New Mexico Mercury

Reflections on Mandela by a South African who was there

"I was not born with a hunger to be free," Nelson Mandela writes in his autobiography. He immediately explains, "I was born free - free in every way that I could know. Free to run in the fields near my mother's hut, free to swim in the clear stream that ran through my village, free to roast mealies under the stars and ride the broad backs of slow-moving bulls. As long as I obeyed my father and abided by the customs of my tribe, I was not troubled by the laws of man or God."

This is part of his reflection and frank assessment of how his life unfolded. Like all of us, Mandela was free in every way that was within his imagination or visible in the world he inhabited...

Mannyism

If you are a Manny, you probably won’t like what I am about to say one damn bit because it’s the Mannys of this world that are spoiling it all for everyone else. In fact, it is the very name Manny that is the probable suspect cause for all misery in the Universe, to say nothing of good ol’ NM.

During 2012 in the United States, the name Manny ranked 2044 in popular baby names. Compared to Bill, say, which is wildly popular, the name Manny has experienced a plummeting decline that could be graphically compared to the collapse of the NYSE in 2008, and it’s no wonder why the name Manny is going to the dogs...

Democracy or Safety? America’s Strategy in Central America

Democracy or safety? Which do you want? This isn’t a reasonable question for us Americans because we can have both. For many countries, it’s a wrenchingly difficult choice.

Take the tiny Central American countries of Honduras and Nicaragua. Honduras just held its Presidential elections and they offer some important lessons about our role in Central America, the impact of drugs and violence, and the factors that make a country viable...

Fighting over funding is hindering real education

In response to my colleagues’ recent op-ed column, “Stop the Cycle of Failure,” let me first say that I think our New Mexico public schools are good, our teachers are great and our students are performing well. I know, that’s not what you’ve read, but please hear me out.

We can argue about test results; let’s look at test design. All standardized-based tests spread children out on a continuum, a bell curve, by design. In every state, children from poverty, with rare exception, score at the bottom, by design. Children learning English as a second language tend to score at the bottom, by design. Does this mean they can’t learn or teachers aren’t working hard enough?...

Over-testing Takes Focus Away from Curriculum

Over the last few years our state has seen a massive push from the governor’s administration to drive education improvements through an increase in testing in our schools. In isolation, this might seem like results-minded reform, but in conjunction with the testing efforts already in place, the resulting “over-testing” is taking the learning right out of our schools...

Following dreams - to the end of the road

How far should you follow your dreams? When do dreams become obsessions? Obsessions become delusions? Delusions become tragedy?

These are the questions I pondered as I left a Saturday evening performance of a new play, Up (The Man in the Flying Chair) at the Mother Road Theater in Albuquerque...

Weekly Poem: Tonight the Moon is Mexican

and so is the wind
and so are the oleanders
the wind is bothering.
The porch light is no longer

anything but Mexican.
It’s true; tonight
is full of this miracle.
The river

is finally Mexican and...

Plants that don’t just sit there

Peter D’Amato walks among the hundreds of plants arranged in rows in the country’s—and possibly the world’s —largest collection of flesh-eating plants until he reaches a Venus flycatcher with hungrily gaping petals. He carefully lifts a live worm and lays it on the lower petal.

This is the eerie, beautiful and fascinating world of carnivorous plants. Once rarities, carnivorous plants have multiplied geometrically in recent years...

The Miracle of Alfredo

It’s a miracle, says Pastor Galván as we talk about the sudden recovery of Alfredo Ortiz, one of the mental patients in his asylum in Juárez. The problem is that I don’t believe in miracles. So how did this man recover from three months of being catatonic?

Alfredo was born in Juárez on June 9, 1977, appears to be a humble young man and is a skillful worker. In April 2012, his family committed him to Vision in Action, this private mental asylum founded by Pastor Galván...

An Open Internet for All New Mexicans

Open Internet, also known as net neutrality, preserves our right to communicate freely online while enabling and protecting free speech. It means that Internet Service Providers (ISPs) should provide us with open networks and not interfere with any applications or content that we access on our computers, phones, and other devices, allowing me to read my favorite blogs even if they criticize big telecom companies...