Author Archives: Patrick Lamb

During the 1999 New Mexico Legislature, a resolution was proposed to give New Mexico an “official state question.” I remember hearing an interview on National Public Radio with the late Sen. Ben Lujan, father of our current U.S. Senator Ben Ray Lujan, explaining why the question “Red or Green” was important to the state. TheContinue reading “It was a pretty good question…”

Every spring/early summer, the New Mexico State University experimental garden just down the street from our house sells various plants that they have perfected/raised from seed and put in planting containers for sale to the public. This year, I bought three medium heat chile plants and two Big Jim chile plants to put in ourContinue reading “Chile confidential…”

Yeah, I know almost every one of you readers has cute grandkid stories. But bear with me on this one — it’s about what a class of pre-kindergarten kids had to say after one full week in school. Last week, students in my youngest grandson’s class were learning about each other and the families ofContinue reading “Pre-K perspectives…”

An adult black bear, apparently thinking it needed to cool off during the summer of 2005, wandered into the lobby of a Holiday Inn in Raton. It walked past a terrified front desk clerk, then ambled down the hallway to the swimming pool area. While taking a dip in the pool, the New Mexico GameContinue reading “Raton is a great place… especially if you’re a bear.”

Three stories I dug up in the 2013 Albuquerque Journal had explosive topics. In the first, officers were called to Conchas Lake State Park in northeastern New Mexico to investigate a loud explosion, followed by a plume of black smoke. The culprit? It was a portable outdoor toilet whose contents — likely a mass ofContinue reading “2013 was an explosive year…”

It was late spring 1963. School would be out for the summer in a couple of weeks and many students had probably mentally checked out for the rest of the school term. A group of young kids,  friends who were probably feeling their independence growing, were wandering through the Mesilla Park neighborhood on this warmContinue reading “History in concrete…”

People who have lived in New Mexico a while are always a bit amused and annoyed when they see maps, postcards and other kitsch showing a saguaro cactus in the state. Many years ago, at a tacky curio shop I ventured into during a gas stop, I found a kitchen magnet in the shape ofContinue reading “Maybe it got lost…”

My first reaction to a story in last week’s Albuquerque Journal was, how do you manage to lose track of this much stuff? The story involved the loss of $2 million in ball bearings from White Sands Missile Range. The missing ball bearings, which officials said weighed about 230,000 pounds or 115 tons, ended upContinue reading “Missing metal…”

I ran across an interesting article in my BMW Car Club of America magazine,  Roundel, regarding car ownership and vehicle dependency rates by state. A car shopping website called Co-Pilot, lists the top ten states in terms of number of cars owned per person, along with other statistics. New Mexico ends up being ninth onContinue reading “Why New Mexico might be on this top ten list…”

I was skimming through the day’s top news stories on the internet last week when I came across this surprising headline from Reuters: “New Mexican vigilante group’s sympathizers set fire to government offices, businesses.” As you might expect, I was rather stunned to read this news about our state and wondered where the burning ofContinue reading “Headline headaches…”

Two years ago today, a surgeon stitched a pig heart valve into my heart to replace a  recalcitrant aortic valve that hiccupped along for more years than it should have lasted. I’m still doing fine, maybe slowing down a bit, but that’s probably just age related. All of us Boomers feel like we’ll never getContinue reading “Two years and oinking along…”

While DNA has become an investigator’s best tool to capture criminals in recent years, an armed robbery case reported in Artesia earlier this summer proves that just careful observation can be just as effective. When masked man walked into a bank branch in Artesia on July 15 and handed a teller a grammatically incorrect noteContinue reading “As Steven Tyler of Aerosmith would say, “Walk this Way…””

A headline in Saturday’s Albuquerque Journal announced that “Rains ease New Mexico’s short-term drought.” That’s really great news. I recall last year’s monsoon season was almost non-existent. This year’s summer rainy season began in late June when more than two inches fell at our house during a two week period. The rains have continued since,Continue reading “What a good monsoon season can do…”

This week in Albuquerque, police spotted something unusual. It was a personal watercraft zipping around in loops in the Rio Grande somewhere in the North Valley.   What was unusual, however, was that there was no rider on the watercraft as it sputtered around in its circle. Police immediately began a search for the missingContinue reading “Hunting for its rider…”