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 — the newspaper that my father owned in the town of Ruidoso for about 20 years — you’re out of luck. The newspaper that he fostered and grew into a significant contributor to growth, success and political integrity of the Village of Ruidoso from the early 1950s to the 1970s, doesn’t seem to care about news any more.

I tried last week to send the newspaper a story about the “Trout In the Classroom” project that I have been working on for several months at White Mountain Elementary in Ruidoso. (See previous blogs for more details). I had no success in finding a local number or even an office address for the Ruidoso News.

If you look up Ruidoso News online you can find a website and an 800 phone number. Both give you options on how get a new subscription, what to do if you’ve missed getting a paper or who to contact if you want to buy advertising. But nowhere is there a local phone number or information about contacting the organization about a local news item.

I mean, isn’t the purpose of a newspaper to gather and distribute news?

Frustrated, I called the Ruidoso of Chamber of Commerce to see if they had a local phone number for the Ruidoso News, now owned by the USA Today network.

“No, we don’t have one. I don’t think they even have an office here any more,” said the person at the Chamber of Commerce.

I called the 800 number for subscriptions and finally was able to speak to a human. I said I wasn’t interested in a subscription, but wanted to know how to get in touch with the newspaper’s editorial staff. After a long wait on hold, I was told “I don’t have a local number for the news operation. I think they’re changing the number.”

Again, a newspaper without the ability to gather news does not make sense to me.

Most people don’t have time to attend every meeting of city council, school board, county commission or other government agency activity. That’s the job of the press — to be there if we can’t. If there’s no one looking over the shoulders of the city council, school board, the county commission or a government agency, they can get away with things that are not in the best interest of the citizens. A report by a group trying to foster local news reporting says there are now more than 200 counties in the United States that do not have newspapers and more than 1,500 with only once source of news. And in my opinion, there are many, many more counties which have a poor excuse for a local newspaper.

Here’s a website by Northwestern University that you may want to look at which shows how dire the situation is:

https://localnewsinitiative.northwestern.edu/projects/state-of-local-news/2023/report

And here’s a map of local news outlets in New Mexico. The yellow shows counties with no local news outlet, the gray show counties which have only one local news outlet and the blue shows counties with two or more more local news outlets.

Some political figures these days have called the media “the enemy of the people.” All politicians, left or right, have probably criticized the media at one time or another as being biased against them. As a former journalist, I got heat from several political figures because I didn’t write a story the way they wanted me to — but I wrote the truth. I was once accused of “faulty reporting” because I did not report on one political figure lambasting another at a public hearing. I instead wrote about a report that was released at that same hearing praising advances in women’s sports programs at state universities.

Journalists for legitimate news outlets make mistakes (as I have done), but I truly believe they all do their best to bring the truth to the people.

The phrase “don’t shoot the messenger,” is something any journalist knows. It has been around forever, beginning as far back as the 3rd and 5th century in Chinese dynasties of those eras. As you know, the phrase relates to blaming bearer of bad (or accurate) news for things that have gone wrong. Even Shakespeare referred to the phrase in his plays “Henry the IV” and “Antony and Cleopatra.” The press is often that messenger who gets shot.

Our local daily newspaper, also a member of the USA today network, is a sad example of what it used to be. It appears that it makes most of its money from obituaries of local citizens, then fills much the rest of pages with newswire copy that is at least two days old.

We had a fatal shooting just two blocks from our house two weeks ago. We’ve never seen a story about that incident in the local paper. I think that would have been important for me to know about. My wife’s friend told her about two local high schools whose athletic teams had won state competitions recently. There was nothing about it in the local daily newspaper — again, something I think our community would have liked to know.

There is good news in that we have a strong local weekly newspaper, where we consistently learn more about what is going around Las Cruces than in the USA today publication. Additionally, a former journalist for the local daily has started an online newspaper which you can reach through Facebook.

The bottom line is that you must support good local journalism to keep everyone informed and to keep political figures and government agencies in line.

But the problem is this: Many people these days don’t support local journalism. Neither my son nor daughter subscribe to their local newspapers. I don’t criticize them — their peers don’t value local journalism either. I suspect many of you who read this don’t subscribe to a local newspaper or follow another local news outlet. If newspapers or other local outlets don’t have subscribers, they will fail and we will have no one to look out for our interests. The other problem is that many newspapers are now owned by large corporations, whose focus seems to be more on the bottom line than in actually serving the community with needed news.

These days, many people rely on the internet, television or radio for their news, often choosing to read, watch or listen only to sites or programs which support their point of view.

I’ve made it a point to listen to and read other clearly biased viewpoints on both sides of issues, both conservative and liberal. I want to know what people are thinking and I struggle to learn why they think the way they do. Hearing what they say — on both sides — is often deeply upsetting to me and I fear that bias has spread the seeds of doubt and conspiracy theories.

I’ll close my rant with this statement from Thomas Jefferson:

“If I had to choose between government and a free press, I would choose a free press.”

As my father is rolling over in his grave from the demise of his once great local newspaper, I hope you, my readers, will support good local journalism.

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 taken a new an ugly twist.

A recent article in the Albuquerque Journal edition says a woman tried to sneak a supply of the illegal drug fentanyl across the southern New Mexico border inside a hamburger.

I don’t think the burger looks very appetizing to begin with, even without the baggie of fentanyl stuffed in the middle.

It also looks like there was green chile added to the burger. Somehow, I think a splash of hot Hatch green chile and fentanyl would make an especially toxic mix.

What concerns me, however, is that it looked like this burger was part of a combo deal which included the drink to the left of the burger. I wonder if they tested the drink to see if it was laced with LSD.

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 the Coronavirus. (Four Coronas.) Luckily, both my wife and I did not catch the virus, even though were cooped up in the same car with our friends for several hours.

That eclipse was an annular “ring of fire” eclipse, where the sun’s outer edges peaked out around the sides of the moon’s disk. It was an impressive experience and it got really cold when it peaked, but it didn’t get all that dark.

Fast forward to earlier this week, when we traveled to Austin to witness a total eclipse with our daughter and grandchildren.

Despite intermittent cloud cover, we were able to experience totality. It got so dark that street lights turned on, birds and insects stopped chirping and churring and it got quite a bit colder.

However, it was far from completely quiet. We went to our granddaughter’s elementary school to witness the event on the playground with about 450 kindergarten through fifth grade students and many of their parents.

It was a cacophony of kids laughing, shrieking and generally talking as loud as they could outdoors. When the approaching eclipse would peek out momentarily from behind a cloud, the kids would cheer “YAY” at the top of their lungs. When the sun slid back behind a cloud, waves of “BOO” would erupt from the crowd. The video below gives you a sample of what it was like.

And below is a picture when totality occurred at 1:34 p.m. At that time, the sun was pretty much obscured by the clouds, but you can see how dark it was. (My iPhone did its best to make the picture bright, so this photo is artificially enhanced.)

My wife, daughter and I wore the t-shirts we had created for the eclipse in Corona last fall, and I chose to wear some really goofy-looking welding glasses — all in hopes of providing maximum embarrassment to our granddaughter. (I actually think she found it funny.)

Our grandson Hayes, who was at a different school that day, got to see the totality when the clouds parted at just the right moment. His viewing outfit, as shown below, was even more unusual than mine.

It was a great experience and I’m glad we had the opportunity to see the eclipse. The next one will be in 2026, but you’ll have to travel to Greenland, Iceland or Spain to catch it. I think I’ll just stay home, wear my t-shirt, drink a Corona and hope no one nearby has the Coronavirus.

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 Olds “Rocket V8” wouldn’t fit, but that a similar part for a Chevy V8 would.

The matter ended up in a lawsuit and in the end General Motors agreed to pay purchasers of Chevrolet-engine Oldsmobiles prior to April 10, 1977 refunds of $550, while those who purchased one afterward got nothing. Furthermore, there would be no punitive damages assessed against GM. Total settlement cost to GM: $8.2 million.

In fact, engine swapping between brands at Ford and Chrysler had been going on for some time as well, but it didn’t raise the rumble that the GM motor swap did.

I remember years later buying various GM vehicles that had a disclaimer that engines might be supplied by “various General Motors” divisions.

The reason I mention this is that I discovered a parts swapping incident involving my body earlier this week.

As some may recall I had an aortic heart valve replacement four and one-half years ago to fix a murmur that I’d apparently had since birth. The procedure went well, and at my last echo cardiogram, I was told that my new heart valve was doing so well that I no longer needed annual ECGs — I could wait three to five years before I should get another one.

But during the discussion of my results, my doctor casually mentioned that he thought I had received a “bovine” heart valve in the procedure.

Whoa! I had been told when I scheduled the surgery that I would likely get a valve from a pig. I envisioned it would come fresh right before a festive Cinco de Mayo pig roast in Dona Ana, where the remnants of the swine were ultimately turned into chicharrónes.

So the doctor double checked, and sure enough, I had been given a heart valve from a cow. He told me that cow heart valves were a bit more durable than ones from a pig, and that it should last me several years before I might have to have it replaced again.

So instead of finding out that I got a cheapo Chevy engine in my Olds, I guess I got a Cowdillac engine. (It’s okay, you can groan).

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 the “Black Death.” Half of the population of Paris is said to have perished during the pandemic.

I mention this because the Albuquerque Journal reported last month that the state had recorded its first fatal case of bubonic plague this year. It was the first death from the plague in New Mexico since 2020.

As a reporter for United Press International in Santa Fe, I wrote many stories about plague cases in the state during the 1970s.

The disease is endemic in New Mexico, usually spread from fleas from an infected animal that a human comes in contact with or from fleas on a pet that has been exposed to an infected animal. The bite of an inflected flea is what normally transmits the disease to a human.

In Europe, much of the disease was spread as the pneumonic form, which could be transmitted through the air by humans breathing or coughing on another human.

In New Mexico, largely because of our arid climate, the organism which causes the disease has been around forever. Cases usually increase during the warmer summer months when humans (and their pets) venture outdoors. If you live in an area of the state where the plague is common, you can reduce your chance of getting the plague if you avoid any dead wild animals and keep your pets treated for fleas.

One summer when I was a reporter in Santa Fe, there was an unusual uptick in the number of plague cases. In fact, entomologists determined that a dog named “Snoopy,” owned by then New Mexico Gov. David F. Cargo, carried infected fleas and the governor’s mansion had to be disinfected for the insect.

I also remember that the high number of cases had caught the attention of a foreign country — I think it was somewhere in the Middle east — and it banned visitors from New Mexico for a period of time.

The good news is that these cases are pretty rare, and because they occur on a fairly regular basis in our state, doctors in New Mexico are more likely to pick up on plague symptoms and know how to diagnose and treat patients.

There is no lack of wild critters roaming through our neighborhood — skunks, foxes, raccoons, squirrels, pack rats, coyotes — so we’ve been careful about giving our dog a regular treatment to keep fleas at bay.

Which reminds me that it’s time today to force Chester to gulp down a large chunk of medicine which he really dislikes and is no fun for me either. When my hands recover from being bathed in slimy dog slobber, I’ll start writing my next blog.

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 political patron who at one time or another served as the county’s Democratic Party Chairman, County Manager, County Sheriff and many years as State Senator. His leadership was frequently surrounded by controversy, especially involving voting practices in the northern New Mexico county.

 What made me think of Naranjo was an article in this week’s Albuquerque Journal, which said that New Mexico’s elections are “conducted more reliably than any other state in the nation.” That is according to The Elections Performance Index, a project of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that attempts to measure efficiency and purity of election administration in each state.

I’m proud to say that I might have been part of that “reliability” since I have served as a volunteer election clerk for the last general and last special election in Dona Ana County. I’ve signed up again to work the upcoming primary election in June. My experience has been that everything is above board and I’ve seen no evidence of election irregularity.

That apparently always wasn’t the case in the state, particularly in Rio Arriba County.

I did a search on Newspapers.com for “Rio Arriba County election irregularities” and came up with what seemed to be an endless supply of articles on the subject.

In 1906, an article in the Santa Fe New Mexican said that the final voting tally for a Congressional race for the Territory of New Mexico could not be completed because results from Rio Arriba County were not yet available. (Lincoln County, another political bad boy of that era, also had not submitted its final tally.)

The article noted that the results from Rio Arriba would determine the outcome of the Congressional race, but “for inexplicable reasons, results from that county have not come in any reliable form…”

Two stories from the 1976 general election caught my eye. One quoted New Mexico Chief of Police Martin Vigil saying that 15 additional State Police officers had been assigned to watch for irregularities at voting locations in Rio Arriba County. After the election, there was this lead in an Albuquerque Journal story:

“Rio Arriba County ballots were impounded — as usual — in the general election Tuesday.”

Another article in the Albuquerque Journal following a general election said a voting machine in Chimayo had an inoperative lever for a candidate who was not supported by the Naranjo camp.

But voting irregularities were not unique to Rio Arriba County in New Mexico. I worked in a peripheral role during a campaign in Dona Ana County the early 1980s and remember hearing conversations about “walking around money” that was paid by some political figures to get out the vote for certain candidates — fortunately not the one I was supporting.

Are things finally on the up and up in Rio Arriba County? As recently as 2002, it appears that might not have been the case. An Albuquerque Journal editorial noted that 360 absentee voting ballots had been submitted in Rio Arriba County for the upcoming primary election, compared to just 100 Bernalillo County with 13 times as many residents.

Even if shady things are still going on in Rio Arriba County elections (which the MIT report seems to refute) the good thing is that I don’t think the county has enough votes to impact a national election.

Digging through Newspapers.com this week, I found a newspaper from a town I had never heard of before in southern New Mexico. The town, now considered a ghost town with nothing much to show for it, was called Robinson.

Its site is located north of the remote Sierra County town of Winston and is also near a more famous New Mexico ghost town, Chloride. This region was an active mining area in the 1880s but most of the mines collapsed after the “Silver Panic of 1893” when the metal’s prices plummeted.

The newspaper in Robinson, known as the Range (after the Black Range mountains), was eventually moved to Chloride, but apparently failed during the silver mining collapse.

The website Ghosttowns.com says the town was founded in 1882 as a proposed terminal for the Santa Fe Railroad. Unfortunately, the railroad veered much further east and bypassed the Black Range area entirely and by 1888, all of the buildings were town down. The town’s name may have come from the chief railroad engineer who failed to deliver the promised rail route though the area.

Reading through the newspapers of this era often produce interesting stories that are written in a folksy and often heavily opinionated style.

One article in the Oct. 26, 1888, edition of the Range reported the death of a pig owned by a local butcher.

“J.M. Smith took a shot in (sic) one of the butcher’s pigs, the other day, not to kill it but just to scare it out of his yard. The gun was loaded with shot and the range was long, so of course the wounds would hurt nothing even if the shot hit, so Smith supposed, but he was evidently mistaken, for no sooner was his gun off than the hog’s life vanished. Smith is a dead shot.”

Another article reported that there were now “thirty-one ladies resident(s) in Chloride which is more than has ever lived here before, at the same time.”

And finally, the editor chimed in on the recent surge of territorial newspapers clamoring for New Mexico statehood.

“…the Range would like to know what good would be accomplished by having this a state. Nobody could be benefitted except the politicians and their pleasure would be the public’s pain.”

“The chief recommendation of the territory of New Mexico today is its lack of politics,” the editor concluded.

This morning, as I was finishing up my morning walk with our dog Chester, he made an abrupt stop just as we were entering our front door. He was peering upwards at something on the parapet wall of the house and was fixated on whatever it was.

Following his clue, I looked up and there was an adult roadrunner staring down at me and Chester. It wasn’t moving much, knowing that it was pretty safe and that neither Chester nor I could jump up and grab it. After a few moments, Chester began barking at it, but it did not seem to faze the bird.

We live in the valley area of Las Cruces/Mesilla, and roadrunners usually stick to the desert areas where they can munch on lizards and small mammals. You occasionally spot them in town, but it’s a bit unusual. I even had one wandering around a home we owned in the middle of Albuquerque, miles from where you’d expect to see one.

I had heard that sighting a roadrunner is a sign of good luck, so I’m happy this bird decided that the top of my house was a good place to perch.

I looked online for some information about roadrunner legends and found several interesting things.

I found this on the “Native Languages of the Americas” website:

“The Hopi and other Pueblo tribes believed that roadrunners were medicine birds and could protect against evil spirits. Their unusual X-shaped footprints are used as sacred symbols to ward off evil in many Pueblo tribes– partially because they invoke the protective power of the roadrunners themselves, and partially because the X shape of the tracks conceals which direction the bird is headed (thus throwing malignant spirits off-track.) Stylized roadrunner tracks have been found in the rock art of ancestral Southwestern tribes like the Anasazi and Mogollon cultures, as well. Roadrunner feathers were traditionally used to decorate Pueblo cradleboards as spiritual protection for the baby. In Mexican Indian tribes, it was considered good luck to see a roadrunner. In some Mexican tribes, the bird was considered sacred and never killed, but most Mexican Indians used the meat of the roadrunner as a folk remedy to cure illness or to boost stamina and strength.”

I had previously heard the story about the unique X-shape of a roadrunner’s tracks and how it confused anything that was trying to track it. I learned that the bird’s walking appendages are “zygodactyl feet, with four toes. Two toes point forward and two toes point backward.” I don’t think, however, that I would be inclined to eat one to “boost (my) stamina and strength.”

Another site, Symbolicmystic.com, said the birds are known for “speed and agility,” “protection and fearlessness,” and “resourcefulness.”

“In conclusion, the spiritual significance of roadrunners is both diverse and profound. Whether they symbolize speed, protection, resourcefulness, or hope, these captivating birds inspire and guide those who encounter them. By understanding and appreciating their deeper meaning, people can find strength and wisdom from these incredible creatures.”

That may be a little too deep for me, but I’m always glad to see one because they are so interesting to observe, particularly how the feathers on the top of their heads raise up and down as they are contemplating running down a road to escape.

And I hope this week finds a roadrunner on your roof as well.

I read with amusement a story about the Roswell, NM, Police Department’s new logo which incorporates the town’s identity with a famous UFO incident and aliens. If you’ll recall, U.S. Army Air Force officials at then Walker Air Force Base in Roswell reported that an alien spacecraft had crash landed on a ranch northwest of the city on July 8, 1947.

The Air Force quickly debunked the story, claiming the debris found on the W.W. Brazel ranch was from a crashed weather balloon. That quickly spiraled into conspiracy theories that continue today about “little green men” and alien spacecraft visiting our planet.

As you can, see the department’s logo promises to protect and serve “all those that land here.” As someone who is sensitive to the proper use of grammar, I did notice that the logo used the word “that” instead of “who,” which to me was used in deference to possible otherworldly beings or spacecraft that might want to visit the southeastern New Mexico city again.

This reminds me of the statue in Winslow, Arizona, that is “standin’ on the corner…” from the Eagles song “Take it easy.”

As the song goes:

“Well I’m-a standin’ on a corner in Winslow, Arizona, and it’s such a fine sight to see. There’s a girl, my Lord, in a flatbed Ford, slowin’ down to take a look at me.”

My very good friend Joel Diemer, a retired professor at New Mexico State University, had a similar idea to help capture the spirit of a town’s character with a project linking historic Route 66 with Tucumcari, NM.

Tucumcari is about the halfway point on the “Mother Road” of U.S. 66 which ran from Chicago to Los Angeles. It’s a legendary highway that has had much written about it along with various songs.

Although Interstate 40 now dodges Tucumcari, the old path of U.S. 66 runs through the town. Joel’s idea was to have a section of the old highway paved with unique tiles that would include a person or group’s name and link to a technical method to replay a recorded message of their memory of U.S. 66. Visitors to the site could have heard many fascinating stories about their personal link to the “Mother Road.”

“It would have made Tucumcari more of a destination,” he said.

Current travelers along Interstate 40 mostly zoom by Tucumcari these days, maybe only stopping at an easy off-on exit for gas or snacks. With Joel’s idea, Tucumcari would have been more of place you’d make time to see and hear about.

I even traveled with Joel to Tucumcari several years ago to talk with local officials about the idea. They seemed to like the idea, but unfortunately, it did not make much progress and seems to have died. It may have been too futuristic for some people to grasp but more likely as Joel said, it was about the money.

“It seems like in New Mexico, if you don’t have a good source of up front money for ideas like this, they won’t go far,” he lamented.

Maybe we could incorporate a similar idea in Roswell, where people who claim to have been abducted by aliens could have their recollections recorded in tiny space capsules placed inside one of the old hangars at Walker Air Force Base. And don’t forget that Elvis Presley’s old private jet haunted the former air force base for years. Maybe we could even conjure Elvis back from the dead to record…

No wait, that’s a little too farfetched. I’ll let Joel come up with the good ideas.

A single wheel cover from a 2000s vintage Ford van or Super Duty truck has been languishing on our street for the last two weeks with no takers. It seems to be in decent shape and I suspect a new one would cost more than $200. With the number of Ford vans and big pickups I see roaming around our town, I’m surprised no one has picked it up.

It reminds me of the time our friends, Dave and Gloria, had a nice Volvo that was missing a hubcap/wheel cover. There was a place in Albuquerque called Hubcap Annies that sold all sorts of hubcaps and wheel covers that had been found along a road or turned in from an owner who bought fancier wheels for their ride. I found a perfectly matching Volvo wheel cover, which needed some refurbishing, so I bought it for not much money, spiffed it up and installed it on their Volvo. The car looked great. But the next time I saw Dave, he told me that the wheel cover flew off shortly after it was installed during his trip back to Santa Fe. So much for doing good deeds.

Anyway, I’ll keep hoping that someone rescues this wheel cover to reunite it with an appropriate truck or van.

_________________

It’s a never ending story. When I was a kid in elementary school, I was known for the number of jackets I lost there. My exasperated parents finally ended up always buying me the cheapest jacket they could find, hoping it would be warm enough to keep me from freezing during the cold Ruidoso winters.

On our trip to Ruidoso last week to check up on the Trout in the Classroom project at White Sands Elementary, I found this box in the school hallway.

I think kids this age just get distracted when they dash out to the playground or scramble out of the classroom to catch the bus at the end of the day. Again, nothing ever seems to change for some of us who have short attention spans.

________________

Our church has been asked to help a border ministry serving immigrants who have come into the El Paso area in recent months. The specific thing they were requesting this time was footwear for men — especially larger sizes. I picked up a pair of inexpensive 11 1/2 athletic shoes at Wal-Mart and took them to the church to deposit in a box with other shoes that had been donated for the cause. When I looked in the box, I found these.

I’m sure these will be especially helpful to a 275 pound guy trying to wade the Rio Grande or trudging across the desert near El Paso.

_______________

And finally, I’ve been sort of offended by recent mailers I’ve been getting about the need to buy my burial plot or pay up front for cremation services. It’s called target marketing, and I am clearly in the old geezer target segment now.

A couple of weeks ago, I got another mailing equally annoying regarding my advancing age. It was inviting me to be a “UFO.” To become a UFO, you have to be a pilot of more than 80 years old and join a group called the “United Flying Octogenarians.” While I’m several years away from that 80-year mark, I could still claim membership now as a member of the “Auxiliary Wing.” Once they discovered that I am a hot air balloon pilot, I doubt they would let me participate anyway, so I think I’ll pass for now. However, identifying myself to people as a “UFO” does have some conversational appeal.

Okay, I know you’re getting tired reading about my Trout In the Classroom project at White Mountain Elementary in Ruidoso, but I have a really great story about my checkup on the school last week.

My wife and I were planning to drive up to Ruidoso for the day last Friday to see if we could help with anything and to pick out a date when the fish might be released from the aquarium in the third-grade classroom of teacher Michelle Thurston. (Under the Trout Unlimited Trout In the Classroom program, students raise fish in an aquarium in their classroom, then release them at the end of the semester in a nearby stream or lake.)

Before we left, I got a message from another teacher, Rachel Lutterman (known by her peers as the “Trout Queen”), that they had somehow misplaced or lost the two larger sizes of trout food that was needed immediately for the now inch-long rainbows darting around the tank. It’s a very specific food, and I was pretty sure goldfish chow from PetCo wouldn’t work.

Then I remembered that the Mescalero Apache Tribe has had a trout fish hatchery for years and it was on my route from Las Cruces to Ruidoso. I’d heard that tribal fisheries programs often operated at arms length from state and federal fish agencies, but I thought I’d give the hatchery a call to see if they could spare some size two and size three trout chow.

To my great pleasure, the people at the Mescalero hatchery were eager to help out with the problem in getting food for the fish in Ruidoso. They agreed to let me have a small bag of the second and third size of trout chow that I could pick up on the drive to Ruidoso. When I got there, the two individuals I dealt with were extremely helpful and supportive. They even gave me some stickers to give to the students at White Mountain Elementary and urged me to invite the students for a tour of the facility in the future.

The two helpful individuals were Tori Marden, assistant manager of the facility, and Robert Morgan, administrative assistant. It was really rewarding to have such great cooperation between our organization, Trout Unlimited, and the Mescalero Tribal Fish Hatchery.

Next, it was on to Ruidoso, where we got to school just at the end of the school day with the appropriate trout food ready to go into the tank before the weekend.

Before we headed home, we got to take a look at what the third graders have done during the Trout In the Classroom project. Their work is pretty amazing. There’s an entire wall in the school dedicated to the project, shown below, that shows their artwork, some stories they wrote about trout and a timeline for development of the fish.

It was also fun to read the students’ stories they wrote about what they thought it would like to be a trout. One of the kids was conflicted about the matter, saying he liked to eat trout, but obviously didn’t want to be someone’s meal. Another wondered what it would be to be like swimming in the tank with weird creatures staring at you all day. And another thought she would find it entertaining to play in bubbles in the tank that are formed by the aerator.

Although the one of the teachers said they would avoid giving the fish names “because they’re not pets,” some names have come up. Among them, “The Big Kahuna,” for its large size, “Big Eyes,” because of its oversized eyes and “Baby Shark,” because it seems to be constantly nipping at some of the other fish in the tank.

As one of the kids’ stories read:

“Hi, my name is Baby Shark. I got this name because I started biting my cusins (sic) and sisters botums (sic). (Because I am the king of the Trout, or at least I was for about two seconds.)”

And for anyone who may be worried about what’s going on in public schools these days, you would feel very encouraged by the enthusiasm of the six third-grade teachers who took on this project. They’ve done a great job in teaching kids about fish, the environment and taking responsibility. I would have been proud to have my own kids in their classrooms.

I wrote in an earlier blog that I my father once told me that Lincoln — honoring the former President — was being considered as the name for our state. I was never able to confirm that story, but I wondered what it would have been like to call the historic town of Lincoln “Lincoln, Lincoln.” With apologies to David Letterman, it was kind of like his line: “New York, New York, a town so nice, they named it twice.”

I recently searched on Newspapers.com recently for any more clues about this matter and found none. But I did find some interesting stories from 1884 about the town in a long-defunct local newspaper called the “Lincoln Golden Era.” There were only three editions I could find, all within the months of July and August of 1884, a few years after the end of the Lincoln County War.

The first story which caught my eye was this two-sentence entry into the editor’s column:

“The village blacksmith’s horse ran away Monday evening. The result: No one hurt but the horse, and he seemed awful sorry of it.”

There was no further explanation of why the wandering equine was “awfully sorry of it.”

There was also a story about a “trout fishing party” that had come to the Lincoln area from Las Cruces. Accompanying them were officials of the Mescalero Indian Agency and about 25 students from the Native American school in Mescalero. The newspaper said of the students:

“They were well dressed and quiet and as well behaved as the average civilized kid.”

So much for political correctness in the 1880s, I guess.

Also in the “New Era” was a depiction of the brands for several local area cattle ranchers, among them Pat Garrett, the sheriff who killed the infamous Lincoln County War outlaw Billy the Kid at Fort Sumner on July 14, 1881.

There was also a brand for legendary western cattleman John S. Chisum, shown below:

A colorfully worded letter to the editor also caught my eye. The writer was venting against an individual who had somehow spread rumors against him. The nature of the rumor was not disclosed in the letter, but the contents leave little doubt of how the writer felt:

“Mr. Editor: I hope you will allow me space in your valuable paper to reply to this low, cowardly ear of curs who has not got the courage to come face to face and tell what he has to say, but goes behind the press for a shield. Ladies are unprotected from the vile wrath of this low bred, narrow-minded, water brained, red head Ananias.”

I had to look up Ananias, and discovered it referred to “an early Christian struck dead for lying.” And once again, in the old West, so much for pleasantries.

But what really piqued my interest was an editorial in which the newspaper owner announced that from this point on, his publication:

“…may be set down as a Democratic organ in the future, devoted to the interests of the party and laboring the best it knows how… “

He goes on:

“Heretofore, we have been a Republican, but as numerous members of the party have done, we repudiate the nominees on the national ticket*, believing that in the event of their election (which the Lord forbid), no greater calamity could befall this free and glorious country of ours.”

Didn’t I just hear something like that last week — from politicians of either party? So here we are, 130 years later, and nothing much has changed.

*The Republican nominee for President in 1884 was James G. Blaine, who was defeated by Democrat Grover Cleveland.

On Memorial Day a few years ago, I wrote a blog about Lt. Hans Chorpenning, a cousin of my wife’s mother*, who died on his first mission aboard a B-17G bomber shortly after D-Day in 1944. It was a tragic story of a handsome young man, willing to serve his country in a job that had very low chances of his survival. It’s not unlike thousands of other stories of brave young men and women who died in World War II.

We recently started watching “Masters of the Air,” a series streaming on Apple TV about men in the 100th Bomb Group of the U.S. Army Air Corps who flew B-17s over Europe during World War II. The series, produced by Tom Hanks, Stephen Speilberg and Gary Goetzman, is based on the book of the same name by Donald Miller and is similar in presentation to the series “Band of Brothers.”

Hans’ squadron was the 349th, which was part of the 100th Bomb Group. I highly recommend the series for anyone interested in World War II, especially to learn about the bravery and almost insurmountable odds of survival these young men faced during their missions to stop the Nazi war machine.

In my first blog, I said Hans was navigator on a B-17G named the “Terrible Termite.” My wife did some more research and discovered that the plane’s name was “Pack of Trouble.” We originally thought that the plane was hit by fire from a German fighter plane on June 12, 1944, near Dunkerque and exploded over the English Channel. Further research by my wife showed that the plane’s right wing was instead hit by German flak which started a fire between the No. 3 and No. 4 engine. The right wing broke off, but one crew member, George Sherback, was able to parachute out of the plane before it exploded. He was captured by German soldiers, held in a prison camp and later liberated.

In a memory of the event written by Sherback, he noted that Chorpenning asked him to wait a minute before bailing out to see if a crew member who had been injured in the foot could be helped. When the injured man said nothing more could be done to save him, Sherback bailed out. Chorpenning apparently hesitated a little longer, possibly still hoping to save his buddy, and died seconds later in the explosion. In “Masters of the Air,” there is a similar scene where a crew member trapped in the B-17’s ball turret could not be released by another crew member who concluded he could no longer help and bailed out. That plane crashed a short time later and the ball turret gunner died but the crewman who parachuted lived. It seemed that the slightest hesitation, for whatever reason, could cost you your life during these dangerous missions.

Chorpenning was posthumously awarded the Air Medal and Purple Heart and his body is in the “Tablets of the Missing” section of the Ardennes American Cemetery in Belgium.

We have not finished the series yet, but we’ve concluded that it’s highly likely that Chorpenning knew some of the men of the 100th Bomb Group who were featured in “Masters of the Air,” even though he was on duty in England such a short time before his life was cut short. We hope to learn more as the series continues.

A humbling lesson that I’m getting out of the series is the amount of bravery and sense of duty these men possessed to fly these missions day after day, knowing that the odds were stacked against them.

And another takeaway is the sadness that we still have to face wars around the globe because of men like Hitler who think they have the right to rule the world.

*He may have been my wife’s “second cousin, once removed.” Someone once tried to explain “second cousin once removed” to me and I looked it up online. I’m still confused and probably got it wrong. I guess I should just say Chorpenning and my wife Margo were “related.”