New Mexico Mercury

Suzyredux

Did you notice that her Suzerainship wants everybody on foodstamps in New M. to work for their food…twenty hours a week?  I sure didn’t. That’s half time at Mcjobs. All these damn foodstompers will have to get airjobs in the wonderful Albuquerque airjob market and work half of their waking and sleeping hours for their airfood. That’s what her Susership proposes. That’s why she wants to be governor again. It’s the vision thing...

El Machete: Terminator

Terminator

Dispatches from the 25th Annual National Poetry Slam

So, 20 years ago, Trinidad Sanchez Jr., Matthew John Conley, Jim Stewart, Bob Wilson, and Kenn Rodriguez all piled in a vehicle (Eric Bodwell's I believe) and made the trek to Ann Arbor for the National Poetry Slam (NPS).  Since that time, ABQ has sent a team to NPS every year, and this year, 2014, marks the 20th time we will pile in a vehicle (rented now) and head out. This year, NPS is in Oakland and the tournament is much bigger than it was back then.   

Albuquerque has a long, storied history with trips to NPS. From near fights in airports to national championships, from overnight drives to luxury flights, from personal vehicles to rental vehicles, from crashing on couches to staying in host hotels, ABQ makes it work from year to year. And this year is no different...

‘The unsolved murder capital of the world’

When Scot Key retired in 2008 after serving 12 years as district attorney, he said of Lincoln County, “In the decades prior, the county was ridiculed as the unsolved murder capital of the world.”

One of those unsolved murders was that of 16-year-old Katrina Chavez. She was a star at Hondo High School, a cheerleader, a volleyball player and a basketball player. The account of that unsolved and forgotten killing forms the most intense section of, The Enchantment of New Mexico, a new book by Dixie Boyle...

New Shoes in Juárez

Although Mexico ranks last in the rankings of the 34 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries in terms of educational achievement and although it has a much higher level of poverty than the US, public education isn’t free. Santa Feans Jim and Pat Noble and their powerful team of volunteers not only manage an orphanage in Palomas, Mexico – La Casa de Amor Para Niños – but they have also raised scholarships for some 300 youngsters there.

Recently, I tried to do my share in the Juárez area by helping several kids I know from my work at the mental asylum, Vision in Action...

Teacher Responds to PED Evaluation

I am a fifth grade general educator in Albuquerque and I recently completed my third year. At the end of this past year, I was given my evaluation results on, what I have deemed the “Worst Day of My Life”. I was given a score of “Minimally Effective”. I did not earn this score. I know in my heart, and without a doubt, that I am a “Highly Effective” teacher. I receive high marks on every observation, my students scored higher than all other fifth graders (at my school) during my second year, and I always give 150% to ensure my students receive the best education possible. Then why did I receive “Minimally Effective”, you ask? Ask Hanna and Susanna. Oh wait, they can’t give you a straight answer...

El Machete: Suck Up

Suck Up

The Longest Night

I disliked my job from the first day, but until that long night in April 1968, I didn’t hate it.

I wanted to cry that night with the reams of copy pouring onto the desk in front of me, stories of deaths and injuries, tears and screams, anger and sorrow, broken bodies and bloodied streets. I wanted to stop and think about what was happening, but there was no time. I wanted to stop and cry, but I could not...

Some Thoughts on δημοκρατία☆

From the adoption of nascent democracy during Greece’s Golden Age, around 460 bce to this day, the system has been considerably altered.

In Athens, the center of trade and the arts, the citizens voted for their government officials. The Council and the Assembly ruled. The Council was made of 500 members who were drawn by lottery from the population. Stop for a second and visualize that today.

The two groups met every ten days and any citizen could speak and vote at the Assembly. However, they would only convene if there were at least 6,000 citizens present. Imagine that...

Parents Respond to For-Profit Education Reform Lapdogs

As mothers helping to lead the fight against harmful policies inflicted on our children in New Mexico and Tennessee, we felt compelled to respond to the July 24 opinion piece written by education leaders Hanna Skandera and Kevin Huffman that appeared in the Washington Post.

In classrooms across New Mexico and Tennessee, standardized tests are taking away valuable classroom learning. Of the 174 days our children attend school in New Mexico, 76 of those days are impacted by some standardized test or another. In Tennessee, teachers estimate that at least 1/3 of the year is devoted to testing or test preparation...