Courtesy Leon Rodgers: A fast and furious twister touched down just southwest of the village of Magdalena on Sunday. Village Marshal Larry Cearley reported no damage to persons or property and that the twister was on the ground three or four minutes.

Brent Wachter of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Weather Service, confirmed the reported tornado sighting, with official reports of hail averaging one inch in diameter. The Weather Service also issued a tornado warning between 2:15 to 3 p.m. for central Socorro County on Sunday.

Dodging a Bullet

Magdalena Marshal Larry Cearley said the village came out unscathed.

“There was no damage to property or individuals. We did experience high winds and hail approximately the size of quarters,” he said. “We were on high alert and prepared to evacuate residents to the high school or assist persons who did not wish to leave their homes to the safest location in their house — a bathtub or a room without windows.”

Cearley also confirmed Rodgers’ report that the tornado touched down on Hwy. 107 and missed hitting the village proper.

“What we understand is that the tornado touched down briefly on Highway 107 — approximately three to four minutes. The only reported damage to date was some damage to nearby fencing that resulted in debris on the road.”

According to Wachter at the Weather Service, a storm survey team was sent to Magdalena to document the intensity of the storm. Socorroans were lucky to have avoided any such weather, although torrential downpour was a factor all weekend long, with confirmed amounts of one inch. Belen also had its fair share of precipitation – the National Weather Service reports hail averaging three quarters of an inch diameter. There was also as much as one inch of rain reported.

No Joke

Magdalena resident Leon Rodgers was an eyewitness to the twister. He reported he saw the tornado touch down not far from his property, which is located on Hwy. 107, about a quarter of a mile off of U.S. 60. Rodgers said that about 2 p.m., a neighbor called him with the warning that “a twister is coming your way.”

He initially thought it to be a joke, but when he went to the window he found the weather was nothing to laugh at.

“I saw it, this swirling mass and I got my camera to take pictures,” he said. “It was southwest, not far from the compound for the forest service, and it looked like it was coming from the southwest, maybe an eighth of a mile from me on Highway 107.”

Another witness to the twister was James Cherry, who lives on the east side of town.

Cherry said he was woken from a nap by hail.

“It was not heavy, but about 1-inch in size. I looked out the front and there was the dust devil. At the time it looked like a classic tornado,” he said. “I figured it was actually an unusually big dust devil, not wanting to believe a small storm would generate a tornado.”

After the storm passed, Cherry jumped on his computer and pulled up a weather radar. Data indicated the height of the storm cloud was 23,000 feet and there was a 100 percent chance of 1-inch hail.

“The storm moved overhead and grew, and I think really cut lose half way to the southern end of Socorro,” he said.

Hail Creates Hazard

Roughly 20 miles to the east as a bird flies, Socorro only got a dose of rain and a spattering of hail from Sunday’s storm. But hail pounded parts of the city the day before.

It started with huge drops of rain mid-afternoon. However, it wasn’t long before pea-sized hail peppered the town, leaving sheets of white stuff on the ground in some areas before it melted when the sun came out after the storm passed.

The hail storm hit the northern part of the county hardest. Travelers on Interstate 25 encountered a hail-covered highway near the Socorro-Valencia county line, causing hazardous, icy driving conditions.

At least one accident resulted. At approximately 3:30 p.m., a camper rolled over while traveling northbound just south of Belen. On board the vehicle were two adults, one teenager, one child and an infant.

The five passengers crawled out of the driver’s side windows to icy conditions. A number of motorists stopped to assist, which included calling 911 to report the accident, situating the passengers of the vehicle into a good samaritan’s car to await police and ambulance arrivals. Passersby also provided blankets and pillows, and did a cursory check to ascertain if any injury had occurred.

Caution Saves Lives

According to the Weather Service’s website, New Mexico and other areas across the Southwest U.S. are affected by a North American Monsoon System every summer. The “monsoon season” runs from approximately June 15th through Sept. 30th. As a result of the effects of monsoon, New Mexicans can face a variety of weather hazards that carry with them the potential risk of serious injury or death.

Thunderstorms are more frequent during this period, and there can be unusually hot weather as well.

The website also stated “even though New Mexico is a desert environment,” statistics indicate “significant weather events associated with the monsoon are responsible for property damage, injuries and fatalities across the state every single year.”

In 2010, monsoon related events were responsible for two fatalities. The agency also provided safety rules to help save lives or help prevent serious injury. Community governments and businesses are encouraged to review their existing emergency action preparedness plans, conduct drills, to familiarize staff and employees as to proper emergency response.

Some recommended activities include:

• Monitoring current weather forecasts on TV or the Internet;

• Listening to weather reports on the radio or a NOAA weather radio;

• Subscribing to online lightning and severe weather notification services;

• Scanning the skies 360 degrees around and overhead before leaving for a safe location.

The settlement was reached between Southwest Tire Processors and the New Mexico Environment Department, and calls for more than $119,000 in civil penalties and the engineering of a cap to be constructed over the site of the fire to prevent groundwater contamination.

On June 17, 2000, the fire started at a tire recycling facility that was located on a 20-30 acre piece of city owned land leased to STP and owned by Moises Romero, Fabian Romero and Jeanne Romero Gacanich. It was reportedly the result of serious operational violations, including the excessive storing of scrap tires and processed rubber near or underneath electrical power lines, and the NMED issued a compliance order in 2003.

According to a previously published El Defensor Chieftain report, it took two days for local fire department and city, county, state and federal agencies to contain the blaze, and on June 19, 2000, the county declared the fire a disaster and the Environmental Protection Agency took charge of the scene.

Eventually the fire was buried under a few feet of dirt, but flare-ups continued for several years after the fire was first put out. An estimated 750,000 tires were piled up and buried, but signs of smoldering and small billows of smoke could be seen emitting from the ground as recently as last June.

Originally there was a lawsuit between Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association, the power company responsible for the transformers involved in the fire and STP owners, which resulted in a settlement. However, the city of Socorro was not part of the litigation and the terms of that settlement are private.

In 2005, the NMED drilled several monitoring wells to ensure that no water contamination had resulted from the fire, and no evidence was found.

Jonathan Miller/El Defensor Chieftain: Members of the Law Enforcement Torch Run accompany Team Socorro members Shawna Montoya, Brittany Soto and Stella Shoemaker, pictured in front, to the Plaza on Monday morning.

That torch was the centerpiece of the 2012 Annual Law Enforcement Torch Run, a Special Olympics fundraiser that began nationally in 1981 and raises millions of dollars worldwide. The event has been held in New Mexico since 1986 and has generated more than $2 million state-wide since its inception. It began as a way to get communities, along with local area law enforcement officers, involved with Special Olympics. The run itself is a 1,600 mile trek around the state that historically involves around 700 law enforcement officials, and this year it will culminate in Albuquerque to signify the opening of the 2012 Special Olympics New Mexico Summer Games.

Amid all of the noise and hoopla surrounding the run is the athletes themselves, who will compete in the Summer Games, and the intent of bringing the torch nearly all the way through town isn’t to slow up traffic, but to get people’s attention.

“That’s why we chose to come through the north end of town this year,” Bureau of Land Management Ranger Marc Wheeler said.

“There’s more business in the north, more people would see it, and I wanted them to know this is what we’re doing. We’re raising awareness for the Special Olympics.”

This year’s version of the Torch Run featured eight different law enforcement agencies from around Socorro County and 10 different individuals handled the torch en route to its destination at the Plaza. The BLM, the New Mexico State Police, City of Socorro Police Department, the Socorro County Sheriff’s Department, the U.S. Forest Service Law Enforcement Department, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Law Enforcement Department and the New Mexico Tech Police Department all chipped in to handle different legs of the run.

“It was awesome,” Socorro County Chief Deputy Shorty Vaiza said.

Vaiza was among the 10 runners that volunteered to run the torch roughly 12 miles north from San Antonio to Interstate 25, Exit 150 and another 1 1/2 miles back down California Street to the Manzanares intersection

The involvement of so many different Socorro County law enforcement agencies reaffirms the connection that exists between them, the community and the Special Olympics.

“It shows the other side of the badge,” Vaiza said. “We’re willing to go out and pound our feet for these athletes. We’re willing to do anything for the community.”

As the sirens were still cutting through the air, the torch was handed off to the last and probably most important individual in this year’s torch run: Team Socorro member Shawna Montoya. Her teammates, Stella Shoemaker and Brittany Soto, ran alongside her, bearing an official Torch Run banner, smiling and laughing until they reached the Plaza.

“It was really, really good,” Soto said. “I really liked it. I had a lot of fun.”

Montoya, Soto, Shoemaker and the rest of Team Socorro will compete in the New Mexico Summer Games beginning on May 18 in Albuquerque and will run through May 20.

Socorro shouldn’t honor rebels
Editor:
Recently, and back in February of this year, my cousin Edward Baca wrote letters to the editor of this fine newspaper protesting the Confederate memorial at the Socorro Protestant Cemetery.
As a genealogist, I believe that we should honor our ancestors, even those who lived in nefarious times. As such, I have no problems with people honoring their Confederate dead.
Certainly, most Confederate soldiers did not own slaves or actively support the institution. However, as a social studies teacher, what I do have a problem with is the misrepresentation of history.
The Civil War was started by the Confederacy when they seceded from the Union and invaded Ft. Sumter. The Union responded to this threat, and the worst conflict in our history was begun.
The Civil War was about slavery and not about states’ rights. The south seceded because they feared that Lincoln would free the slaves. The Confederacy actually did not support states’ rights. Their secession document states that they were protesting that the Fugitive Slave Act was not being enforced.
This law imposed federal law on the states’ rights of Northern states by forcing them to abide by the Southern slave owners right to capture and re-enslave slaves that escaped to Northern free states.
This false history of states’ rights and of the ensuing Reconstruction allowed for segregationists to impose their will over African-Americans in the South. Southern segregationists blamed “carpetbaggers,” “scalawags” and freed African-Americans of trying to destroy the Confederate South.
When Reconstruction ended, they were able to impose Jim Crow laws that held down the progress of African-Americans for a century.
As a nascent local historian, I also find problems with the Confederate monument’s assertion that the Confederates soldiers honored were defending the Confederacy in New Mexico. Ever since before the Mexican American War (1846-1848), Texas had claimed ownership of half of New Mexico. They even sent a judge to New Mexico to impose Texas law on New Mexicans. This judge was completely ignored by the local authorities.
Within a year after the Civil War broke out, Texas Confederates invaded New Mexico in order to try to get Colorado and California gold. Brave Union soldiers and New Mexico volunteers repelled these invaders.
While they were here in Socorro, the Confederates set up a makeshift hospital and pressed Socorro residents into involuntary service.
The Confederate invasion was terrible part of our town’s history. It should not be honored by locals with a Confederate monument.
Robert J. C. Baca
Albuquerque

Jonathan Miller/El Defensor Chieftan: Boot Camp Boxing Gym coach Russell Moses, Jr. instructs one of his students on the heavy bag during practice on Monday.

The dangling, exposed wiring is a thing of the past and the concrete floor has been swept and smoothed out. The lighting has improved and there are no longer lumps of crumbling asphalt in the parking lot. It’s also difficult to ignore the new competition sized boxing ring at the far end.

When Russell Moses started Boot Camp Boxing Gym a few months ago he didn’t have that ring. He had a near-dilapidated building that he inherited the use of from the Socorro County Board of Commissioners. Now that building has seen noticeable improvements because of Moses, and the gym is showing steadying signs of progress. And not just structurally.

Marvin Chavez’s 14-year-old son Patrick has been working out at the gym for about four months now.

“It’s good for him because it keeps him out of trouble,” Chavez said. “He’s been doing good in school since he’s been here. This occupies his mind a little more, keeps him a little more focused.”

And that’s exactly what Moses set out to accomplish when he opened the doors; trying to positively influence kids, teach them discipline and keep them out of harm’s way. “I really think if we don’t have something for the kids to do, they’re going to go out there and get in trouble,” Moses said.

If anyone has the keys to instill a sense of pride in the community’s youth, it’s him.

A former Golden Glove boxer and American War veteran, Moses brings a high level of intensity and passion to his workouts.

“I think he shows them (the kids) a lot of discipline, and not just as boxers but as individuals,” said Danielle Rodarte, the mother of Boot Camp Boxing Gym member Felix Rodarte.

While he is an ideal candidate for helping out local area kids, Moses knows that his efforts to open the gym and keep it running are strictly for the benefit of those that he can help. It’s something that he can give back to Socorro, and so far giving is all he’s done. Moses doesn’t profit from the gym, but that seems to be a non-issue.

“I love seeing the kids make changes,” he said. “I do it for the kids.”

Despite the gym’s progression thus far, and despite the desire for Moses to provide kids with something constructive to do after school, the hard truth is that the gym is a business, and businesses need money to stay open. Boxing is an expensive sport. Items, such as gloves, bags, wraps and exercise equipment aren’t cheap, and that doesn’t even include general upkeep and maintenance. Moses does his best to keep things rolling through various fundraising events, but since most of the funds for gym equipment come out of pocket for him it’s been difficult to make the types of improvements he wants to do so far.

And for him, simply surviving isn’t an option.

“I don’t want to just keep it open,” he said. “I want to make it a family environment.”

If family is an important part of Moses’ purpose, he’s already making a splash with some parents. Both Chavez and Rodarte agreed that if their kids weren’t involved with the gym, they’d probably be at home playing video games. Boot Camp Boxing Gym gives kids the drive they need to get off the couch and avoid being sedentary, and since the gym is mostly intended for learning and conditioning purposes, parents don’t generally need to worry about the well-being of their children.

“Having a place like this that’s safe… I think it’s huge for them (the kids),” assistant coach Devyn Coker said. “They can come and work out their aggressions, just get some of that pent up energy out, and at the same time work out hard.”

Moses is currently working to put together a local fundraising event the first week of June and is selling custom designed, sponsored tee shirts out of the gym. Those interested in joining the gym or assisting with fundraising can visit the website at www.bootcampboxinggym.com or find the gym on Facebook.

Jason W. Brooks/Valencia County News-bulletin: Zoe Howell (right) hands the baton off to Tamara Chavez during the 400-meter relay race. Socorro placed second in the race. Chavez was second individually in the 100-meter dash and Howell had a big meet, finishing second in both the 200 and 800 meter races and third in the 400.

When the two-day, season-ending meet was over, the Warrior boys had an individual state title and another for a relay, and the Lady Warriors had the girls third-place crown.

“I think it’s been well over 10 years since the Socorro girls took home a trophy from state,” said SHS girls coach Dianna Jameson. “We only brought eight girls, but they each did a lot, and I’m so proud of them.”

The Socorro boys got a state title from junior Adam Paz in the triple jump, and one from the 1600-meter relay team of Ibrahim Maiga, Dominic Baca, Dylan Gallegos and Ray Vaiza.

The Lady Warriors finished with 43 points, many in relays and the shorter track-event distances, behind 3A champion Hope Christian (96 points) and runner-up Pojoaque Valley (55). Not only did the SHS girls outpace a tough Sandia Prep team, they also finished with more points than perennially strong teams, such as St. Michael’s and Lovington.

The nine Socorro boys who competed scored 28 points. That placed them seventh for the second straight year behind Robertson and ahead of Ruidoso. Silver, the Warriors’ District 3-3A rival, won the state title with 85 points.

For the Lady Warriors, Zoe Howell saved one of her best meets for last. The senior helped the 400 relay team place second, was second in both the 200 and 800 meters, third in the 400 and almost cracked the top six in the triple jump. The future University of New Mexico student is going to try to walk on to the Lobo track team.

Dezirae Armijo, a soccer teammate of Howell’s, ran on the 400 relay team, was on the 800 relay squad that placed third, and was third in the 200 and fourth in the long jump. Tamara Chavez was second in the 100, and Kierra Schauer and Nikki Mortensen also made major contributions, especially in the relays.

Senior JeriAna Contreras placed sixth in the 300 hurdles in the final meet of her diverse Socorro athletics career, and Julie Aster and Angelina Stanzione competed with the Lady Warriors as well.

“It’s been so great to run with these girls,” said Howell. “They work so hard, and still have fun.”

On the boys side, Paz grabbed the triple jump state title with a mark of 43 feet, 2.5 inches.

The boys 1600-meter relay, running in the last event of the meet, had incentive to earn the state crown, with Vaiza, Maiga and Baca all being seniors.

Vaiza, who led much of his anchor lap, said he peeked over his shoulder with about 50 meters left to survey his short lead.

“I peeked, but then I looked up and saw Ibby (Maiga) smiling, and I knew we had it,” said Vaiza. “It’s the greatest way ever to end a career, and I’d rather share it with these guys than to have won state individually.”

The 1600 squad was the lone boys relay to reach the finals. Maiga placed fifth in the 110 hurdles, and Sam Hale was sixth in the shot put.

Senior David Robinson was nearly successful in his defense of his 3A discus title, but he ended up in second place this year. He also placed sixth in the javelin, while teammate Nate Fenby took fifth.

The national debt is the amount of money owed by the government — at the moment, some $8.9 trillion. The federal deficit is the yearly amount by which spending exceeds revenue. So debt and deficit are not the same thing. One of them makes your hair stand on end, and the other just makes your teeth grind.

Earth travels around the sun going 67,062 miles per hour, that is, about 1,000 times faster than we drive on the highway. In one year, it travels 149,597,890 kilometers. Your cousin Fred drives that far to get to work in Albuquerque and 1,000 times faster than the sun does, anyway.

Robert Oppenheimer saw that there would be no secret about nuclear weapons, since others would eventually copy them. So they could never be that super-defender we thought could keep us safe. Now the same thing is happening in regard to the drone aircraft, which several other nations are also developing. Be sure to watch out who’s peeking in your window.

Researchers have discovered how birds are able to navigate from place to place, even over long distances. One part of the brain is able to detect the earth’s magnetic field, and another part compares that information to a map it has stored inside. Never again will I feel insulted if someone calls me a bird brain. What a compliment!

Spam was already over 70 percent of Internet traffic back in 2004. In 2007, there were more than 100 billion spam world-wide every day, in some places consisting in over 90 percent of all messages. More than $10 billion are spent in the United States every year trying to contain spam. It takes five seconds to recognize and delete an email. It takes you barely two minutes to wolf down a can of spam.

Only 5 percent of the universe we inhabit is familiar matter, according to physicists. Twenty-five percent is dark matter, and the remaining 70 percent may be dark energy. The universe that I inhabit, though, is actually less than 1 percent familiar when I’m under the sink trying to figure out how to stop a leak.

It has been found that the human brain is more active when sleeping than it is when watching television. Unless you’re sleeping while you’re watching television, and then the word “active” doesn’t apply at all.

It costs us tax-payers $600-a-gallon for gasoline used by our military in Afghanistan, and that price has just recently gone up by several times, among our other exorbitant expenses there. And you thought you were paying too much at the pump down the street.

At the Socorro Airport, if a plane misses the runway, it lands in the county landfill. If it misses the landfill, you know the pilot was texting his granddaughter and probably still is.

Ninety percent of the entire universe is plasma, which involves cells that have lost electrons. This is science’s dirty little secret they don’t want you to know about. Who was responsible for the loss of those little electrons, and why was there no government oversight when they were lost?

We share lived space with four or five distinct eras of history. It’s like the trip to Los Mochis, Mexico, by rail, through which you traverse five climate zones. Or driving in Albuquerque, where you must honk your horn five times per half hour to avoid being cut off.

Factory farms have been found to feed their poultry many drugs, including caffeine, arsenic, and the active ingredients in Tylenol, Benadryl and Prozac, not to mention antibiotics. No wonder that chicken sandwich you had last night looked like it was high on something.

My veins run when a nurse inserts a syringe to draw blood. My dog runs when I bring out the bucket of water to give it a bath. Dogs don’t bark at parked cars. And parked cars don’t honk at sleeping dogs.

We’re always learning something new, it seems. Isn’t that special?

Kozeny has worked as a teacher, counselor, and in pastoral ministry. He can be reached by e-mail to tkozfreespirit@netzero.net.

Admittedly that may not be saying a lot. The best any previous Libertarian presidential candidate has done was in 1980 when Ed Clark won 1.1 percent of the general election vote.

Nonetheless, Friederdorf may be onto something when he pegs Johnson to do better in the November election than his Libertarian Party predecessors.

By all accounts, after he bolted the Republican Party earlier this year and set his sights on the Libertarians’ nomination, Johnson went directly to the party’s grassroots, where he wooed Libertarian rank and file at state and local gatherings wherever they assembled.

It was retail politicking pure and simple, in the course of which he paid homage to the conventional Libertarian doctrines of miniscule taxes and “limited government.” Libertarian political necessity and Johnson’s personal convictions demanded nothing less.

But Johnson went beyond traditional Libertarian anti-government dogma, to advocate a number of fundamental changes in basic U.S. policies he sees as impinging on the personal liberties of individual Americans.

Among those policy changes, of course, is Johnson’s long held conviction that relatively minor drugs like marijuana should be legalized, or at the very least decriminalized.

Otherwise, on matters of abortion, he goes on to ally himself with a woman’s right to choose. And where gay rights are concerned, he advocates that same sex partners should be free to marry if that is their choice.

The former governor brought it all together at the Libertarian convention when he said of himself, “The Libertarian candidate is the only one who is going to talk about gun rights and gay rights in the same sentence.”

The final coup at the Las Vegas convention came when Libertarian delegates gave him the vice presidential running mate he had requested, retired California Superior Court Judge Jim Gray, also a former Republican, who shares Johnson’s views on key issues.

All that notwithstanding, Gary Johnson aficionados would be advised to temper the celebrations.

The Libertarian Party is what it is: a minor party.

With roughly a quarter of a million registered voters, it calls itself the nation’s third largest political party, but short of somehow seducing millions and millions of other Americans to their cause, Libertarians do not elect presidents of these United States.

The number of registered independents in the United States has grown appreciably over the past two decades, but party loyalty, Democratic and Republican, still holds a majority of American voters in its grip.

Case in point, right here in New Mexico: In December, before Gary Johnson announced he was leaving the Republican party, the Public Policy Polling organization found 45 percent of voters in this state held a favorable opinion of the former governor, with 39 percent in the unfavorable column.

What’s more, a solid 23 percent of New Mexico voters said they’d vote for him as a third party candidate.

Last month, the same polling organization found that Johnson’s favorability rating with New Mexico voters had dropped to 37 percent, whereas his “unfavorable” numbers had risen to 42 percent. On top of that, only 15 percent said they would vote for him as a third party candidate in the most recent poll.

Simply put, Gary Johnson deserves a tip of the hat for personal integrity by switching to a political organization more in tune with his convictions. He also deserves kudos for the political skill he displayed in capturing the Libertarian nomination.

He’s unlikely to be inaugurated president next Jan. 20, however.

© 2012 New Mexico News Services

Miles fly by and you look at the scenery and take your mind far away from business as usual. Hearing “60s on 6″ on the radio with Sonny and Cher, Linda Ronstadt and Simon and Garfunkel bring back good memories of happy times.

Funny things can happen on a road trip, like getting handed ear plugs when we checked into the Best Western in Barstow or to my husband running into the back of my sister-in-law’s car in Pescadero. Nothing was damaged on either car, but we thought that if you were going to run into someone, it might as well be a relative!

The landscape has been so varied on this trip, from the desert of Death Valley, to the green hills covered with grapes in California, to the amazing and majestic redwoods, and today, the beaches and rugged coastline of Oregon.

I am sitting here right now looking at the waves roll in and enjoying the fog and misty ambience. Tomorrow it is supposed to rain all day but we have another day here in Cannon Beach so we will just hunker down with our wedge of brie cheese, salami, baguettes, a bottle of wine and enjoy.

This has been a great trip so far. We’ve visited with my brother-in-law and his wife in Arroyo Grande in Central California and had many laughs, driven through a tree in the Redwood Forest, eaten a whole Dungeness crab in Port Orford, Ore. and now, here we are with two whole days in beautiful Cannon Beach. I do have a recipe for you, though.

Wine, Not Just for Breakfast Anymore

This all started when my brother-in-law was, as usual, scrolling through his computer in the morning and found an article on aerating your wine in a blender. Being a curious kind of guy — and a great wine enthusiast — he thought we needed to try this. We voted and decided to put off experimenting until after a walk on the beach and a nice lunch — with wine, of course.

We got home and got ready for the experiment. Meanwhile, I decide that if we were going to use a blender anyway, then we might as well make wine smoothies for dessert. So, we ran to Trader Joe’s and got ice cream and cheap wine, brought the stuff home, and my bro-in-law got out the immersion blender. I start arguing with him, telling him an immersion blender isn’t the same as a blender but he was undeterred, saying a blender is a blender.

We put the ice cream and equal parts of cheap wine in a container and he turned on this weedwacker thing and ice cream went everywhere. My sister-in-law starts hollering, “I’ve got ice cream in my hair!” The cabinets were covered in it. What a mess!

Anyway, all I can say about my smoothie is that we should have used a sweeter wine and the proportions should have been 2/3 wine, 1/3 ice cream. We did try aerating the wine to see if the taste was different, but again, using the immersion blender was not the way to go, and I don’t think we proved anything except that we were idiots.

Pescadero, California

I have loved Pescadero forever. I first went there 20 years ago and tried the cream of artichoke soup and hot apricot pie with ice cream. Oh my.

Pescadero is about 10 miles south of Half Moon Bay and east of Hwy 1. It is a charming little village with numerous art galleries, Duartes’ restaurant, a general store and that is about it.

The food is good, the pie is awesome. I asked them what they made the pie crust with, butter or lard, and was told that the cooks just had a bucket of “white stuff” that they used for pie crust. White stuff aside, the apricots were tart and tangy and as yummy as they have always been. I’m undecided about the white stuff.

Curds, No Whey

A loyal reader suggested that we stop at The Tillamook Cheese Factory for curds. I was driving along Hwy 101 and my husband yelled, “Turn quick — cheese tasting!!!!” I turned into a parking lot only to find it was Blue Heron French Cheese Factory, not Tillamook.

Ah well, sorry dear reader, it was lunch time, we were hungry and a cheese tasting sounded good. We were told that Blue Heron specialized in brie, not cheddar. OK. I love brie. I love cheddar too, but a cheese in hand…

Anyway, we loved the sample of peppered brie and bought a chunk. We got a sandwich, got some ice cream, got some salami, baguettes, wine. We were set. Later on, down the road a couple of miles, was Tillamook Cheese Factory, but we were on dairy overload so we kept driving.

Marrion Berries

The Marrion berry is a special treat in Oregon and it tastes like a cross between a blackberry and a blueberry. The thing is, the disgraced mayor of Washington, D.C. is also named Marion Barry. The perverse side of me couldn’t stand the irony of this so we bought Marrion berry truffles last night and sent texts to both boys. They reacted in a typical goofy Fowler sort of way with comments about hired escorts and drug use. The question is, did Oregon name their berries after the D.C. mayor, or was he named after the Oregon fruit? These are questions to ponder, maybe after another piece of Marrion berry pie.

Next column: Victoria, BC and cinnamon rolls with my girl … stay tuned!

Belinda Molina

The Socorro Police Department is seeking information concerning a young woman considered a Missing Person Juvenile.

Belinda Molina was last seen in Socorro on Sunday, May 13, in the company of a young female and male couple who were driving a silver colored 2004 Pontiac with New Mexico license plate LMM187.

Molina is an 18-year-old, white female with black hair and brown eyes. She is 5 feet, 6 inches tall and weighs 140 pounds.

Anyone with information regarding Molina’s whereabouts should contact Capt. Angel Garcia with the Socorro Police Department at 575-835-4222.