There is Life After APD!

Just north of Travis County and the city of Austin, Texas, is Williamson County, where the city of Round Rock is located.

In March 2014, Round Rock Police department hired a new chief, Allen Banks.

Banks, as deputy chief, had been interim chief here in Albuquerque following Chief Raymond Schultz’ retirement.

On a recent road trip with my buddy Rocky Nogales, to attend a wedding of his sister, we ran into Banks as he filled his SUV at a local gas station.

Click on badge and see the center showing a cowboy, cattle, and the round rock.

Nogales and I had planned on tracking down Banks to see how his new world was treating him, but instead, he rolled up on where we were.

Banks is doing fine. He commands a 155-officer department. 

While talking with us, the wife of an officer came over to shake the chief’s hand and to introduce herself to him, commenting, she and her husband were very pleased at how he was directing the department.

Motorcycle Officer Jesse Rodriguez, whom we had seen running radar earlier, pulled in to get gas. I noticed his name was on the lower fairing and asked Banks about it.

The name of every officer is on their marked take-home vehicles, Banks said. It is part of his community policing effort, and he says it has been well received.

I approached Rodriguez, introducing myself as having worked with Banks in Albuquerque.

Rodriguez approached Banks, shook his hand, and joined our conversation.

These two contacts seemed truly sincere.

Later in the day I went to the font of all truth in a community – the barbershop to get a shave.

The barber, sporting tattoos, admitted to knowing members of the Banditos motorcycle club. He also said he had several clients who were Round Rock police officers.

The man slinging the razor reported, every officer told him they were impressed with Banks and believed they were on the right path.

Banks may have wanted to lead APD, but it is apparent that he has found a new, welcoming home, with good workers, and community support.

Banks said his family was pleased with the move, his in-laws having moved into the area a few years back. He was wearing his long-sleeved dress uniform as he was on his way to watch his sister present her dissertation for a PhD.. in nursing management from the University of Texas at Austin's School of Nursing Doctoral program.

My Take

Banks made a very good move, for several reasons:

He is unburdened by the problems of the Albuquerque Police Department, some of which he had occurred under his watch.

APD’s problems are bigger than a single change in rank from the inside could overcome. This is evidenced by the continued and increasing issues since Bank’s departure.

Financially, he is pulling down a very good retirement through the State of New Mexico’s system and is now receiving a good salary in a healthy economy,

What he could not accomplish at Albuquerque Police Department, the community of Round Rock is now going to enjoy.

The War is Over

One hundred years ago yesterday the Colorado Coalfield War ended.

Where the war ended, another prickly battle began for workers rights.

Some sixty-six people were killed.

Coal miners in southern Colorado along the Rocky Mountains Front Range between Trinidad and Pueblo, struck against several John D. Rockefeller Jr.’s, Colorado Fuel & Iron Co. coalmines, in September 1913, in an effort to join the United Mine Workers
of America.

Several tent colonies were set up, because strikers were thrown out of the company town.

On April 20, 1914, Easter Sunday. 20 people were killed at Ludlow, Colo. by the Colorado National Guard and embedded private detectives hired by Rockefeller to break the strike. Of the 20 killed, 11 were children and two were women; family members’ of strikers died in a pit dug under a tent, to protect them from gunfire, when the tent was torched.

The site has been enshrined and is known as the “Death Pit.’”

The numbers killed that day vary, even within the United Mine Workers of America.

One by-passer was killed.

Three National Guard and private detectives were also killed.

When word spread to other tent colonies and gun battles raged for ten days.

Federal troops were sent to separate the warring factions.

The strike was broken, but the deadly events became the catalyst for unionism to take hold in America.

It was the practice of the day, of large corporations in providing everything for the workers from: housing, schools, to groceries, to libraries, (containing censored books), to everything they might need through a company store, and even ministers.

However, everything provided was just slightly overpriced, requiring the workers to establish credit, which hooked and trapped the workers in an indebted servitude. Workers were prohibited from acquiring goods from any other source.

An economic concept that some argue continues to exist to this day.

Coal mining was dangerous work and nearly 200 miners through out the country were killed each year.

The number one issue for workers was safety.

The strike failed but a number of things changed with numerous after-effects that have had an impact on our society in many ways, some subtle and others more obvious:

John D. Rockefeller Jr. was called before congress and hit hard in the day’s media.

Rockefeller set up company unions. They could not bargain, but workers were able to meet and talk to mine operator to express their concerns and grievances.

The damaging publicity was so bad Rockefeller hired a public relations firm, Ivy Lee, and created a new field of industrial public relations, which is with us today.

Note the advertising on network newscasts and in particular, Sunday morning talk shows where such industrial giants as Exxon/Mobile, a direct spinoff of Rockefeller Sr's Standard Oil and the third largest company by revenue in the world, Monsanto,  Archer Midland Daniels, and others.

Lee would claim an overturned stove, not the fires started by the National Guard, caused the deaths in the pit.

Upton Sinclair would call Lee, “Poison Ivy.”

In the early 1930s Lee consulted with a German company, I.G. Farben Industrie and would be accused of having Nazi sympathies, he was brought before Congress, but he died before the question was resolved.

Union activist Mother Jones gained more notoriety

The Colorado miners would join the UMWA, which put up this monument.

Ludlow, Colorado Cola Miners Strikers’ Massacre Centennial was Easter Sunday, April 20, 2014.

Today there are only two coalmines in Colorado and none on the front range, yet there is a manufacturing of other competing sources of energy.

Shirley Temple-Black 1928-2014

Child movie star Shirley Temple died of natural causes February 10, 2014, at home in Woodside, Calif., near San Francisco.

She was 85.

Shirley Temple-Black, the United States Protocol Officer to the Social, Humanitarian and Political Committees at the U.N., arrives prior to President Richard Nixon's arrival to speak before the General Assembly in New York City, on September 18, 1969.

She would later serve as U.S. ambassador to Ghana and Czechoslovakia.

If You Don’t Like the Weather in New Mexico; Just Wait, It’ll Change!

What’s Wrong With This Picture?

In a matter of a few days one couldn’t tell what season it is.

Saturday, December 21, 2013, began the Northern Hemisphere’s astronomical winter.

Is it winter? It seemed to be a couple of weeks ago,

Then it looked and felt like fall again.

And this weekend, eight weeks into winter, with a record high temperature of 71°, for the date, green is sprouting on the bush in my front yard. It is green a month earlier than last year.

Surely winter has not gone away, it has just relinquished its hold here and given the East-coast the honor of a good blast.

Don’t Pay the Ransom, I’ve Escaped!

What’s Wrong With This Picture?

It’s the punch-line of an old joke about the bar flies wondering aloud what excuse they’ll use for being out late and drunk; one says, I’ll just call my wife and tell her....

I haven’t been hanging around bars, but I have been working on a number of large time-consuming projects, which are coming to a head and I can see some light at the end of the tunnel.

The projects are not going away, but there might be a little break where I can get a post or two up.

So, to my readers and followers who have been patiently waited and for those who have not been so patient, don't give up or pay the ransom, I do have several stories in various stages of completion that I should be able to get up.

I’ve also been out in the wilderness staring down wild beasts to bring you hair-raising tales.

OK! It’s a coyote in the high regions of Yosemite National Park scrounging for food from any passing motorist who would slow down to take a look.

Yogi Bear over in Jellystone Park with Ranger Smith has nothing on this critter, but it didn’t score anything from a “picanic basket” either.

I have a road trip story, from whence this picture came.

A short planned seven-day trip to California, to see a nephew-godson get married and to visit my mother in the Sacramento area.

Follow my misadventures as a broken differential and a nationwide search for the right part extends my stay.

I have a photographic review of former Governor David Cargo upon his recent passing.

Those big projects have stories behind them also and we still have things to talk about over what is happening with government and how they don’t deal with aspects of the press they refuse to even acknowledge.

Happy Fourth of July and Remember the 150th Anniversary of the Battles of Gettysburg and Vicksburg

As I have done before, don’t’ forget in the midst of the: hotdogs, beer, flag flying, baseball playing or watching, ice cream, and apple pie, to take a few moments to read the master essay of the Committee of Five, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Robert Sherman, and Robert Livingston – The Declaration of Independence – wrote such a fine love letter to King George III.

The third and decisive day in the Battle of Gettysburg happened 150 years ago today.

It was arguably the turning point against the Confederacy; as not only was General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia repulsed, but Union General Ulysses S. Grant’s Army of the Tennessee completed the siege and battle of Vicksburg, Mississippi on the same day, which gave control of the Mississippi river to the Union and effectively ended the war in the west.

Though it wasn’t delivered until November 1863, President Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, considered to be some of the best prose ever delivered is worth also reading today.

I will spare you having to link to it and let you read it here:

Gettysburg Address

Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure.

We are met on a great battle field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that nation might live.

It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But in a larger sense we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate we can not hallow this ground.

The brave men, living and dead, who struggled her have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract.

The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.

It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.

It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion.

That we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain.

That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom.

And that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.

Abraham Lincoln

Pause and reflect on these documents and please consider what they mean as a reflection of our country today.

Now go take in one of the local fireworks displays.

A Blank Space is Not a Memorial!

What’s Wrong With This Picture?

Better yet, what is this picture?

This is the north wall of a room in the Albuquerque Publishing Company headquarters.

 

It is the Ray Cary Auditorium.

Who was Ray Cary and why was the auditorium named for him?

Cary was an Albuquerque Journal photographer for many years.

You have met him here, and on the Blue Flyer; here Cary, center, is at a June 5, 1969, impromptu press conference with land grant activist Reies Lopez Tijerina, left during a convention that would end with the burning of U.S. Forest Service signs. Tijerina and his wife were arrested and convicted. He was sentenced to ten-years along with another conviction, yet spent a little over two-years in custody.

So What’s Wrong With This Picture?

I had heard about the room, but had never seen it. I had the opportunity to attend a day-long event in the auditorium last week. I was greatly disappointed. Though it is a state of the art presentation hall, with all the electronic bells and whistles, it was lacking.

The walls are bare. How could a room named in honor of a Journal photographer not have a single picture taken by him or of him to demonstrate why he is recognized?

Cary and I were not the best of buddies, but we were peers, contemporaries, and fierce competitors when it came news photography contests.

What may have been his most famous pictures were taken after the courthouse raid and appeared in a book by Peter Nabokov, “Tijerina and the Courthouse Raid.” 

The Smithsonian Institution has photographs in their museum of his coverage following the June 5, 1967, Rio Arriba County courthouse raid at Tierra Amarilla, New Mexico.

It is unfortunate that Journal Editor Kent Walz and Albuquerque Publishing Company Owner and Journal Publisher, Tom Lang, purportedly his friend, don’t go through the morgue and select eight or ten of Cary’s best work, print them, frame them, and hang them in the room.

It’s the least they could do as a real honor.

How to Win a Baseball Game

What’s Wrong With This Picture?

Take a beautiful Albuquerque evening, at Isotopes Park, let the winds calm down, play back and forth ball, get to the end the ninth inning tied 4-4 with the Memphis Redbirds.

After enjoying the between innings promotional events 

and the antics of the huggable Orbit, winner of best mascot in all of Minor League baseball contest.

Hang out in the dugout with Tony Gwynn eating sunflower seeds and analyzing the game on an off night.

Get the Birds out in the top of the tenth inning on the relief pitching of Australian native Peter Moylan, who pitched two no-hit innings.

Bring to bat Isotopes First Baseman Scott Van Slyke, let him get on base, this time by way of a walk.

Earlier in the game Van Slyke was face down in the mud, hit in the left hand by a pitched ball.

Catcher Tim Federowicz, who had already hit two doubles, scoring two runs, takes a pitch and with a mighty swing places it in the Redbirds bullpen.

The Isotopes bench gathers around Home Plate to greet Van Slyke and Federowicz.

Final score 6-4.

It’s Green!

Here are some sure signs of Spring.

The foliage is showing early signs of the changing season, (don’t worry, this is New Mexico, there is cold still left in the calendar).

With a reported high temperature of 73 degrees, Saturday March 15, these men got out the motorcycles to go to lunch and a shirtsleeve ride.

It also must be March as 15^th ranked University of New Mexico Lobos won the Mountain West Conference Basketball tournament, in Las Vegas, Nv, by  defeating University of Nevada Las Vegas, Rebels 63 – 56, clinching a spot in the NCAA first round of 68.

This picture, taken February 2, 2013, at the only game I attended, shows the Lobos on a breakaway after a steal against the University of Nevada Wolf Pack; UNM 75 – Nevada 62.

The 2013 New Mexico Legislature (Senate) slogged through another 60-day session which ended at noon, March 16, without any earth-shattering results.

Face-Off

What’s Wrong With This Picture?

In the most anticipated Senate confirmation hearing of Governor Susana Martinez’s administration, that of Secretary of Public Education, will take place today in what is expected to be a contentious political battle.

Senate Rules Committee Chair Sen, Linda M. Lopez – D Bernalillo County, left, has delayed a conformation hearing into the third Legislative session.

New Mexico Department of Public Education Secretary Designate Hanna Skandera, right, has been serving in the position since January 1, 2011. She is paid the same as if she were the confirmed Secretary and acts with full authority.

New Mexico Constitution

Sec. 6. [Public education department; public education commission.]

A.        There is hereby created a “public education department” and a “public education commission” that shall have such powers and duties as provided by law.  The department shall be a cabinet department headed by a secretary of public education who is a qualified, experienced educator who shall be appointed by the governor and confirmed by the senate.

What seems at issue is based on the Constitutional requirements that the secretary of public education, “is a qualified, experienced educator.”

According to her resume she has a Bachelor’s degree in Business from Sonoma State University and a Master’s of Public Policy, specializing in American Politics and International Relations from Pepperdine University’s School of Public Policy.

The Martinez administration citing Skandara's resume, takes the position her vast experience as a high level as a senior policy advisor and Deputy Chief of Staff at the U.S. Department of Education, as Florida’s Deputy Commissioner of Education, California’s Undersecretary for Education, and having taught Education Policy at Pepperdine University’s Graduate School of Public Policy substitutes for “qualified, experienced educator”.

Senate Minority Floor Leader Sen. Stuart Ingle – R Chaves, Curry, De Baca, Lea, and Roosevelt Counties, right, and as senior Republican member of the Rules Committee will introduce Skandera. The hearing is scheduled for 8:30 a.m. – Room 321, State Capitol.