Socorro in the morning

Something good to read: an article about The Daily Show with Jon Stewart in the New York Times.

Something good to listen to: Pandora Internet Radio and more specifically a song Morningtime by Sarah Dashew.

Here are some pictures from this morning's walk. A Community Fair, Yard Sale and Farmer's market on the plaza.

Church Street.

This is a recycling place that apparently takes junk metal. No name, or hours posted -
but there is one very interesting sign.

You'd think there'd be something behind that sign besides sinks and restaurant type kitchen fixtures, wouldn't you?

I would love to have a screen porch like this.

If this house were anywhere near an ocean or large body of water, I'd call that Widow's Walk on the rooftop.


If I ever won the lottery, I might want to buy a house like this and make it liveable. I'm a home-owner by necessity, not by desire, but I could totally fall for a house with porches.

And that's all for now - headed south to Truth or Consequences to the RiverBend Hot Springs.

ESP, or useful things I learned on the ranch.

My friend Jim, who keeps his finger on the pulse of the Socorro music scene, here, made me laugh by telling me I have ESP (Especially Senses Precipitation). In the interest of full disclosure, I will share my secret: watch the cows. When I drove to work the other morning, I noticed that the cows were all lying down in the fields. When the cows lie down, expect rain.

It rained this afternoon, so we put a chicken in the oven to roast, and went out to play in the puddles.



There's a new shop on the main drag, where we spotted this fellow -



and this one -



and this one.



He has the whole world in his hands...and while we're doing ellipses, check out this one:



Socorro is lovely after a good rain. We walked around a little near San Miguel. What follows is a few houses that appeal to me for one reason or another.









This has been a tough summer in a few ways, and I have been going a little crazy upstairs in my head. It feels good to be doing again the thing that kept me sane out in Catron County the last few years - walking and taking pictures and posting them on a blog. Also, reading good books and sharing them with people, like this one:

which is funny and interesting and has been a really good read in the run-up to the Beijing Olympics.

So in the interest of sanity, I'm back, and I will be posting more frequently, with pictures. Sure, I could find a good therapist, but this is cheaper, and more fun.

Humidity and mosquitos

One thing you can usually count on in NM is a lack of humidity, but not lately. Walks this summer have been confined to after dark, when it's not so sticky hot, along the irrigation ditches and canals that spread the water out laterally from the Rio Grande. I quit even those late night walks when the mosquitos population exploded a little while ago.

But you can't stay inside forever. Eventually the urge to wander about and poke around overcome the tendency towards inertia. Too buggy still along the ditches and irrigated fields, so loaded the kids and dogs into the car looking for where we left off.



It was starting to get a bit too dim for picture taking, but I got this picture of a house on Neel Street that looks like it's been there for a while. I like the one tiny little window high up in the north wall.