Welcome to a potpourri of fun! On this page you’ll find the latest comics by Jari Thymian, a motivational quote, a crossword puzzle contest, and whatever else we decide to throw in here. Be sure to check back for the latest!
- Earth Corner – With Pat Walsh
- Star Stories – by Kelly Ricks
- Riding the Santa Fe Trail – by Laura Brewer
- Every Day Should be Earth Day – Editorial by Laura Brewer
- Find the Differences
- Frank Mahannah – Gallery
- Exploring Climax Canyon by Mauricio Meneses
- Madi’s Kitchen
- Quotes & Riddles
Quotes & Riddles
Earth Corner – With Pat Walsh
Turkey Vultures have an Image Problem
Posted April 5, 2025
The old Western movies had the formula down pat.
The cowboy’s horse has died. The canteen has run dry. The poor guy stumbles through the desert, desperately searching for water. To make sure we know the situation is grim, somewhere out of sight the filmmakers say, “Cue the vultures!”
In our area, of course, one sure marker of spring’s return is the arrival of turkey vultures soaring gracefully in circles above town. It reassures me that the Earth is continuing its orbit around the sun, with all the natural cycles that entails.
Turkey vultures have an image problem. Instead of feathers on their heads, they have red and wrinkled skin.
Let’s say I put two photos side by side, one of a turkey vulture and the other of a bald eagle. I ask you to choose which is more appealing. Odds are, you’ll prefer the bald eagle (ironic, since the eagle is not bald and has white feathers on its head!) Or perhaps one image is the vulture, the other a spotted fawn. Which one makes you feel warm and fuzzy?
And there you have it—the so-called “Beauty Bias,” as author Hal Herzog puts it in an online article for Psychology today. Why People Care More About Beautiful Animals Than Ugly Ones | Psychology Today
“Why do humans care more about cute animals than ugly ones?” Herzog asks. “One explanation is that cute animals remind us of human babies. Indeed, several studies have reported that animals with characteristics like big eyes and soft facial features trigger our parental care instincts.”
But turkey vultures have a big ecosystem job, serving as the “cleanup crew.” In Raton, stalwart city workers drive garbage trucks through town once a week to empty our dumpsters and keep our streets clean. Thank goodness!
Our town sits amid a beautiful natural landscape. Out there, when animals die, turkey vultures discover this quickly because they have a keen sense of smell, which is unusual in birds. When they arrive, they can chow down easily. Any gore left behind on their bald heads will be disinfected by sunlight. And the remains of the dead animal are safely cycled back into nature.
“By quickly cleaning up decaying remains, vultures help stop the spread of potentially harmful bacteria and viruses that could otherwise contaminate water sources or cause diseases in other animal populations,” says Peter Knight in an online piece. Why vultures are so important? – Birdful “Studies have shown significant increases in infectious diseases like rabies and anthrax in places where vulture populations have declined.”
Turkey vultures are also masters of flight, spiraling upward on warm air currents using little energy. Our turkey vultures migrate south to Central and South America in the winter, and back to us in the spring. Other local animals suffer from an image problem, including insects, snakes, and bats. But, like turkey vultures, each supports ongoing life on our amazing planet.
So next time you see one of our vultures overhead, consider joining me in smiling and saying, “Welcome back!”
Star Stories – by Kelly Ricks
Total Lunar Eclipse
Posted March 2, 2025
The gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge… how much sooner man could have walked on the moon… had we listened to a child’s fantasies. It is truly a pity that so many lose their gift of imagination to the steady hum of the status quo. – Albert Einstein, born March 14th, 1879
Our moon is full of stories. Ever since ever since we have looked up at our faithful celestial companion and wondered why its shape changes and how it got it’s spots. Is a hungry dog nipping at its edges? Did a rabbit throw gobs of mud onto its face? Is the moon a huge mirror reflecting Earth’s oceans and continents? All our stories about the moon are efforts to make sense of what we see and experience, and sometimes teach a lesson. Albert Einstein knew this too: science and understanding begins with wonder, imagination, observation, and investigation. And there are few things as full of wonder as an eclipse.
After thousands of years of observation scientists can now predict the movements of the moon with pinpoint precision.
- March’s full moon will be near apogee—its greatest distance from Earth—and will appear smaller than average. Some call it a “micro-moon.”
- March 13 @ 11:09 pm: the full moon will begin to enter the darkest part of Earth’s shadow (umbra).
- March 14th @ 12:26 am: totality begins. The moon is fully covered by the umbra.
- 1:31 am: totality ends as the moon starts moving back into the sunlight.
- 2:48 am: the moon will be free from the umbra
- During totality, the sun’s light spectrum will be refracted by Earth’s atmosphere till only warm colors remain, causing the moon to take on a rusty reddish hue.
This is the “Full Blood Moon.” An eerie sight in the wee hours of morning. Most old stories about eclipses imagine the moon being devoured by animals or demons, and ancient tales told under its red gaze might leave you with a sense of foreboding. But in this case, reality is even more fantastic and beautiful than myth. Let’s take a page from Einstein and imagine standing on the eclipsed moon looking back toward Earth.
You’re standing above the Sinus Medii, the “Middle Bay:” a small basalt plain at the center of our Moon’s near side. The terrain is not unlike the high volcanic plains of northeastern New Mexico…minus vegetation. An impossibly black circle surrounded by a shimmering ring of red, orange, and gold hangs high in the sky. You can see every sunrise in England, Spain, and West Africa, and every sunset over the open Pacific in a single glance. Their combined colors bathe the moon’s surface in a wash of fiery hues. Countless stars—normally invisible in the bright light of lunar day—shine like pinpoints across the sky, while Saturn, Venus, and Mercury—much brighter than surrounding stars—flank Earth’s reddened atmosphere. The lights of civilization are still too dim to make out, but somewhere down on that jet-black disc, there are a few people in northeastern New Mexico looking back in wonder.
And I almost forgot…Happy Birthday Mr. Einstein!
Help our Earth – Editorial by Laura Brewer
Every day should be Earth Day, but officially we celebrate in the U.S. on Monday, April 22, 2024. Below is a graphic of some of the things one can do to help our Earth.
Posted March 9, 2025 – Provided by Laura Brewer
Madi’s Kitchen
See additional recipes on Madi’s Kitchen page
Stuffed Bell Peppers and Tomato Sauce
Posted April 5, 2025
I love bell peppers for a snack or a meal and this is a great way to cook them up. I got this recipe from an old cookbook that my mom bought at the library. The cookbook series is called “Foods of the World”. It’s a series of cookbooks published in the 1968-1970’s timeframe and we have 6 books from the series. The “Foods of the World” series had 27 cookbooks and was published by Time Life Books. They started in 1968 and continued into the late 1970’s. The cookbooks represent many different countries and foods around the world.
Individual volumes were written by well-known experts in various cuisines and included significant contemporary food. Writers like Julia Child, James Beard and Pierre Franey were contributors and were all overseen by Michael Field, who died before the series was complete. Each cookbook had recipes from different countries. The ones I have are The Cooking of Germany, Pacific and Southeast Asia Cooking, Middle Eastern Cooking, The Cooking of the British Isles, Cooking of Provincial France, and A Quintet of Cuisines.
This recipe for stuffed bell peppers comes from the last one. If you want one of these books yourself, they are pretty widespread so you could probably get your hands on one easily for like 20 dollars or so. The covers have a big photo with food you can find in the book or ingredients that you will be using. I’m not sure how many were printed. I am sure that there were quite a few considering they have 27 cookbooks, and it is not too hard to find at least some of them for sale.
Some of the more common ones I’ve seen for sale are the Germany and the British Isles cooking books. Please remember if you cook a recipe for one of these cookbook’s that they are old recipes. So, there might be some ingredients or items in the instructions that you may not know of or have. For this week’s recipe I did edit it so it would work for modern kitchens. This warning is more just to let you know edits may be required for most old recipes.
You can find some fun recipes in old cookbooks that’s why me and my mom love them! They’re old and fun, like a peek into the past, it’s even better when there’s some photos to look at – a remanence of times long ago.
I hope you enjoy this recipe and when you have a chance and find an old cookbook, take a look through it. See what old recipes you can find and try them out if you think they’re interesting and just enjoy!
Ingredients:
- large bell peppers (without the seeds)
- 1 tablespoon 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
- 1 cup of rice (white or brown, your choice, but know that brown rice takes a bit longer to cook)
- 5 tablespoons of butter
- 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons of freshly chopped onion
- 1/4 cup of freshly cut parsley
- 2 tablespoons freshly cut fennel (fennel is the leaf part of the plant not the seed)
- Pepper to taste
- 1 egg lightly beaten
- 1 tablespoon of flour
- 1/2 cup of chicken stock
- 4 tomatoes, chopped
- 6 tablespoons of sour cream
Instructions:
- Preheat oven to 350 or 375 for high elevation. Place the cored-out peppers into a pot with boiling water, enough to cover them completely and boil for 2 to 3 minutes. After 2 to 3 minutes covering the pot, remove it from the heat and set it aside for five minutes. With tongs or a slotted spoon (if you don’t have either of those two forks work fine), carefully remove the peppers from the water and then place them on paper towels to drain.
- Bring water with 1 tablespoon of salt to boil in a saucepan, pour in the rice and bring back to a boil. Cover for 10 minutes then drain the rice. Set it aside.
- In a heavy skillet, melt 3 tablespoons of butter over medium heat. Once melted, add in one cup of onions. Cook them, stirring frequently until they are clear or light brown. Careful not to burn. Remove the skillet from the heat and stir in the rice, 2 tablespoons of parsley, the fennel, 1 teaspoon of salt and a few grindings of pepper.
- When all the ingredients are thoroughly mixed, cool to room temperature then stir in the egg. Set aside. Melt the remaining 2 tablespoons of butter over medium heat adding the remaining 2 tablespoons of onion and fry for 2 to 3 minutes. Then add the flour and mix thoroughly, pour in the stock, and stir consistently with a whisk or spoon. Cook over high heat until the sauce comes to a boil. Reduce to a low heat and simmer for a few minutes stirring in the tomatoes and the remaining salt, then remove from the heat. If needed, you can add a bit more chicken stock or take it off the burner sooner.
- In a casserole dish, put the peppers in and stuff them with the rice mix. Add the sauce around them in the peppers with a bit of sour cream and parsley (yes before you bake them). Bake for about 30 minutes and serve while still warm.
Find the Differences – Search by the Sea
Find the five differences in the two images above.
Exploring Climax Canyon by Mauricio Meneses
Artist Mauricio Meneses (D’MAU) is creating videos highlighting sights in and around New Mexico. Visit his YouTube channel to see more. Click on the image below to go to the YouTube video.
