New Mexico Mercury

The Mimbres-Paquimé Connection

I’m with a group of officials and participants in the cross-border economic development project started by Mayor Philip Skinner of Columbus, New Mexico. The first meeting took place in Columbus on September 13, 2014 and I wrote about it in the article “Rebuilding Economies on the Border.” I missed the second meeting but attended the one in Deming on December 6, a meeting that was much more heavily attended than the first and included a number of private sector representatives like the Deming-Luna County Chamber of Commerce, the Deming Visitor’s Center and managers of Deming hotels...

Numbfecu Forever

It’s been a couple of weeks since my credit union, Numbfecu became Nusenda, and praise be, I have survived the name change. Yes, this is one of those delightful and quirky kind of New Mexico stories that always leave you laughing and never leave you numb, not like yesteryear, not like say the day Susana came swooping down like a Cooper’s hawk on our social services and shuttered places like Hogares in the North Valley, places that had been operating for forty years. All these local providers who had been serving New Mexico communities for so long were all criminals. In fact so heinous were their crimes, that they had to be driven away before anyone could assess their evil, which was disclosed by a Grand Audit showing just how crooked all these social services really were...

Fool’s Gold: Ps and Queues

I received some kickback over a disparaging comment I made about Hotmail a few weeks ago. Hotmail is technically an email provider that was all the rage for about four days in 1997. It is the communication service favored today by young Russian singles looking to marry a kindly Amerikan gentlemen, as well as, it turns out, one of my publishers.

I believe my exact words were—and I’m paraphrasing—that Hotmail is a quaint anachronism that deserves special consideration when it is finally tossed into a dumpster fire and destroyed forever...

Self-Serving Payday Loan Industry Proposals No Surprise

Two weeks ago, the New Mexico House Regulation and Public Affairs Committee tabled popular 36% interest cap bills designed to protect borrowers from triple digit interest loans that lock them in poverty.

The committee dismissed testimony in favor of 36% caps from a broad range of financial counseling, social service, tribal, religious, senior citizen and other groups.  It preferred to consider an industry proposal for consumer protections that lenders promised was forthcoming.  Once the loan sharks were handed the keys to the bait tank, advocates of loan reform were skeptical that meaningful proposals were in the offing...

Home, Part One: Ties that bind

Later this month, I will be traveling far from home. My wife and I will be exploring Nicaragua, a country we have been trying to visit for 25 years but year after year kept putting it on the deferred list. Now, however, we are pulled by opportunity and pushed by two realizations: now in our 60s and 70s, we are unlikely to get any younger; and Nicaragua itself is moving toward a point of crisis with totally unpredictable results.

But while I am preparing to be far from home, I find myself thinking almost obsessively of home—what it means to have and not have it, to find and lose it, to leave and return, or not...

Ripples Into Riptides

John Adams once wrote, “Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes and murders itself. There never was a democracy that did not commit suicide.” The unrelenting war on all forms and manifestations of a democratic social contract has led to bloody revolutions in every era, on every continent, and in virtually every culture. They all begin as slight disturbances, ripples on the surface of daily events, minor perturbations in the status quo that eventually take on a destructive life of their own, not unlike the early gentle rumblings of an earthquake...

Five Questions for New Mexico Authors—Lois Palken Rudnick

This week we ask editor, scholar, teacher, and writer Lois Palken Rudnick about the reissue of her condensation of the four books of memoirs of Mabel Dodge Luhan, titled Intimate Memories, which make up Luhan’s autobiography. Rudnick’s work as an editor and as a writer of the book’s wisely insightful introduction and afterword gives readers an entry into Luhan’s life and contribution to American culture that has not been possible before. Intimate Memories is published by the University of New Mexico Press...

Fool’s Gold: Aftermath

Not to toot my own horn, but I’m pretty much a math genius. Like, I scored more points on the SAT than the Seahawks and Patriots scored in the Super Bowl COMBINED, which means I’m worthy of a halftime show with performers way more famous than Katy Perry, whoever he is.

Other greats, like Stephen Hawking and Benjamin Franklin, must prove themselves. But I never needed to publish a groundbreaking book or invent kites, let alone take a college math class. My intellect was free to study the humanities, which is where all the chicks are, anyway...

Making Chorizo

Geez it’s depressing watching the legislature. It’s never pretty. Bismarck supposedly said those who like sausages and laws shouldn’t watch either being made. And Dios sabe we’re all used to how ugly DC looks. But somehow, in New Mexico, you expect more humanity, more empathy, when the human issue is laid on the table. Sure, there will be different ideas of how to solve problems, but people will be more likely to understand them in terms of what it means to be a human trying to make it through the day. 

But this pack of Republicans, I dunno...

El Machete: Profe Truxillo

Profe Truxillo