By now, you’ve probably figured out that I’m writing about Pluto. Specifically the object orbiting our solar system that was discovered by New Mexico State University Astronomy Professor Clyde W. Tombaugh. It was first declared to be the ninth planet when discovered in 1930, then in 2006 the International Astronomical Union dumbed it down and declared it just a lowly dwarf planet.

There was much controversy about that when it happened. Al Tombaugh, Clyde Tombaugh’s son who I worked with for many years in my career in banking, led a protest around the NMSU campus when the demotion occurred, carrying signs and chanting “size doesn’t matter — it’s a real planet.” The effort to return the object’s status to a planet was unsuccessful, however.

Actually, it kind of looks like a planet to me. It’s spherical in shape, has five moons and orbits the sun. The orbit, however, is huge, tilted away from other planets’ orbits and is elliptical. It takes 248 earth years to complete a full orbit of the sun. At one point in its orbit, it passes closer to the sun than Neptune.

Tombaugh, who at one time lived in a house just two blocks south of our home in Mesilla Park, made a methodical search at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, AZ , for a suspected ninth planet in the solar system. Percival Lowell, after whom the Flagstaff observatory was named, had concluded that a “Planet X” existed because of the interference of some object on the orbit of the planets Uranus and Neptune. He died before he could find it, but Tombaugh persevered and identified it on Feb. 18, 1930.

I think I might have met Tombaugh in person a time or two. What I do remember is him slowly driving around our neighborhood at an age where he probably shouldn’t still be driving any more, hunched over the steering wheel of a battered brown Toyota pickup.

Tombaugh didn’t name the planet Pluto, which is the name of the Greek God of the Underworld. That was decided by the Lowell Observatory, which first considered Minerva and then Cronus, but then settled on Pluto because of its connection to other Greek gods who had been namesakes for other planets in our solar system.

The name Pluto also came to be associated with a Walt Disney character, a non-anthropomorphic mixed breed dog with short yellow hair, black ears and expressive eyes. He is Mickey Mouse’s pet.

Created by Disney and animator Norm Ferguson, Pluto had appeared in three films before he was given his current name in a feature called “Moose Hunt” in 1931. There was speculation that the name was adopted because of the extensive publicity surrounding the recent discovery of ninth planet. But one Disney animator named Ben Sharpsteen remembered it this way:

“We thought the name [Rover] was too common, so we had to look for something else. … We changed it to Pluto the Pup … but I don’t honestly remember why.”

Another person in the Disney studios said they thought Walt Disney himself once had a dog named Pluto and selected the name because of that.

What triggered all my rambling about Pluto was my accidental discovery of the map below on a neighborhood internet bulletin board:

Yes, that’s New Mexico highlighted in purple, which still strongly believes that Pluto is a real planet. I have no idea why Illinois is conflicted about the issue when the rest of the 48 states appear to have gotten over the demotion of New Mexico’s favorite celestial body. And I have no idea where the map above originated and how that information was gathered. I do suspect that it is correct, however, knowing how passionate we New Mexicans seem to get over such seemingly esoteric things as:

1. Why did Aliens choose New Mexico for their first (botched) landing on Earth?
2. Why do we think a paper bags, sand and candles make good Christmas decorations?
3. Who makes the best green chile cheeseburger in the state?

A significant member of my family and a friend recently commented that they thought some of my recent blogs have been too long. Point taken. Hope you enjoyed this one.

And other odds and ends…

First, a couple of updates.

The woman in Albuquerque who lost her pet cockatiel is still advertising periodically in the Albuquerque Journal for the bird’s return. As mentioned in a previous blog, she used an “animal communicator” to determine that the bird is still alive and was rescued by someone else after it flew away from her house several months ago. She apparently remains hopeful that the “someone else” will eventually feel guilty and return the bird.

And on another note, the Village of Chama continues to receive a minimum .01 precipitation every day, according to records furnished by the National Weather Service and published daily in the Albuquerque Journal. That’s even on days when there is not a cloud in the sky anywhere in New Mexico. I called the National Weather Service office in Albuquerque about a year ago to ask whether the .01 daily precipitation recording was the result of some equipment malfunction at the local weather data collection point in Chama. I was assured that it probably was a problem with the equipment and that it would be corrected soon. But the daily report still doesn’t change, unless the northern New Mexico town actually picks up some real precipitation like it did today at .15 of an inch (likely .14 of an inch but with a gratuitous .01 added.) Yes, I know, no one else but me cares about this.

Moving on to steam, an advertisement in the Journal last week said Laguna Pueblo schools were seeking applicants for a “Steam Teacher.” I’m pretty sure they meant STEAM (All caps for Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics) but at first glance I thought maybe they were looking for someone to teach plumbing or pipefitting.

Regarding Cheetos, a recent article by the Associated Press said that an accidentally dropped a bag of Cheetos in Carlsbad Caverns was a source of great concern for Park Rangers. Rangers said that the the unique moist and cool environment triggered a growth of mold on the cavern floor and on nearby cave formations.

“To the ecosystem of the cave, it had a huge impact,” the Park noted on its social media post. It said cave crickets, mites spiders and flies organized to eat and disperse the powdered orange snack and spread the contamination away from where the opened bag was dropped.

Park officials say they regularly check for items left or dropped by the more than 2,000 people who trek through the cavern on its busiest days. Many times, some of the items can fall into dark crevasses inside the cave and not be immediately discovered.

Park Officials say the best defense against allowing litter to contaminate the cave is to constantly remind visitors not to bring any food items with them and to be careful not to leave any other non-food items.

And finally, a recent obituary in the Las Cruces Sun-News lamented the passing of someone who appeared to be a true New Mexico cowboy.

“He died in his sleep of a heart attack — his dog, his horse and his cowboy hat nearby,” the obituary read.

For a cowboy, it was probably the best way to go.

New Mexico hasn’t had the best record on public executions for bad guys over the years.

I previously wrote about the botched hanging of notorious outlaw Tom “Black Jack” Ketchum during which his head snapped off when he plunged through the gallows at Clayton, NM, April 16, 1901.

Ketchum, who had made a career of robbing trains with the “Hole in the Wall” gang and other desperados, had been convicted of attempting to hold up a train by himself on Aug. 16, 1899, at Twin Forks in northeastern New Mexico. During the robbery attempt, an agent on the train shot Ketchum in the arm, making his subsequent capture relatively easy. While in prison awaiting his trial, his arm was amputated and he gained significant weight. Both of those things appeared to be factors in his unfortunate ending at the gallows.

According to a Wikipedia entry about him:

“Ketchum was executed by hanging… but no one in the town had any experience with the procedure. The combination of too long a rope, Ketchum’s significant weight gain while in jail, and the mass imbalance due to the amputation of his arm caused him to be decapitated when he fell through the trapdoor. His last words were “Good-bye. Please dig my grave very deep. All right; hurry up.”

I recently finished reading John P. Wilson’s excellent book on the Lincoln County War, during which one man had to be hung twice before the executioner could complete his job. In that incident, William Wilson (no relation to author John Wilson) was convicted and sentenced to hang on Dec. 10, 1875, for a fatal shooting in the turmoil leading up to the Lincoln County War.

Author John P. Wilson said William Wilson had apparently made disparaging remarks earlier about Maj. L.G. Murphy, one of the principals in the Lincoln County War and now probate judge and the person in charge of the execution. While standing on the gallows, Wilson was given a chance to make his last remarks. He began by telling Murphy “You know you are the cause of this. You promised to save me but…” At that point, apparently not wanting to hear anything more negative said against him, Murphy cut the rope to the trap door and silenced Wilson.

According to John Wilson’s book, the convicted Wilson hung for six and one-half minutes, then was cut down and placed in a casket. But one observer at the hanging noticed that Wilson appeared to still be breathing while in the casket. Another rope was placed around his neck and this time he swayed from the gallows for 20 minutes to make sure the deed was done.

At least Wilson didn’t suffer the consequences of being hung three times like Texas outlaw Wild Bill Longley. The story goes that Longley was hung the first time by a lynching party for being involved in a horse or cattle theft. But while swinging from a tree branch, an errant bullet fired in celebration by the retreating posse severed the rope attached to the noose and freed Longley. He was later convicted of murder in another case and sentenced to hang on Oct. 11, 1888, in Giddings, TX.

When he gave his last remarks, he told the crowd of about 4,000:

“I deserved this fate.  It is a debt I have owed for a wild and reckless life.  So long, everybody!”

This time, the hanging party used a rope that was too long. When Longley fell through the trap, he landed upright on his feet. No longer trusting their skills with the gallows, the sheriff and deputy sheriff simply pulled up hard on the rope themselves until Longley expired.

New Mexico outlawed capital punishment in a bill signed by then Gov. Bill Richardson in 2009. Prior to that, the last execution occurred in 2001 by means of lethal injection.

Before lethal injection was used, New Mexico executions used “Old Sparky,” the somewhat gruesomely named electric chair in the infamous old state prison outside of Santa Fe. The last time it was used was in 1956 in what also turned out to be a less than textbook execution.

The prisoner, James Larry Upton, was convicted for the 1954 murder of a Kirtland Air Force base airman in Albuquerque. His execution date was set for Feb. 24, 1956.

When that date came, it was found that the standard cap used for the electric chair did not fit Upton. Prison officials decided to make it fit by using a cap from a parka that had fur around the edges. As the electric current surged through the chair and Upton’s body, the fur of the parka ignited and smoke billowed from the improvised cap. This incident provided further impetus for the state to discontinue using the electric chair for future executions.

Needless to say, we’ve had some less than stellar attempts at public executions in New Mexico. But at least we can say there are no records in the Land of Enchantment of public stonings or burnings at the stake.

I’m finishing up a more than two-week stint as an election official for early voting in the Nov. 4 primary in Dona Ana County. My location, as it has been in the previous four elections, is the town hall of Mesilla.

Surrounding me are displays about the history of Mesilla, many focusing on the connections between legendary Western outlaw Billy the Kid and this town that was once an influential center and hub of southern New Mexico.

Specifically, William H. Bonney was convicted in a trial in Mesilla in 1881 for the murder of Lincoln County Sheriff William J. Brady during the years leading up to the famous Lincoln County War during the late 1870s. Following the trial, he was transported back to the town of Lincoln where he would be hanged on May 13, 1881. But before his date with the gallows, he staged a daring and lethal escape from the Lincoln County Jail on April 28, 1881, killing two more lawmen, Deputy U.S. Marshall Robert Olinger and Deputy Sheriff J.W. Bell. On July 14, 1881, he was shot and killed by Sheriff Pat Garrett in Fort Sumner, New Mexico.

There have been hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of words written about Billy the Kid and the Lincoln County War. On top of that, 52 movies (not including TV shows and documentaries) have been made about the outlaw’s escapades and the Lincoln County War. Needless to say, I’m not going to try to add anything new about Billy the Kid or the Lincoln County War because the subject has been worked to death.

However, while here at the polls during lots of slow periods, I thought it might be fun to read more about the subject while I was surrounded by Billy the Kid lore. I had previously read parts of a book by good friend, John P. “Jack” Wilson, entitled Merchants, Guns & Money, The Story of Lincoln County and Its Wars. This seemed like an opportune time to delve further into the subject by thoroughly reading his work.

The book was published by the University of New Mexico Press in 1987 and, in my opinion, is the most thoroughly researched publication on the subject of the Lincoln County War. To that point, the book has 50 pages of additional documentation, notes and references. Wilson, a Harvard graduate and long-time resident of Las Cruces, has had a distinguished career in archaeological and historic research. He’s written several books, one of which I’ve reviewed in previous posts on my blog. Wilson clearly knows how to do thorough research.

I highly recommend his book, which you can still find on Amazon and I suspect in local bookstores, like COAS.

Be prepared for lots of detail in the book, especially regarding financial matters, government records and population statistics. But as Wilson said, to find the real truth about the cause of the Lincoln County War, you have to “follow the money.”

 As he wrote, the Lincoln County War “was not a cattle or a range war, nor even a feud. Essentially it grew out of a struggle for economic power in a land where hard cash was scarce and federal contracts…. were the grand prizes. The competition for these contracts became bitter and frequently ruthless.”

What struck me most when reading his book about the war was the number of people who were killed, many of them senselessly.

One sentence in Wilson’s book sums it up succinctly:

“Of the 30 funerals the Reverend (Taylor) Ealy conducted during his five months in Lincoln (during 1877-78), only one resulted from natural causes.”

You probably have seen Westerns where opposing sides are blasting away hundreds of shots with their pistols, rifles or shotguns. I always thought that was Hollywood going over the top in portraying the Old West. Not so in Lincoln during the war.

The peak of the War was “The Five-Day Battle” in Lincoln July 15-19, 1878. Wilson told me that “as many as 50” men participated in that shootout between the rival Murphy-Dolan group and the Tunstall-McSween group during those five days. Lt. Col. N.A.M. Dudley, commanding officer at Fort Stanton, estimated that 2,000 shots were fired on one night alone. At one point, troops at Fort Stanton brought a Gatling gun and a 12-pound howitzer to position in the middle of Lincoln’s main street in hopes of subduing the fighting. Wilson’s books contains many descriptions of individuals being wounded or shot dead during that and other skirmishes between the two groups.

The mayhem went on outside of Lincoln. A retreating party of Murphy-Dolan supporters later shot and killed three men harvesting hay further down the Rio Bonito “without the least provocation,” then on the same day randomly killed the young son of a rancher and raped two women at another ranch.

One of the principals in the war, Alexander McSween, said he had heard reports that “there were 200 armed men in the field” during the height of the war. The post surgeon at Fort Stanton commented that there was “depredation and murder by a band of miscreants” throughout the county.

An interesting statistic from the 1880 census showed that 20 percent of the 167 households in Lincoln were headed by women. Digging further into this statistic, Wilson discovered at 33 of those 39 women said they were widowed — likely many because their husband was a casualty of the Lincoln County War.

I asked Wilson how many people had likely been killed in the events leading up to the war, during the peak of the war and its aftermath. He said although the number isn’t certain, he suspects it is around 60. He noted that many of the deaths of Hispanics (Identified by locals as “Mexicans” at the time — even though they were born in the United States territory) and Indians were not counted.

To show why you shouldn’t believe everything on the Internet, I asked Google how many people were killed during the Lincoln County War. The number it gave was 19. If you read Wilson’s thoroughly researched book, you’d agree that number is far too low and that Lincoln was a frightening and lawless place to be in the 1870s and 1880s.

When I fly commercially, I always try to get a window seat so I can look out of the plane at the landscape and wonder about things I see on the ground. I even pick a specific side of the plane I’m on if I know there’s something special along the route that I can study from the aircraft 40,000 feet in the air.

I know that’s a weird concept for most people who like to sit on the aisle so they don’t feel as confined, can take an easy mid-flight bathroom break and can make a quicker exit from the plane when they get to their destination gate. And of course, no one wants to sit in the middle seat unless there are no other options except perhaps to cram yourself in the overhead luggage bin.

If you’re on a flight out of El Paso to Phoenix or the Los Angeles area and suffer the annoyance of sitting in a window seat, you might spot something interesting on the ground about 30 miles west of the city near the Potrillo Mountains. It’s a shallow crater more than a mile wide and about 430 feet deep, lined with volcanic rock and an occasional small lake in its center.

Kilbourne Hole, located in the Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument on Bureau of Land Management land in the in far southern New Mexico is what is known geologically as a “maar volcanic crater.”

Sources on the internet describe explain that these craters are formed when rising volcanic magma encounters a saturated underground water table above it. The intense heat of the magma brings the water to above boiling and eventually the magma/water mix explodes toward the surface in spectacular style. It’s kind of like having a pressure cooker (remember those?) suddenly blow off its lid when the pressure inside the kettle gets too strong for the seals to hold. It would have been a pretty loud and dramatic explosion if anyone had been around to hear it.

Kilbourne Hole and its little brother Hunt’s Hole are located in the Potrillo Lava Fields of southern Dona Ana County, part of the Rio Grande rift which runs roughly along the path of the Rio Grande through all of New Mexico. There are numerous volcanic features along this rift though its north-south route, including Albuquerque’s West Mesa volcanoes, the Jemez Mountains and many lava outcroppings along the way.

According to Wikipedia, the Rio Grande Rift is an area where the earth’s crust is being constantly stretched and thinned. This stretching and thinning allows magma from deep within the earth’s core to push toward the surface. Additionally, Kilbourne Hole and Hunt’s Hole are located on the Fitzgerald-Robledo fault system, making magma’s path to the surface even easier.

Geologically speaking the two maars are not that old — between 24,000 and 80,000 years when they exploded. It’s like it was in the last millisecond in a year-long calendar of our planet’s history.

Kilbourne Hole is noted for the large amount of xenoliths that were blasted out during the explosion. Xenoliths are lower mantle and upper crustal rocks that form lherzolite, a greenish tinted rock with black flecks.

Getting there is kind of an adventure over somewhat primitive roads, from what I can find online. Here’s a Bureau of Land Management link with a route that you can take there from New Mexico 28 in southern Dona Ana County:

Kilbourne Hole Volcanic Crater | Bureau of Land Management

And reverting back to a my post last week before Halloween, I wonder if La Llorona occasionally haunts the shallow pool of water that occasionally forms in the bottom of the crater. That would be pretty spooky to witness on a dark night in the middle of the desert wilderness, I think.

Like many in the Land of Enchantment, I always assumed that our state’s name was derived from Mexico, the nation to our south. I figured that our state was named after Mexico had been established as a country. I was wrong. Read on.

I made that assumption when you consider the pattern that many places in the United States were given the prefix “New” in their name when settlers moved here from somewhere else.

Consider the names New Jersey, New York, New England, New London, New Hampshire, New Brunswick and New Rochelle. You’d think the early settlers could have come up with something more original. And if Great Britain was so bad as to make you want to escape on a harrowing ocean voyage to the New World, you’d think they’d want to forget the names of the places they’d left behind.

But in New Mexico, that was not the case. In fact, New Mexico was given its name sometime in 1562 when Spanish explorer Don Francisco de Ibarra first used the name “Nuevo Mexico” in an official document.

According to both AI sources on the internet and the book “New Mexico Place Names,” the word Mexico was derived from the Nahuatl language of the Aztecs. The word was used to identify the place they migrated to near the present Mexico City. Mexico is a mishmash of the words Mexihco, Mexicas or just Mexi. Loosely translated, it means “place of” or “in the center” of the moon.

Early explorers Cabeza de Vaca and Friar Marcos de Niza used the words Cibola and Quivira to refer to much of what is now New Mexico, but it never fully caught on (although there is a Cibola County in the state.) So Nuevo (or New) Mexico was the official name through the rest of the Spanish occupation

Later, when another Spanish explorer named Antonio de Espejo returned from a two-year exploration, he referred to the region as “Nuevo Andalucia,” for reasons I could not determine. It might, however, be that the terrain of New Mexico reminded him of the Andalusia region of southern Spain. I think the name it has a nice ring to it.

In 1598. Don Juan de Onate, took possession of the region and declared himself to be “governor, captain, general and adelantado of New Mexico and of its kingdoms and provinces, as well as those in its vicinity — and contiguous thereto.” In 1771, Onate’s boastful claim to a “kingdom” was reduced to a territory. And then in 1846, American troops occupied the region and declared it to be known as the “Territory of New Mexico.”

You may recall an earlier blog I wrote about four and one-half years ago that suggested that the name “Lincoln” might have been considered for our state. I could find no evidence to support that, but I’ve included a link to that post if you’re interested. There was a suggestion at one point that the state’s name be “Montezuma.”

Meanwhile back in present day Mexico, the locals had not officially determined what to call their nation until the country gained its independence from Spain in 1821.

Anyway, we’re stuck with the name New Mexico at this point. I think it would be difficult to change, even if some people wanted to do that. I remember that a few years back, South Dakota wanted to change its name to simply “Dakota.” That suggestion never seemed to gain much momentum.

What if we could just drop the “Nuevo” and call our state Andalucia. Maybe I’ll start a movement.

In Las Cruces on the banks of the Rio Grande where the old highway to Deming, Tucson and California crosses the river is La Llorona Park. The river here is shallow and slow even during the summer when water from Elephant Butte reservoir is released for the irrigation needs for farmers. In the lean precipitation years — which happen most of the time — the river is bone dry in the winter while water is diverted upstream to fill the lake about 75 miles north of Las Cruces. At night, it is the perfect place for a ghostly apparition.

The city park is the dedicated to the legend of La Llorona, a legendary figure in Mexican and New Mexican folklore. The story of La Llorona is about a tortured woman who drowned her two children in a fit of rage, then drowned herself after she realized the terrible thing she had done. It is said that she now wanders the banks of the rivers or other bodies of water while searching for her dead children. The legend says she floats effortlessly just above the ground while moaning in sorrow for her lost children.

Sources say the legend began in Mexico in 1850, possibly out of an Aztec folk story. One version says she fell in love with a man who loved her two children more than he loved her. To spite him, she drowned her children.

In New Mexico, there is a story about a Native American woman named Malinche, who was an assistant to Cortez in his conquest of Mexico and the Southwest. When Cortez married a Spanish woman and spurned Malinche’s love, it is said she killed her two children for spite after being betrayed by the explorer.

There have been many reports of sightings of La Llorona over the centuries in New Mexico. In the 1930s, a young man in Santa Fe said he saw a woman wearing a shimmering white dress gliding effortlessly just above the ground near his home as she floated toward a body of water. No footprints were ever found.

During my current job as an early voting clerk for the Nov. 4 local election, two people told me stories about La Llorona in Las Cruces. One main claimed to have seen her when he was fishing one evening near the Mesilla Dam. A woman said her mother would tell her if she wasn’t good “La Llorona will get you.”

And now, just in time for Halloween and Day of the Dead, Mattel has introduced a La Llorona Barbie. You could have had one for just $110, but they’re already sold out. In fact, a story in the El Paso times last week said they were sold out almost immediately after the dolls were offered.

The story in the El Paso times says the doll “is is a hauntingly beautiful representative of the Mexican folkore. She is draped in white lace with a corset bodice, blue underskirt and sleeves that lay over her frosty blue hands.” Her neck and face are painted in traditional Day of the Dead designs and she wears a black rose headdress.

No doubt it will be a valuable collector’s item.

Our daughter had various Barbie dolls when she was growing up, but she didn’t treat them like collectors items. In fact, when she was done with them, some looked more like “Weird Barbie” in the recent Barbie movie. Some of their hair was whacked off and on one of the dolls, the toes were chewed off.

If she had treated the La Llorna Barbie like that, she might have been haunted for life. But our daughter is now a successful young mother of two and I’m glad she’s moved beyond the Weird Barbie phase.