Serving the High Plains
Serving the High Plains
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Christmas brings out the best and worst of our way of life. Crass consumerism runs rampant this time of year, as if owning things equates to happiness. If that’s the case, why are there so many miserable rich people? Sure, it’s the season of giving, but it’s also a season for getting. People buy things for their loved ones, and then a little extra for that special something for themselves. You know you do. I do too. Christmas used to be a religious holiday, but if that’s still the case for you, it’s because you’re going out of your way to give...
Ah, Thanksgiving, my favorite holiday of them all. As its name implies, it’s a day to give thanks for our many blessings. And for me, it’s family time up in the mountains, in a lodge we rent out every year for a long holiday weekend reunion. This year, we’ll be grieving the loss of a loved one, celebrating the youngest among us, reconnecting as a family and going home exhausted from all the fun. And then there’s politics. I’ve already been warned not to be bringing it up, and I said I’ll try. I’m not a bit happy with Trump’s election and th...
When Amazon billionaire and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos decided not to allow his newspaper to endorse Kamala Harris for president, a quarter million readers canceled their subscriptions. Now this esteemed newspaper is suffering from a credibility crisis that may never recover under Bezos’ compromised ownership. Something similar happened to Fox News back in 2020, when the network essentially called the election for Joe Biden while their most loyal viewers were drinking in Donald Trump’s Kool-Aid and denying the reality of his loss. A sud...
This column is to the progressives out there who, once again, saw their hopes for a better world thwarted by the election of Donald Trump. All is not lost. Trump could still self-destruct, especially if he actually does what he promised to do. His affinity for tariffs is a good example. More than likely, they will raise prices and undercut American jobs, and that surely won’t sit well even with his MAGA base. And his mass deportation promises will undercut our economy by taking away workers doing jobs that “true” Americans don’t want. If you...
When I was young, I didn’t know how good I had it. My family wasn’t rich, but we had enough. My parents loved their children unconditionally, taught us the value of service and gave us all a foundation for lives well lived. Moreover, I grew up with a hero in the house — my father. He wasn’t a war hero, a great athlete or television star. Instead, he was a good and decent man who made sure our home was filled with love and laughter, and I never stopped looking up to him as an example of how someone should live their life. When I hit my young a...
Here we are, on the cusp of one of the most consequential elections in American history, with the choices for president as different as night and day. Three big questions remain: Who will win the presidency? Which political party will win control of the U.S. Senate and House? And what will the losers do after the winners emerge? Polls and pundits tell us it’s too close to call in the presidential election. I expect Kamala Harris to win the overall popular vote, just as the Democratic candidate has in every presidential election since 2004, b...
Heroes are easy to find but hard to keep. Especially when we’re young, we need our heroes, or positive role models if you prefer, as examples of what courage, sacrifice and success are all about. We typically start with our parents, superheroes in our young eyes, while our imaginations gravitate toward mythical beings like the Man of Steel, the Dark Knight or, yes, that proverbial cowboy riding through a time when right was right and wrong was wrong and what you did, not what you said, was who you are. Parents and action figures are just the be...
Set aside for a moment the devastation that has hit the Southeast after back-to-back hurricanes. Turn instead to what’s happening in our little corner of the planet. Studies suggest the human body can’t survive outdoors in sustained temperatures of 120 degrees Fahrenheit or more. And yet, Phoenix, Ariz., just endured a summer that included 56 days of 110-degree temps. And here it is October and they’re still cooking under 100-degree days. Over here in New Mexico, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported August was the hotte...
Every now and then, someone comes along who makes a unique contribution to the world in which he live. Kris Kristofferson, who died recently at age 88, was that sort of man. Kristofferson hit Nashville and the country music scene in the 1970s, first as a broom-pushing songwriter on Music Row, then as a gravel-voiced singer/songwriter on the Nashville scene, and finally as a movie star in Hollywood. But before all that, he was a standout athlete in rugby, football and boxing, a Rhodes Scholar and an Army officer. He was even offered a teaching...
Other than the presidential election and a super-tight congressional race down south, it’s a fairly tame general election in New Mexico. It could have been a more consequential year, with a mid-term, term-limited governor struggling to keep her party in lockstep on issues like crime containment and school calendars — while every seat in both the state House and Senate are up for election. Currently the New Mexico Senate is run by the Democrats, who command a 27-15 supermajority. All 42 Senate seats are up for election this year, but only 14...
I heard a report the other day that the St. James Hotel in Cimarron is closing. Another Wild West landmark goes down. The St. James is where I got the best steak I’ve ever eaten, but that wasn’t so long ago, when its owners’ focus was more on fine dining than cowboy accommodations. Back in the day, it was a rough and rowdy place, to say the least. Lots of shoot-em-ups, dozens of killings — one estimate I read had the total at 26 dead. Traveling lawmen and notorious outlaws frequented the place, and stories have been passed down about visits...
Homelessness isn’t as far away from home anymore. January “point in time” counts show that New Mexico’s unhoused population has been growing in recent years, while nationally it’s at a 15-year high. Last year’s count found a 48% increase in New Mexico’s homeless population from a year earlier, and this year’s count showed a 62% increase. This is more than a perception; it’s a reality. It’s not just in the cities these days. Where I live, along Interstate 40 in Santa Rosa, we get our share of transients, sometimes hoofing or hitchhiking their wa...
Turns out, Democrats have a mind of their own. You can see it in the fallout from Joe Biden’s weak debate performance, when the president showed his age. And you could see it in last week’s special session of the New Mexico Legislature, when Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham attempted to run roughshod over her party with poorly vetted legislation. It should have been a humbling experience from our second-term governor, who has been getting things done her way for nearly six years now. But instead of coming out, hat in hand, to apologize for her fai...
By now, most New Mexicans are aware of the case against the movie star Alec Baldwin. It was getting plenty of play both here at home and abroad until, poof, it went away. It shouldn’t disappear so easily. There are more than enough questions still left to answer. The case against Baldwin was dismissed Friday after it was discovered that ammunition from the set of “Rust” had been “misfiled” and was not disclosed to the defense. That was enough to compel Santa Fe’s First Judicial District Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer to grant a motion to dismiss the...
About 12 years ago, when I was at the Las Vegas Optic, we worked up a special section on the seven-county region of Northeast New Mexico. Not surprisingly, our lead story was about water. At the time, Las Vegas was facing some serious drought conditions that had slowed the Gallinas River to little more than a trickle, leaving the city — which gets nearly all its water from the Gallinas — with only a couple months of water in reserve. City officials at that time said the reservoirs were only 68% full and sinking. Also around that time, I got...
Set aside for a moment Joe Biden’s haunting performance at the debate last week, there was something even more troubling that just took place. It’s not getting as much attention because we’re used to it. The debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump is an example of style versus substance. Trump won on style and Biden won, by default, on substance. Biden supporters blamed a head cold on their man’s hoarse voice and subdued manner, while Trump’s supporters declared Biden ready for the nursing home. Meanwhile, Trump used his arsenal of misinform...
Stifling heat, brutal winds and massive wildfires. Extreme storms, flooding and still a years-long drought. Welcome to New Mexico’s summer of 2024. Before the summer solstice even arrived, much of our state was experiencing 100-degree temperatures. Then “fire season” blew up with a pair of wildfires in the Ruidoso area, while the 2-year-old Hermit’s Peak burn scar led to flooding in Las Vegas as the Gallinas River overflowed its banks. No corner of the state is immune from what’s to come, which is probably going to be more extreme than in s...
Common sense is not as common as it once was. Used to be, good ol’ horse sense would tell you that if a jury found a businessman turned politician guilty of every damn charge brought against him, he must be guilty. But now, way too many people have suspended their reason to see the convicted felon as nothing more than a victim of some unimaginable conspiracy against him. It makes no kind of sense, but that’s the Republican Party these days. The fact is, Donald Trump paid a porn star to keep quiet about their sordid affair so he could get electe...
I must admit to a certain grudge against Californians who come rolling into New Mexico with an attitude of superiority over us poor souls. It’s a prejudice I developed after a few years living in the Land of Enchantment, after seeing more than enough arrogant Californians coming in and trying to tell the rest of us how best to live and behave. I’ve held the same grudge against Texas, but developed it years earlier while growing up in Arkansas. But I felt my own attitude of superiority when, within just a few years: the Razorbacks exited the...
I’m a big fan of vacations on the cheap, which is good, since I’ve seldom been able to afford anything first-class. Besides, top-dollar travel often overlooks the best stuff to see. Several years ago, when my family was younger and we were fairly new to the Land of Enchantment, we decided to take a New Mexico-centric vacation. My wife and I, along with our two daughters, got into our four-door sedan early one summer morning and left our northern New Mexico home in search of wonderment, which we found at just about every stop. Our first sto...
If you ask me, history is speeding up. Used to be, things didn’t change much from one generation to another, but with the onset of the 20th century, it all began to accelerate. And, now that we’re a couple of decades into the 21st century, we’re living as if the past doesn’t matter anymore. But of course, it does. History is how we got here, and it portends where we’re going. My baby-boomer generation has been through some incredible history. We were raised during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and ’60s, which led our nation in a...
It’s that time of year, when just about every newspaper in the state gives front-page attention to at least one local graduation. They’re always a big deal, especially to those who walk across that ceremonial stage and make their families proud. It’s also the time when yours truly offers some less-than-conventional advice to those who are about to move on to bigger and better things: First, let’s dispel the notion that you can be anything you set your mind to becoming, because you can’t. If you’re short, you won’t likely make it to the NBA no...
I just want the world to know that all this “catch-and-kill” National Enquirer-style of so-called journalism is a disgusting exception, nowhere close to the rule of how newspapers behave. In my 30-plus years of newspapering, I’ve worked at big dailies and little weeklies and others in between, and I can confidently attest to the fact that I never, ever saw an editor or publisher “buy” the rights to a story, much less buy the right to bury it, as the Enquirer’s Pecker said he did for Donald Trump. That just doesn’t happen, at least not at any of...
The noise may be more pronounced elsewhere, but here in New Mexico, we’ve got plenty of hot topics of our own. Hottest at the moment, I suppose, is the lawsuit that’s been filed challenging the Public Education Department’s new rule requiring 180 days of classroom instruction per year per school district, which effectively nixes the four-day schedule that dozens of school district have been operating under. There are two questions before the 9th Judicial District Court in Curry County: Whether to order an injunction that would prevent the P...
Imagine living in a household full of smokers. Whether you like it or not, you’re stuck with each other, so if you want to overcome your problem, you’re going to have do it together. More than one doctor has told you as much, but not everyone in the household believes what the docs say, opting instead for a quack’s opinion that the whole problem is better off ignored. The problem is, you’ve all got to quit together or you will all get sick and die by either first- or second-hand smoking. All that coughing and hacking around the house are obv...