New Mexico Mercury

Finally an honest book about the New Mexico Legislature

After her first New Mexico legislative session in 1997, Sen. Dede Feldman said it was “like riding a motorcycle in a thunderstorm in the nude.”

When she left the Senate 16 years later, the liberal Democrat from Albuquerque’s North Valley still felt like “Alice in Wonderland” in this “crazy unpredictable place” dominated by “peculiar personalities [and] strange alliances"...

Albuquerque Police Shootings - We Must Have Answers!

On November 27, 2012 the Department of Justice, in a joint statement with Mayor Berry and Chief Schultz announced that it was launching an investigation of the Albuquerque Police Department (APD) after a string of officer-involved shootings and high profile abuse cases that allege the use of excessive and deadly force.

APD officers have fired on 34 suspects since early 2010. APD has justified ALL of them...

Springtime brings unwanted guests

Many home owners will soon get unwelcome houseguests. The arrival of spring means insect populations are about to boom in New Mexico Here’s how to reduce the odds that ants, flies and crickets will get into your home—and how to deal with them naturally if they do...

El Machete: No Regrets

El Machete: No Regrets

Acequia Booksellers Closing After Ten Years

Books define my life.  As a writer I read copiously and love to shop for books to read or add to my research library.  As a book artist some of my works focus on castoff books I alter into art.  That is, I take a worthless textbook and transform it into a book sculpture.  Altered Books is a popular new art genre.  This year a few of my artist books have been exhibited at the University of South Dakota, University of Puget Sound and in a Book Arts Show at the New Mexico State Capitol rotunda gallery in Santa Fe...

Disney’s Façade in Saving Mr. Banks

Having grown up in Orlando, Florida, I had the sort of close relationship with Disney that allows the perfectly executed fantasy to be slowly chipped away.  The Victorian houses on Main Street, USA, reveal themselves as empty, one-sided plaster. The waving characters of your childhood eventually become your fellow college students, sweating off last night’s binge drinking under a costume in Florida’s 100% humidity.  The happy families are desperate, like ours, to make the Disney experience worth the savings and idealism spent on it...

New Mexico Then and Now

Thirty-five years ago I arrived in New Mexico to spend a night camping on my way to San Francisco. Although I have since spent shorter or longer spells in many places, including most recently northern California, I never really left New Mexico after that fine autumn night with stars blazing in crisp mountain air.

I have been remembering of late what life was like for me and for this state when I arrived in the fall of 1978...

Dreaming of America

“I came across the border when I was seven years old,” says Rosario Rodriguez or “Chalio” as we know him, “and I knew that eventually this was where I wanted to live.”

That was sixty years ago. Now it’s Friday, December 20, 2013 and we’re in a huge meeting room in the Convention Center in Albuquerque. In addition to hundreds of friends and family members, there are one hundred and sixty four people from 44 countries who are waiting for their oath of US citizenship. Chalio is one of them...

Now’s the time for inspections and pest proofing

Someone asked me if bugs will be out early because of the mild weather and what they should do about it. As I said in a previous column, you should take time to pest proof your home in the winter before pest activity starts. Inspect your home or business around the outside and seal or screen any openings where bugs as small as ants can enter...

A Special Kind of Paradise

We stand outside the handsome visitors center, an atoll in the midst of a vast brown sea. The sea is the Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge, 230,000 acres of Chihuahua Desert, Colorado Plateau, high plains grasslands and two mountain ranges, the Ladrón and Los Pinos.

There are few people in this 30-mile by 15-mile slab of New Mexico between Belen and Socorro: a scattering of ranchers in enclaves along the Rio Grande, a few biologists and geologists, five rangers, a handful of volunteers living on the reserve for three months at a time—and we, of course, a photographer and a reporter who have come to discover the story of this unique place...