Reporter's notebook: Year of the dog

Much farther east than our corner of New Mexico, the Lunar New Year was heralded Friday with festivities in China, Korea, Vietnam and a few other Asian countries. In Clovis and Portales, the celebrations were a little more subdued.

“I’m here at my business, I can’t do anything today,” Soon Cho, the owner of a specialty grocery store on Clovis' Main Street said Friday. But traditionally, Cho said, the occasion is marked by families coming together, playing games and eating special food.

Loved ones passed are remembered and new clothes are purchased.

“In China and Korea, we have a parade,” she said. And 15 days after the start of the new year, “we make rice — rice everything.”

A representative of Eastern New Mexico University’s Office of Multicultural Affairs said Friday she wasn’t aware of any special programming in town for the new year, save for a fundraiser by the Roosevelt General Hospital Foundation that evening with a Chinese theme at Portales’ Yam Theater.

RGH’s Public Relations Director Haylee Spence said the plates used at the event came from the college’s dining halls, with the mascot Greyhound logo printed on each being a happy coincidence with the advent of the Year of the Dog.

— Compiled by Staff Writer David Grieder