My wife and I drove to the site of old Fort Cummings in Luna County northeast of Deming this week. We’d heard about it in the last few years and learned more about it from good friend Jack Wilson. Jack is a retired archaeologist, historical researcher and author who submitted a nomination to have the site placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975. * The fort was established in 1863 primarily to defend locals and travelers from Apache Indians who roamed that part of southwestern New Mexico. It was abandoned in 1873, then occupied again briefly in the 1880s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Cummings

After reviewing several articles on the Internet about the old fort and looking at Google Earth maps, we set out Wednesday in our four-wheel-drive GMC Sierra pickup along with our dog Chester. As several of the internet articles warned, the road was very rough and not fit for normal passenger vehicles. Nevertheless, after a few miles of jolting bumps over large rocks and small gullies, we came to the site and discovered many interesting things.

All that’s left of the old fort are some crumbling adobe walls, some rock walls and the cemetery. All of the soldiers buried in the cemetery were later re-interred at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and there is only one gravestone left. It tells the story of four soldiers who were killed by Apaches on an excursion to get firewood.

The Fort’s site was chosen because of the location of Cooke’s Spring, one of the few reliable sources of water between Mesilla and Tucson. And old well house is still visible, along with a rock corral used by the Butterfield Overland stage that also went through this spot.

The spring and site was found by the Mormon Battalion, which began in 1846 at Council Bluffs, Iowa, and ended in San Diego, CA, in a march by the only religious detachment in U.S. Military history. The battalion, which served in the Mexican-American War, was led from Santa Fe through southwestern New Mexico by Philip St. George Cooke, who en-route named Cooke’s Peak, and the spring at the southeastern end of Cooke’s Range, after himself. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_St._George_Cooke

While I was a journalist in Santa Fe in the 1970s, I knew Cooke’s great grandson, also called Philip St. George Cooke (III), who worked as an information officer for the New Mexico Parks Department. He was an interesting and memorable character, as I am sure his namesake was. The elder Cooke became a Union general in the Civil War.

As I mentioned earlier, the spring was also the reason for a stage stop along the Butterfield Overland Mail stage route through the southwestern United States. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfield_Overland_Mail

This route eventually became part of the Wells Fargo stage route, and for many years, I worked for Wells Fargo and helped bring replicas of the famous Wells Fargo stagecoaches for events in New Mexico.

Another Interesting thing we discovered in researching our trip was that the son of John Butterfield, who established the Butterfield Overland Mail stage route, was credited with writing the music for “Taps” which is the military bugle song played at the end of the day and at military funerals.

Also of interest is that at Fort Cummings, “Buffalo Soldiers” — black soldiers — were stationed there and at Fort Selden just north of Las Cruces. One of those soldiers was Cathay Williams, a woman who disguised herself as a man to serve from 1866-68 at Fort Cummings. She is believed the be the first black woman to serve as a soldier in the U.S. Military in the 19th century. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathay_Williams

And we discovered this final interesting personal connection. At some point during Fort Cummings history, an attempted mutiny was staged. When the soldiers who attempted the mutiny were put on trial, their attorney was Thomas B. Catron, the infamous “Santa Fe Ring” lawyer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Fe_Ring who represented Interior Secretary Albert B. Fall during Teapot Dome scandal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_B._Catron

My wife and I knew his great, great grandson, Fletcher Catron, when we lived in Santa Fe in the 1970s. As I recall, Fletcher frequently took time to defend some of the suspect dealings in which his great great grandfather was allegedly involved.

It just goes to show that when you start poking around with New Mexico history, you’ll never know what you might find.

And of course, the only history that interested Chester was the trail of where a jackrabbit might have run across the desert earlier that day.

*Jack says the Bureau of Land Management, on whose land most of the old fort rests, never took action on his proposal to place the property on the National Historic Register. The BLM has placed some signage with historical information around the property but a more robust interpretive display along with a better preservation plan would be appreciated by visitors.

I frequently skim through weird things in the newspaper that I suspect most people never look at. One of them is the list of new patents granted to New Mexico businesses or individuals that is posted in the Business Outlook section of the Albuquerque Journal.

Last week, a couple of things in that listing caught my eye.

One was for a patent for “Phosphorylation of Syntaxin 17 by TBk1 controls autophagy initiation.” Wow, that left me speechless and wondering what the heck it was.

I looked up Phosphorylation and found it is “the addition of a phosphoryl (PO₃) group to a molecule.” Okay, I’m still in the dark.

But here’s what a phosphoryl group looks like, if you’re interested:

 Got it now? Nope, me neither.

I did a little more research and found that Syntaxins are “nervous system-specific proteins implicated in the docking of synaptic vesicles with the presynaptic plasma membrane.”

Okay, now we’re getting somewhere — I think.

I looked up autophagy and found it was “the natural, conserved degradation of the cell that removes unnecessary or dysfunctional components…”

Given that this patent application went through the University of New Mexico’s Rainforest Innovations center and thinking that it has something to do with human cells, I suspect it is a medical advancement helping to clean up something bad in your body — probably cancer.

Here’s a link to the UNM Rainforest Innovations Center if you want to look at some really interesting research underway:

innovations.unm.edu

But the great juxtaposition of this scholarly research next to the following patent approval really got my attention.

It was for a guy from tiny Pie Town, NM, who had been awarded a patent for a “hose manipulation instrument.” Really, that’s what the listing said.

I kind of recall that someone had already invented something like that. As a matter of fact, I think I have two of them. But I certainly don’t have anything that “controls autophagy initiation.”

For the third year in a row, our dog Chester made the wrong pick about who would win the Super Bowl. He picked the San Francisco 49ers over the Kansas City Chiefs — although he did dither for a few moments before running off with the red ball that was the 49ers token.

I tried to talk to him about how he made this mistake, given that he had spent so much time analyzing statistics, past records, results of the Puppy Bowl and the Taylor Swift factor.

This is how he responded:

Yes, that is a look of remorse for failing to guide you, good readers, on where to put your money for the big game. I think it was the Taylor Swift factor that threw him off. Chester, of course, loves everyone, and goes bonkers when he sees someone he really likes. We think he concluded that Travis Kelce would do the same when he saw Taylor Swift in the sky box at the game and would be unable to focus on his duties as a tight end.

Now, we’re having to deal with a bewildered dog wondering what his true purpose in life might be. Oh wait, he just got a treat — everything is forgotten now.

Next, he’ll probably be pondering the Chicago Cubs chances of winning another World Series in 2024. Good luck with that, Chester.

The Albuquerque Journal had an article recently about a contest to name snowplows in the New Mexico Department of Transportation’s fleet. After the NMDOT reviewed almost 1,600 suggestions — many that had a New Mexico twist — I’ve included some of the ones that made the cut:

• Sleetwood Mac
• Darth Blader
• Bis-Snow-Chito
• Mr. Snow-It-All
• Better Call Salt
• Billy the Skid
• SnowZobra

So If we can name snow plows, why not garbage trucks?

How about:

• Landfill Filly
• You Only Take Me to Dumps
• Flies with Ten Wheels
• The Sheriff of Rotting-Ham
• Dump Blonde
• Trash-A-Rito
• Waste Away from Burritoville
• I Am Your Mother (Cleaning Up After You)
• Trash Gordon
• Smelly Sally
• The Crap Nebula
• Dump Bunny
• Garbager Harbinger
• Trash Bandicoot
  

And from the Rock Group collection:

• Trashing Pumpkins
• Trash Mouth
• Garbage (Yes, there was really a band named that)
• Trash Test Dummies

And from the financial sector:

• Trash Cow
• Trash Flow
• Trash is King

Okay, these are pretty cheesy. I’m sure you have better ones. So send me your suggestions and the winner will get a plastic bag of our last week’s kitchen garbage and I’ll repeat your suggestions (nothing too political and assuming I get some) in a future post.

(And a trout update)

I sense that many of you have been huddled around your computer in the last few days anxiously awaiting the news that Chester, our rambunctious Goldendoodle, has made his annual Super Bowl pick. Well, your wait it over.

As you can see below, Chester took this task very seriously. The photo below shows him just minutes before making his selection, contemplating the odds of each team winning, analyzing team data and statistics and most importantly, contemplating whether the Taylor Swift factor was going to come into play.

As usual, Chester is given a choice between two differently colored squeaky balls to grab after they are tossed to him in our back yard. This year, the Kansas City Chiefs were represented by a yellow ball and the San Francisco 49ers were represented by a red ball.

The video attached below shows him in action. The sound is bad because it was so windy the afternoon of Chester’s pick.

As you can see (sort of of) Chester went for the red (49ers) ball first, although he did dither back and forth between it and the yellow ball several times after his initial pick. In the end, he ran off with the red ball, no doubt hoping we would chase him down and reward him with a treat.

And now for the complete disclosure: Chester has failed to correctly pick winner of the Super Bowl in the last two years.

Let your conscience (and your bookie) be your guide.

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And now for the trout update. The alevin have now grown into fry at the White Mountain Elementary School “Trout in the Classroom” project. They have been moved from the nesting baskets into the main 55-gallon aquarium and are starting to swim around.

Teacher Rachel Lutterman sent me a video, where she says you can see one of them swimming, but I could not see any movement. However, I’ve attached a clip from the video where you can clearly see the outline of a fish on the bottom of the tank.

Stay tuned for more developments.

Wave The Wonder Dog, who fetches the tee for the New Mexico State University Aggies after every football kickoff, is entering the transfer portal and plans to go to Vanderbilt University.

Yep, you heard it here first. I completely made that up, but let’s see if it ends up in social media somewhere. Heck, it might even come out in the Presidential Campaign.

Wave even has his own Facebook Page, so if he’s already so famous, why couldn’t he go for a big NIL (name, image, likeness) deal with his own dog food chef, a limo to get him to games and a comfy couch on the sidelines to rest on in between kickoffs.

https://www.facebook.com/WaveTheWonderDog/

His fame is well deserved. At the 24th Annual American Kennel Club Humane Fund Awards last year, Wave received one of five awards for “hard working dogs that have significantly improved the lives of their owners and communities.” Not only that, Wave is also a member of the Mesilla Valley Search and Rescue Organization.

So after NMSU football coach Jerry Kill and Aggie quarterback Diego Pavia scampered off for greener pastures in Nashville at Vanderbilt, why shouldn’t Wave have that same opportunity?

I asked my good friend, retired professor Dr. Jim Peach and former faculty athletic advisor Jim Peach, about the rumor.

“That would be awful,” he said, clearly understanding that I had made up the whole thing and understanding the significance of such a dire possibility.

I’m sure it won’t happen. And after what seems like almost everyone in Aggie football heading out to the transfer portal, Wave might be the only thing we can look forward to during the 2024 football season at NMSU. That’s assuming we score and get to kick off to the opponent at some point during the game.

As my friends know, I’ve been a BMW fan for years. We purchased our first one, a metallic red 2002, on European delivery back in 1975. We picked it up at the factory in Munich and drove through Germany, Austria, Italy, Switzerland and France before dropping it off in Paris to be shipped home.

Since then, I’ve owned a dozen more in various models and sizes and currently have two — my 1975 hobby car below and an X3 driven mostly by my wife.

BMWs can be expensive to maintain, particularly if you have an older high-end model out of warranty and you don’t want to do some of the work yourself. Luckily, the last three that I’ve owned have been virtually trouble free.

The car that made the most nervous was a used 1988 735i, a beautiful cruiser for long distance touring. It had a strong reliable engine, graceful suspension and responsive transmission, but it was manufactured at the beginning of use of a lot of electronic features which had not yet been completely sorted out by car makers. When the car was first parked, you could hear a two-minute cycle of multiple ventilation doors somewhere deep inside the dash closing and opening. Beneath the back seat and in the trunk was a collection of electronic black boxes that I had no idea of their function. Troubleshooting the electronics for the ventilation system and then repairing any one of the malfunctioning doors would have meant hours of dashboard removal at a cost that would easily have been more than $1,000. A fellow BMW owner told me he had once spent more than $1,500 to repair the electronics on a power seat on his 735i, and that was at least 20 years ago when that amount was not just a drop in the bucket.

I finally decided to sell it when the reader board at the bottom of the instrument cluster randomly began giving out instructions in German.

“Bitte schließen Sie die Tür,” it instructed me one day. (I was later able to translate it to “Please close the door.”)

“Sie haben wenig Benzin” was another instruction warning me that I was low on gas.

Analyzing what was wrong with the then primitive electronics was not something I could do myself, and it might have cost more to fix the reader board than the car was worth at that time. So I parted ways with it, hoping that the next owner would find the occasional lapse into German amusing and not frightening as I did.

I mention this because I spotted a funny post a few days ago that a very expensive new Porsche model was having difficulty in translating from German to English.

Or maybe Porsche has developed a new feature that surrounds drivers with pads occasionally to give them a “break” if they decide to take a nap while using driverless cruise control. But apparently the feature only works if you’ve changed the “brake” pads in your $150,000+ German sports car.

When I first got news that the first few trout eggs hatched at White Mountain Elementary School in Ruidoso, I was very excited that the project was coming to fruition. The teacher told me: “We have Alvin!!”

I think she meant to say they had “alevin,” which is the word for newly hatched trout or salmon. But I though it sounded cool to say that the kids had named one of the first fish “Alvin,” so I passed that along as fact.

I offer my apologies for the scrambling of words, but I’m glad to announce that all but maybe two of the 35 eggs have hatched and will soon be transferred from their nesting baskets into the large 55 gallon aquarium.

I’ll keep everyone posted as the “Trout in the Classroom” project moves forward.

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And on another important note, be sure to watch for news of the dramatic moment when Chester, our Goldendoodle picks the winner of the Super Bowl. We toss him two squeaky balls, each one in the color of the two teams competing, and the one he picks will be the winner.

So far in the last three years, he hasn’t picked the winning team. So if you’re a betting person, I’d put your money on the team that Chester doesn’t pick.

But since both teams’ colors are primarily red this year, he might actually make the right pick this time.

Latest news from Ruidoso’s White Mountain Elementary is that 32 of the trout eggs, also known as alevin, have hatched. Three more — which would bring the total to 35 of the eggs that were shipped — look like they are ready to hatch, according to teacher Rachel Lutterman.

Stay tuned for updates on the epic “Trout in the Classroom” event right here at:

http://aero-cordero.com

Okay, it’s official. I am a new grandfather — well, if you can count a rainbow trout as a grandchild.

I got word yesterday that at least three of the 35 rainbow trout eggs we carefully placed in an aquarium in a 3rd grade classroom at White Mountain Elementary School in Ruidoso have hatched. The kids have named the newest hatchling “Alvin.”

If you’ll recall, I’m helping coordinate a Trout Unlimited “Trout in the Classroom” project at White Mountain Elementary in Ruidoso. Students will help raise Alvin and other trout to maturity in the classroom aquarium, then release them into a local lake or stream. We got the trout eggs almost two weeks ago in what was like a Pony Express delivery during a snow storm. It all worked out, and it’s all going well at this point.

But special thanks to the third graders who helped Alvin get to this point, and to the wonderful team of teachers, headed by Michelle Thurston and Rachel Lutterman, to make this all happen.

Stay tuned for more “Alvin and Friends” updates.

As a marketer, I often studied cases focusing on life-cycles of maturing industries and products. The product cycle curve is bell shaped, where best opportunities for profit and growth are early in the beginning of the industry or product. By the end of the cycle, there is deep discounting, increasing competition and declining sales and profits.

In New Mexico, I think the cannabis industry went straight from the introduction cycle to the decline stage.

As of the latest data, New Mexico has 1,063 cannabis dispensaries in the state, which has a population of 2.1 million. Compare that to Colorado, with a population of 5.8 million and only 670 cannabis outlets. For New Mexico, that works out to approximately one marijuana dispensary for every 1,975 persons. In Colorado, the numbers work out to one dispensary for every 8,656 persons.

On recent trips in southern New Mexico, I noticed some signs indicating the state of the industry in the state.

One sign said:”We price match.” Another said: “Watch for our daily specials.” And a third said: “Special Discounts for Seniors.”

Deep discounting is apparently already happening and I’ve noticed several stores that have already closed or never got opened. One is just a few blocks north of where we live on Main Street that was stillborn. The entire building, which used to be a liquor store, was painted in a gruesome black and had bold graphics on the sides of the building and the sign, apparently in hopes of a booming business just off Interstate 10. It never opened, despite what I assume was thousands of dollars spent on the paint job and remodeling of the interior.

I’m not going to comment on whether you think we should or shouldn’t have recreational marijuana. What was interesting to me is that none of the vendors seem to have taken the time to analyze market opportunities and that they made the blind assumption that everyone in New Mexico was “all in” on smoking pot.

Last year, marijuana vendors pleaded with state officials to limit the number of outlets in the state — yet another sign of a maturing industry reaching out to the government to help buoy it.

And to me, the great tragedy of this is that no one — as yet to my knowledge — has opened a dispensary in Weed, New Mexico.

My wife said the whole process sounded like a Pony Express delivery from the 1800s. Only it wasn’t mail that was being delivered — it was rainbow trout eggs.

On the evening of Feb. 11, a batch of freshly fertilized eggs was shipped by truck during a snow storm from a New Mexico Department of Game and Fish hatchery in northern New Mexico at Mora to another NMDG&F hatchery a little further south in Pecos. The next morning, another truck took the eggs from the Pecos hatchery to a distribution point in Albuquerque. From there, the eggs headed south to Ruidoso and then what was left went to Alamogordo.

I’ve written a couple of blogs earlier about the project at White Mountain Elementary School to allow third graders to watch the process of how trout eggs hatch into fry, then grow into adult-sized fish and then get released into local clean cold waters somewhere in the vicinity of Ruidoso. Alamogordo High School is doing a similar program in a science class.

Despite my concerns about the tight delivery schedule and the snow storm, the eggs showed up on time ready to be placed in the 55-gallon tank in the third-grade classroom of teacher Michelle Thurston. The NMDG&F delivered 35 healthy looking peach-colored eggs about half the size of salmon eggs.

Thurston and the other enthusiastic third grade teachers came up with the idea to participate in Trout Unlimited’s “Trout in the Classroom” (TIC) program, which is designed to help young students understand the importance of clean cold-water streams and lakes in the United States. They held fund-raisers to buy most of the equipment needed to raise the fish. The equipment includes a chiller to keep the water temperature at a steady 45-55 degrees, a water filter, an aerator to keep the water oxygenated and various chemicals to test the quality of the water. As secretary of the Gila/Rio Grande Chapter of Trout Unlimited, I volunteered to help facilitate the program and donated the 55- gallon tank to the school.

And so, like an anxious father, I’m awaiting news of the hatch, which should happen in about two and one-half weeks. I’ll send out a birth announcement and maybe smoke a cigar in celebration.

The last time I flew a hot air balloon was about a year ago. It wasn’t much of a flight — just three short hops on vacant field to get current (the FAA required three take offs and landings every 90 days.) At this time, I’m no longer current and I also need to do a biennial flight review to be fully qualified.

I’ve also released my half-interest in my balloon Aero Cordero, so I no longer have my own ride. The envelope was getting pretty old and porous anyway, so it was time to say goodbye to it.

However, last weekend, I helped facilitate balloon club fly in which has been held traditionally over the Martin Luther King weekend in Las Cruces. At one time, as a fully organized rally, it drew 50 hot air balloons from around the region. This year’s event had eight balloons, but it was still enjoyable for me to get back in touch with many friends in the ballooning community and be part of the event. I crewed one day for a long-time pilot and friend, Jim Hoidal.

I’m attaching some photos from the fly-in. All were taken by a local photographer, Victor Gibbs, and I’ve posted a link below to his site to view all of the images he captured over the two-day event.

https://adventuring.smugmug.com/Las-Cruces-Hot-Air-Balloon

As I’ve done for many years at this event, I did the weather briefing for the pilots. Winds for the Saturday flight were a bit iffy, but four of the balloons flew. On Sunday, conditions improved and six of the pilots had great long-lasting flights over the north and eastern sides of Las Cruces.

I do miss flying occasionally, but after 35 years of doing it, it was just time to quit. I’m sure I would have no problem piloting, but because of various medications I need to take after my heart surgery three years ago, it’s best I don’t risk any regulatory issues that might arise if there was an incident.

I’m glad to say that in my 35 years of flying, the only injury that ever occurred to one of my passengers was a tiny fracture of a woman’s pinky finger on one of the softest landings I ever made. The woman was the wife of an orthopedic surgeon, and she didn’t even know she had the minor injury until several weeks later.