A Curious Instrument

I travel in north-eastern New Mexico a lot, as it is the territory of my job doing computer support for the New Mexico Cooperative Extension Service.  If you go to a website on New Mexico, it probably isn't really talking about this part of the state, as it is very lightly populated, and has no recreation areas or mountains (compared with Santa Fe and Taos).  It is a land of huge ranches and wide-open spaces, sandwiched between that fertile mid-western farmland, the scenic mountains, and the bleak "Great Southwest Desert" that early explorers warned travelers to avoid at all costs.  Apparently, most sane people listened to that advice! North-east New Mexico was mostly the range-land of buffalo in the distant past.  Apache and Comanche tribes hunted here, but never made anything approaching settlements.  Water is scarce and seasonal at best and the tribes had sense enough to keep their families in more hospitable places.  The first settlers were Span...

Everyone always focuses on a person who is being offended , their tender feelings, and moving mountains in defending that tender heart. I think it is high time we spend a bit more time on those who offend , what makes them so offensive, and either helping them or, more often, ourselves to change. Now, I am certainly not advocating for some "anything goes" attitude about something as important as how people live.  There are such things as community standards and these need to be honored when we are out in public.  It is sad to see some glorified "do-good-er" from a far-away, culturally-denuded place come to an area and immediately begin working diligently (as only "community activists" can) to remove aspects of life that, here it comes, they find offensive . As an eleven-year-old, I attended a tiny country school in a village called Grady in the arid grasslands of eastern New Mexico.  I was not a hunter, nor were my parents or grandparents, bu...