Week 10 in El Paso-Good Bye!

Well, it had to end sometime. My 10-week adventure to El Paso, Texas, is about to come to a close. I want to reflect on what this trip has meant to me.

Before I arrived in mid-January, I had never been to this city or area. In fact, I had only been to Texas three times before this visit: to Dallas for a video production conference about 30 years ago; to Brownsville, Texas, for a video shoot about 15 years ago and we drove across the northern panhandle returning from my brother’s wedding on the West Coast when I was a teenager.

My sole experience with El Paso before this visit was seeing scenes in commercials produced by the El Paso tourism office during broadcasts of the Sun Bowl football game.

Last fall I decided to quit teaching at the University of Akron and find someplace warmer during the worst winter months. I spent many hours on the computer trying to find a place that would provide some relief from my asthma and chronic allergy conditions. Also, I was on a budget so I couldn’t afford to spend thousands a month for an elaborate condo on the beach in Florida.

I chose El Paso because of its dry climate with about 10 inches of precipitation a year, it has about 300 sunny days each year and the average daily high temperature in January is close to 60 degrees with it steadily increasing until reaching the mid-70s by the end of March. Also, there were a number of reasonably-priced options on the AirBnb website.

I picked one that was called a casita or small house that was the size of a large studio apartment. It also had a small courtyard in front that has been an excellent place to relax with a cup of coffee or a cocktail and the laptop I am using to write this. I have really enjoyed staying in this property that also has a very nice park across the street.

The first six weeks I was here, the weather was about what I expected and it was pretty good for me. Then, around the beginning of March, the tree and grass pollen started to emerge and that kicked in my allergy symptoms. Also, March in El Paso means strong, persistent winds that occasionally stir up dust storms.

The other problem with the climate and environment here has been the altitude. El Paso is roughly 3,800 feet above sea level and that’s about 3,000 feet higher than the Akron area. When I tried to walk in the park across the street, going up some of the gradual inclines was very hard for me.

So, the hope of feeling better here was very much a split decision.

Perhaps the best decision I made about coming here was to sign up for non-credit classes at the University of Texas El Paso (UTEP). The classes were offered through a national program for students over 50 called the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute. I took three courses, two taught by retired UTEP faculty members and the third by a 30-year veteran of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA). I met some very interesting fellow students and learned a great deal, without having to worry about assignments, papers or tests.

My favorite class was Borderland History and Culture taught by Dr. Oscar Martinez. He has written several books about the history and culture of the Borderland, the name El Pasoens give to this region. His course focused on what is really unique about this area that one expert has called “Mex-America.”

I’ve seen statistics that say half or more of the residents of El Paso have some family connection with Mexico. It makes for an interesting mixture of two cultures. As I said before, you are as likely to hear people speaking Spanish as English when in the store, the coffee shop or on the UTEP campus. This city has long history of its border with Mexico being rather fluid and open. Juarez, Mexico, just across the Rio Grande River is El Paso’s sister city.

The current controversy about border security and the influx of migrants seeking asylum from unstable, dangerous countries like Honduras and Guatemala is a real problem. In recent weeks, as many as 1,000 migrants have been arriving at the border checkpoints in the El Paso region each day. The city’s social services agencies are seriously taxed and the city is constantly asking the state and federal governments for more aid.

These migrants are not single men seeking employment and opportunity like in the past. Nor are a many of them drug traffickers and criminals that some would have us believe. The vast majority of these migrants now are families or woman and their children who are seeking safety from the drug gangs and criminals that have taken control of some countries in Central and South America.

I don’t know what the ultimate solution is, but our country has a history of accepting migrants seeking safety and freedom from oppressive regimes abroad. I have come to enjoy what El Paso stands for and I fear this crisis will alter the character of this city and that would be a shame.

At a rally where former Congressman Beto O’Rourke staged an official kickoff for his candidacy for President in downtown El Paso, current El Paso Congresswoman Veronica Escobar said, “El Paso is the new Ellis Island,” and that is true in my observation.

Soon I will be gassing up the Honda-CRV and packing up my clothes and stuff to make the three-day drive back to Ohio. I have been a bit homesick for the last couple of weeks, so I will be glad to get back to Pam and Brian and my own home. But, I also feel a tinge of sadness in leaving this unique city and the interesting people I have met.

Adios, El Paso. Hasta la vista.

Week Nine in El Paso

This is my penultimate week in El Paso. With only two weeks to go, I am thinking more and more about returning home to Ohio. My experience here has been unique and interesting and it will soon be over.

The week began with St. Patrick’s Day and I celebrated with a couple of pints of Guinness and a Tex-Mex corned beef sandwich made with green peppers and sauerkraut, Swiss cheese and a spicy dressing. It was a little too hot for my taste.

The previous Sunday I had visited the International Space Hall of Fame in Alamogordo, NM. So, as I was browsing Netflix, I found “Apollo 13”. I had seen the film more than 20 years ago when it first came out and it was still special to watch it again.

A couple of days later, I slept until after 9AM. I was really tired because I hadn’t slept well the previous two nights due to breathing difficulty. According the Weather Channel website, the tree pollen count was extremely high this week and it was really affecting me.

Also, I’ve found that when I try to walk fast or climb a hill, it is harder to breathe here than at home. The altitude is about 3,800 feet here, about 3,000 feet higher than the Akron area that is around 900 feet. I was hoping for an improvement of my asthma here, but it hasn’t worked out that way. That’s a major disappointment because I was looking for a place to spend the winter that will aid my breathing difficulties.

Thursday afternoon, Pam arrived in El Paso and I picked her up at the airport. The main parking area is a huge surface lot and it is very spread out. So, it’s a long trek from the terminal to the car. On the way home from the airport, I took her on a brief driving tour of the west side of El Paso before we stopped for a Mexican dinner.

Friday, we did some sightseeing and toured the Joseph Magoffin home. He was born in Kentucky and eventually settled in El Paso. He was a farmer and also an astute businessman. He eventually convinced the railroad company to come through El Paso instead of taking a more direct route through Las Cruces, NM, about 40 miles north.

After that, we visited a couple of churches that were once missions on the El Camino Real. We drove southeast outside El Paso and stopped in the towns of Socorro and San Elizario. Both of the churches are still active Catholic parishes. It was very interesting to learn more about the role of these missions in developing the society of their areas dating back to the late 1600s.

On Saturday, we decided to do some sightseeing in downtown El Paso. The city has developed an arts plaza that contains a restored theater, a concert hall for the El Paso Symphony, an art museum and a history museum. We visited the El Paso Museum of Art that has an extensive collection of works with a southwestern theme. There was also an impressive display of paintings by contemporary American artist Julie Speed and a special collection of Mexican retablos, small paintings on wood or tin with religious messages, usually to give thanks for surviving illness or some other catastrophe.

We also explored the El Paso History Museum. It had lots of interesting artifacts and documents illustrating the history of this area. One I found most interesting was a production assistant’s notebook from the filming of the movie “Glory Road.” It contained notes about different locations used in shooting the film and a copy of the shooting permit for the film issued by the city.

Across the street is Southwestern University Park, the baseball home of the Triple-A El Paso Chihuahuas. The stadium opened in 2014 and has a capacity of 9,500. It reminds me a lot of Akron’s Canal Park with the brick exterior and the field below street level. I would love to see a game there, but the team’s home opener isn’t until after I leave El Paso.

Saturday ended with watching “Jersey Boys” on Netflix. We had talked about seeing stage versions of this in either Cleveland or Akron, but there always seemed to be a conflict. It was a good film and we enjoyed seeing the actors cover some great hits of the Four Seasons in the movie.

I be back in a week or so with my final blog about El Paso.

Week Eight in El Paso-Wind, Rain and Beto

As I ended my eighth week in El Paso, I started to realize that my time here is really growing short. As I write this, I am only two weeks away from packing up my car and heading back north to my home in Ohio.

I looked at the weather forecast for Stow this morning and saw temperatures will be mostly in the 40s this week. So, I hope winter will be gone by the time I return, although, it’s not unusual for us to have some snow in Northeast Ohio early April.

The weather here this past week was cooler than normal with some rain, although, the rain here is not heavy like in spring storms in the north and east. The biggest weather issue here in the spring is the wind and the havoc it can cause.

For example, on Tuesday, the morning was sunny so I was able to walk in the park. That afternoon, I went to the coffee shop to do some writing. While I was there the skies darkened and we had another dust storm for about an hour. Then, we had the hardest rain I’ve seen here and that lasted about an hour. But, the strong winds continued to howl for the next two days.

While I was at Kinley's writing a story that involved rain, I felt a drop on my arm and then another. The 20-something guy who was at the next table said he thought the roof was leaking and it was. It was just ironic to be writing about rain and feeling water from a leak in the roof dripping on my arm.

The week began on Sunday with a drive to Alamogordo, NM, which is a little more than an hour and a half northeast of El Paso to visit the International Space Hall of Fame. It is an impressive looking gold colored four-story glass building on a hill overlooking the town.

The museum displays were interesting with artifacts from previous missile tests and space missions. The US government’s White Sands Missile range in not too far from here, so rockets and space travel are of great interest in this area.

One of the most interesting things I saw was a stunning six-foot in diameter model of the Moon that was used on the set for CBS anchor Walter Cronkite’s coverage of the manned moon missions of the late 60s and early 70s.

The other interesting thing was the display about Ham, America’s first “astrochimp.” He was the first live passenger to go into space in the Mercury capsule that later carried John Glenn into orbit. Ham’s space suit is on display and in front of the museum is a monument and his gravesite.

Unfortunately, parts of the museum seemed dated and several display galleries were closed for renovation.

On the way home I encountered some wind and rain, and that was a precursor of the weather this week. During a dust storm two days later, hurricane force winds caused the cancellation of all flights at the El Paso International Airport and wind gusts of more than 100 m.p.h. were recorded in the mountains, causing a couple of trucks to be blown over on area freeways.

On Monday, I had my last Borderland class and happened to ride the campus shuttle to the parking lot with the professor and his wife after class. They were intrigued to hear about my coming to El Paso and about Pam and me adopting Brian, who was born in Honduras. Dr. Oscar Martinez taught a very interesting class that helped me understand the unique character of this area.

The big news story in El Paso this week was the announcement by former Congressman Beto O’Rourke that he is running for the Democratic Party nomination for President. One of the local TV stations broke the story late Wednesday afternoon and it was all over the national media on Thursday.

O’Rourke is an El Paso native and his father Pat was once a county commissioner and county judge of El Paso County. In the 2018 election, Beto nearly defeated incumbent U.S. Senator Ted Cruz and has received national attention since. The younger O’Rourke served on city council and served three terms in Congress before making his effort to unseat Cruz.

I finished the week working on a couple of chapters of the novel and watching some of the college basketball conference tournaments. It’s a little bit of an adjustment getting used to watching games in the late morning because I am on Mountain Time, two hours behind the East Coast and Ohio.

On Saturday, I watched Kentucky and Tennessee battle in the SEC semifinal and it was an incredible game for about 35 minutes. Then, there were several video reviews by officials in the last five minutes that completely disrupted the flow of the game. Unfortunately, UK lost and that probably cost them a number one seed in the tournament.

Later that afternoon, I received an email that Pam’s flight here on Wednesday evening had been cancelled. After an exchange of emails and her phone call to Southwest, she will be coming down on Thursday afternoon instead. So, I will still have the opportunity to show her around the area.

I will be back with more next week.

Week Seven in El Paso--The Borderland

This week I want to talk about El Paso as the Borderland and the importance of the immigration issue here. 

El Paso is really a blended city that is influenced greatly by its proximately to Juarez, Mexico. I’ve read that more than half of the population here has some familial roots in Mexico and that manifests itself in several ways. First, when you visit a store, restaurant or the UTEP campus, you are as likely to hear people speaking Spanish as English.

Second, when you visit certain parts of the city, you notice that many if not the majority of the merchants’ signs are in Spanish.

I’m taking classes in a program at UTEP for people over 50 and several of them have talked about “the good old days” when you could cross the border with minimal waiting to have your ID checked. One man said he worked in downtown El Paso and he and his co-workers often went to Ciudad Juarez for lunch. Another said he rode his motorcycle across the bridge into Juarez to shop for groceries that were much cheaper on the Mexican side of the border.

All this changed several decades ago with the rise of the Mexican drug cartels and the US government’s war on drugs. Now, it takes a lot longer to enter the US from Mexico, even if you are a US citizen. The border control agents now spend more time checking passports, vehicles and inquiring about purchases. So, for most of the day there are now multiple long lines of cars and trucks at the main boarder crossing.

Also, Juarez is much more dangerous than it used to be. As of March 5, there have been 90 homicides in Juarez so far this year. Many of these killings are execution-style and related to the drug trade. However, El Paso’s overall crime rate remains relatively low, 27 percent below the average for Texas and 20 percent below the national average according to the website areavibes.com.

There are two other border crossings in the El Paso area, but one of them in on the east side of the city closes in the overnight hours and the other is in Santa Teresa, NM, about 20 miles west of downtown El Paso.

What has happened is the number of large groups of immigrants crossing the border is growing. These immigrants are mostly from Honduras and Guatemala, two places where criminal gangs have made these countries unsafe. One news report said the number of large groups has increased because the smugglers are telling their “clients” that people accompanied by minor children will be admitted to the US automatically, which is not true.

Boarder patrol officials have confirmed a significant increase in large groups, defined as larger than 100 persons, trying to enter the US. This week, there were a total of about 1,000 people apprehended in one day entering the El Paso area in several groups.

The obvious problem for the federal government and the city of El Paso is dealing with the humanitarian needs of these immigrants while their cases are adjudicated—a process that may take several months. One proposal is to used a closed manufacturing plant, where Hoover vacuum cleaners were once made, as a processing center. Authorities say the facility could hold up to 800 people at a time.

Now, I need to disclose that in 1986 Pam and I travelled to Honduras and adopted an infant boy and brought him home to the US. Our son Brian became a US citizen at the age of two and is a great source of pride and joy for us. So, when I see videos of the young children in these immigrant “caravans”, it really upsets me.

Another misunderstanding about the current wave of immigrants is that they are criminals and bringing illegal drugs into the US. Of the 1,000 immigrants who entered the US this week in the El Paso area, only two of them had criminal records and a third person was a US citizen who may face charges for not entering the country through border control.

One class I took at UTEP was taught by Alfredo Arroyo, a 30-year agent with the DEA (U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration) who is now retired. He said that about 95 percent of the illegal drugs entering the U.S. from Mexico come in hidden in trucks and cars passing through the border checkpoints.

In a previous blog I detailed how he said drug gangs were getting the VIN numbers of frequent American visitors to Juarez and making duplicate remote lock openers for their cars. They would put drugs in the trunk of unsuspecting Americans’ cars in Mexico and then retrieve the shipment once the driver returned to the US.

He said the amount coming in with immigrants crossing the border on foot is insignificant.

The solution to this problem rests with countries such as Honduras and Guatemala being able to neutralize the gangs and restore safety and security for their citizens. The other solution lies with the US to effectively reduce the domestic consumption of drugs by our citizens, thus curtailing the market for the Mexican cartels.

In El Paso, both Republican and Democratic politicians, and many people who live near the border or further away mostly say they are in not in favor of a big wall. For the past four centuries, the character of this area is that people here are residents of a blended cultural society (called “Mex-America” by some experts). After all, the southern half of Texas used to be part of Mexico. Many long-time El Paso residents feel a large, impenetrable wall isn’t necessary and would change the unique character of the Borderland for the worse.

I’ll have more next week.

Week Six in El Paso

I’ve only got about a month left to find out more about El Paso and the surrounding area. It’s been a very interesting trip so far, but there is a lot more I want to find out about this community.

Monday was the first day of an excellent week of weather. Temperatures were in the mid-70s nearly every day with mostly sunny skies. However, some days it is windy and that kicks up the dust in the air. Monday morning, I went for a walk in the park across the street from where I am staying. As I walked, I noticed the mountains across the Rio Grande in Mexico were enshrouded in haze from the blowing dust. I could feel it in my lungs, so I took the shorter trail around the park.

I went to my classes at UTEP that afternoon and met more interesting people. I met Maria, who is a retired teacher. She spent much of her career working for the Bureau of Indian Affairs teaching English to children who live on reservations. I also met Kjell (pronounced “Kell”) who is from Norway. He, like me is spending the winter in El Paso to avoid the cold weather and snow. He said he commutes back and forth from El Paso to Norway about twice a year.

The class on Borderland History and Culture focused on Tejano music and the prof said it was a fusion of Mexican folk music and the polka. He said a lot of people with German heritage settled in Texas. Mexicans on the US side of the border liked that music’s rhythm and the use of the accordion and incorporated it into Tejano music.

He played a documentary about Tejano music and by the end of the class, most of the students were singing along with the video. It was a lot of fun.

I took the campus shuttle back to the parking lot and found that someone had put a couple of orange parking cones directly behind my car. I have no idea who did it, but maybe someone doesn’t like Ohio and saw my license plates.

That night I went to dinner at a bar called Lucy’s and had four flautas, rice and beans with a cup of soup for less than $8. I had been there before and will go back because the food is good and cheap.

I hadn’t had a haircut in nearly two months, so I went to Great Clips on Mesa Street across from UTEP. My barber was Cassie from Olmstead Falls, a Cleveland suburb. Her husband is stationed at Ft. Bliss and she has been in El Paso for six months and really likes it. Her husband is going to be sent to Poland for nine months soon, so she said she will probably move back to Ohio and stay with her parents to save money.

There was a UTEP student symphony performance on campus Tuesday night, but Kentucky was playing on TV that night. So, I decided to stay home and drink some Kentucky Bourbon and cheer for the Cats.

While I am now retired, I still had some business follow me to El Paso. I am chairman of the Endowment Committee at my church and we had a member resign in January. The church council was supposed to select a new member and I had to write a couple of emails welcoming the new member and alerting the other members about that.

That morning before class, I watched about two hours of the testimony of former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen before a house committee. The scene was reminiscent of the testimony of John Dean, Nixon’s former lawyer during the Watergate break-in scandal who uttered the famous line,” …there is a cancer on the presidency.”

That afternoon I had my music conducting class and we watched a TED talk with conductor and composer Benjamin Zander. He illustrated the difference between playing piano music accurately and playing with feeling and emotion.

One thing I have noticed while on the UTEP campus is the popularity among students of Chuck Taylor Converse All-Star basketball shoes. I wore those all the time while I was in high school and our high school basketball team wore the white high-top models for practice and games. It may be that the warmer climate and rarity of rain and snow here makes those shoes more appealing and practical. But, I do see a lot of them.

The week ended with a trip to the Organ Mountains that are about 10 miles east of Las Cruces, NM. It took a little over an hour to get there and I hiked for about an hour and a half. The views were stunning. The mountains get their name because there are nearly-vertical outcrops up the side of the mountains that look like the pipes on a church organ. The top of these mountains is about 9,000 feet, but I actually hiked downhill about 800 feet to the bottom of a valley. The hike back uphill was difficult and I had to stop a couple of times to catch my breath but the scenery was well worth it.

After my hike, I went into Las Cruces to explore a bit. I stopped at a small café-art store combination in the Mesilla area for lunch and drove around the New Mexico State University campus. Las Cruces is in the Mesilla Valley and it is very flat around the city. The campus architecture is similar to UTEP. I noticed the percentage of Latino students at NMSU seems to be lower than that UTEP, perhaps because Las Cruces is about 50 miles from the Mexican border.

With the temperature about 80 degrees, I drove back to El Paso with the windows and sunroof open and it was delightful. About five miles south of Las Cruces there is a very large dairy farm right next to the I-10 highway. So, for a couple of miles, I was subjected to what I will call a “rural” odor from the thousands of cows.

Saturday was “Nephews and Niece Day,” as three of them had important events that day. My nephew Daniel is majoring in music composition at Boston University and his senior recital was that day. His parents went to Boston for the event and I was fortunate to watch it on Facebook live video. It was impressive to see him conduct a chamber orchestra and play piano for another piece. He also had fellow students and a faculty member perform several works he had composed.

Just before that concert began, I received a text with pictures from my nephew Neil Brent who had just received the keys to a house he has purchased in Richland, WA. He moved there about a year ago for a new job as a social worker after living on what Washington residents call “the West Side” for much of his life. He did live in Florida for about 10 years while he was in the Air Force and then going to college.

Later that afternoon I talked on the phone with my niece Angela who was returning to Washington after a week vacationing with friends in Palm Springs, CA. She went there because her husband was gone all week at the state basketball tournament in Tacoma. He has been a high school basketball and football official for years and has been one of the supervisors of officials at the state tournament for several years.

Saturday night I went out to get dinner and I decided to drive by the Sun Bowl after I ate. There had been commercials for a Monster Truck Jam all week on local TV and I was interested in the size of the crowd. It looked like all 50,000 seats were filled on what was a delightful spring evening. Well, this is Texas, so I should have expected that.

See you next week with more.