Features

The 2017 nominees are in for the Community Asset Awards, which will take place January 13.
Thirty-eight nominees that live or work in our community have been nominated for accolades from 2017. One will win the biggest honor of the night, the prestigious Spirit of the West Award, named in honor of former County Councilor Jim West.
“We’re excited once again to acknowledge the efforts of those that make our community better in many ways every day,” said Bernadette Lauritzen, executive director of Champions of Youth Ambitions (C’YA). The local non-profit welcomes nominations throughout the entire year with a special focus to get submissions between Thanksgiving and the winter holidays.
The celebration has found a home in the Betty Ehart Senior Center for several years. That night nominees and a guest are invited for a variety of desserts to herald their accomplishments. A very limited number of tickets are sold to community members that would like to attend the occasion.
Another annual celebration is that the nominees are unaware of who nominated them for the award and why until the actual celebration is held. Nominees are never made to speak to the large crowd gathered, but are made to stand with other nominees while their accolades are shared with the crowd.

Felipe Rodriguez says he thought he was hallucinating when an eagle snatched his sister’s little white dog from her yard, flapped its massive wings and disappeared over the trees.

Did he really just see that?

He had. Zoey the 8-pound bichon frise was gone, taken by a hungry raptor Tuesday afternoon not 50 feet from his sister’s house on the banks of the Lehigh River in Pennsylvania, Rodriguez said.

“It seemed like something from the ‘Wizard of Oz,’” he told The Associated Press on Wednesday. “I’m a city boy. This doesn’t happen in my world.”

Even more astonishing: Zoey would live to bark the tale.

More on that later. But first, let it be said that eagles are quite capable of taking a small dog or a cat.

“It has been documented before, but not that often,” said Laurie Goodrich, a biologist at nearby Hawk Mountain Sanctuary, a ridgetop preserve that annually records tens of thousands of migrating hawks, eagles and falcons.

With food scarce and waterways freezing up, raptors are “looking a little more widely and taking advantage of whatever might be out there,” she said.

The public is invited to attend the fall prevention workshop “Stay on Your Feet:  Keeping your Balance and Preventing Falls,” a presentation at Aspen Ridge Lodge, located at 1010 Sombrillo Court.

The presentation will be January 23, given by Robert Lee, PT, DPT, MA and director of LAMC Rehabilitation Services.

No RSVP is needed to attend. Refreshments will be served on third floor of Aspen Ridge.

For information, contact Cynthia Goldblatt, program manager and liaison, at 695-8981.

Start the New Year with a Cowboy Pancake Breakfast.  The first breakfast of the year will be from 7-11 a.m.  Sunday at the Posse Lodge on North Mesa Road.

The all-you-can-eat breakfast features a variety of pancakes plus eggs, sausage, bacon, coffee and juice. Adult breakfasts will cost $7, children 10 and under can eat for $4.

This month, the proceeds from breakfast will benefit the Rotary Club of Los Alamos.

The Rotary Club, which has been serving the Los Alamos community for over 50 years, plans to use the funds for improvements to the Quemazon Trailhead.

Other projects supported by the club and the community’s generosity include providing pre-paid exam vouchers for UNM-LA students in the high school equivalency program; the LAHS Memorial Garden; vocational training for Delancey Street residents; transportation to swimming lessons for fourth-graders in the elementary schools; an active inbound and outbound Youth Exchange Student Exchange program and leadership camp for high school students; the Deborah Beene Music Awards; the LAHS Memorial Garden; picnic tables for PEEC; funding support for the Posse Lodge, FIRST Robotics, the Hilltalkers Speech and Debate; LA Makers, Boy Scouts, LA Cares, Family Strengths Network, the Senior Center, and PAC-8 after-school programs for middle-schoolers.

This month’s Nature on Tap, set for Thursday, will focus on the latest findings in astronomy, including gravitational waves and neutron star collisions.

Local astronomers and astrophysicists Dr. Galen Gisler, Dr. Steve Becker and Dr. Paul Arendt, will provide an engaging discussion about gravitational waves, the creation of precious metals, black holes, neutron stars, the night sky and upcoming planetarium shows.

Nature on Tap is part of a series of conversations about art, history, nature and science. Thursday’s discussion will be at 5:30 p.m. at UnQuarked Wine Room.

Gisler was born under the dark and starry skies of eastern New Mexico and eventually found his way back to his home state. With a bachelor’s degree in astronomy from Yale University, and a Ph.D in astrophysics from the University of Cambridge (England), Gisler went on to postdoctoral positions at the Leiden University Observatory (Netherlands) and Kitt Peak National Observatory (Arizona).

Arendt has a Ph.D in physics from Ohio State University. His working career was spent in Applied Research and Development of materials at LANL and also in commercial manufacturing.

As I sat and listened to a holiday message on Sunday afternoon, the speaker mentioned the Hebrew word Shalom. He spoke of one of the meanings being, “wholeness.”

I naturally looked up what the internet had to say and found therefinersfire.org for the definition. It is used in many ways, as a welcome, a goodbye and most commonly related to peace.

I could remember as a child, my mother having the words put on a cake for a friend.

As we approach 2018, I wish you all Shalom. So many are seeking wholeness in so many ways, like waves of the ocean all throughout our lives.

I believe in the depths of my soul that it all begins and ends with the Assets. I am certain that constantly talking about Assets, might get annoying from time to time. The truth is like eating healthy, sleep, exercise and taking care of ourselves, it just needs to become a lifestyle, a permanent habit.

As a nation, we are constantly seeking ways to build kindness, end bullying, put an end to crime or terrorism. If we try to build the skills and traits in our young people, within our communities and let that ripple throughout our region and state, everyone’s lives will be better.

Los Alamos Middle School (LAMS) is successfully implementing Saturday School, a completely voluntary program in which students get extra help from teachers and catch up on school work.

The goal is to finish assignments and make sure they are not falling behind. Last year was the first year for 7th and 8th grade Saturday School and this year’s improved version comes with extra assistance and better communications from teachers.

At Saturday School, students tend to work on makeup homework, makeup tests, or even to get ahead on assignments before a busy week. There is a mix of students who attend: some are simply asking for more help from a teacher while others are specifically recommended by a teacher.

According to Johnson, some students like to attend because it is a quiet place to get work done, free of distractions.

Students stay for the entire three-hour period and are also instructed to keep a log of the work they accomplish.

Saturday School is not meant for one type of student, but rather students of any level who might need help, including special education students.

And students really see the results from attending Saturday school; “Kids are amazed with how much they get done,” said Johnson.  In one case, a teacher was working with a particular student that was behind.

 “And love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love, cannot be killed or swept aside”-Lin-Manuel Miranda.
Mr. Miranda said these words at the 2016 Tony Awards and I feel it was really a much, needed anthem for the year.

I see this love shown in many ways and for a variety of people throughout the year. The ladies of Alpha Zeta showed it once again as they saw fit to find volunteers to adopt 80 families with kids in our local schools, for the holidays.

Kate Stoddard, one of those people you love to be around and her band of merry makers, some husbands and a few children dragged along for fun pulled off the annually impossible last weekend. They transformed the Christian Church into, “Love Central,” preparing for many to feel the love this holiday season. They weren’t even miffed if you showed up a bit late or with something not wrapped yet.

Ironically for 2016, the ladies with their “sweetness of spirit,” received a Community Asset Award for the work that they do in our community. It was just a small opportunity to let them feel some of that love in return.

So now, here is my final plea, a chance for you to do a kindness for someone that otherwise we may never know about.

With the holidays and 2018 approaching, Bandelier National Monument is offering news on upcoming events, both this year and next.  

First on the list is Winter Solstice, Dec. 21, shortest day of the year and the point on the calendar when the days begin to lengthen again.  Many peoples all over the world recognized the solstices and built markers into structures or found them in the surrounding landscape.

The Ancestral Pueblo people in Frijoles Canyon may have built parts of Tyuonyi, the large pueblo on the canyon bottom, in alignment with the sunrise and sunset on the Winter Solstice.  Ranger walks will be offered that day to greet the sunrise and sunset and see the possible alignments.  The Sunrise Walk meets at 7:15 a.m. in front of the Visitor Center, and the Sunset Walk meets there at 1:30 p.m.  The times are a reminder that sunrise and sunset happen at different times in the bottom of the 400-foot-deep canyon than they do in the wide-open landscapes on the mesa tops.  No signups are required for these walks, but participants should be sure to dress warmly.  If the sky is overcast, the walks will be held the following day.

The Visitor Center, book store, and administrative offices in Frijoles Canyon will be closed on Dec. 25 and Jan. 1, and the snack bar is closed until March.