Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
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We are just past the anniversary of the most horrific gun massacre in the history of the United States. This time of year, I'm overwhelmed with the memory of those little boys and girls who will never become teenagers, young adults, mothers and fathers, and grandparents who themselves cherish the little boys and girls surrounding them. I was forever changed by Sandy Hook, and each Dec. 14 has become a day of mourning and reflection, of anger and defiance and a promise to work...
I have been pretty honest and clear about my refusal to sing Kumbaya with the other side on policy. But I’m not willing to demonize people with whom I disagree in areas where politics and policy, ideology and integrity are irrelevant. Case in point: Phil Murphy. The Democratic governor of New Jersey was out last month dining with family, when two irate constituents began to heckle him with foul but familiar epithets. I will leave to your fertile imaginations the sort of t...
People might get tired of stories about my father Ted and his summer in Mississippi. They might roll their eyes when I, once again, write about how he faced hostility and the KKK during his time in the places that have become legendary for their ferocious efforts at silencing Black voices and votes. There are many out there who never heard of my father, but who are doing their damndest to make sure that people like him are silenced and forgotten. They are doing this because...
In the suburbs of Philadelphia, Montgomery County’s Board of Health issued an order by unanimous vote this month to shut down all in-person learning at school for two weeks. The reason for the shutdown is the reason every local, regional, and national official has used over the past eight or so months: COVID, corona, Wuhan, call it whatever you want. The pandemic is making decisions for us. Except, not everyone is accepting these decisions with the docility that these governme...
A few days after the election, when things were still a bit murky, I made an offhand remark to some friends about what kind of hat I should crochet for the march that would be taking place the day after Joe Biden’s anticipated inauguration. Of course, we won’t be needing any hats. There will be no throngs of women parading down the avenues of big cities like Washington, D.C., New York and Philadelphia with needlework replicas of genitalia on their heads. That is so 2016, that...
Philadelphia often makes national news for unfortunate reasons, like bombing its own neighborhoods, rioting in its streets, pelting Santa with snowballs, and threatening the Boy Scouts with eviction from the home it built for itself. But sometimes, good things actually do happen in and around Philadelphia, despite President Trump's suggestion to the contrary. This month, Catholic Social Services of Philadelphia appeared before the Supreme Court to strike a blow for religious...
At the beginning of the Senate confirmation hearings on the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, Lindsay Graham observed that it was a great moment for young conservative women because they finally had someone they could look to as a role model on the highest court in the land. Graham was on to something. Conservative women have been called “not the right kind of women” for years in the mainstream media and among those who always talk about “em...
Earlier this month, I passed by a small group of people outside a Planned Parenthood building in Philadelphia praying in the rain, heads bowed and exposed to the fine mist from heaven. Even though I was late to my appointment, I crossed the street to thank them. One woman, middle-aged, African American and leaning on a cane, thanked me for reaching out. “It doesn’t happen often. It means the world,” she said. Regardless of your position on abortion, you cannot — if you are...
When Joe Biden picked Kamala Harris as his running mate a couple of months ago, it was historic. Third woman, first “woman of color” as we keep being reminded, first “child born of immigrants,” Harris was impressive if only because of her novelty. And some felt she was impressive because of a lot of other factors, including her intelligence and resume. I DVR’d the vice presidential debate featuring Harris and Vice President Mike Pence so I could give it the attention it deserv...
I know that social media is not the real world, just as Kim Kardashian is not your average working mother. But we have all started to spend parts of our days in the virtual world, and in the post-pandemic era, some of us spend the majority of our waking hours communicating with avatars, digital creations, and shadow-humans. So the things that are happening in that environment do have an impact on our emotional health, and the way we view the actual world. After the news broke...
I just signed up to be a mentor at my law school, and did something that is atypical for me: Display a preference for female law students. It even surprises me when I look at that sentence, since my entire career as a columnist has been dedicated to the proposition that gender, race, sexual orientation, religion and all of the other epidermal things that form our identity are less important than the intangibles of brain, values, heart and capacity for endurance. But the death...
Cancel culture and cancer both begin with the letter “C,” which is not a coincidence. The urge to obliterate, annul, remove, censor and excise from our collective social conscience is akin to what a surgeon does when he approaches a toxic tumor: Cuts it out. We no longer have a tolerance for anything that annoys. If someone has said something offensive, or if we have evidence that their thoughts are improvident or less-than-evolved, that person must be neutralized as a viable...
Before I decided to tackle this topic, I had a moment’s hesitation. Is the fact that Nancy Pelosi decided to get her hair done really an issue of national importance? And of course, I concluded that it is. Pelosi had every right to get her hair done recently, even though she was violating the regulations she herself championed to restrict the spread of the coronavirus. As the first and only female Speaker of the House of Representatives (so far), Pelosi is one of the most visi...
It's rare that a simple tweet triggers in me the desire to write a column. On night three of the Republican National Convention last month, I had the great pleasure of watching Madison Cawthorne, a young paraplegic who is running for a house seat in North Carolina. At the very end of his short but moving address, this man - who is otherwise confined to a wheelchair - was helped out of that chair by two friends and stood. He was standing for the flag, for what it represents,...
I am no longer surprised at the depths to which some people will sink in these fraught and tortured moments. A friend recently posted something on her Facebook page honoring the life and tragic death of Cannon Hinnant, the little 5-year-old from North Carolina who was shot through the head by his next-door neighbor. I also posted about the death, and made the child’s picture my social media profile photo. We both did it to call attention to the loss of another innocent to sens...
I’ve been all over the place with Kamala Harris. Before Joe Biden picked her as his running mate, I was convinced that of all the possible choices, she was the most palatable. Harris has a lot of experience, is highly educated, is a P.R. genius and has fielded almost as much hate from the left as she has from the right. Her years as a prosecutor have put her on the wrong side of the law for Black Lives Matter activists and allies, so to say that the extremists on the far l...
I've been pretty lucky in the name department. With the exception of that brief period when I hated the fact that “Christine” became a symbol for women who couldn't keep their hair out of their faces and whispered before Congress about an alleged assault no one else could remember, I've never been ashamed to, as Beyonce sang, say my name. That's why I feel so bad for women named Karen. It's a lovely name, and I have some equally lovely female friends who share it. There is...
One of the few things that seem to unite all three levels of government these days — local, state and federal — is the astounding and blatant level of hypocrisy exhibited by their leaders. Starting from the bottom up is the “Honorable” James Kenney, the mayor of Philadelphia, who issued an edict that essentially and effectively canceled the Mummer’s parade, the Thanksgiving Day Parade and all other outdoor activities in the city until February. Of course, there is one big e...
