Serving the High Plains
Serving the High Plains
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L.P. Hartley’s 1953 novel, “The Go-Between,” opens with these words: “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.” As we approach the end of another calendar year, our tendency is to gaze backward and analyze the time that was, if only briefly. That’s fine. As another writer has said, the unexamined life is not worth living. There’s benefit in going back and “watching the game film” like an old football coach, seeing what we did well and what we need to work on. But I hear a caution in Hartley’s memorable line: You...
For years, New Mexico has been seriously short of virtually all doctors: primary care, pediatricians, dentists, eye doctors, and other specialists … and all the people who help them take care of patients. It can take months to see a specialist and weeks to see a primary care physician, if you can find one. We are short almost 13,000 healthcare workers to serve our 2.1 million residents. That includes every kind of healthcare worker like EMTs, pharmacists and physical therapists as well as physicians and nurses. This shortage is getting worse a...
If you ask me, the election of 2026 is shaping up to look like 2010, at least at the top of New Mexico’s ticket. In 2010, then-Gov. Bill Richardson was being term limited out after two terms in office. His Democratic Party nominated his lieutenant governor, Diane Denish, who became saddled with Richardson’s growing unpopularity at the time. She lost the election to Republican Susana Martinez, who went on to defeat Denish in the general election with 53% of the vote. Look ahead to 2026 and a similar scenario may be shaping up. Gov. Michelle Luj...
The next four years are going to be especially tough for MSNBC’s Joy Reid. The always angry host of “The ReidOut” has spent the last four years ranting about Donald Trump and the danger he poses to democracy – and he wasn’t even in power. She’s already politically insane. She regularly calls Trump a gangster and a Putin puppet. I can’t imagine how she’ll deal with the next four years as Trump and his salvage team try to get America on the road to being great again. Reid is so blinded by Trump hate that she – like so many humorless Democrats and...
William Shatner, star of the original “Star Trek,” now has actually gone into space and written a book about his experience, which he summarized in a Variety magazine article I found while researching for this column. While I had a good idea for this article based on the concept of boldly going where no man had gone before, the article didn’t go where I thought it would and became largely based on the Variety article. So, here’s what I gleaned from the Variety article that might be of value to Christians and to encourage others to conside...
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...
Donald Trump kept telling us he’d be a threat to democracy if re-elected president. Now he’s showing us. Several months ago on his Truth Social website, Trump threatened to “expel” and “cast out” government workers who oppose his radical views, describing them as a “sick political class” that hates the country. The 2024 election, he wrote, “is our final battle.” He is wasting no time acting on his promise. Trump, who has endured his own accusations of sexual harassment and election interference, appears to have no qualms concerning the backgrou...
As a Baby Boomer, I looked on with bemusement; but Dec. 10, 1974 was a cultural milestone for the oldest members of Generation X. That’s when ABC premiered the Rankin/Bass Productions animated Christmas special “The Year Without A Santa Claus” (a.k.a. “Scary Title, Kids, But Tell Mom and Dad That Hasbro and Mattel Are Still Here for You Even in a Worst-Case Scenario”). Showcasing the voice talent of Shirley Booth and Mickey Rooney (“Hey, kids, let’s put on a show – one without that nerve-wracking ‘A Charlie Brown Christmas’ music”), the progra...
It’s Thanksgiving. This is another holiday that has fallen victim to the secularization of society. Whatever you watch, you’ll hear that Thanksgiving is about gathering with friends and family to belly up to the trough and eat like there’s no tomorrow. There might be some murmurings about Pilgrims and natives and how one group managed to save the other, depending on your own political spin. My favorite football team will almost certainly lose in spectacular fashion. Some will dare to say we should focus on what we’re thankful for. But, the ver...
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...
President-elect Donald Trump has hit the ground running, alerting the public to the sort of individuals he intends to appoint to his second presidential cabinet. He continues to advertise his colorful selections, rewarding his most ardent supporters, setting the tone for what his administration will attempt to accomplish, and demonstrating little if any concern for what anyone else thinks. Trump’s most controversial picks so far include former Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz to lead the Department of Justice, former Hawaii Democratic Rep. Tulsi G...
It doesn’t matter how many terrible wars we’re mired in overseas. It doesn’t matter how many seemingly unsolvable social and political problems we face at home. At this time of year, we Americans have the usual Walmart store of blessings to be thankful for. An extra reason for the entire country to give thanks this week is the fact that the long-dreaded 2024 election is finally in our rearview mirror – and for half of us the outcome was a blessing. Thanksgiving is usually a national holiday that doesn’t get stuck in the swamp of partisan...
We’ve all probably heard the saying that something – clothes, figure/physique, chocolate – is to die for, meaning it was highly desirable. The Christmas season has been upon us in a commercial sense since before Halloween, with some Black Friday sales already started, though Thanksgiving isn’t until next week. While I haven’t heard “to die for” used in any sales pitches yet, the products being hawked on TV are billed with the concept that they’re the latest and greatest, and you simply cannot live without them. We like giving to die for gift...
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...
It’s been two weeks since Election Day, and we’ve heard what pundits think cost Vice President Kamala Harris the election. Their hit list of topics included the uneven economy, high inflation, the Israeli-Hamas conflict, rising crime, extreme and excessive wokeness, and out-of-control borders. Yet, there is another reason that hasn’t been discussed nearly as much in most quarters – the intersection of race and gender. Harris would have been the first woman of any race and the first South Asian person to have been elected president of the mos...
The Democrats did not do a good job of dealing with their terrible loss. In fact, they and the liberal media collectively melted down in front of the whole world when Donald Trump and America’s voters dealt Kamala Harris a decisive, humiliating and historic election defeat. For a bunch of supposedly sophisticated liberal politicians, journalists and celebrities who profess to love democracy, it was an embarrassing but completely predictable display of bad sportsmanship, denial, reverse racism and partisan bias. Joy Reid of MSNBC blamed white w...
Standing on the banks of the Jordan River, about to cross into Canaan and three years of warfare, the fledgling nation of Isreal listened to the final address of Moses. In Deuteronomy 10, one of the old man’s points was that God could have chosen anybody. The whole world was his, after all. He literally had every option open to him. God chose Abraham, though. God set him apart and lavished his love on the man. Then God chose Abraham’s descendants and blessed them. God revealed himself to this holy line, while leaving the other nations in rel...
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...
For Democrats and their weeping soulmates in liberal media, it’s “Mourning in America.” Not morning – M-O-U-R-N-I-N-G. But for those of us who voted for Donald Trump, today feels like the opening line of my father’s famous TV campaign commercial – “It’s morning again in America.” The message of Ronald Reagan’s 1984 ad – considered one of the greatest political spots ever – was that after four tough years in office his policies had fixed America and restored the country to greatness. I’m obviously feeling terrific about Trump’s defeat of K...
For some people, Nov. 5, 2024, was one of the greatest days in American history. Others may well remember it as a day that will live in political infamy. Regardless, the 2024 presidential election is over, and Donald Trump has been reelected as the 47th president of the United States. And if people are honest with themselves, they would probably admit that Tuesday’s results shocked but did not totally surprise them. Throughout various periods in our nation’s history, charismatic politicians espousing a populist message have sporadically emerged...
“Close don’t count in baseball. Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.” That was said by baseball manager Frank Robinson in 1973. Not long after that, while I was in college and throwing water balloons through open windows into girls’ dorms was fun (more fun if there was a screen), we modified the last sentence to, “Close only counts in horseshoes, hand grenades and water balloons.” We’ve heard almost all summer the presidential election would be close and that the loser might have the greater popular vote but lose due to the ou...
When we think about the economic damage of climate change, most of us probably think about the physical destruction wrought by mammoth disasters like hurricanes, wildfires and droughts: Bungalows tumbling into the sea. Houses turned to ash. Acres of dead crops. That sort of thing. But the quieter, longer-term effects of global warming cut even deeper. Consider western North Carolina. It’s just beginning to repair the heavy physical damage to homes, businesses and infrastructure caused by Hurricane Helene nearly a month ago. The state’s tab for...
If you designed a banner declaring, “The world is full of crazies” and ran it up the flagpole, assuredly, I would salute it. On the other hand, as Veterans Day approaches, I realize the world is also full of opportunists – opportunists who devalue the dangers faced by the nation’s military personnel. We’ve all witnessed it with increasing frequency: some office-holder, bureaucrat or celebrity (a) gets pushback for a totally outrageous statement or (b) finally gets busted engaging in some flavor of financial/political/sexual skulldugg...
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...
The bride-price is a common feature of the Bible’s stories. Jacob famously put in 14 years of hard labor for Rachel. David paid King Saul a bride-price of 100 foreskins of the hated Philistines. For a family to give up a daughter in marriage represented a financial burden, as most of them lived a hand-to-mouth agrarian lifestyle, and all the women helped keep it going. To lose a young woman was to lose an important worker. So, the payment of a bride-price was meant to help compensate for that l...