Media Notes
We're walking a little taller, standing a little
straighter here in Silver City now that the "nation's newspaper of record" has
taken notice of our little burg. Some of us are also taking swimming
lessons, but more on that in a moment.
Maria Finn, a writer for The
New York Times' Friday "Escapes" section,
came to town to write up Silver City for the paper's weekly "36
Hours" feature, in which it prescribes a whirlwind of fun requiring
just a day and a half. Silver City joined such varied previous hotspots
as Maui, Mexico City, Houston and Pensacola, Fla. Finn began, "People
who live in Silver City like to say that their town of 10,000 offers
'the real New Mexico experience.' Perched on the edge of the Gila National
Forest in a high-desert wonderland of ponderosas, deep gorges and red-rock
mesas, Silver City is a bit rough around the edges, especially compared
to places like Santa Fe and Taos—but that's the way the locals like
it."
She then went on to guide potential visitors to an array of attractions:
Twisted Vine, the Buckhorn, Nancy's Silver Cafe, the new StudioSpace
gallery, the Silver City Museum, Jalisco's, Elemental Day Spa, City of
Rocks State Park, Spaghetti Western, the Buffalo Bar, Grey Feathers Lodge
and the Gila Cliff Dwellings. Recommended lodging included the Inn on
Broadway, Bear Mountain Lodge and Casitas de Gila. Finn missed a few
of our favorites, but overall a pretty good list—and you can only do
so much in 36 hours, after all.
The newspaper's mapmakers, however, made Silver
City perhaps a bit too "rough
around the edges." As pointed out by eagle-eyed reader Mitch Hellman,
owner of Alotta Gelato (which theTimes inexplicably
left out—it's one of only two full-time gelaterias in the entire state—the
other being in Santa Fe), "The downtown map that accompanied the
article (apparently cribbed from Google) mentions a 'N. Main St.' Any
tourist planning on walking down this street should bring hip waders,
because between 1895 and 1906 a series of flash floods dropped Main
Street about 55 feet, forming a tree-lined stream bed running through
what is now known as Big Ditch Park."
Watch on the Potomac
Gov. Bill Richardson has been too busy blasting
off into space (see
story this issue) lately to give the slightest thought
to running for the White House in 2008, we're sure, but if he does
have presidential ambitions maybe he'd better get blogging. Plain and
simple, Richardson is losing the Democratic blog sweepstakes, big time,
to 2004 also-ran Gen. Wesley Clark. Take the online poll at The Next
Prez (thenextprez.blogspot.com)—a site devoted entirely, believe it
or not, to the presidential race still two years away—for example:
Clark blows away the field with 49%, leaving Richardson in the fine
print at 3%. On the bright side for the governor: Supposed Democratic
frontrunner Sen. Hillary Clinton barely beats him with 4%.
Meanwhile, the Los Angeles
Times writes about how
hard it is to run for the White House from the US Senate (are you listening,
Hillary?) and adds, "This discouraging history is one reason some
partisans (notably those close to ambitious governors such as New Mexico
Democrat Bill Richardson and Massachusetts Republican Mitt Romney)
suggest the parties should look outside the Beltway for their next
nominees."
Quote/Unquote:
"Everyone in the public was basically
hoodwinked."
—attorney
Letty Belin, representing the state of New Mexico
in a hearing charging
that the Bureau of Land Management
changed its rules on oversight of
Otero Mesa drilling
"As best as we can tell, nearly a fourth
to a third of the physicians in New Mexico in the 1920s were 'lungers'
or family members of 'lungers.'"
—Jake
Spidle, UNM history professor,
in a
Silver City Museum lecture on the
effects of tuberculosis on New Mexico
"We are not in any way trying to encourage
or promote migration. The only thing we are trying to do is warn
them of the risks they face and where to get water, so they don't
die."
—Mauricio Farah of Mexico's
National Human
Rights Commission, on a plan to distribute 70,000 maps
of the Arizona desert to
potential border crossers
"We want to develop a strategy to guide
communication for all our community colleges and to have a style
that we can use consistently."
—Maureen
Howard, NMSU associate vice president for
communications and marketing,
on hiring a
consulting
firm to rebrand the university's
Dona Ana Branch
Community College
"The reality in the world has changed
and we have not paid enough attention to that, and it's high time
we did."
—Sen. Jeff Bingaman,
introducing three bills
to boost science and technology education.
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February 2006