We had a full day of I-40 in front of us before we needed to arrive in Albuquerque. Since we had a little bit of a time crunch, Kevin only had three hours of sleep at a rest area and drove through most of the night while the rest of us slept comfortably. We all appreciated Kevin’s ability to keep driving through the night so that we could make it to Albuquerque on time for a graduation party that we were attending.

Since we would pass through Oklahoma City on the way, we decided to pull off and see the site of the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. What stands on the spot of the building is a beautiful and moving monument that quickly stunned all four of us, and sent our light hearted mood into one of seriousness. The monument has a reflecting pool in the middle of two huge structures that form the entrance and exits, and empty chairs representing each victim of the bombing line one side of the monument. The walk along the pool is a powerful one, and one filled with thought.

When we exited in the back side of the monument, I saw another small monument across the street and decided to venture across five city lanes and see the monument up close for myself. Jed was snapping away at the wall of things people have left in memoriam and Kevin and Branic had already started walking across the street. The closer I walked to the monument, the closer I saw that it was a 15-foot statue of Jesus, with his back to the memorial and his face grimaced. With his hand covering his brow, you could see that Jesus was looking away in pain, and on the base of the sculpture was inscribed, “And Jesus wept.” When I saw that quote from the bible, and looked up to see Jesus’ torn emotions and clearly in the background was the Oklahoma City bombing memorial, I felt a rush of enormity. It was certainly a monument that was easy to miss, and of the four of us, I was the only one who found it. After spending more than an hour at the memorial, we again got on I-40 and finished the drive to Albuquerque.

We pulled up to Christine “CB” Buchholz and Shoshanah Epstein’s home, where Sarah, who graduated from New Mexico University today, was having her graduation party. We were invited so that we could get an idea of what the Albuquerque Deaf community looked like, however small it was. We stayed for a few hours chatting with all the guests, and learned a lot about the Albuquerque Deaf community. With very few Deaf residents, and most of them who stay isolated with their families and close friends, it is hard to have large community gatherings. Most of the New Mexico Deaf community is concentrated in Santa Fe, located just an hour north of Albuquerque. We talked with CB, who explained to us why Deaf people have some of the strongest advantages in New Mexico compared to the rest of the nation.

The Governor of New Mexico is Bill Richardson, the first Hispanic Governor in the history of the United States. Having a minority in governmental positions is a huge advantage for other minorities, because they are more sensitive to each other and their needs. The Deaf community however, struck gold when New Mexico School for the Deaf superintendent Ron Stern happened to share a table with the Governor’s wife during Richardson’s campaigning. There, Stern engaged in a lengthy conversation with the Governor’s wife and explained to her for the first time the entire concept of Deaf culture, community, and ASL. She was awestruck and shared all her newfound information with the eventual Governor. What resulted from this is one of the clearest Deaf education bills in the entire country.

We had a great time at the party and afterwards Jed needed to go to a Borders bookstore where there was Wi-Fi accessability and update the website. Since Jed already has a Wi-Fi card, and it is a wireless internet service, we decided to see if the range of the card was strong enough to travel from the RV and into the bookstore if we parked just outside the store. This way, Jed would not have to unhook all of his computer equipment and bring it inside and have to hook it back up again when he finished. Sure enough, when we parked a good 150 feet from the building, the signal strength was strong enough to feed high speed internet into our RV!

It is my first time in New Mexico, and I have to say, I certainly enjoy the weather and especially the scenery. You don’t get too many of these mountains back home in Indiana.