New Mexico Central

Happy New Year!

by John Weckerle

It is January 1, and we find ourselves looking eagerly forward to 2012.  With some positive life changes having occurred during the latter months of 2011, the denizens of New Mexico Central Headquarters find themselves more optimistic about the coming year’s prospects.  We hope that our readers do, also.

Over the last few days, your editor has been giving some thought to how the year is looking and what it may mean for New Mexico Central.  A few thoughts:

• Photography may play a more important, or at least a more routine, role in NM-Central’s content.  This is in part because your editor is planning an equipment upgrade, and will be feverishly snapping away at everything in sight in order to learn the nuances of the new camera.  We may also be introducing some video; in fact, we have the first one put together but need to make a decision on rendering software so we can post it.  We used Adobe Premiere Elements to compile it, but the outputs are inadequate and Premiere Elements 9 was widely panned.  If any of our readers have suggestions, we could use them.
• Digital art may also start showing up from time to time, possibly a little later in the year.  Fractal and 3D art are a couple of your editor’s occasional hobbies, and designing fractal-art Kindle sleeves (these can be seen at your editor’s Cafe Press site under the Digital Worlds collection) as part of this year’s Christmas present inventory has perhaps reinstated the itch.  We’ll see.
• We are excited that our gardening experiments have been successful – successful, that is,  in demonstrating that 1/2-inch PVC is not sufficient to withstand heavy winter snows if used for a hoop house.  The recent barrage of winter storms provided us with a great “test case” and, despite the fact that we didn’t have the plastic on, the snow on the bird netting was still enough to crush the frame.  We’ll repair, redesign, and rebuild with thicker pipe when the weather gets a little nicer.
• We’ve given it some thought and we find ourselves even more fed up than in the past with people dressing up intolerance and dishonesty as patriotism.  We’re also sick and tired of people in certain quarters constantly tearing down our government.  No government is perfect, including ours, and we think the focus should be on making what we have run as effectively as possible as opposed to rather than cripple it or tear it down.  We’re tired of intransigent idealogues monopolizing the discussion and gumming up the works.  There’s probably not much we can do about it other than continue to “write the wrongs,” as it were, and we’ll continue to try and do so.  However, we may be a bit more pointed in some of our critiques, and may also be looking at the backgrounds of those whose writings we are reviewing, as this puts some perspective on the situation and gives an insight into just how much these people actually know about the subjects upon which they are expostulating.
• The recent omission of the Capulin Snow Play hours was a little embarrassing, and we’re going to try to do a better job at posting the public service announcements and press releases the various agencies send us.

With those thoughts in mind, we’ll move forward into the New Year with a sense of adventure and at least a couple of goals.  We wish our readers, and everybody else, a happy and prosperous New Year!

Filed under: Announcements,Gardening | |2 Comments