Live and Learn New Mexico!

This is my first week volunteering for Bethel Storehouse in Moriarty, and I have talked to them about offering a free high school equivalency test preparation seminar. They offer many services like that to residents in the area. They were open to the idea. So I started thinking... We won't offer a regular class unless we see the need. What we will offer is a monthly (or more often if needed), 2-hour session to show people where to register for a GED/HSE (high school equivalency) test, find websites to help them prepare (e.g., Khan Academy, Google), and other helpful information they might need. We can also offer tutoring hours for those who might need some one-on-one help and for those who have no computer at home. This means we need tutors/teachers and computers/internet access. Could we use Bethel Storehouse space to have a tutor be around a few hours a week for walk-in help? I will check on that. I also need to find the closest public library. They usually have computers ...

Michelle Worley here. I was looking at old blog posts and decided to update this one. I think the message is good, and I have more readers now. Woo hoo! Enjoy. Ten years ago, I was stressed out, and that resulted in some serious weight gain. My blood pressure was off the charts, and my cholesterol was high. I started taking prescription drugs but didn't like them. They worked but very slowly, and they had side effects that made no sense to me. My parents, especially my mom, were firm believers in the power of prescription drugs. Maybe it's because so many breakthroughs in medicine were made in their lifetime. My mom went to the doctor for every little thing. She even volunteered at the local hospital after she retired. She died in a hospital of a hospital-acquired respiratory ailment. I've hated going to doctors all my life and luckily, never really needed to see them but at one time as an adult, I came to believe in preventive medicine, which to me was a yearly exam....

So I drove into town today just to get out and feel sorry for myself because L&LNM did not make it to the next round of the XQ super school challenge. I needed some music therapy, and that is best done in the car on the road. My first choice to listen to is almost always the Imagine Dragons. They were the ones whose song, Trouble , got me home after my stressful high school reunion -- "I took a photograph of me, I was only 19, I looked a little lost at sea, I keep trying to find me." I'm home again today, and I feel much better. Thank you, the Imagine Dragons, for your song, Underdog -- "That sounds like my luck. I get the short end of it. I love to be the underdog." As I listened to the song, I started thinking...isn't that what New Mexico is in a way -- the underdog? And don't we kind of like being the underdog because it sets us apart, and there's so much potential there?  Also, underdogs are the ones people root for. I say let's e...