge,” McCall said.
But don’t count on ice cream, or any other pay. Your only reward will be the glory.
“We’re looking for as many people as possible. If you show up, about a half hour before the shoot times, if possible, you’ll be in the trailer,” which will be posted online in about six weeks, McCall said.
Shooting for the actual film is expected to be completed in 2012.
“Becoming Eduardo,” McCall’s recent film shot in Southern New Mexico, has won 11 top awards at film festivals throughout the world.
Try to look Midwestern. “It’s heavily Anglo, because the story is set in Iowa,” said McCall, who also teaches at NMSU’s Creative Media Institute, which is co-producing the project.
Men only are asked to show up at New Mexico State University’s Activity Center next to the natatorium at Stewart Street and Breland Drive between 7 and 11 p.m. Sunday Aug. 7.
“We’re looking for guys 18 to 60. Wear whatever you wear to work. It’s a town meeting scene,” McCall said.
Women only are asked to report for a shoot from 9:30 to 10:30 a.m. Monday Aug. 8 at the Bosque Bridge, also known as the Mesilla Bridge. Take Calle De Norte 1.7 miles west of Avenida de Mesilla to the bridge on the Rio Grande.
“We’re looking for women 18 to 55. They can wear dresses, or blouses with skirts, jeans or shorts. They will be chasing an ice cream truck across the bridge,” McCall said.
But don’t count on ice cream, or any other pay. Your only reward will be the glory.
“We’re looking for as many people as possible. If you show up, about a half hour before the shoot times, if possible, you’ll be in the trailer,” which will be posted online in about six weeks, McCall said.
Shooting for the actual film is expected to be completed in 2012.
“Becoming Eduardo,” McCall’s recent film shot in Southern New Mexico, has won 11 top awards at film festivals throughout the world.
Our nation needs art therapy
LAS CRUCES — It’s a summer to take comfort where you can find it.
“When it all gets to be too much, I just look around my little living room and think, right now, at this moment, things are looking good,” said my daughter-in-law, Shannon, an artistic soul with an knack for beautifying her surroundings on a budget.
I thought about that centering attitude of gratitude and the healing power of artistic expression, as I tried to make sense of summer 2011, which has been filled with angst, sudden change, unrest and horrors, nationally, globally and personally.
For some reason, I keep thinking of 1967, famously known as the Summer of Love to nostalgic ’60s fans. But I also remember, as a journalism major at Michigan State, visiting Detroit and thinking that the city was about to explode. Detroit riots followed soon thereafter; then came a year of national tragedies, assassinations, protests and heartbreaks.
The mood seems similar this agonizing summer, I mused on a recent mid-week drive. Then I made an early morning trip to photograph a unique artistic tribute in progress. Alma d’arte students are deconstructing a dumpster painted by the late Alex Medina and turning it into a bench and memorial that will be part of an inspiring campus project.
“Students, faculty and volunteers are working on an art piece that makes a trash-the-violence statement and we’re thinking about creating a peace garden,” Alma founder Irene Oliver-Lewis said.
There’s something about an artistic, if wistful, homage to peace that can soothe the soul.
Many of our loved ones near and far are struggling with health insurance issues and cutbacks in hours and benefits, and those at or near retirement age are stressed out, too, by the economic uncertainties of this peripatetic summer.
The forces of arrogance and greed, partisan politics and governmental gridlock all seem locked, loaded and committed to summer high noon standoffs in Washington D.C., putting us all through more anxiety.
I was walking through the Downtown Mall grumbling to myself when I spotted Chelsea Melton’s custom license plate: “Stop repeat offenders: Do not re-elect them.” (Read about three generations of creative Melton family members in this week’s Artists of the Week feature on page 4E.)
A laugh at the one-glance solution cheered me up considerably more than wading through all the lengthy treatises I’m getting at home and the office, which include sensible suggestions that we return to our founding philosophy of government by citizen legislators rather than career politicians. Ideas include limiting congressman, senators and even presidents to one term, restricting all legislators to the same Social Security and health plans the rest of us have to cope with (elimination their self-customized platinum versions), strictly prohibiting campaign contributions from exceeding $10 for individuals AND for corporations, and abolishing the U.S. Electoral College in favor of one person, one vote.
Maybe if we could condense such concepts to a few license plates or bumper stickers, we could make progress in this era of information overload.
What I’d really like to do is make survival on minimum wage for six months a requirement for anyone running for office.
But I’d settle for some mandatory activities to channel all that raw energy into creative, rather than destructive, pursuits.
Maybe we should withhold THEIR paychecks until our lawmakers agree to sing “Kumbaya,” (in four-part, or at least two-part harmony). And maybe we should require them to regularly sit down together to make artistic macaroni bracelets, paint cooperative murals or create and fire pottery together without breaking anything or wasting all their art supplies.
Or, better yet, we should demand that they stage an annual bipartisan show to benefit (rather than demoralize) the American public.
In the stressed-out summer of 2011, we all could use an artistic break.
S. Derrickson Moore can be reached at (575) 541-5450
“When it all gets to be too much, I just look around my little living room and think, right now, at this moment, things are looking good,” said my daughter-in-law, Shannon, an artistic soul with an knack for beautifying her surroundings on a budget.
I thought about that centering attitude of gratitude and the healing power of artistic expression, as I tried to make sense of summer 2011, which has been filled with angst, sudden change, unrest and horrors, nationally, globally and personally.
For some reason, I keep thinking of 1967, famously known as the Summer of Love to nostalgic ’60s fans. But I also remember, as a journalism major at Michigan State, visiting Detroit and thinking that the city was about to explode. Detroit riots followed soon thereafter; then came a year of national tragedies, assassinations, protests and heartbreaks.
The mood seems similar this agonizing summer, I mused on a recent mid-week drive. Then I made an early morning trip to photograph a unique artistic tribute in progress. Alma d’arte students are deconstructing a dumpster painted by the late Alex Medina and turning it into a bench and memorial that will be part of an inspiring campus project.
“Students, faculty and volunteers are working on an art piece that makes a trash-the-violence statement and we’re thinking about creating a peace garden,” Alma founder Irene Oliver-Lewis said.
There’s something about an artistic, if wistful, homage to peace that can soothe the soul.
Many of our loved ones near and far are struggling with health insurance issues and cutbacks in hours and benefits, and those at or near retirement age are stressed out, too, by the economic uncertainties of this peripatetic summer.
The forces of arrogance and greed, partisan politics and governmental gridlock all seem locked, loaded and committed to summer high noon standoffs in Washington D.C., putting us all through more anxiety.
I was walking through the Downtown Mall grumbling to myself when I spotted Chelsea Melton’s custom license plate: “Stop repeat offenders: Do not re-elect them.” (Read about three generations of creative Melton family members in this week’s Artists of the Week feature on page 4E.)
A laugh at the one-glance solution cheered me up considerably more than wading through all the lengthy treatises I’m getting at home and the office, which include sensible suggestions that we return to our founding philosophy of government by citizen legislators rather than career politicians. Ideas include limiting congressman, senators and even presidents to one term, restricting all legislators to the same Social Security and health plans the rest of us have to cope with (elimination their self-customized platinum versions), strictly prohibiting campaign contributions from exceeding $10 for individuals AND for corporations, and abolishing the U.S. Electoral College in favor of one person, one vote.
Maybe if we could condense such concepts to a few license plates or bumper stickers, we could make progress in this era of information overload.
What I’d really like to do is make survival on minimum wage for six months a requirement for anyone running for office.
But I’d settle for some mandatory activities to channel all that raw energy into creative, rather than destructive, pursuits.
Maybe we should withhold THEIR paychecks until our lawmakers agree to sing “Kumbaya,” (in four-part, or at least two-part harmony). And maybe we should require them to regularly sit down together to make artistic macaroni bracelets, paint cooperative murals or create and fire pottery together without breaking anything or wasting all their art supplies.
Or, better yet, we should demand that they stage an annual bipartisan show to benefit (rather than demoralize) the American public.
In the stressed-out summer of 2011, we all could use an artistic break.
S. Derrickson Moore can be reached at (575) 541-5450
Thursday, July 21, 2011
In the beginning, there was the word: "Hey!"
By S. Derrickson Moore
dmoore@lcsun-news.com
LAS CRUCES — When did “hey” become the casual greeting of choice? Gradually, it’s been replacing “hello,” “good morning,” “bye” and even “hi.”
When you’ve already greeted someone for the day at the office, for instance, it doesn’t seem appropriate to say “Hi” when you see him or her a few minutes later in the break room, at the water cooler, or strolling off to another meeting. But “hey” always seems okay.
It’s casual, friendly in a noncommittal mode ... a neutral way of acknowledging the presence of another creature in your environment.
It can be the equivalent of a poke on Facebook, when you don’t have the time, energy or inclination for any kind of real communication.
Maybe we need an online “hey” option: something between “poke” and “like,” for people who aren’t willing or ready to commit to liking but feel a little too strongly to leave it at a poke.
Of course, “hey” can offer a lot of room for emotional expansion and self-expression, and it’s all right there in the official Merriam-Webster/Dictionary.com definition for hey: “Used to attract attention, to express surprise, interest, or annoyance, or to elicit agreement.”
Depending on your inflection, “hey” could be a protest, an expression of approval, excitement, even coy seduction.
Of course, without the real-time, face-time, or even the voice inflections or facial expressions in a Skype or phone call, you’ll need some help to get your real message across via e-mail, text or tweet.
If you aren’t into emoticons, you can experiment with punctuation.
Try the alarmed or enthusiastic “Hey!”
Take it to the next level with “Hey!!” Or get extreme with “HEY!!!!!!”
Retreat to shy befuzzlement with “Hey?” Or the even more timid “hey....?”
Go old school with a retro variation on the Fonz’s cool, self-confident, or even flirtatious, “Heeeyyyyy!”
Say “hey” with music: “Hey, Jude,” “Hey, hey, hey” advice to “Mrs. Robinson,” “Hey, Good Lookin’,” “Hey, Soul Sister” or “Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye.”
Of course, some prefer the safety of taking refuge in the neutral DMZ of hey.
But others of us will always be seekers, working to discover where hey came from, probing why hey is here and wondering if it can boldly go where no hey has gone before.
C’mon. Let’s go on a “hey” ride.
Explore international variations. When in Canada, substitute “Eh?”
Legendary Sioux warrior Crazy Horse famously issued the war cry, “Hoka Hey,” which is variously translated by urbandictionary.com as “clear the path,” or “to live life in such as way that one has done all that one should upon one’s last day, so it is indeed a good day to die.”
Do some online research at cool sites like www.ancient-hebrew.org, where you’ll discover hey is the word for a Hebrew letter meaning “behold, look, breath and sigh.” The site even has some graphics (much cooler than emoticons, by the way) showing the evolution of the symbol for the letter hey, which started, in ancient times, with a little stick figure guy with both arms raised. Some mystic traditions have it that “Hey” represents the divine breath, revelation, ancient humanity’s greeting for God, or the word for the God principal itself. Or, given the divine breath concept, maybe it was God’s word in the beginning: a divine greeting and acknowledgment to creation itself.
Maybe it all started with a “hey,” not a big bang.
Hey, it’s something to think about, eh?
S. Derrickson Moore can be reached at dmoore@lcsun-news.com; (575) 541-5450. To share comments, go to www.lcsun-news.com and click on Blogzone and Las Cruces Style.
dmoore@lcsun-news.com
LAS CRUCES — When did “hey” become the casual greeting of choice? Gradually, it’s been replacing “hello,” “good morning,” “bye” and even “hi.”
When you’ve already greeted someone for the day at the office, for instance, it doesn’t seem appropriate to say “Hi” when you see him or her a few minutes later in the break room, at the water cooler, or strolling off to another meeting. But “hey” always seems okay.
It’s casual, friendly in a noncommittal mode ... a neutral way of acknowledging the presence of another creature in your environment.
It can be the equivalent of a poke on Facebook, when you don’t have the time, energy or inclination for any kind of real communication.
Maybe we need an online “hey” option: something between “poke” and “like,” for people who aren’t willing or ready to commit to liking but feel a little too strongly to leave it at a poke.
Of course, “hey” can offer a lot of room for emotional expansion and self-expression, and it’s all right there in the official Merriam-Webster/Dictionary.com definition for hey: “Used to attract attention, to express surprise, interest, or annoyance, or to elicit agreement.”
Depending on your inflection, “hey” could be a protest, an expression of approval, excitement, even coy seduction.
Of course, without the real-time, face-time, or even the voice inflections or facial expressions in a Skype or phone call, you’ll need some help to get your real message across via e-mail, text or tweet.
If you aren’t into emoticons, you can experiment with punctuation.
Try the alarmed or enthusiastic “Hey!”
Take it to the next level with “Hey!!” Or get extreme with “HEY!!!!!!”
Retreat to shy befuzzlement with “Hey?” Or the even more timid “hey....?”
Go old school with a retro variation on the Fonz’s cool, self-confident, or even flirtatious, “Heeeyyyyy!”
Say “hey” with music: “Hey, Jude,” “Hey, hey, hey” advice to “Mrs. Robinson,” “Hey, Good Lookin’,” “Hey, Soul Sister” or “Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye.”
Of course, some prefer the safety of taking refuge in the neutral DMZ of hey.
But others of us will always be seekers, working to discover where hey came from, probing why hey is here and wondering if it can boldly go where no hey has gone before.
C’mon. Let’s go on a “hey” ride.
Explore international variations. When in Canada, substitute “Eh?”
Legendary Sioux warrior Crazy Horse famously issued the war cry, “Hoka Hey,” which is variously translated by urbandictionary.com as “clear the path,” or “to live life in such as way that one has done all that one should upon one’s last day, so it is indeed a good day to die.”
Do some online research at cool sites like www.ancient-hebrew.org, where you’ll discover hey is the word for a Hebrew letter meaning “behold, look, breath and sigh.” The site even has some graphics (much cooler than emoticons, by the way) showing the evolution of the symbol for the letter hey, which started, in ancient times, with a little stick figure guy with both arms raised. Some mystic traditions have it that “Hey” represents the divine breath, revelation, ancient humanity’s greeting for God, or the word for the God principal itself. Or, given the divine breath concept, maybe it was God’s word in the beginning: a divine greeting and acknowledgment to creation itself.
Maybe it all started with a “hey,” not a big bang.
Hey, it’s something to think about, eh?
S. Derrickson Moore can be reached at dmoore@lcsun-news.com; (575) 541-5450. To share comments, go to www.lcsun-news.com and click on Blogzone and Las Cruces Style.
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Plaza spirit nurtures friendships
LAS CRUCES and MESILLA — Maybe it comes with finally finding your querencia, that wonderful word that represents, to me, more than just a special place: it’s a kind of soulmate relationship between a person and the spot that feels like home.
After visiting and living in a lot of places around the planet, I’ve realized that there are cities, towns and villages that can become good friends, and I feel lucky to have found two amigos of a lifetime right here in querencia territory.
Two of my best buds are Las Cruces and Mesilla. Like all BFFs, they have hearts of gold — in this case, Mesilla Plaza and the Downtown Mall.
And like other loved ones, I miss them if we don’t keep in touch, I realized one recent Wednesday when I drove over to the Las Cruces Farmers & Crafts Market. The corazon of LC and I used to get together pretty much every week when it was a block’s walk from the Sun-News building. Our post-fire interim headquarters at 715 E. Idaho Ave. isn’t really that far away, but there’s still that little heartache of separation you feel when you, or a loved one, moves out of the 'hood.
Meandering through Mesilla last Friday, it struck me again that weekends and market days are particularly good times to have heart-to-hearts with my amigos.
And here the heart analogy stretches, because the hearts of my best city friends are densely populated with the human friends I always seem to encounter there. Old friends. New friends. Friends-in-development. Friends I’d like to know better. Even, rewarding experience has taught me, as-yet-unmet potential friends.
There’s something about New Mexico plazas that makes them unlike any other place on Earth, not even the European plazas that inspired them.
There is a mixture of native Pueblo style and profoundly bonded community, a touch of Wild West adventure, high-desert hospitality and a spirit of All-American melting pot democratic camaraderie.
I noticed it decades ago on my first visit to New Mexico, when I first discovered the plazas of old town Albuquerque and downtown Carlsbad.
The same spirit pervades the corazons of tiny Tularosa, artistic Taos and even otherwise-sometimes-snooty Santa Fe.
Locals — and quickly-acclimated tourists and visitors — make eye contact, smile and greet strangers. Maybe we paid our dues with those legendary high noon shoot-outs long ago. Now, casual acquaintances and even those in awkward or hostile relationships tend to greet one another as friends, at least for the space of an encounter in a plaza DMZ.
That spirit holds whether you’re dancing through a full-tilt fiesta or enjoying a solitary solo amble through an almost-deserted plaza at dawn or dusk.
Plaza spirit makes us sensitive; even psychic. We’ll generally acknowledge one another with a cordial nod or wave, and maybe stop you for a friendly chat, if the mood is right. But we’ll also sense it if you’re savoring alone time, and let you walk on, undisturbed.
For most of us, (those of us who don’t have to plant, clean, decorate and renovate them — and mil gracias, you all, for tending our corazons) plazas are low maintenance, loyal and rewarding. And so, it seems to me, are the friendships we form and nurture there.
It's easy, on a Farmers Market Saturday morning or a Mesilla Plaza Sunday afternoon, to meet, greet and catch up with dozens of friends, share a bit of news, a sympathetic hug, a congratulatory pat on the back, a beso, a handshake … and then stroll on, all in the space of a few moments. Or discover a long-lost amigo and join forces for an impromptu drink or meal that turns into a reunion that lasts for hours.
You can continue an ongoing conversation, mend a misunderstanding, share a dance, make a plan, start a life-changing collaboration or —¿quien sabe? — maybe even fall in love.
Miracles big and small … anything and everything seems possible in the milagro spirit of a New Mexico plaza, which waxes strong from sultry summers to frosty piñon-scented winters, especially in my querencia favorites: Mesilla and Las Cruces.
S. Derrickson Moore can be reached at dmoore@lcsun-news.com; (575) 541-5450. To share comments, go to www.lcsun-news.com and click on Blogzone and Las Cruces Style.
After visiting and living in a lot of places around the planet, I’ve realized that there are cities, towns and villages that can become good friends, and I feel lucky to have found two amigos of a lifetime right here in querencia territory.
Two of my best buds are Las Cruces and Mesilla. Like all BFFs, they have hearts of gold — in this case, Mesilla Plaza and the Downtown Mall.
And like other loved ones, I miss them if we don’t keep in touch, I realized one recent Wednesday when I drove over to the Las Cruces Farmers & Crafts Market. The corazon of LC and I used to get together pretty much every week when it was a block’s walk from the Sun-News building. Our post-fire interim headquarters at 715 E. Idaho Ave. isn’t really that far away, but there’s still that little heartache of separation you feel when you, or a loved one, moves out of the 'hood.
Meandering through Mesilla last Friday, it struck me again that weekends and market days are particularly good times to have heart-to-hearts with my amigos.
And here the heart analogy stretches, because the hearts of my best city friends are densely populated with the human friends I always seem to encounter there. Old friends. New friends. Friends-in-development. Friends I’d like to know better. Even, rewarding experience has taught me, as-yet-unmet potential friends.
There’s something about New Mexico plazas that makes them unlike any other place on Earth, not even the European plazas that inspired them.
There is a mixture of native Pueblo style and profoundly bonded community, a touch of Wild West adventure, high-desert hospitality and a spirit of All-American melting pot democratic camaraderie.
I noticed it decades ago on my first visit to New Mexico, when I first discovered the plazas of old town Albuquerque and downtown Carlsbad.
The same spirit pervades the corazons of tiny Tularosa, artistic Taos and even otherwise-sometimes-snooty Santa Fe.
Locals — and quickly-acclimated tourists and visitors — make eye contact, smile and greet strangers. Maybe we paid our dues with those legendary high noon shoot-outs long ago. Now, casual acquaintances and even those in awkward or hostile relationships tend to greet one another as friends, at least for the space of an encounter in a plaza DMZ.
That spirit holds whether you’re dancing through a full-tilt fiesta or enjoying a solitary solo amble through an almost-deserted plaza at dawn or dusk.
Plaza spirit makes us sensitive; even psychic. We’ll generally acknowledge one another with a cordial nod or wave, and maybe stop you for a friendly chat, if the mood is right. But we’ll also sense it if you’re savoring alone time, and let you walk on, undisturbed.
For most of us, (those of us who don’t have to plant, clean, decorate and renovate them — and mil gracias, you all, for tending our corazons) plazas are low maintenance, loyal and rewarding. And so, it seems to me, are the friendships we form and nurture there.
It's easy, on a Farmers Market Saturday morning or a Mesilla Plaza Sunday afternoon, to meet, greet and catch up with dozens of friends, share a bit of news, a sympathetic hug, a congratulatory pat on the back, a beso, a handshake … and then stroll on, all in the space of a few moments. Or discover a long-lost amigo and join forces for an impromptu drink or meal that turns into a reunion that lasts for hours.
You can continue an ongoing conversation, mend a misunderstanding, share a dance, make a plan, start a life-changing collaboration or —¿quien sabe? — maybe even fall in love.
Miracles big and small … anything and everything seems possible in the milagro spirit of a New Mexico plaza, which waxes strong from sultry summers to frosty piñon-scented winters, especially in my querencia favorites: Mesilla and Las Cruces.
S. Derrickson Moore can be reached at dmoore@lcsun-news.com; (575) 541-5450. To share comments, go to www.lcsun-news.com and click on Blogzone and Las Cruces Style.
Thursday, July 7, 2011
Waiting to sing in the rain...
By S. Derrickson Moore
dmoore@lcsun-news.com
LAS CRUCES — I’ve been looking into fun things to do in the summertime for all ages and I’ve been wondering if good times are really all that different for different generations in different climates.
From my earliest Michigan toddler memories to a high school summer in Europe as an exchange student near the north Atlantic coast, it seems that most of my most vivid summer memories involve bodies of water.
First steps into Lake Michigan. Building sandcastles with my mom and dad. Camping on rivers and lakes.
There were canoe trips with my maternal grandfather on the AuSable River, and never-quite-long-enough summer weeks spent with my cousins at my grandparents’ cabin, at the heart of what was once their resort on Lake Margrethe in Michigan.
But there was no way we were roughing it. Grandma served us gourmet goodies with her china, silver and good crystal at hand. It was a log cabin, but a log cabin with a living room big enough for mom’s baby grand piano, which we happily noodled around when we weren’t sailing, swimming, canoeing, waterskiing, fishing and hiking.
And sunbathing. There was lots of that in the days before mandatory SPF basting. Summer wasn’t really summer until you’d gotten your first sunburn, soothed with a menthol haze of Noxema from grandma’s elegant dressing table.
At home or on vacation, when you grow up in Michigan, it all happens around the water. First kisses at lakeside dances. Flirting with cute guys at high noon, and, if things worked out, long walks on moonlit shores, cuddling on blankets and beach towels with our amigos by driftwood bonfires, or sneaking off for a little more privacy in dunes nearly as bright as White Sands’ crystalline hills.
Parents seemed as drawn to the water as the kids. Before we acquired our own riverside land, my folks would gather all three kids and set up camp on the shores of Lake Michigan for a few weeks each summer. We pitched a tent and slept in sleeping bags on bales of hay.
Our parents made occasional runs to our house for clothes and groceries. Dad commuted to work during the week. Each evening he came “home,” pitched his suitcoat over a tent post, changed into his bathing trunks and joined us for a dip in Lake Michigan before he and mom threw dinner on the grill.
Judging from the crowds at the Rio Grande River races, at Elephant Butte and local swimming pools, I’m guessing that kids everywhere have the same return-to-the-water summertime instincts, even in high desert country — and especially in hot, fiery drought years like this.
It’s not surprising that “Singin’ in the Rain,” one of the world’s greatest love songs to water, was composed by a guy from our territory, Nacio Herb Brown, who was born in Deming.
The long-awaited monsoons are our summer fun water source — and lifeline.
We’ve spent a lot of months praying for rain and at last we’re getting a few drizzles. When the big rains finally come, I’ll be out there singing, and dancing, too.
S. Derrickson Moore can be reached at dmoore@lcsun-news.com; (575) 541-5450.
dmoore@lcsun-news.com
LAS CRUCES — I’ve been looking into fun things to do in the summertime for all ages and I’ve been wondering if good times are really all that different for different generations in different climates.
From my earliest Michigan toddler memories to a high school summer in Europe as an exchange student near the north Atlantic coast, it seems that most of my most vivid summer memories involve bodies of water.
First steps into Lake Michigan. Building sandcastles with my mom and dad. Camping on rivers and lakes.
There were canoe trips with my maternal grandfather on the AuSable River, and never-quite-long-enough summer weeks spent with my cousins at my grandparents’ cabin, at the heart of what was once their resort on Lake Margrethe in Michigan.
But there was no way we were roughing it. Grandma served us gourmet goodies with her china, silver and good crystal at hand. It was a log cabin, but a log cabin with a living room big enough for mom’s baby grand piano, which we happily noodled around when we weren’t sailing, swimming, canoeing, waterskiing, fishing and hiking.
And sunbathing. There was lots of that in the days before mandatory SPF basting. Summer wasn’t really summer until you’d gotten your first sunburn, soothed with a menthol haze of Noxema from grandma’s elegant dressing table.
At home or on vacation, when you grow up in Michigan, it all happens around the water. First kisses at lakeside dances. Flirting with cute guys at high noon, and, if things worked out, long walks on moonlit shores, cuddling on blankets and beach towels with our amigos by driftwood bonfires, or sneaking off for a little more privacy in dunes nearly as bright as White Sands’ crystalline hills.
Parents seemed as drawn to the water as the kids. Before we acquired our own riverside land, my folks would gather all three kids and set up camp on the shores of Lake Michigan for a few weeks each summer. We pitched a tent and slept in sleeping bags on bales of hay.
Our parents made occasional runs to our house for clothes and groceries. Dad commuted to work during the week. Each evening he came “home,” pitched his suitcoat over a tent post, changed into his bathing trunks and joined us for a dip in Lake Michigan before he and mom threw dinner on the grill.
Judging from the crowds at the Rio Grande River races, at Elephant Butte and local swimming pools, I’m guessing that kids everywhere have the same return-to-the-water summertime instincts, even in high desert country — and especially in hot, fiery drought years like this.
It’s not surprising that “Singin’ in the Rain,” one of the world’s greatest love songs to water, was composed by a guy from our territory, Nacio Herb Brown, who was born in Deming.
The long-awaited monsoons are our summer fun water source — and lifeline.
We’ve spent a lot of months praying for rain and at last we’re getting a few drizzles. When the big rains finally come, I’ll be out there singing, and dancing, too.
S. Derrickson Moore can be reached at dmoore@lcsun-news.com; (575) 541-5450.
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