Whispers: Au revoir to a Downtown staple

As of Dec. 9, Pot Au Feu will be no more. The cozy little restaurant and pub in Downtown El Paso is closing after 13 years.

Located at 307 E. Franklin in the 100-year-old Gardner Hotel, Pot Au Feu served global cuisine prepared with classic French cooking techniques.

What does Pot Au Feu mean? It’s a traditional French stew of beef and vegetables.

Never been? There’s still time to go.

Snow for the holidays

If you’d like to play in freshly fallen snow without any of the worries of shoveling it off your driveway, a local company can make that happen.

Vicencio’s Ice Distributors is offering snow parties. Their snow machine can make 6 to 12 inches of snow to cover your backyard in about half an hour. The snow should last about 12 hours, depending on the weather, of course.

Sun Bowl prep

Now that we’ve made it through Thanksgiving, it’s time to think about that big event in December – yes, that’s right – the Sun Bowl!

This year’s game, officially named the Tony the Tiger Sun Bowl, kicks off at noon on Friday, Dec. 30.

There’s lots of history behind the bowl game, which was first played in 1935. But here’s one item you may not know.

In the 1980s, the Sun Bowl signed John Hancock Financial Services as its title sponsor, making the Sun Bowl the first collegiate bowl to secure a title sponsorship.

Congrats, Ginger!

The name Ginger Kerrick should be familiar to you. In 2005, the El Paso native and Hanks High graduate became the first Hispanic female to serve as a flight director in the history of NASA.

Now she’s been named as the vice chairwoman of the board of regents for the Texas Tech University System. She is the sixth woman, and the first since 2017, to serve as vice chair.

FYI: After graduating second in her class at Hanks, Kerrick started her studies at UTEP, then she transferred to Texas Tech. She was a summer intern at NASA and then was hired as a materials research engineer.

Kerrick even interviewed for the astronaut program, but was disqualified for kidney stones. In 2012, she became chief strategy officer at Barrios Technology in Houston.

Got a Whisper?

Email ford@elpasoinc.com