Annual Cowchip Awards: 2011 Was a Doozy

Good morning and welcome to the new year, or as we like to call it, One More Chance To Get it Right.

Maybe you spent last night cutting your rug or tying one on. Hope you had fun. The rest of us were pushing with all our might against the door to 2011, making sure it was closed completely and triple-locked.

The year now behind us was a doozy. We started with a deep, deep freeze and followed with drought and then fire and then floods in epic proportions. Just when we thought we were out of the woods, along came that post-Thanksgiving wind that tore down trees and collapsed fences and moved every single remaining leaf from your yard and deposited it in your neighbor’s. Or, if luck wasn’t on your side, vice versa.

On the bright side, anyone who drove past the AMAFCA display on I-40 after the storm now knows the definition of a gale-force wind: Strong enough to blow the tumbleweeds off a tumbleweed snowman.

But part of the joy of the season is taking stock of the past, turning the corner and looking with fresh eyes at the future.

Every year around this time, right after we undeck our halls and stow away our boughs of holly and right before we sharpen our pencils in anticipation of chronicling a new year, we here in the newspaper factory take time to walk down a particular little stretch of Memory Lane to remind ourselves that every year is chock-full of weirdness.

It’s a winding road, and it’s littered with cowchips, each one redolent of a little stinker of news from the year that’s passed.

As journalistic traditions go, the Albuquerque Journal’s annual Cowchip Awards are, let’s put it nicely, unconventional. No. 1, they don’t review the big, important news of the year, but rather the goofy also-rans. And No. 2, they’re named for No. 2.

This year, like all the others in the quarter-century that we’ve been mucking out the barn at year’s end, hapless crooks, marauding animals and misguided public servants kept us in ink up to our elbows.

Bears caused a ruckus all summer long, tipping over the governor’s trash can in Santa Fe and crashing a fancy wedding in Taos. But the bears looked nice compared with a Volvo-eating dog on the loose in Pecos.

The state’s Health Department made sure to alert everyone that a popular movie was, well, a movie. The attorney general, while out hunting crime, tracked down a furry fictional bear and turned it into a big stink. And a Public Regulation Commission member used someone else’s government gas card to treat himself to gas station chimichangas.

Oh, and that Big Cheese finally moved out of the Governor’s Mansion, only to have the new governor fill it with bologna.

Come along as we make the trip again this year – just click here to read all the cowchips and find out the lucky winner of the prestigious Cowchip of the Year.

And have a happy new year. We’ll be busy sharpening our pencils and keeping an eye out for patties.

UpFront is a daily front-page news and opinion column. Comment directly to Leslie Linthicum at 823-3914 or llinthicum@abqjournal.com. Go to www.abqjournal.com/letters/new to submit a letter to the editor.
— This article appeared on page A1 of the Albuquerque Journal