/njuː ˈmɛksɪkoʊ/

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak of a place I have never actually stepped foot in, although I have flown over it in an airplane at an altitude of 35,000 feet. That place, as the rest of this post will make clear, is our sixth most sparsely-populated state, the great and sovereign state of New Mexico, which is called New to distinguish it from Old Mexico, which is not actually called Old Mexico at all, just Mexico, but which many people in the neighboring state of Texas believe is also a state, which it is not, it is a country. But I digress.

Mr. Speaker, in my reading of blogs, one I enjoy is Reamus, written by a man named Michael Burns, who lives in Carlsbad, California. Let me just mention here that Carlsbad, California, may have Michael Burns, whom I have never seen at all, but Carlsbad, New Mexico, has world-famous caverns that I have seen in three dimensions by looking at two photographs simultaneously through a Viewmaster Stereoscope and out of the mouth of which millions of bats fly every evening. The caverns I mean, not the Viewmaster Stereoscope.

In a comment on one of Reamus’s recent posts, a woman named Sherry Peyton who lives in Iowa told Michael Burns that she and her husband will soon be moving to Las Cruces, New Mexico.

A word to the wise: I just want to state here for the record that back when I was a teenager in Mansfield, Texas, in the mid-fifties, my piano teacher, Mrs. Alyne Eagan, suddenly married a Mr. Cyrus and moved to Las Cruces, New Mexico, and was never heard from again.

I took a peek at Sherry Peyton’s blog (a feather adrift) and couldn’t help noticing that three or four posts back she had one entitled “Truth or Consequences?” that had absolutely nothing to do with New Mexico, although she did mention again that she and her husband will soon be moving there, to New Mexico I mean, not to Truth or Consequences.

Mr. Speaker, need I remind you that there is a town in New Mexico called Truth or Consequences that used to be called Hot Springs until a man named Ralph Edwards broadcast his usually-Los-Angeles-based radio program, Truth or Consequences, from there many years ago for several weeks in a row, and the town fathers, enamored of the attention and apparently craving even more publicity, decided to change the name of their town to the name of Ralph Edwards’s radio program so that people wouldn’t keep getting their town confused with Hot Springs, Arkansas? Just think what might have happened if Edward R. Murrow had ever decided to broadcast See It Now! from Albuquerque and the New Mexico Board of Tourism had gotten wind of it! Fortunately or unfortunately for us, however, depending on your point of view, he never did.

Furthermore, Granny Howell, the mother of my stepmother’s first husband, Clarence Houston, moved to Clovis, New Mexico, which is barely in New Mexico at all, to live with her daughter, Etta Stringfellow, and although it can’t be said that Granny Howell was never heard from again, she was heard from only rarely.

And we all know what happened in Area 51 near Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947. Don’t we?

Anyway, Mr. Speaker, aside from the fact that the Rio Grande flows through New Mexico (and notice that I do not call it the Rio Grande River, which would be redundant), I know nothing more about New Mexico than what I have already told you, except for a few place names like Santa Fe and Taos and the fact that New Mexico became our 47th state in 1912 and also that its nickname, which is emblazoned on the automobile license plates of its residents, of which I have seen only a few, both license plates and residents, is Land of Enchantment.

Therefore, Mr. Speaker, I have taken the liberty of inserting into today’s Blogressional Record the article from Wikipedia entitled “New Mexico” for the reading pleasure and enlightenment of every one of our constituents who cares to avail himself or herself of this unprecedented educational opportunity.

Mr. Speaker, I yield the balance of my time.