Serving the High Plains
Serving the High Plains
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My little sister, Margaret Grace, succumbed to COVID on Dec. 22, 2020, while in a nursing home in Hazard, Kentucky, near where we spent most of my childhood and she spent nearly all her life. While I knew her first name came from a longtime family friend, I never knew where she got her middle name. My father’s sister passed away right before Thanksgiving. I don’t recall ever meeting her because she and my father were estranged over her husband, which is really sad, but I learned her middle name was “Grace” when I read her obituary. So, I email...
Two emails caught my attention last week – one about the future, the other about the past. The future came from Mario Caswell. He’s a proud dad whose daughter will likely be seeing her name in the newspaper a lot these next few years. Caswell tells us: “My daughter Janaeh Caswell is an eighth-grader at Yucca Middle school. “They had a game Thursday against Lovington. They fell short, 33-31. But my daughter had an amazing game. “I’m a youth coach and also have coached at the Freshman Academy so I record her games and stats. “This game she fini...
The late author Maya Angelou once stated, “When people show you who they are, believe them.” Nowhere is that saying more applicable than the latest rantings of Donald Trump. The former president was asked twice during a Fox News town hall if he would rule out any abuse of power as retribution against his critics if he ends up returning to the White House. “Except for day one,” Trump responded, noting he would use his presidential powers to close the southern border with Mexico and expand oil drilling. “After that, I’m not a dictator....
We’ve got Israel looking for billions. We’ve got Ukraine begging for more billions. And the president and Democrats can’t wait another day to cut fat checks for both countries. Thank God the Republicans in charge of the House of Representatives are telling Democrats that before we dish out money to help Ukraine and Israel defend their borders, we have to defend ours first. Naturally, Democrats don’t want anything to do with that sensible deal. They’re calling it outrageous. They’re saying Republicans are bad guys who don’t care about dead Is...
Many churches that follow a traditional calendar in their activities will regard this upcoming Sunday as the third Sunday in the season of Advent. In the first, they focused on themes of hope and expectation. Last Sunday was about promise and fulfillment. Looking over the suggested Scripture readings for the third Sunday, the theme of restoration is prominent. The people of God who had managed to hold on to their faith at the time of Jesus of Nazareth were in need of restoration, severely so. Beginning with the captivity in Babylon, at the...
The fourth Republican presidential debate thankfully featured just four candidates rather than the cattle call we saw in previous sessions. But, whether there are four or 14 running, the same problem persists. There's only one - former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie - willing to tell primary voters what too many of them apparently don't want to hear. Donald Trump is unfit to be president and presents an unacceptable threat to our democracy. To our ears, the key moment in the debate was when...
Do as I say, not as I do. This sort of Victorian philosophy seems to be par for the course among many of the so-called family values conservatives. Recent reports that Christian Ziegler, the husband of Moms for Liberty co-founder Bridget Ziegler, is under police investigation in Sarasota, Fla., following a rape allegation sent shockwaves through the right-wing echo chamber while eliciting eye rolls from many progressives and others on the cultural left. Local reporters for the Florida Trident interviewed a woman who said she was involved in a...
Monica Crowley summed up the sad state of the Republican Party perfectly last week in a single tweet. Following the House’s 311-114 vote to expel the lying GOP weirdo and future criminal defendant George Santos, she wrote: “Republicans bounced George Santos. “Kevin McCarthy is leaving this month. “Bill Johnson is retiring. “This will leave the GOP with a ONE-SEAT majority. “Democrats would never do their voters like this. “These people don’t give a bleep about us or the country. In fact, they revel in sticking it to us and the country. “Disgu...
While public confidence in journalism remains low, surveys in recent years by the Pew Research Center and Gallup, among others, suggest that local news is faring better in public opinion. Surveys show high rates of confidence in local reporting and community information, as well as for advertising sources. Interestingly, the confidence spans age groups: It’s not just the older generations that value their local newspapers, even as more and more people look for that information online. A 2019 survey by Pew also found that much of the public w...
Donald Trump is telling us he’s a threat to democracy. We just have to listen. Earlier this month 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.” Sound apocalyptic to you? The former president’s use of the words “cast out” elicited a chorus of praise from his most loyal constituency: white evangelicals. That sort of term is commonly used by evangelicals,...
Excuse me for skipping the great debate Thursday night between the governors of Florida and California. I had better things to do than watch a meaningless political debate between Red State hero Ron DeSantis and Blue State hero Gavin Newsom. Anyway, I’ve already suffered enough political pain in the last few months. I’ve watched what seemed like a dozen presidential primary debates – Republican Party exhibition games, really – starring a bunch of second- and third-stringers who haven’t made a dent in the lead of its future 2024 candidate...
’Tis the season to be joyful! Having just celebrated Thanksgiving, we’re now reminded we should be most thankful and joyful because of the good news of great joy that the Savior had been born (Luke 2:8-14). Jesus, the Savior, was/is the greatest gift to humankind for all eternity (James 1:16-17; Romans 3:23; 6:23; John 3:16-17). Because the Christmas season is the giving season, pleas to help the needy have increased. Also for about 10 years, we’ve had Giving Tuesday that comes right after Thanksgiving and soon enough before Christmas to not in...
One of the best administrators I have ever worked with grounded every decision in the essential question: “Is this what’s best for kids?” To get to the answers, she skillfully used data as a tool for school, teacher and student growth. Whether it was tracking student behaviors, attendance rates or having teachers track classroom growth and proficiency on short cycle assessments and classroom assignments, she helped me to understand that the answers to almost any question or assumption I might make about a student could be discerned by analy...
When the world weighs on me, I pull out a tattered cookbook and thumb through the pages. Baking therapy. The old book has recipes from decades and people long past. There’s something soothing about those pages, and revisiting family stories. I don’t know that it’s a family history so much as a hodgepodge of memories. Past celebrations. Past holidays. Past conversations. I replay conversations with my dad over and over again. When things are especially trying, I picture him in my mind and listen to his words of wisdom, or snarkiness. He was good...
Israel wandered in the wilderness for a full generation (40 years) without a king, at the beginning of its national history. In fact, in the first giving of the law, which occurred at Mount Sinai, there was no provision given for a king in Israel at all. Moses was certainly the leader of the new nation, but his governmental function was to serve as the judge of Israel’s supreme court. The law created an appeals court system, with Moses as the court of last appeal. He was not their king. Under that arrangement, which we call the Old Covenant, G...
Wind power may be having a difficult year, but it’s still many times cheaper than oil or gas and remains a core piece of the energy-transition puzzle. A single rotation of a 260-meter-tall offshore turbine — General Electric Co.’s Haliade-X 13 MW, to be precise — can produce enough energy to power a household for more than two days, emitting no carbon or other pollutants. Not everyone is a fan. NIMBYism is one of the biggest barriers to green energy installations, as local residents protest “view-ruining” turbines and new grid infrastruct...
My name is Johnnie Meier, historic preservation officer for the New Mexico Route 66 Association. I have been leading an all-volunteer preservation team that has been working to restore Tucumcari’s hail damaged historic neon signs and we have been making significant progress. On Nov. 18, I was in Tucumcari with the association preservation team working on several neon signs. Sitting in my motel room after a hard day’s work, I decided to go to the Odeon Theater to watch a movie. I have long been familiar with the Odeon having watched movies there...
Recently, I was heading home from a local coffeehouse. Along the way, at one specific intersection, there were a few men in a pickup truck with a Confederate flag. Two men were sitting in the back of the truck, and one of them proceeded to yell at me, “Do you see this flag?!” I rolled down my window and delivered a blunt commentary to the guy, letting my emotions get the best of me. He responded with “White power” at the same moment the truck took off and headed down the highway. I was angry and irritated, and let out a loud yell to release...
America celebrates Thanksgiving this week, but things have seemed pretty bleak for some time with all the evil that’s happening in our nation and around the world. While evil will increase over time, there’s still hope that life will get better (2 Timothy 3:12-13; Matthew 24:4-13, 21-22). But this article isn’t about the present evils. It’s about our blessings and how we should still be thankful despite all that’s going on around us and that we shouldn’t let ourselves get so distracted by evil that we forget about God because he’s our on...
It’s the onset of our annual holiday season, when gratefulness, gift-giving and anticipation of a new year come over us. It’s coming during troubled times. Nationally and internationally, the problems seem overwhelming. One war, between Ukraine and Russia, keeps dragging along with no clear victory in sight, while horrors are unfolding in a brand-new Israel-Hamas war. All this while the Earth warms, the climate changes and the weather turns extreme. On our homefront, there’s a pitched battle coming between authoritarianism and democratic rule...
The ghost of political déjà vu has revisited the Republican Party, with the GOP suffering humiliating defeats in virtually all of their political contests. The one bright spot was Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves holding onto his seat in a state so ruby red no one expected Democrats to win, anyway. Ohio voters overwhelmingly voted in favor of guaranteeing women the right to an abortion in the state’s constitution. Interestingly, in November 2022, access to abortion measures won in all six state ballot measures where it was up for a vote. On the...
Here in sunny Los Angeles, it’s raining. It’s too bad it didn’t rain real hard on Nov. 11. It might have helped firefighters put out the enormous fire under the 10 Freeway near downtown before the heat weakened the pillars and forced the highway to be closed. The fire – which officials now say was arson – erupted near a village of homeless people living in their colorful tents, trailers and sleeping bags. It was fed by huge stacks of wood pallets that were illegally stored in the underpass. Gov. Newsom would never dare say that “houseles...
It can be cataclysmic when God’s plan for us forces a change in the whole way we’ve lived our lives up to that point. I’ve seen it happen several times since I was called to serve as a pastor. I have no Bible behind me when I say this, but experience leads me to assert that it’s especially difficult for men of action, or activity, to encounter a change in their circumstance that forces them to spend some time in what feels like “doing nothing.” This is because men especially are tempted to view themselves in light of what they do or accompli...
In a state often lacking statesmanship, two crime-fighters are emerging who are giving us hope. Listening to Bernalillo County District Attorney Sam Bregman and Attorney General Raúl Torrez talk about crime, you wouldn’t know they’re Democrats. Or Republicans, or independents or anything else for that matter. Few New Mexicans outside law enforcement likely knew that police officers had been prosecuting shoplifting cases in Albuquerque’s Metropolitan Court. And their conviction rates were abysmal, only about 15%. Bregman said the old system was...
Debates over free speech have deeply immersed themselves into the fabric of our culture over the past few years. Wild and sharp finger-pointing has gone in both directions. This month, a Cornell University junior accused of posting violently threatening statements against Jewish people on campus was held without bail after his first appearance in federal court, as he should have been. Patrick Dai, from Rochester, N.Y., has been charged with using interstate communications to post death threats. The graphic, anonymous messages posted on a Greek...
