New Mexico Mercury

3 Good Reasons Why You Should Object to the Santolina Subdivision

You probably haven’t heard of the new proposed subdivision “Santolina” and yet the Bernalillo County Planning Commission has been debating about its implementation for months. The Santolina subdivision is proposed to be built in the southwest portion of Bernalillo County on what is commonly referred to as the Black Mesa. The subdivision would cover almost 14,000 previously untouched acres with approximately 38,000 new cookie-cutter homes. Although you may not have ever heard of Santolina, you should object to it, and here’s why...

The Rio Grande - Our Imperiled Lifeline

Speaking our river’s name, the Rio Grande, evokes images of a vast and powerful river of the West, flowing forth from high mountains through the desert landscape nurturing an abundance of life that springs forth along its banks.  The river is truly the soul of this desert community, offering opportunities for life, growth, and co-creation in an otherwise severe and less than hospitable environment.  Human settlements have flourished for centuries along the banks of the Rio Grande with thriving agricultural communities supported by the waters of this great river...

El Machete: 43 Missing

43 Missing

Holiday Budgets on the Fly

November arrived earlier than ever this year, probably due to global warming. That means it’s time for you to kick back and relax for the rest of the season, because your Christmas shopping is already done. Unless you’re like me. I just found out that people my age are technically adults. This classification burdens me with the responsibility of orchestrating a Flawless Holiday Season. Someone should have told me sooner! For I have not started thinking about what presents to give my loved ones, let alone how to make scarecrow table settings out of oak leaves, Q-tips, and leftover jack-o’-lantern scraps...

God Picks Candidates in This Here Legacy County, Bro

Are you for James Baird for County Sheriff?  God is for James Baird, and if you are anywhere near being a sane, decent, upstanding, thoughtful, God-fearing human being, you will be too. You see, here in Legacy County we all know God favors certain candidates.

He’s up there in the sky marking His ballot even now. You will receive by divine agency a pre-marked ballot showing God’s actual highlighting, his revealed choices in upcoming county and state races.

Don’t worry.  They’re all Republicans...

Give people a chance

Nov. 1 was Day of the Dead but in Albuquerque it was an exceptional day of life. What made the day was a unique musical gathering called OneBeat. The performance Saturday night was a rare conjunction of time, place and people, an occasion to be not only remembered but treasured.

Some 25 young musicians from Africa, Asia, Latin America, Australia and North America joined to produce some three hours of music that blended a wide range of genres, traditions, styles and instruments into an evening that was a celebration—of youth, of international collaboration and harmony, most of all of music that can stir our souls and ignite our passions like nothing else on earth...

Mercury Poetry: Between Portales and Clovis

On the road from Portales to Clovis
sand mixes with cloud,
the air thick with grainy patches where dust
joins with air in a raucous dance
ignoring the people below
ignoring the animals in their burrows
ignoring the cows eating, heads down, haunches up,
not a care in the world...

Five Questions for New Mexico Authors - Paula E. Morton

This week we ask Florida author and journalist Paula E. Morton some questions about her enthralling new book, Tortillas: A Cultural History, from the University of New Mexico Press, 2014.

New Mexico Mercury: How did you come to think of the tortilla as a vehicle with which to study history and society across cultures?

Paula E. Mortan: Before I was an author, I was a farmer in York County, Pennsylvania. It was a rich but demanding lifestyle, and after more than twenty years we headed west to Las Cruces in the southwest corner of New Mexico. The most I knew about tortillas was that they tasted good in Pennsylvania and were best at the borderlands, handmade and warm off the griddle...

‘A walk back in time’

No cars. No TV. No radio. No internet. No landline phones. Just a little light at night and a little water in the shower. Furniture, decor and art from the 1920s. Wood frame buildings clinging to a cliff or squatting on the sand beside the ocean. Nothing newer than1938. An entire town built in the elbow of a gentle cove, then deserted, then re-inhabited as a state park.

The harmonies of our lives play out to the rhythms of crashing surf. The markers of our days are sunrise and sunset, waves and clouds by day, stars and a red, red moon by night...

El Machete: Ebola!

Ebola!