This 3 minute video was created in July/August 2010, 6 years later. Since 2004 there has been no similar set of circumstances and no similar blossoming.

I literally did not know when I took these photos that I was capturing such a singular or once-in-a-long-time event. I hope you enjoy watching this video as much as I did making it.

If you do like it, please click the “like” button and leave a comment.

Thanks, and happy Fall 2010.

And when you throw in the Santa Fe Railroad, a New York air transportation promoter, Charles Lindbergh, Mayor and Governor Clyde Tingley, the WPA, WWII and the Manhattan Project, and you end up with  a fascinating eight-minute narrated video.

Albuquerque International Airport at 70 Video

I hope you enjoy it, and look forward to comments or suggestions you might have on how to improve a possible second version, and please feel free to let others know about it, too.

Casandra Meyers-Warner, New Mexico State 1st Vice Regent and Past Regent of the Charles Dibrell Chapter presenting the certificate.

From the program notes: “The Charles Dibrell Chapter of the Albuquerque DAR is pleased to present Tom Miles the DAR Community Service Award for his creation of the Albuquerque Tricentennial Timeline. The timeline itself depicts 600 years of Albuquerque history in a large 4 foot x 16 foot poster-format piece mounted in the East Wing of the Albuquerque Convention Center and the Passenger Waiting Lounge at the Sunport. It depicts and relates interesting historical events throughout the world as well as describing the many and varied ethnic and cultural arrivals and contributions to Albuquerque over this 600 year period. The Timeline Project took two years to complete and required Tom to meet repeatedly with the University of New Mexico History Department, the State Folklorist, the State Historian, the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center, the Spanish Colonial Research Center and the National Hispanic Cultural Center. For graphics, Tom worked with Sandia Labs Graphics Department. The timeline was considered to be sufficiently interesting and valuable that the Tricentennial Committee contracted for the printing of a number of smaller, 2 foot x 4 foot, copies which were given to the Albuquerque Public School, Parochial and selected private high school and middle schools throughout Albuquerque to facilitate teaching Albuquerque, New Mexico, US and world history and Social Studies. It is impossible with a photo to show the importance of this work. You may want to  view on line two very informative YouTube videos produced  by Tom:  “5 Perspectives on Albuquerque, NM” and “Mexican Immigration Through New Mexico and the Southwest.”

463 richly researched and documented pages detailing 450 years of southwest adventure and discovery! Very hard to put down!

Douglas Preston literally takes you in his saddle bag on two 900-mile horseback/roughing-it odysseys with his cantankerous Santa Fe artist friend Walter Nelson. Two journeys cover the same geography: Coronado’s 1540 epic exploration from New Spain/Mexico through Arizona, New Mexico and Kansas.

The chapters and episodes are written from multiple viewpoints: New Spain’s (Mexico’s) culture, Coronado’s expectations in planning and leaving New Spain, Coronado’s experiences en-route, various and numerous native American initial encounters with white Europeans – Mexican Aztecs – and black Africans, And last, but not least by a long shot, … Doug and Walter’s experiences and observations of both what had changed and how little had changed in the intervening 450 years.

I found this a tremendous context piece to open my understanding and appreciation of the nearly complete uniqueness of New Mexico in particular and America’s great southwest in general. You will be exposed to amazing repeating patterns of history from 1540s Spain and New Spain right up into today’s New Mexico business and politics.

Cites of Gold is a thoroughly charming, entertaining, amazing, irritating, enlightening, frustrating, and fulfilling read! Check it out for yourself!

It is worthy noting that this story takes place in 1988-99, long before the Patriot Act’s privacy invasions became commonplace.  The book’s protagonist and heroine is Beverly Parmentier, owner of a small Latin American folk aft and antiques importing store in Old Town.

How Beverly finds herself and her store under surveillance by U. S. Customs Service is a humorous happenstance of President Reagan’s Central American policies and a relentless and opportunistic Customs Service Albuquerque Station Chief. The story shifts into high gear from there and never lets up until the last pages.

Beverly (Martha) relates in detail her surveillance as the story careens from Albuquerque across the country.  They include Customs Service employment of Vietnam Vets and taxpayer funded junkets to “surveil” Beverly from Albuquerque’s Old Town, North Valley, Santa Fe, Washington, D. C., a Colorado river raft trip, and a Caribbean island “getaway.”  You’ll howl both in laughter and in anger, over the ineptness and relentlessness of the federales abuses of power.  And then you will smile wickedly at the justice of the finale.

Lots of familiar territory and names and places throughout should make Clearing Customs a particularly enjoyable read to everyone familiar with Albuquerque, Santa Fe, New Mexico … or U. S. Customs.

He researches team histories and produces logo T-shirts for such old teams as:

• Madrid Miners – AA Minor League: 1020s, ’30s and 40’s
• Artesia Drillers – Longhorn League: 1951-1953
• Carlsbad Potashers – Longhorn League, Southwestern League and Sophomore League: 1953-1956
• New Mexico Storm – American Indoor Soccer League: 2004-2005

Regrettably, the only two sports teams I mentioned in the Albuquerque Timeline are Albuquerque’s first pro baseball team ‘The Albuquerque Dons’ in 1932, and the 1984 El Dorado High School Girls Basketball team that won 74 consecutive victories – the longest winning streak in the nation. It’s neat to learn that Danny is filling the blanks.

I think you will enjoy visiting Danny’s website at www.pdvintage.com and taking a look at his great logo T-shirts. Myself, I’m looking forward to seeing what other fascinating and interesting former New Mexico sports teams he finds.

This is a photo of me with Rick Chase, the District Director of Purdue’s Extension Service and one of the organizers of the conference. Rick was the gent that came across the 5 Perspectives on Albuquerque YouTube video and asked for an introductory presentation on Albuquerque’s and New Mexico’s history.

Great fun. Good people.

I can’t quite say how tickled I am to have the opportunity to tell them some Albuquerque and New Mexico stories from the timeline. This is what I put the two years in for – so there would be a one-stop-shop for 600 years of our histories and cultures for people who would like such a summary. I’ll be taking one of the 2 ft x 8 ft copies to speak from, mounted on a plastic backing board so it can stand on two easels, and leaving it there the whole day so the 44 attendees from 13 North Central states can read it more closely on their breaks. Interestingly, their mission statement is … to build leadership in Cooperative Extension at all levels and provide current and future Extension leaders with the vision, courage, and tools to lead in a changing world.

I hope to get some pix of the event that I can post later this week.

There are a couple of things you will want to know if you would like to purchase your very own  copy of the Albuquerque Historical Timeline:

• the 2 ft x 8 ft size is the smallest that is easily eye-readable
• each copy is a full-color exact replica of the 4 ft x 16 ft Convention Center original
• each copy has a very resilient laminate protecting it
• a single copy reproduction  goes for $200, and that includes any tax and shipping

New Mexico Big Prints are the good folks that produced the 4 ft x 16 ft copies of the Timeline at the Convention Center and at the Airport. They also produced the smaller, 2 ft x 8 ft copies for high school and middle school use throughout Albuquerque and the Archdiocese, and it’s this size that is available for  purchase. I suppose you could order a 4 ft x 16 ft size, but expect to come up with about $3,750 or so per copy.

The URL to contact the good folks at New Mexico Big Prints is http://www.nmbigprints.com/index3.html.

There are a few caveats.

1. With all large spreadsheets, and this one is 96 pages large, it’s impossible to have everything appear on one screen and still have the font size readable. That means you will have to scroll left/right through time, and up/down through geography and ethnic/cultural events. It took me a while to get used to all the scrolling when building the spreadsheet, but there wasn’t any good alternative. There have been many suggestions and ideas about interactive, hyperlinked formats, but none have panned out as yet.

2. You will need to zoom in to the spreadsheet 3-4-5 times until you can comfortably read the text. When I do that, the text at the top of the page kind of ‘disappears,’ but using the up-down scroll bar can bring it back into view quickly.

3. I believe the spreadsheet is ‘read only’ protected, so information can’t be added or changed, which may well be a source of some consternation to revisionist-oriented historians.  It is possible, however, to copy and paste from the timeline cells. The timeline is copyrighted with the U.S. Copyright Office (VAu674-484) so thanks in advance for asking permission via a comment before you copy/paste any content from the timeline.

4. In the original Excel spreadsheet on my hard-drive, all of the dates neatly lined up at the left of each cell for ease of reading (and yes, lining up 740+ dated events in 341 separate cells was a goodly chore). Uploading caused some events to shift within the cell so their dates follow the text of previous events rather than lining up neatly on the left on their own separate line. Tweaking that may take place at some future time when (a) I can take the time to figure out how to do that, and (b) I have the time to really dive in and actually clean each of them up.

So, with that as preface, I heartily invite you to click this link to browse: The Albuquerque History and Cultural Timeline. I would enjoy hearing your thoughts in a comment to this post.