New Mexico Mercury

Section K: No Unfinished Business in Vegas

Unfinished Business

The Lobos adopted the mantra after the season-ending loss to Harvard, and, ever since, it has been the rallying cry of this team’s focus: to make a historic, post-season run. On senior night, Kendall Williams cited the motto, saying the Lobos were on a mission to complete unfinished business: win the regular-season outright in San Diego, continue on to Vegas for the tournament title, and then to the Big Dance to make history. The Lobos are saying all the right things, but, after falling short on Saturday, the team had to realize they did not fail to complete any unfinished business. And this week, the Lobos don’t have any unfinished business in Las Vegas...

Public education is not a sporting event

Hanna Skandera tells us, in a recent Albuquerque Journal guest editorial, what should have been an inspirational and heart-warming story about her glory days in track, when she trained for months for that one big cross-country race at the end. She came in second. It’s implied that the rest of them were ranked-and-filed as, I assume, winners and losers?

First, academics and cognitive development are not cross-country. Learning is not a race; learning is a process. Learning is not a competition; learning is a quest...

The Myth of the Good Mother

Who is the good mother? From the earliest representations of women-- Paleolithic figurines with wildly inflated reproductive organs – through modern mothers Facebooking their cleanest, happiest family photos, she is a creation mixed with history, culture and pure imagination. The good mother has features we all recognize—her supernatural patience, unwavering attention and empathy, submission to the needs of others, and an expectation to have her own value measured heavily by the outcomes of her offspring.

The problem with the good mother is that she is a myth that many women rely heavily upon as the role model for their real, dirty, wonderful but emotionally turbulent motherhoods...

The Wind Rises: Miyazaki’s Most Personal Film

In The Wind Rises, anime master Hayao Miyazaki adds his own memories and obsessions to the real life of Jiro Horikoshi and the writings of Tatsuo Hori. The result is a complex film of great beauty, one that has angered the right wing in Japan for its attitude toward 1930s militarism, and disappointed others worldwide for its failure to show the consequences of the hero’s quest.

Jiro Horikoshi designed the innovative Zero, a long-range and highly maneuverable fighter used in the attack on Pearl Harbor. Once the United States had caught up in fighter design, the Zero became a manned missile...

Weekly Poem: Certainly, Water

When I think of water spilling from a green bottle onto a wooden floor and the danger

it poses to a carpet and the Moroccan women I met once, Berber women with kohl
lined eyes and mehndi on their hands, who made carpets from wool they sheared
themselves, and who ululated on request for pictures because outside of Morocco that’s
what they were, ululating Berber women— ...

Lines from Eleven Introductions to New Mexico

New Mexico holds a unique tricultural position in the history of the United States.

Although a modern reader might surmise that “New Mexico” is derived directly from the place name “Mexico,” as we now identify that modern country, it has instead a somewhat more complicated history.

Trinity stands for the Christian culture of the Spanish and later the Anglo Americans as well as for the Trinity site in White Sands, where the world’s first atomic bomb was detonated on July 16, 1945...

Albuquerque’s River

Most people in Albuquerque see the Rio Grande in flashes, from a bike path or a bridge. But really? That’s no way to know a river. It takes drifting downstream and sometimes, running into sandbars. The river provides water to cities and farmers. But it’s also a place of wildness, and of solace. Here's an audio postcard from a canoe trip in the spring of 2013...

Let’s Do Welcome COPS

The TV show COPS has chosen to film right here in Bernalillo County. I am so excited and upbeat about this really great development for our city and county. I can’t for the life of me fathom why the mayor and other gov officials are pushing this great opportunity away, distancing themselves from COPS, because if there’s one thing we do well around here, it’s run away from the police. I have no idea why we run away from police around here, but we do, and fortunately that’s what COPS is all about—running away from the police...

Not Just Fiftieth

Sadly, in New Mexico we are used to hearing that we are fiftieth on the lists that measure poverty, health care, employment, prison overcrowding, or what percentage of our high school students graduate. From year to year we compete with Mississippi for the dishonor. Sometimes we are only second from last, sometimes at the very bottom.

One percent of New Mexicans enjoy 72.6% of our economic growth. That same 1% has shown an increase in income of 119.3%, with only ten other states showing a larger percentage of growth for their top tier. Overall real income growth in New Mexico, from 1979 to 2007, was only 14%, making it the seventh lowest among all fifty states...

El Machete: Take that El Chapo

Take that El Chapo