Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Sorted by date Results 51 - 75 of 306
Back in the 1990s, as a father of young children and a journalist committed to honest reporting, I became concerned with the whole Santa Claus “lie” that I was perpetuating with my own little girls. So I asked my father how he handled the whole myth about Santa. After all, I don’t remember ever thinking of Dad as a liar when it came to such matters, nor do I remember a day when I went from being a believer to a humbug, so I figured Dad must have done it right. For me while growing up, Christmas was all about Jesus’ birthda...
It’s a political myth, really, but it’s still poignant: that no one could have visited China back in 1972 but then-President Richard Nixon. His anti-communist positions provided him the political cover he needed to improve relations without being attacked by the Cold War “hawks” on the right. “Only Nixon could have gone to China,” historians and even Spock (in the movie Star Trek VI, Wikipedia says) have said. Maybe in the years ahead, they’ll add, “only the fossil fuel industry could take on global warming.” The l...
Could it be that today’s “Deep State” conspiracy theories got their start with 1947’s Roswell Incident? One could say you can draw a straight line from the UFO conspiracy theories that grew from that mystery to today’s belief that the 2020 presidential election was rigged by a massive government conspiracy. Garrett Graff, a seasoned journalist with extensive experience covering national security issues, is now making the rounds to promote his new book, “UFO: The Inside Story of the US Government’s Search of Alien Life He...
In my formative years, I worked for a program called the Appalachia Service Project, a home repair project affiliated with the United Methodist Church. We went into the poorest areas of Eastern Kentucky and Tennessee and used donated money, supplies and volunteers to make homes warmer, safer and drier for their residents. Once we came upon a house with no running water because the pipes had frozen and burst. A small, frail, elderly woman and a confused, friendly old man lived there, and they wanted and needed our help, but...
As you get older, you get more used to death. You become familiar with seeing your elders pass on. Death can be painful; oftentimes more so for the ones left behind. It’s a tragedy when a loved one’s life is cut short; for parents, the loss of a child must be the worst. I haven’t gone through that, but I can imagine how incredibly heart-wrenching it is. I’ve lost a lot of people who meant the world to me — friends, mentors, family members. The loss of my parents, Charles and Lois McDonald, was the most monumental for my li...
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 autho...
This from a Source New Mexico report last week: Virgin Galactic, New Mexico’s anchor tenant for Spaceport America, is pausing its flights to the edge of space and laying off a bunch of its workers. That’s not a good sign for the state’s $212 million spaceport southeast of Truth or Consequences, but I’m glad we built it anyway. You might remember Spaceport America as the creation of then-Gov. Bill Richardson, who saddled up with British billionaire Richard Branson to sell the idea of a commercial spaceport to New Mexico...
Esports is a good example of what’s wrong with our world today and what the schools are doing right about it. In case you haven’t heard of it, at the middle and high school levels, esports is basically video gaming as a competitive team. Some call it a “mind sport” along the lines of a board or card game, taking its place as one of many “cybersports” online. Regardless of how you cast it, esports is growing in popularity in schools around the country. In 2019, the New Mexico Activities Association sanctioned esports as...
Maybe I wrote Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s political obituary too soon. Not so long ago, after the governor issued a public health order restricting the carry and concealment of guns in Albuquerque and Bernalillo County, a firestorm of protests broke out statewide. Some Second Amendment proponents defiantly brandished their firearms in public protests over her order, and even some of her fellow Democrats said she was overreaching her constitutional authority. It made national news and Lujan Grisham was widely criticized. I...
When I was a young man (a college dropout searching for meaning and fun in the 1970s), I made my way to Washington D.C., where I visited the Thomas Jefferson Memorial with a couple of friends. I wasn’t well-versed in history at that age, and they set me straight when I idolized this Founding Father, a fellow Southerner whose words set in motion the ideal of human equality. I’ve since learned that great and wonderful things are often set in motion by seriously flawed people, and now that I know a more complete story of Thomas...
Let’s be honest about the hypocrisy coming out of both political parties when it comes to gerrymandering. Both sides do it when given the opportunity and both sides decry the other side for doing it — all depending only on who’s in power at the moment the maps get redrawn. If you want a definition for “gerrymander,” here’s Merriam-Webster Dictionary’s: “to divide or arrange (a territorial unit) into election districts in a way that gives one political party an unfair advantage.” And if you want to see an example of gerrymande...
Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I grew up on them. They were the first thing I learned to make in the kitchen. That and a glass of milk. Microwaves hadn’t been invented yet. Playing basketball on a dirt patch in our back yard. That’s where I learned to dribble and shoot with one hand. And football in our front yard. When no one else was around, I’d take the hike from an imaginary center, drop back and throw to the trees, believing that I was the star quarterback for the Arkansas Razorbacks, the only college team that...
I’m conflicted. The American in me doesn’t want Donald Trump to ever again come close to the presidency. A second time around would be a move away from democracy and toward an autocracy, which sounds very un-American to me. The partisan side of me, however, sees another Trump nomination as great for the Democrats. First, the odds are Trump will lose again in the general election, dragging other Republicans down with him, maybe even giving all of Congress back to the Dems. With Trump at the top of the ticket in 2024, the Rep...
Seldom is a governor’s second term as bright as their first term; the gubernatorial luster loses its shine for one reason or another. With the late, great Bill Richardson, it was “pay to play.” With Susana Martinez, it was “pizzagate.” And now, with Michelle Lujan Grisham, it’s an overreaching public health order. Don’t get me wrong, Gov. Lujan Grisham is no lame duck. She still has three years left as governor of a state controlled by Democrats, so she still wields considerable power. But her order to temporarily b...
Out here in the Land of Enchantment, we have many trails. We have the Space Trail, which includes more than 50 archeological sites, museums, laboratories, observatories and more scattered around the state — but mostly concentrated in southern New Mexico. We’ve got petroglyphs showing pre-historic stargazers at work and modern-day observatories like the Very Large Array and its ability to look deep into space, both into and beyond our own Milky Way. Meanwhile, New Mexico’s Museum of Space History in Alamogordo provides us with...
You’d be hard-pressed to find a more consequential New Mexican than Bill Richardson. He was a U.S. congressman and New Mexico governor, a cabinet secretary, an ambassador to the United Nations, a diplomat at-large, and for a few months in 2007-08, a candidate for president. Richardson died Sept. 1 at age 75. William Blaine Richardson III was born in Pasadena, Calif., grew up in Mexico City and earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Tufts University in Massachusetts, where he met his future wife, Barbara Flavin. In 1978, Bi...
Often I’ve said that my dad wasn’t the “greatest” man I’ve ever known, but he was the “best” man I’ve known. In my book, that puts Dad over Bill Clinton any day. Let’s apply that to nations. The U.S. is the greatest nation on earth, as long as you equate greatness with wealth and power. But “best” we are not. Nearly a year ago, U.S. News & World Report put out its seventh annual “Best Countries Rankings” and we weren’t even in the top three. But at least we moved up from the previous year. Surprisingly (or not), the...
Before I realized it was the FBI, not the Secret Service, that killed an alleged wannabe assassin, I got to thinking about an old movie, “In the Line of Fire,” and fished it out of my DVD collection to watch again. It’s about a Secret Service agent played by Clint Eastwood and a would-be assassin played by John Malkovich — and it’s still well worth watching. Let me say on the front end that I consider Eastwood one of the greatest moviemakers of our time, although he didn’t “make” this one. He starred in it, yes, but Wolfga...
I remember when I was a kid, an adult or two told me “ain’t” wasn’t a word. “It’s not in the dictionary,” they said. I don’t remember ever looking it up to see if they were right, but I can say it’s in there now, along with who-knows how many other slang words that decorate our great American lexicon. Every year, dictionaries add words and terms — to make them “officially” part of our language, I suppose. And, of course, all our “new words” say something about the twists and turns of our modern culture. For example: “Near...
Since it’s so hot outside, maybe you’ll appreciate the chilling nature of a recent National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration report, which says there were 18 major climate and weather disasters last year alone. Each one cost at least $1 billion in recovery costs, while altogether they cost us $165 billion. The U.S. is in its eighth straight year of 10 or more such extreme weather disasters. This year we’ve already had 12, and that’s not even counting the oppressive heat that’s been bearing down on most of the Northern He...
Most people move because of a job. But nowadays, some are moving because of the politics. That’s according to a recent Associated Press report that highlights people who are packing up and moving to other states because they don’t feel they can express themselves freely where they currently reside. AP reporter Nicholas Riccardi gives examples of individuals and couples who have left their “blue” state for a “red” state, and visa versa. The list includes conservative Californians who moved to Idaho, and liberal Texans movi...
Hot enough for you? Well, brace yourself, it’s going to get worse. As I write this, an unprecedented heat wave is gripping much of our nation and world. Scientists are saying this could turn out to be the hottest year on record — at least until next year, when it could be hotter. Scientists have been predicting this incoming disaster for more than a century, since about the onset of the industrial revolution. Or, if you’d rather count the years in which pop culture made us aware, it’s been 17 years since Al Gore release...
Contrary to what some of you think, patriotism isn’t about who fires the largest firecracker. I get weary of people who equate fireworks and flag waving with patriotism. It makes me want to break out in John Prine’s old tune, “Your Flag Decal Won’t Get You Into Heaven Anymore … They’re already overcrowded for your duty little war …” Sure, it’s a Vietnam War protest song from way back, but it still makes a mockery of the superficial gestures of patriotism we so often see around Independence Day. It reminds me of another cul...
Sometimes I think I “own” the supporters of Trump, the way they seek to “own” the liberals. All I have to do is make a case against Donald Trump and they come out of the woodwork. Often, they take issue with me over the issues rather than Trump per se; more often they attack me as a person. I’ve been called un-American and unpatriotic, a liar, a baby killer, a hater, and most of all — gasp — a liberal. None of that really bothers me because I know they’re wrong about me, except of course for the liberal part. Let the record...
Sometimes I wonder if I control my technology or if technology now controls me. I say this while sitting in my house with no internet. A defective router, or something, will have to wait until Monday, when I can get it fixed or replaced. That leaves me a weekend without my “smart” TV, an incessant flow of emails and an offline computer that only works off its “desktop.” Sure, I’ve still got a working smart phone, which for many is all they need — but not me, since I’m not into the apps that turn such devices into a mini-me. I...
