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.