NMT Mineral Museum

I confess one reason I love the NMT Mineral Museum is that I grew up near a grocery/rock shop with a very similar museum in the back. Some deep part of me believes that childhood requires a rock museum you can return to, over and over again.

The NMT Mineral Museum has two large rooms of lovely rocks -- some sorted by the exact mine they came out of, and best of all, a glow-in-the-dark room (sorted by New Mexican and non-New Mexican specimens).

The Museum is free and is directly east of Macey Center park. It's open seven days a week. For my five year old it's good for about 15 minutes of serious browsing. I extend her interest by playing a game called "dibs" -- each of us picks out a favorite rock in each display case. Lynn's favorites are fool's gold and quartz.



I don't normally schedule outings entirely around shopping, but I have to say the BEST thing about The Mineral Museum is buying rocks. It's cool, educational, and the price is right. Graduate students are on call for questions or to sell rocks -- dial the number posted near the phone. Eschew the rotating display case (too awkward for kiddos) and ask them to pull out the trays of 25 cent rocks from the cupboard. Two dollars later you have a rock collection. I think it's cool that each rock comes nestled in packing material with a typed label identifying it -- naturally the kiddo strips this all off the minute we get home.

While the museum is upstairs, the elevator makes it wheelchair and stroller friendly. Bathrooms are around the corner.

A YouTube course on Media Literacy for Five Year Olds

Our five year old is media deprived. She is not allowed to use our computers. We go to great lengths to make sure the TV she watches is commercial-free. Everything she watches has to pass the our idiosyncratic family rating system -- Disney movies are too scary, the violence in Kim Possible, The Muppet Show, and Scooby Doo is fine. Home is a nice protected environment.

A few months ago our daughter went to a friend's house and had a transformative experience -- she spent a few hours playing on Barbie.com. For the next three days we talked about nothing but Barbie.com. I heard about the games, about the paper-doll dress-ups, the toys, the rockstars. While there's nothing I hate more than Pepto-Bismol-pink Barbie, really, I'm not all that upset. I remember going to my friends houses and making a beeline for MTV. I remember eating nothing but Cocoa Puffs and Captain Crunch three meals a day my first few weeks in college. She does need to be exposed to the real world somewhere, and a few hours of braincandy is not going to undermine our 24/7 home life.

What strikes me, in a bad way, is how powerful TV and the internet is. Since she'd had no exposure to any of this, she sucked it up like a sponge. My gentle prompting that Barbie.com has something to sell had little effect. So, fight fire with fire. I hit the internet, and found the makings of a course on media literacy for five year olds.

I suggest that you don't try to do this in one day -- both because kiddos have short attention spans and because they need time to think about their questions. Repetition is good -- I've shown this to her two or three time, seizing the chance when a friend is over. The second time I showed it to Alexander he gratified me by turning to me and saying "The Typhoon II isn't so cool, it only runs nine minutes before the batteries run out".

HBO has a great series from the 1990's called "Buy Me That" which is surprisingly undated. Available on YouTube is a 3 minute video on the reality of commercials: Buy Me That: Helping Kids Understand Toy Ads, Typhoon II

Next onto fast food commercials:

There's a wonderful food stylist video on YouTube -- she's a bit like Donna Reed as she puts cardboard in your hamburger, straight pins in the lettuce and Styrofoam in the french fries. I like to follow this up with the musical montage of real vs. fake. Encourage the kids to yell out "Real!" vs. "Fake!" as the images are shown.

Now I need a segment on product placements in movies, kid eye-level marketing in grocery stores and brand-orientated web sites. Suggestions anyone?


(for local parents in Socorro I have the full VHS tape which has:

• Typhoon II episode (toy doesn't work as shown)
  
• How the GI Joe Battle Copter ad was made
  
• Product placements in movies and video games
  
• Kids Clubs
  
• How special effects make everything sound better on TV
  
• Does buying everything make you a bigger fan?
  
• Do Nike shoes make you jump higher or run faster?
  
• How much Corn Flakes do you have to eat to collect all 15 3D baseball cards?
  

Children's radio program now online

For years we have listened to The Children's Hour -- an hour of talk and music on the "local" public radio station KUNM. We've had terrible luck buying children's music -- so much of it is cloying. We've found a lot of children's music we really like through The Children's Hour but the big problem is that if we forget to turn it on at 9AM on Saturday, that's it, it's over.

Now two weeks of archives are available at their website. The archive format is a bit awkward -- rather than select a show, you must select a time slot, so remember, Saturday 9AM to 10AM. So next time you need an hour of kid-friendly cheerful music, The Children's Hour will be there (maybe even two hours!).

If you listen often, please do remember to donate to KUNM. Public radio, like everything else, is suffering a lot during the economic downturn. Streaming and podcasting makes it seem like the programs come out of nowhere, but in fact there are real people who need real salaries (and health insurance!) behind the programs.

The New Mexico Starter Library

New to New Mexico? Welcome to the wild west. This article is not specifically for kiddos, rather it is a list of recommended books for adults (we deserve some reading above the level of "Hop on Pop"!).

So without further ado, here is my recommendations for New Mexico books:

Be My Guest, Conrad Hilton Conrad Hilton grew up in San Antonio, just twelve miles south of Socorro. His dad ran a grocery store/hotel, then they moved to the "big town" of Socorro. The first half of this memoir is well worth reading. Conrad's father stands out as one of the few settlers of the wild west who refused to carry a gun. He claimed that carrying a gun meant that sooner or later either you or the person you pointed it at died. There's a harrowing scene of him talking a drunken cowboy down at gunpoint.

Blood and Thunder, Hampton Sides This book is much bigger than Carson alone. It tells the rich and complex history of the "taming" of New Mexico and fills in the detail of the brutal campaign against the Navajos. The US Army (hopelessly unsuited to New Mexico) has the duty to protect the pueblos and the Hispanic settlers only lately inherited from Mexico. The governor and army desperately want a Napoleonic style war, with a single leader to negotiate with, and had no idea how to deal with raids carried out by small groups of young male Navajos...thus the tragedy of Bosque Rondondo. This book explained something I never understood -- why anyone thought that interning Apaches with Navajo was a good idea.

The Harvey Girls, Lesley Poling-Kempes If importing brides to the wild west leaves a bad taste in your mouth, don't worry, by the end of this book, you are left with the joy of being a young women in 1900, getting to leave home (with chaperon), travel west (live in a dorm), draw a salary, and transfer between Harvey Houses! I've written more extensively in my article about the Belen Harvey Museum.

The Great Taos Bank Robbery: And Other True Stories of the Southwest, Tony Hillerman If you like mysteries (or even if you can just only stand them) you should read all of Tony Hillerman's mysteries. They are set primarily in Arizona, but the country, and traditions are New Mexican -- Hopi and Navajo did not draw those state borders. This light book is from Hillerman's newspaper days, and is a "Prairie Home Companion" take on New Mexico. We are a small town at heart.

No Life for a Lady, Agnes Morley CleavelandThere are intertwining strands in the rope that makes up New Mexico, this book is about the strand made up of Anglo ranchers. The roughness of life on the frontier, the joy and the practical jokes are all described. The horse culture, where the only acceptable reason for being caught walking was chasing a horse, is described with energy.

The Milagro Beanfield War, John Nichols This fabulous book is a wonderful romp through small town New Mexico. I hate to say much about -- I don't want to give anything away. Hispanic farmers, innocent and well meaning university volunteers, land developers and ghosts cavort. It should be required reading for anyone who crosses the border. I wish I could recommend all the books in the trilogy, but they get rapidly weirder and more violent.

Things that every kid should know

Here's a list of things every kid who grows up in Socorro should know:

• Sedillo springs, which used to be the town's water supply is the only known location of Socorro Isopods, a pill bug that lives in the water.
  
• The town's name means "help" and can be used positively (as in assistance) and as a exclamation --"Socorro!".
  
• Despite what your mother says about running the water while you brush your teeth, Socorro is not a desert. It gets 12 inches of rain a year, two inches more than deserts, making it merely "semiarid".
  
• Socorro Texas was founded by Piro Indians who left Socorro NM to go back to Old Mexico during the Publeo revolt -- they were in trouble for helping the Spanish.
  
• Socorro is nationally known among birders for the Bosque del Apache wildlife refuge and among amateur astronomers for The Enchanted Skies star party.
  
• Elfego Baca, the Hispanic folk hero, was born in Socorro and served here as mayor and sheriff. When he was 19, he deputized himself, went to Frisco (present day Reserve) and tried to arrest a Anglo cowboy who had abused Hispanic ranchers. There was a 30 hour shootout, involving more than 1000 rounds of ammunition. Since his law enforcement credentials were a bit shaky so he later had to stand trial for the arrest. The story grew in the telling and Baca had a long political career.
  
• Socorro used to have a roller skating rink and a bowling alley. Those were the days.
  
  
  
• Conrad Hilton, who founded the Hilton hotel chain, was born in San Antonio and moved to the "big town" of Socorro. The first half of his autobiography, "Be My Guest", is all about growing up in New Mexico
  
• New Mexico has the highest numbers of Ph.D.s per capita in the U.S. Within New Mexico, Los Alamos has 261, Albuquerque has 76 and Socorro (city) at 67 per 1000 (PhD or professional degrees, US Census, 2000).
  
• The Nicotine Patch was invented by a former professor at NMT and he and NMT share the patent for it.
  
• New Mexico has the second highest teenage birth rate in the country: 64.1 per 1000. Socorro (2006) "only" has 57 per 1000, placing it 17 out of 33 counties in New Mexico.
  
• The Pueblo Revolt of 1680 was the single most successful Native American revolt against European invaders. The revolt drove all Spanish from New Mexico for 12 years.
  

A Hike to Sedillo Springs

This two mile round trip hike is described as part of a longer bike ride at the Fat Tire Fiesta website.



The hike is through desert scrub, then on dirt roads, to the old Socorro water supply. We love hikes (rare in New Mexico) that end with water. The view of Socorro is lovely. Have your kids check the water temperature (80 degrees!) in series of small concrete baths and look for the Socorro Isopod -- a pill bug that lives in the water. The Socorro Isopod ONLY lives in these springs! The baths are the remains of a spa called "The Evergreen" (like the road).

New Mexico Game and Fish PDF on the Isopod says:

In August 1988 the entire population died out
at the spring when the flow of water became
obstructed and the habitat dried up. Fortunately,
a population of the isopod, which was housed
at the University of New Mexico, saved the
species from extinction, and a transplant has
restored it to Sedillo Spring.

Directions:

1. From California, drive west on Spring Street. Rather than turn south onto 60, stay on Spring Street, watching for a residential road branching from the left, Evergreen
   
2. Take Evergreen to the end. We usually park on the right, in front of an abandoned house.
   
3. The first land you cross belongs to a retired Socorro police officer. It's clearly marked "No Trespassing" and "City Vehicles Only", which he explained is designed to keep drinkers and spray painters away. The Fat Tire Fiesta map shows a trail under the powerpoles but there is no trail. Either cut cross-country toward the tank, or if you have a jogging stroller, take the driveway marked "No Trespassing".
   
4. From the tank, pick up the dirt road, headed east. At about a mile, there will be a small trail to the left, leading towards the cottonwood stand (always a good sign of water in New Mexico). At the empty holding pond you can continue toward the adobe ruin, then cut cross country back to the car (barbed wire fence), or retrace your steps, return to the car (or and add a another half mile by climbing to the top of the hill behind the springs).
   

Belen Harvey House Museum

Taking the train across the wild west from 1817-1917 was quite an adventure, and worst of all, you were on your own for food. You packed a picnic and it had better last. Trains actually stopped in small towns for meals, and some shifty restaurants took your money, then just waited for the train to leave -- your empty stomach on it. To compete with other railway lines, the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railway (ATSF) "branded" their railway with Harvey Houses -- regularly scheduled stops where you could order a full meal in a civilized setting. After a drunken fight put his black stewards out of business for the day, Harvey started hiring girls. Waitressing wasn't respectable on the East Coast, but Fred Harvey opened dormitories, hired chaperons, demanded strict manners and brought pride to the profession. Working at the Harvey House gave girls a chance to travel in a chaperoned manner -- they signed six month contracts, were given a free trip home every year, and could transfer between the Harvey Houses, 87 different locations at their peak. The supply chain was very impressive: uniforms were shipped to Newton, Kansas to be laundered, ice was shipped from northern climes to every Harvey House.

An unintended consequence of importing adventurous east-coast girls to male dominated towns of the wild west was that the girls married local cowboys, settled down and brought the Harvey manners to the next generation -- from "Gold Rush" to small town America in one generation. And then the next train brought in a fresh new crop of Harvey Girls.

The Belen Harvey House contains a small museum (the menu is really impressive!) and the model train club. I would watch "Harvey Girls" first, the 1946 musical with Judy Garland and the memorable "Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe train song". The movie is good for age 5 and up -- there's a scary fire and threatened gunfight and some rather tame "women of ill repute" (a young Angela Lansbury). The museum is good for about 20 minutes, trains go by, and then the model railroad is fun.

Open 12:30-3:30PM T-S, (575?) 861-0581



Belen is a 45 minute drive from Socoro