The wayback machine, that is.
After my post yesterday, I got an email from my best good friend. Turns out she was in the wayback machine yesterday too, but for a whole different reason.
Still a resident of Las Cruces, over the years, she's given me an on site report on all the things changing in that sleepy college town. Yesterday she saw a sight that made her incredibly sad and she had to tell me about it in email.
Remember how I talked about NMSU being a land grant college?
What that meant to a business major such as me, is that if you walked down the hill toward the Ag College, you would find a big open pasture in which actual cows roamed around, grazing on the actual college campus.
With the wind from the right direction, you were reminded, frequently enough, that you did, in fact, attend an agricultural college.
Personally, I always liked that. Tied us to our roots. Kept us humble.
Once upon a time I even had to help round up a truckload of calves that were being moved to a different pasture. Those buggars had managed to break free. Tiny criminals. If you know anything about calves, you know they don't naturally have that herding instinct yet.
It was like herding jello. Or the Tasmanian devil. Or some combo therein.
Sadly, the cows haven’t roamed the campus of NMSU for several years, and that open land went pretty much unused.
Until former university president, Michael Martin, agreed to annex that pastureland to the City of Las Cruces for the purpose of building a convention center. In exchange, the university gets money back from events hosted there.
I'd heard this was coming. My friend and I talked at length about it when I visited in February.
As of yesterday, ground has been broken. Construction is underway.
They made my best friend cry. That makes me cry.
There is some quote about not going quietly into that good night. But anymore, I'm not sure it's worth the calorie expenditure to holler into a hurricane.
Change must happen. At the end of the day, it's not about the memories, it's about the dollars. As an NMSU trained businesswoman, I should know better.
Photo by Clay Mathis of NMSU. Source.
