All Things New Mexico, part 2

Rio Grande River, welcome sign, road

Dr. Estevan Rael-Gálvez, former New Mexico State Historian, said New Mexico History is worth remembering.  New Mexico is a state very rich in culture, but many people don't find it a place to visit (or even know that it is a state, as noted before).  


Take a scenic drive along Historic Route 66, from Chicago to Los Angeles and you will go right through New Mexico. We have bat caves, white sands, stalactites, aliens (the UFO kind), green chile, ristras, Native American art (jewelry, rugs, pottery), hot air balloons, Shiprocks, Billy the Kid and much more. 


A stop in Carlsbad will give you some major underground exploration at Carlsbad Caverns.  Here you can go approximately 79 stories into the cave and see stalactites and stalagmites.  At dusk, for about half of the year, 1000s of bats can be seen flying out of the cave (that's more then Austin has).


 In Roswell, there are Alien museums and paraphernalia every where you turn.  It is said that a farmer saw evidence of a UFO in his fields and sightings of dead creatures.  It became known as the Roswell UFO Incident but very much was covered up by the military.  There has been books and movies about what "really" happened.  They even went on to make a fictional television series of it, that aired on the WB.    


One of the most defining characteristics of New Mexico is the dominance of the New Mexican chile (grown mainly in Hatch)—in red and green varieties.  The New Mexico chile, especially when harvested as green chile, is perhaps the defining ingredient of New Mexican food compared to neighboring styles.  Chile is New Mexico's largest agricultural crop.  Within New Mexico, green chile is a popular ingredient in everything from enchiladas and burritos to cheeseburgers, french fries, bagels, and pizzas, and is added to the standard menu of many national American food chains.  When you become used to eating green chile, it is hard to live in a place like Chicago that doesn't even have hot jalapeños.   

We even have celebrity sightings.  Val Kilmore owns a ranch outside of Taos, that is rumored to become a Bed and Breakfast.  Julia Roberts also owns a ranch near Taos.  Demi Moore was born in Roswell, Neil Patrick Harris was born in Albuquerque and grew up in Ruidoso and Freddie Prinze Jr lived and went to school in Albuquerque.  If you have watched USA's In Plain Sight, it is filmed on location in and around Albuquerque.  


How could one not be proud to be a New Mexican?  LOL.


Pictures from previous post: 
Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta
New Mexico State University Aggies (where I went to school, but UNM has a bigger presence)
Green chile 
Navajo rug
Ristra
Roswell alien postcard
White Sands 
Isotopes baseball team
The Whole Enchilada Fiesta (a real enchilada)

Some Noteworthy Blogs

Check them out if you like crafty, creative things (some of their buttons are on my sidebar):

Today's Creative Blog

The Blog Guidebook

The Serendipity Factory

Tatertots and Jello

Polish the Stars

Let's Scrap Design Team
The Blackberry Vine

Values

Can you easily state what values you live by?  Are the values you wish you lived by different?  How can you change your life so that you are living by the values you really want to be?  Gandhi said, You must be the change you wish to see in the world.


I recently stumbled upon another blogger that is very inspirational and has brought a smile to my day, almost every day I read her blogs.  In  Spirit Lights The Way, Nancy is always upbeat and uplifting.  She posted that:

 If you want a more loving world, be more loving. 

If you desire more joy, share joy with others. 

If you want to be happier, choose to be happier. 

If you desire more understanding, be more understanding.

How can one not live true to our values with that line of thinking?

The Foundation for a Better Life conducted an online survey to find out what values are most important to people. The graphic cloud tag above illustrates their findings.  After some 4200 submissions, each value above was sized in accordance with how many times it was suggested.  They are still taking suggestions, and votes.  I voted for Support.  You can also save the graphic cloud on your desktop for a daily reminder of what values many find important.  

How can you use kindness tomorrow?   

All Things New Mexico

Above are all pictures of something to do with or in New Mexico, can you label them?

I used to be a flight attendant in my younger, childless days.  Though it wasn't a prestigious job, I didn't work for that kind of airline, it was fun.  It was also the perfect airline for me because I got to travel all over the world. I will post more on that later.  All of us wore our name tags, that said our name and home place.  So mine said Alicia, Las Cruces, NM.  In junior high and high school geography was a subject I did well in.  I could name all 50 states and their capitals.  I can still name all 50 states with a little time.  So it always got me when I would hear things like, you speak such good English or you are so blonde; these being on flights within the states.  Do they not teach geography of ALL 50 states on the east coast?  Did you know that even our license plates have to say New Mexico, U.S.A.?  Go out and look at your license plate and see if it says U.S.A. after your state.  Let me know.  I am, however, proud of my state.  I have lived in Illinois, Maryland, Texas and Arizona and each time I come back to New Mexico.  No matter where I end up down the road New Mexico will always be home.  

Serendipitous

Serendipity. I love that word. It just zippity do dahs off the tongue.
Serendipity is a natural tendency for making fortunate discoveries while looking for something unrelated.
I like the word so much that I looked it up and found some interesting discoveries:
~Chocolate chip cookies were invented by Ruth Wakefield when she attempted to make chocolate drop cookies. She did not have the required chocolate so she broke up a candy bar and placed the chunks into the cookie mix. These chunks later morphed into what is now known as chocolate chip cookies.
~Corn flakes and wheat flakes (Wheaties) were accidentally discovered by the Kelloggs brothers in 1898, when they left cooked wheat unattended for a day and tried to roll the mass, obtaining a flaky material instead of a sheet.
~Arthur Fry happened to attend a 3M college's seminar on a new "low-tack" adhesive and, wanting to anchor his bookmarks in his hymnal at church, went on to invent Post-It Notes.
~The microwave oven was invented by Percy Spencer while testing a magnetron for radar sets at Raytheon, he noticed that a peanut candy bar in his pocket had melted when exposed to radar waves.
~Christopher Columbus was looking for a new way to India in 1492 and wound up landing in The Americas. Native Americans were therefore called Indians.


Then there is the movie Serendipity (2001) with John Cusack (Jonathon) and Kate Beckinsale (Sara) and a scene from the movie which takes place in the New York restaurant Serendipity:
Jonathan: This is the ultimate blend to drink. How’d you find this place?
Sara: I first came in because of the name: Serendipity. It’s one of my favorite words.
Jonathan: It is? Why?
Sara: It’s such a nice sounding word for what it means: a fortunate accident.

In my serendipitous quest, I made a chance discovery of my own, a blog called The Serendipity Factory, full of inspirational findings.

Serendipity is looking in a haystack for a needle and discovering a farmer’s daughter.
- Julius Comroe Jr.

Who is Lili?

I am new at blogging and still trying to figure it all out. But I am reading, reading, reading. Finding my style. I tried wordpress.com but decided to give Blogger a try because most of the creative blogs I have seen are on Blogger. Next I am going to bring one of my blogs from there over because I just like it so much (for now).






Who am I? I am an educated, unemployed, single mom of a very testy 1st grade boy. I love creativity and could not live a black and white life.