News You Probably Can't Use

I have no idea why I did it, but I was looking at the Portales page on Wikipedia this evening and noticed (a) the page has been extensively edited since the last time I visited and (b) my Fair City is growing… much more so than I thought. From The Wiki:

Portales is a city in and the county seat of Roosevelt County^[1], New Mexico, United States. The population of Portales and its near suburbs, contained in Zip Code 88130, was nearly 17,000 people in 2007, not including a majority of the city's college students.

That’s something like a 42% increase over what we announce to folks driving through our beautiful burg.

But this is what really caught my eye:

According to a study conducted by Bizjournals.com, of 577 micropolitan areas, Portales ranked 15th (ed: my link added) in the nation and ninth in the western United States in overall quality of life.^[3] The goal of the study was to identify America’s most attractive micropolitan areas and points were given to small, well-rounded communities where the economy is strong, traffic is light, the cost of living is moderate, adults are well-educated, and access to big-city attractions is reasonably close.

The study identified 12 categories including population growth, per capita income, small business growth, professional jobs, commuting, cost of living, and advanced degrees. Cities were given points for positive results and negative scores if they were below the national averages. These scores were then totaled to determine its overall rank on the list of micropolitan areas.

Portales, the smallest city in the top 25, received a quality of life score of 8.96, the 15th highest score in the nation. According Scott Thomas, the author of the study, the income per capita, short commuting times, low taxes, and substantial percentage of adults with a graduate degree contributed to the ranking. Los Alamos was the only other New Mexico city to be recognized in the top 20.

[…]

Unemployment in Roosevelt County in 2007 averaged less than 3%, and the cost of living was approximately 83% of the US average, based primarily on the historically low but rising cost of housing in the area. By 2009, Portales continued to experience economic growth, with unemployment in the 3% range. Portales in 2009 remained largely insulated from the national economic downturn due in part to a balanced economy based on food processing, higher education, and government, along with a growing population of university students and US Air Force employees.

Well, now! One learns something every single day… I now know I live in a “micropolitan area,” whereas I previously thought I lived in the proverbial “one-horse town.” T’ain’t so! SN1 has long called Clovis “the microplex,” which was a running joke about The Big(ger) City™ among the troops out at Cannon Airplane Patch in the way-back and still might be, for all I know.

All joking aside, the last paragraph quoted above is largely responsible for my perception that the current “economic crisis”… as beat into my head by the Talking Heads on my teevee … ain’t everything it’s cracked up to be. I’m not saying the current recession isn’t serious — far from it. It’s just that we here on The High Plains of New Mexico are fortunate to be insulated from the down-turn. So far.

―:☺:―

More local news… We got our first precipitation of 2009 this past evening in the form of massive thunderstorms that rolled through P-Ville and the surrounding area for about an hour and a half last night. “Driving rain” would be an understatement of massive proportions, Gentle Reader, and there was considerable hail, too. At one point I looked out the window and the ground was completely covered in hail… looking for all the world like a moderate snow fall. And have I ever told you about the racket hail makes on the roof of an RV? I have? OK… never mind.

I don’t have a rain gauge here on the premises of El Casa Móvil De Pennington, but my educated guess is we got about a half-inch of rain, perhaps more.

We needed it.

―:☺:―

In news of another sort… for the first time in recent memory I own the Grammy-winning “Best Album of the Year.”

Oh, and there were some trophies handed out. A leading total of five of those went to the unlikely tandem of classic rock demi-god Robert Plant and country angel Alison Krauss, who paired for "Raising Sand," a mystic-minded journey through American roots music. "Raising Sand" won for album of the year and the evocative track "Please Read the Letter" claimed the prestigious record of the year honor.

No… I didn’t watch the Grammies. Are you kidding me? I’d rather listen to hail beat down on my roof. And so I did. But reading that Plant/Krauss won big was a bit of good news. Taste is still alive in America, albeit on life support. Beyonce didn't win shit anything... as near as I can tell.