Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
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“My heroes have always been cowboys, still are, it seems. Sadly, in search of, and one step in back of, themselves and their slow movin’ dreams.” — Sharon Vaughn, songwriter SANTA ROSA — 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, t...
If I had to assign a genre to Rudolfo Anaya’s latest book, “Chupacabra Meets Billy The Kid,” I’d say it’s of the Western / science fiction / fantasy / Chicano literature / historical fiction genre, as if there’s such a thing. Maybe “unique” is a better description, because that’s certainly the way this outside-the-box tale reads. And to the contrary, I’d describe its Guadalupe and Lincoln county settings as realistically descriptive … well, except for the wormhole along the Pecos. Anaya, best known for his groundbreaking bo...
One of my great regrets is not learning another language. I took Spanish in high school for a couple of years, but didn’t practice it enough over the years to go beyond the few words I’ve recalled since moving out here to New Mexico. And when I married into Japan, I found that my tongue just didn’t work right for Japanese, so I got discouraged and quit. I often joke that I am in fact bilingual — I know both English and Southern — but that’s just me covering up my own lack of knowing a real second language and explaining...
New Mexico is building itself up with some new, cutting-edge infrastructure. First, there’s Facebook and its $1 billion data center at Los Lunas. It’s creating a need for some expensive improvements to New Mexico’s energy infrastructure. The data center needs a lot of electricity and plans are in the works to build a transmission line on top of an existing line with less transmission capacity, at a cost of $85 million. As it stands, the state’s Public Regulation Commission has ruled that Facebook must pay $39 million of that...
Today’s topic is change. It makes the world go round, but a lot of people hate it anyway. Change is inevitable, and yet the older we get, the more we’re inclined to resist it. It can be evolutionary or revolutionary, and it always has its share of detractors and proponents. Change is seldom without controversy. By its own definition, it causes friction. And nowadays, it comes at a blinding pace. More changes have come to the human experience in the last 50 years than has occurred in a thousand years prior. We barely have tim...
I just finished doing a final read of high school seniors’ summaries. That’s something my newspaper compiles from surveys we pass out to the soon-to-be graduates and then publish on the eve of their commencement. It’s uplifting to read about these teenagers’ hope and dreams for the future — and worrisome because of what they’re going to face as adults. They may not realize what they’re facing in the world ahead. These are small-town youths, filled with the optimism that comes from supportive parents, grandparents...
About this time every year, parents all over New Mexico swell with pride as their daughters and sons walk across the graduation stage — and wave goodbye. The walk is ceremonial; the wave, at least for small towns, is figurative. As the urbanization of America continues, fewer of these young men and women will be staying in or returning to their hometown, simply because the opportunities they seek aren’t there. Some of them will choose to carve out a life in their hometown, while many others will move on. Their futures dep...
You may not be aware, but our pre-primetime way of life is undergoing a big change. Jeopardy! is being transformed. Like many Americans, I’m a fan of this game show, which I like for brain teasing entertainment value. I’m not a regular viewer because my work doesn’t always allow me to be at home in time (it airs at 6 p.m. weeknights here in New Mexico). Millions of Americans, however, tune in regularly — more than 10 million daily, according to one Nielson report. TV Guide lists Jeopardy! as the biggest game show of all tim...
If Donald Trump wants to convince the public that the Mueller report vindicates him, he needs to keep us from reading the report ourselves. Or even part of it. Just a couple of hours of reading its summaries and conclusions (which I did over the weekend, and look forward to reading it entirely when time permits) will leave you seriously concerned about Russian meddling and downright disgusted with how badly Trump has behaved since taking office. But don’t take my word for it. Go to justice.gov/sco and click into “Report on...
Tom Udall’s announcement that he won’t seek another term as U.S. senator really brought out the politics in New Mexico. Already, two Democrats have announced they’ll seek to replace Udall, and there’s plenty of speculation about others interested in vying for the crown jewel of statewide office. Let’s consider only a few. First to announce was U.S. Rep. Ben Ray Luján, who has come a long way in the 10 years he’s been the House. I remember being wholly unimpressed that first time he ran in 2008, when his father, the late New...
There’s nothing like a good outing to bring a family together. If you want to go on a leisurely drive to somewhere for a daytime adventure, with some wide-eyed young’uns in tow, you certainly don’t have to leave New Mexico. Space requires only a mention of a few, but you can easily google any and all that grab your attention. Northeast When we lived in Las Vegas, the largest town in this quadrant of the state, we discovered that a drive away from the mountains could turn up some real gems. Mills Canyon up in the high plain...
When America’s youth began to rebel against the Vietnam War, it was because young men were being drafted. They were on the cutting edge of the issue, so they rose up in defiance. Something similar is happening now, only it’s not one particular war, nor is it just one nation’s youths. This time, it’s climate change and young people all over the world are demanding change. Maybe you’ve heard in the news about Greta Thunberg, a 15-year-old Swedish girl who, outside her home country’s parliament, staged the first school stri...
Today’s topic is sin. I’ll try not to get preachy about it. There’s a long list of habit-forming vices that Americans have enjoyed, condemned, regulated and even outlawed over time, but today we’ll consider four in particular — tobacco, alcohol, marijuana and gambling. Our U.S. government has spent a lot of time and effort trying to control each of them, with some of the biggest changes having occurred over the last half-century. Used to be, a lot of communities relegated drinking, pot smoking and betting to the shadows,...
Trump. Climate change. Liberals. Conservatives. Socialists. Capitalists. Bet you don’t think any of these charged-up words are funny, but maybe you should. Recently I heard a segment on NPR’s Morning Edition connecting anger and humor, part of a series called, “The Other Side of Anger.” I found it familiar to my upbringing and how I’ve been conditioned to cope with the stresses of life. “All comedy starts with anger,” the NPR piece quotes Jerry Seinfeld saying, before delving into how stand-up comedy turns anger into la...
News item: The United Methodist Church voted on Feb. 26 to reinforce its ban on openly gay clergy and same-sex marriages, leaving in place a longstanding policy that states, “The practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching.” The United Methodist Church is built on a connectional structure that ties all its leaders and congregations together. Local churches share their ministers and their money in such a way that ties people together in meaningful ways. I grew up living under that big tent, as a pre...
Move over marijuana. Your straight cousin is about to become the latest cash cow for agriculture in America. In case you missed it, the biggest news to come out of the 2018 Farm Bill is the federal legalization of hemp, a cannabis species that doesn’t get you high. The legislation, signed into law in December, sets up a structure for regulating commercial or “industrial” hemp in a way that will encourage its growth nationwide. Before this latest farm bill’s passage, more than 20 states had already legalized the product...
Sound the alarm! We’ve got a national emergency on our hands! Well, it’s really more of a constitutional emergency, as President Trump has opened the door for all future emergency declarations to be defined by politics, not real threats to our health and safety. He has conjured up a national security crisis at our southern border and, in doing so, has opened a new world of absurd possibilities. Allow me to illustrate … Let’s start with hair. The way Americans have decided to comb, cut, style and color their hair these days is...
Let’s start with this reality-based premise: The “national security crisis” we face is mostly internal. The violence and crime in our schools and on our streets doesn’t have anything to do with foreign-born “illegals” and terrorists. They’re almost entirely the result of angry and/or disturbed Americans. The real crisis in our country isn’t so much “us” verses “them” as it is us verses us. Black and white, rich and poor, city dweller and county folks, the mentally ill and the less mentally ill — as Americans, we’re all in thi...
This will be the year in which New Mexico’s minimum wage will go up, probably dramatically. The Democrats will make sure of that. Moreover, this year’s legislative session is an opportunity to put this perennial issue to rest for good — by tying it to inflation. Politics, not smart regulations, have gotten us to where we are now. Because of political pendulum swings between Democratic and Republican control, when the minimum wage is raised, and by how much, depends on who’s in power; the Republicans typically oppose minimum...
I’m done with the NFL. At least for this season. If I were a man of higher principles, I’d be done with it for good. The New Orleans loss to the Rams was the straw that broke my back. To essentially end a great season with such a blatant penalty that wasn’t even called is tough to take. And what’s going to come of that? Further delays to the game, as officials will now be allowed to second-guess their calls (and non-calls) on the field. And now we’ve got to watch those cheatin’ Patriots, again, this year up against a f...
The last time New Mexico was in this situation, Bill Richardson had just been elected governor. It was 2003 and Richardson, a former congressman and high-ranking official in the Clinton administration, had just won election with about 56 percent of the statewide vote. He succeeded Gary Johnson, known as “Governor No” because of his propensity to veto just about anything and everything. So by the time Richardson came into office, with Democratic majorities in both the House and Senate, the circumstances were in place for a f...
I’m always hoping things will turn out better than they appear to be headed. Take our future as a species as an example. Climate change and the polluting of our air, soil and water suggests that catastrophe is bearing down on us, and it doesn’t look like we’re willing to do anything about it. But wait, there are still reasons to believe we can survive this mess. I’ve written about one of them already — a company called Carbon Engineering, which is developing a chemical process to remove carbon dioxide from the atmospher...
Suit up, New Mexicans. Big changes are about to take place. That’s what a commanding majority of New Mexicans voted for — but that doesn’t mean we’re all going to like it. Take gun control as an example. In a rural western state such as ours, there are plenty of people who don’t want additional gun controls, but you can bet there will be talk of doing exactly that. It’ll pit urban lawmakers along the Rio Grande Corridor against lawmakers from small towns and country settings around the state. Even some Democratic lawmakers w...
The new year is a time for hope. We want to believe in a better year ahead, so we celebrate the possibilities. Here in New Mexico, there are a number of reasons to be optimistic about 2019, especially if you’re a Democrat, the party that now controls all three branches of state government. But politics won’t be the only big news in the year ahead; the economy will also make some headlines. In the upcoming legislative session, the last eight years of divided government will come to an end, which means a plethora of cha...
SANTA ROSA — Could it be that Time magazine is abandoning the “great man” perspective on history, one in which larger-than-life individuals shape world events, for a “people’s history” narrative in which common people have the greater impact? That would explain why the magazine has chosen a group of people, rather than individuals, as its “Person of the Year” for three of the last five years. Or maybe it’s because the magazine is just catching up with the realization that people, collectively, have a bigger influence over wo...
