Author Archives: Patrick Lamb

My wife, Margo, was walking our dog Chester last week when she came upon a Little League practice in a park near our home. There were two teams, one practicing shagging flies and the other working on batting. The one working on catching fly balls needed to hone their skills a bit, she observed. “TheyContinue reading “Thoughts on Little League…”

You’ve probably been reading a lot lately about Artificial Intelligence and the dangers that some scientists, politicians and others think it poses for the human race and the planet. My wife ran across something last week that adds some fuel to those concerns. It was on a website called travlers.com (you should be able toContinue reading “What do we look like ???”

You might recall that a good friend of mine was enraged several years ago when he read a New Mexico State Highway Department sign warning vehicles pulling “trailors” to reduce their speed along a section of Interstate 25 north of T or C. He fired off a letter to the authorities — maybe even theContinue reading “Signs of the times…”

Marijuana dispensaries. Last week, when I went to pick up a pizza, I discovered two more new cannabis dispensaries that I had not seen two weeks earlier. I went online and asked for “cannabis dispensaries near me” and found at least 30 of them in the immediate Las Cruces area. I don’t think the mapContinue reading “Soon to overtake Mexican food restaurants as the most prolific business Las Cruces …”

I just looked up online how many times the average human heart beats in a day. The number I got from two sources as 100,000. When you load all of those into a year, it totals around 35 million. Luckily for me, the faithful pig valve inserted into my heart five years ago on TuesdayContinue reading “Another 35 million oinks…”

In our neighborhood, especially during their two-month mating season in February and March, we’re always cautious about the presence of skunks when we let our dog Chester out in the back yard in the early morning or at night. Yes, he’s been spritzed once, but the second time he saw a skunk he backed offContinue reading “Keeping a closer eye on my back door…”

I was watching an auto auction show on television last week , mostly because there was nothing else interesting on and because it was still too hot to do much outdoors. During the show, a Chevrolet dealership somewhere in New York, ran an ad boasting that they sold more Corvettes than any other dealership inContinue reading “They still don’t know much about us…”

An interesting article in the Albuquerque Journal last week told the story of an Albuquerque man who had recently celebrated his 100th birthday and claimed that drinking a can of Coors Banquet beer each day was the key to his longevity. When Coors heard about Robert Nolen, Jr.’s, accomplishment, the company sent him three casesContinue reading “The bane of bad restaurants…”

You’ve probably heard the old adage that “it’s hot enough to fry an egg on the street.” Well, here’s a new twist. This week, I read online about a couple of staff members from an Albuquerque television station who wanted to determine if, during our current heat wave, there was enough heat to cook aContinue reading “Cutting edge investigative journalism by yours truly…”

During my career as a journalist for United Press International in the 1970s, one topic that I wrote about many times was the joint effort by the states of New Mexico and Colorado to acquire the old Denver and Rio Grande Western narrow-gauge railroad between Antonito, CO and Chama NM. It was an almost impossibleContinue reading “The little engine that could…”

My regular blog posting has been interrupted by a long-planned 50th anniversary vacation with family and the subsequent grandparent collapse after being flogged by our four grandchildren for several days. The 50th anniversary was supposed to happen two years ago, but Covid and other complications delayed it until this summer. We went to Durango, CO,Continue reading “Recovering…”

Most of us remember the phrase “Iron Curtain” from the cold war era to describe the Soviet Union’s shunning of the rest of Europe and the West. And of course there was the “Steel Curtain” to describe the Pittsburgh Steelers crushing defensive line during the 1970s. I’ve discovered a new take on seemingly rigid andContinue reading “All in all, you’re just another brick in the wall (or window)…”

Our neighboring city to the south, El Paso, had a couple of interesting food-related incidents last week. On Friday, an 18-wheeler loaded with thousands of gallons of Tabasco sauce in large containers suddenly sprung a leak on Interstate 10 in the central part of the city. The problem was discovered when the truck started spewingContinue reading “An ice cream and Tabasco fiasco…”

My blog on Sunday focused on the new book “50 Pies, 50 States.” The book, by author Stacy Mei Yan Fong, focuses on pies which she felt were appropriate for each state based on history, locally sourced ingredients, state culture and other factors. The New Mexico pie, as I mentioned, looked rather unappetizing. It hadContinue reading “Journalistic integrity and the Montana pie…”