On Saturday, September 29th, Betty Rhodus passed away. Betty was a big presence in the lives of the Weltons, starting back in the late 70’s when Dad moved us across town from the bustling Juan Tabo and Copper area to a house in a new, largely undeveloped swath in Albuquerque’s Northeast Heights. Our new...
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The 2018 Cubs ended their post-season run as soon as it began last night with a 2-1 13-inning chess match Wild Card loss to the visiting Colorado Rockies. The last game of the season for the Cubs was like 39 of the 163 other games they played this year, with the Cubs scoring 1...
Read more →Tonight I decided it was time to go to a photography meetup group activity here in town. The timing seemed right because I had been a “member” of this particular group for over a year, which involved me watching posts about member events on the meetup site for a year and never attending anything....
Read more →We don’t know why, when the world is lost in shadows, there is a light that will remain… Written in 1987, Montana Sky was the band’s response to member Gordon Kennedy’s sister-in-law taking her own life, offering a message that God is always trustworthy and loving, even in times when things make no sense....
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Tonight after work I decided to head back down to Valle de Oro National Wildlife Refuge to check in on the birds. I knew the Cubs game played this evening was blacked out locally, so I couldn’t go home and watch it. And I also didn’t feel much like going home to sit around....
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If September 2nd rolls around and you are in central New Mexico looking for something to do, consider attending the Feast Day of San Estevan at Acoma Pueblo. I offer this up as a native New Mexican who, up until three Sundays ago, had never attended a formal feast day at any pueblo before....
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I always liked this song from Corey Hart- a song released in 1985, when I was a junior in high school. I don’t know that I ever actually read or heard the words so that I knew what he was singing about. Corey was just cool in his leather jacket with the popped collar...
Read more →When Ernesto finished his cigarette, he tossed the butt into the gravel and stomped it with his brown work boot, trying to crush the nub of ashes on the end flat. He lingered with the last drag of smoke in his mouth and looked east, past the near vineyard field, toward the pad of...
Read more →I. There are days that the silence is loud, that I see vague faces and mouths move, but the gulf is too wide for the words to cross it, and whatever is human is continents away, and I dog-paddle in an open sea of disconnection and meaninglessness. I’ve heard of love as a wonderful...
Read more →The sun rose in the west this morning, and the light was cold. She spoke and the words were backwards, inside out, thoughts unwound, like strands of a sticky web, attaching to chaos and confusion. Her kiss burned his neck, her gaze his eyes, her touch his arm, and sky swirled into the dark...
Read more →This week, I received a film from Netflix that I had expected to see in the theater last year. I had seen trailers for the film last spring, and earmarked it in my mind as a must see when it came out on the big screen, if, for anything, for its extensive use of...
Read more →After a long layoff, I spent a little time today trying to collect a few more facts about life in Colonial New Mexico. One of the source books I have enjoyed is “Bolton and the Spanish Borderlands”, which is a collection of writings by Herbert Bolton, an American historian from the early twentieth century...
Read more →Before us, the traffic light is red, so this morning I slow down with the cluster of cars ahead of me and stop on the hill at Lead and Second, a little away from the intersection, after going over the bridge over the rail yard tracks. A sedan pulls up beside me with muted...
Read more →With mom out of town tonight, Dad and I went to dinner at Dion’s, a local pizza joint, and I enjoyed gleaning a few more nuggets from him about his past. He was the middle of three kids, which has been noted before, but I learned tonight that birth symmetry is a Welton attribute....
Read more →It was a Thursday morning, early, when Morton Roger Hollings tried to get out of bed, and his back locked up, leaving him virtually paralyzed. He asked the dogs to get him some ibuprofen or a thermal patch to heat his back, but they ignored him and tore up a cardboard microwave meal box...
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My sister’s family was invited by close friends to camp overnight at Chaco on a group site. Did I want to join them? Sure. Friday afternoon we drove out 550 from Albuquerque and on into Chaco Canyon and Gallo Campgrounds. We ate hot dogs and everyone socialized. We went to bed late, and Kristi,...
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