My Field Days

The beauty of the high plains is a rugged beauty.  Barren landscapes that stretch as far as the eye can see.  The rising of the sun, and its majestic setting… we do have incredible sunsets.  Wild plums that put on a wonderful show in the springtime.  The plants here are tough, just like the people [...]

My family history with Roosevelt County in New Mexico begins in the early 1900s, and I’ve always loved the stories of the pioneers.  But I’ve never known much of the personal history from the late 1800s until very recently when I read the new book by Ruth Burns, “A Man Was a Real Man in [...]

It’s such a pleasure to look back through the newspaper clippings my great-grandmother preserved.  I have an old article written about that house on the “Floyd to Melrose” highway.  Long gone now, it was in the crumbling stages when I was growing up, and the fraternities from Eastern would go paint their symbols on the [...]

  One hundred years ago this fall a courtship began.  It was in 1912 that Bill Borden and Nellie Lily Trotter were working together pulling broom corn in Roosevelt County, New Mexico.  They were married just a few months later. I’m part of their legacy… a great-granddaughter in their tree that now has many branches [...]

It doesn’t surprise you to hear me say I love tradition.  As much as I love change and movement… I also love classics.  Taking a close look at myself, I think I’m just comfortable walking a few steps behind the times. I stay with old music.  I love the old hymns best… the poetic wording, [...]

A steady cast of characters streams past my front porch.  I enjoy my own personal viewing area as I take in this show.  While I sit on my old glider, or work at the ever present weeds, the neighborhood passes by. Many of them have dogs in tow.  Our college professor, the airman recently home [...]

You just can’t predict the wonderful little coincidences that come along in life.  They’re always a great joy when they come!  Like learning a new word, then hearing it in conversation the next day.  Or traveling to an interesting park on vacation, and seeing it in a movie a few weeks later.  I love things [...]

I’m a map reader.  Love maps, always have.  Surprise, surprise… I don’t like GPS gadgets.  Oh, they’re great for some things, but give me a good old-fashioned paper map any day.  When we’re traveling down the road, meandering about the country, we stick with our ritual.  G drives, and I have a huge atlas in [...]

One of the new things I’m enjoying this year is writing a column for the Portales News Tribune.  Thanks to the Tribune for allowing me to post it on my website as well.  Sharing the first two articles and some of my clippings.  (That’s me with my Nana at a Garden Club meeting.) Does the [...]