Columns

If you are a working stiff, sweating away eight or more hours a day for someone who’s making the “big bucks,” there’s a good chance that you feel unappreciated.

What was intended as a joyous occasion — a sign of real progress, with cake as the main course and punch as the chaser — might have instead appeared as an annoyance, if you read newspaper headlines.

Let me explain:

A recent issue of the Optic included a front-page photo spread on a ribbon-cutting for a the city’s newest diversion dam. About 50 city officials and townspeople boarded vans to go high up Gallinas Canyon, “to places some of you have never been before,” as Mayor Alfonso Ortiz expressed it.

Having established its new rail town east of the Gallinas in 1879, the AT&SF quickly embarked on the second reason it chose to make Las Vegas its regional headquarters. The railroad intended to develop the hot springs north of town as a premier resort for the rich and famous who were by then anxiously traveling by rail to the alluring west.

But first, a brief history of the hot springs area before the railroad arrived.

David Cargo, the former Republican governor, was honored last week in the state Roundhouse with the unveiling of a bronze bust in his likeness. The crowd that gathered for the ceremony included Gov. Susana Martinez, out of respect for one of her predecessors, and a host of friends and relatives out of loyalty to this man and the mark he made on New Mexico.

Interestingly, Cargo observed that there were probably more Democrats in the audience than Republicans, which illustrates a sad reality to politics today.