Author Archives: Melinda Green Harvey
enforcement
We planned an entire trip (eight nights on the road) that was built around someone telling us that there was a great little restaurant in Burlington, Colorado. We’re up for a trip and thought we could drive up one day, eat dinner that night, and come home the next.
Only…then we added Oklahoma City because I had to be there anyway. Then we tacked on a few nights in Santa Fe for reasons that mostly dealt with another place to eat and added some other nights in places and before you knew it, we’d turned it into The Most Random Trip Ever (with food)™.
Really, why do anything the normal way when you can make it complicated?
Burlington, Colorado
photographed 9.4.2024
PS: Burlington has about 3,000 residents; one of them is the fancy chef over at the Dish Room who’ll make you a delicious dinner.
ring
The church in this tiny town was locked; that gave me time to explore the churchyard, where I found a ring with a heart-shaped stone hung over the statue’s thumb.
On a side note, sometimes I feel sorry for people who take the fastest route somewhere and who don’t deviate from the plan and who arrive somewhere in a “normal” amount of time: they miss stuff like this. I am speaking as a former take-the-quickest-route person who took great pride in beating my own records at getting where I was going, so I know for sure Previous Me wouldn’t have found this town, this church, or the ring.
San José, New Mexico
photographed 8.31.2024
planning ahead can be helpful
I’ve seen a lot of things in cemeteries, but this was the first “reserved” sign I’ve ever noticed.
I found a book called Spanish Surnames, Older Baptismal First Names and the Origins of the Spanish Language at a tiny grocery store in New Mexico earlier this month. I bought it because it seemed like the right thing to do (it’s less a book, honestly, than it is some photocopied pages stapled together) and because it seemed like the sort of thing that might come in handy. And that’s why I can tell you that the name “Rael” previously appeared “as the name of a soldier, Real de Aguilar from Lorca, Murica, Spain, at paso del norte in the lower Rio Grande in 1689.” My new book further notes that as a surname, “Rael” is of Jewish-Greek origin.
And that concludes today’s lesson. Please carry on.
Truchas, New Mexico
photographed 9.3.2024
four eyes
I’m not saying that on a four-day visit to Tesuque I ate at the Tesuque Village Market four times. But even though I am not saying it, that is precisely what I did.
Tesuque Village Market
Tesuque, New Mexico
photographed 8.31.2024
signs of a previous life
It’s been a long slide down from the time when someone used this clothesline to now, when spray-painted signs on what’s left of the stucco warn of danger and advise photographers to keep out.
El Pueblo, New Mexico
photographed 8.31.24
One Day | One Image 