Author Archives: Patrick Lamb

During World War II, Britons dubbed the German VI rocket that terrorized London as the “Doodlebug.” It alerted residents of its approach with an annoying pulsing buzzing sound from its primitive rocket motor, then became silent when the engine quit over the city and then after a few moments exploded when it crashed randomly aroundContinue reading “More than you wanted to know about doodlebugs…”

Anyone who’s been in New Mexico for a while knows about the burning of Zozobra, the effigy portraying gloom and doom that is torched every year around Labor Day during the Santa Fe Fiesta. The burning of Zozbra began in 1924 when Santa Fe artist Will Shuster decided to have a private Fiesta party inContinue reading “I guess I should have notified NTSB every time I flew…”

There was a sad story in the Albuquerque Journal last week about a young man from the Boston area who had died from ingesting too much capsicum in chile extract from participating in a “One Chip Challenge” that was circulating on social media. The story noted that the young man had a congenital heart defectContinue reading “Don’t think you can ever get enough of that great New Mexico chile? Think again…”

I’m easily entertained by people watching at airports when I’m waiting for a plane. I wonder why people are traveling, what their lives might be like and who they might vote for in the upcoming elections. (Actually, I don’t think you can guess that by mere appearance, given my experience as a voter registration clerkContinue reading “She shouldn’t be a fashion accessory…”

My wife and I have become fans of the “Father Brown” mystery series on Brit Box. A meddling Catholic priest in the mythical town of Kembleford in the Cotswold region of England is an amateur sleuth who always manages to upstage the local police in their investigations of murders in the otherwise tranquil British countryside.Continue reading “Cars eliminating human jobs…”

Imagine you come to self awareness and realize you are a rainbow trout in a 55-gallon glass prison cell. You constantly bump up against the clear walls that surround you and you endure the endless sound of buzzing machines pumping water. Each day, at least 100 scary animals, mostly small humans, peer at you quizzicallyContinue reading “The White Mountain 13 have been freed!!!”

Imagine that you’re cruising down Interstate 10 in southern New Mexico. It’s getting close to lunchtime and your Tesla’s charge is getting low. On your car’s navigation screen, a Tesla charging location pops up on the next exit in Las Cruces. You take the exit and there it is — “The Roasted Rooster” with aboutContinue reading “Would you like a doobie with those overalls?”

Warning: This blog may be as close to a political statement as I have made in my four years of writing at Aero-Cordero.com. You are welcome to click out if you don’t want to read it. If you try to get information about how to contact a local newsroom of the Ruidoso News — theContinue reading “Heeding Thomas Jefferson…”

You may recall my earlier high-level journalistic investigations into the smuggling of Mexican bologna into the state. This was prompted by stories that the processed meat from Mexico was being transported across the state’s southern border inside spare tires, beneath car seats and intermingled with underwear in suitcases. Well now the smuggling game has takenContinue reading “Would you like some special sauce with that burger?”

You may recall that last fall, we traveled to Corona, NM, watched the sun’s corona emerge from the edges of an annular eclipse and drank a Corona beer to celebrate. And on the way back, our good friends who rode with us to experience the astronomical phenomena started coming down with a case of theContinue reading “Eclipse, V 2.0…”

In the late 1970s, General Motors was caught in the act of putting Chevrolet V8 motors into other models in the GM lineup — Oldsmobile in particular. The swap was discovered when a Chicago man went to the dealership and was told by his mechanic that a part that had been ordered for his OldsContinue reading “Instead of an oink, a moo…”

While the Coronavirus has claimed an estimated 7 million lives around the world since it first appeared in early 2020, it was nothing compared to the plague epidemic which gripped Europe and northern Africa from 1346 to 1353. Estimates are that between 25 and 50 million people died during the plague, also known as theContinue reading ““Black Death” in New Mexico”

The headline below appeared in the 1966 Albuquerque Journal following the November general election. For years, New Mexico’s Rio Arriba County has been tagged as the election irregularity poster child, most notably during the tenure of long-time political boss Emilio Naranjo. Naranjo, who died in 2008 at the age of 92, was a true politicalContinue reading “Emilio Naranjo is turning over in his grave…”