Daily Digest
Ty's Take Carol Ann Knapp Foreman, Clarence Villemez, Shannyn Caldwell, Timothy Joseph Hourigan—four names in the paper this week, four people who lived their lives in this valley and left it different than they found it, the way it works here. You don't get to
Daily Digest
Ty's Take We lost a few good ones this week—Carol Ann, Clare, Shannyn, and Timothy—and the valley feels a little smaller when the names start stacking up like that. But what strikes me reading through the notices is how many of these folks spent their whole
Daily Digest
Ty's Take Dog days of summer and the TV guide is what we're working with—which tells you everything about how quiet things get around here come mid-July. But that's not nothing. It means the schools are empty, the Aggies aren't
Daily Digest
Ty's Take Slow week in the valley, which around here usually means everybody's out in the fields or already thinking about the next harvest cycle. The TV guide hits different when you're a farming town—half the county's probably still outside at
Daily Digest
Ty's Take The obits page today carries names that mean something in this valley—Knapp, Villemez, Hourigan—people who were here when the orchards still stretched wider and the water fights were mostly about farming. Meanwhile down at the other end of the paper, you've got
Daily Digest
Ty's Take The obits this week remind you that Hatch loses people steady—Carol Ann, Clare, Shannyn, Timothy—names that belonged to families who worked these fields and knew the valley when it was smaller and the chile harvest meant something different than it does now. But there&
Daily Digest
Ty's Take The TV guide hits the desk on a Wednesday in July, which means somebody's already thinking about what folks will be watching when the heat settles in and the sun doesn't quit till after eight. That's the rhythm of a
Daily Digest
Ty's Take Not much stirring in the news cycle this week—that's what July looks like down here when the heat settles in and folks are either in the fields or staying put in the shade. The entertainment guide is about all the wire's
Daily Digest
Ty's Take Most weeks in July, the valley empties out a little—folks heading to the mountains to escape the heat, or down to visit family across the line in Juárez. The obits page tells you who stayed, who made it through another season tending pecan trees or
Daily Digest
Ty's Take Clare Villemez was the kind of man who showed up—to the fields at dawn, to the church on Sunday, to help a neighbor move irrigation pipe when the Rio Grande ran low. He spent his life in the Mesilla Valley doing work that doesn'
Daily Digest
Ty's Take Carol Ann Knapp Foreman spent most of her life in this valley, which means she saw what Las Cruces was and what it's become—the orchards giving way to subdivisions, the quiet town turning into something busier and louder. The obituaries in a paper
Daily Digest
Ty's Take There's something worth noticing when a local maker decides to turn creativity into commerce, especially in a town where most of us still think of economy in terms of what grows in the ground or what the university brings in. These plushie artisans are