Author Archives: Patrick Lamb

My good friend David and I went fly fishing last week on private water in the Sacramento Mountains. It was the first time he had been fishing since he had heart surgery last fall and he managed to catch a nice fat rainbow to make his trip extra special. I caught only a couple ofContinue reading “He left it out there somewhere…”

Last week’s spectacular explosion of Elon Musk’s SpaceX rocket was described by company officials as a “rapid unscheduled disassembly.” Wow, what a creative way to explain a disaster. But Musk apparently saw the failure as a way to learn more about how to prevent a future multi-million dollar fireworks display. It was Thomas Edison, whoContinue reading “What we really wanted to say…”

Yesterday at our church, St. James’ Episcopal, a group of ten persons showed up unexpectedly. They were sitting on a rock wall while we were preparing for our monthly Vestry (church board) meeting. The group, consisting of six children and four adults, were migrants/refugees from Venezuela. Their only possessions were carried in paper Wal-Mart shoppingContinue reading “Far from home…”

I was once asked where I would eat my last three meals — breakfast, lunch and dinner — if I had one day left on the planet. My choice for breakfast was Andre’s in Aspen, where my wife and I used to go each fall when we were newlyweds. It was a prototype of theContinue reading “Shrinksizing and Jesus…”

The Albuquerque Journal last week reported that city officials admitted that a section of Third Street in the city’s downtown area had been transmogrified with errant lane stripes. The city said a routine paint job to delineate lanes on the road had been botched and ended up creating angle parking spaces on the road. TheContinue reading “Tripped Up Over Stripes…”

Our rambunctious goldendoodle, Chester, discovered another way to amuse us last week. I had just mowed our back yard and because I had let my tall fescue grow too high. When I mowed, there was a lot of bright green mulch scattered about in certain areas. Chester has rolled in some awful stuff in theContinue reading “He missed St. Patrick’s Day by about a month…”

You’ve probably been reading or hearing a lot lately about the New Mexico Legislature’s designation of roasting green and red chile as the official aroma of our state. The legislation drew criticism from some who said our lawmakers needed to focus on more important issues than the odiferous offering that seems to be unique inContinue reading “Officially, official New Mexico stuff…”

No, not our wedding anniversary. That was 51 years ago on Feb. 13, 1971. This anniversary was March 30, 1982, when the Space Shuttle Columbia landed at what was then called Northrup Strip on White Sands Missile Range, virtually in our back yard here in southern New Mexico. Columbia, which began its mission on MarchContinue reading “A 40th anniversary I missed a year ago…”

I read with sadness last week that Chevrolet was planning to end production of the Camaro, introduced in 1966 to combat Ford’s wildly successful Mustang. That car, as well as the Mustang and many other followers, fueled the desire of young men to look cool in a sporty but relatively inexpensive set of wheels. IContinue reading “The end of many young men’s dreams…”

But first things first, my good friend Don in Montana spotted another error in my writing. And to make it worse, it was in an article about how careful we need to be with writing style. I apparently inserted a semi-colon in place of an apostrophe in the word “it’s.” I blame my fat fingersContinue reading “Being handsome and sartorial wasn’t enough to save him…”

As a former journalist, I pride myself on proper spelling, being grammatically correct and being consistent in my writing style. In my more than 50 years as a journalist, the United Press International Stylebook was THE proper way of writing. It;s my writing Bible, so to speak. For example, it says to always spell outContinue reading “A correction and an observation…”

A couple of quick updates. First, my good friend Don in Montana sent me an update about plans to auction off Elvis Presley’s private jet that had been left on the tarmac for years at the Roswell Industrial Air Center (old Walker Air Force Base). The plane, complete with a red velvet interior, was aContinue reading “Elvis and the chihuahuas…”

I’ll bet that many of you remember 5th or 6th grade geography class, in which we had to remember the names of each state capitol. Montpelier, Vermont, always stood out in my mind, for some obscure reason. So when it came to Arizona, it was always easy to remember Phoenix as the capitol because itContinue reading “Mesilla, Arizona???”

I’ve been driving past this place in Las Cruces Several years. It was the location of Church’s Chicken franchise which apparently did not do well in our city, perhaps because of its location on a busy one-way street, and was forced to close because of limited business. (Truth be told, I ate there one timeContinue reading “Stating the obvious…”