New Mexico Mercury

Weekly Poem: FIRST SHA’LA’KO

The  men come down
in twos and threes South
to  dust-dry Zuni River:
surround and screen
six tall  Sha’la’ko of the
snapping beaks and hooting.

Up the hill the small
Zuni girl chops  at
stacked juniper  with
a sharp, man- sized axe: 
smoke comes East swings
around North then West...

Desalinization for Sprawl

I wonder what it would be like to have huge mounds of salt laced with arsenic sitting on the ground west of Albuquerque. Suppose a developer wanted to build a massive subdivision miles from the center of the city and worked a deal with Sandoval County to drill deep into the aquifer around the Rio Puerco and tap into the brackish water known to be there.

Suppose this developer started the project, used a process of desalinization, to clean the water, making promises to clean up the salt and arsenic waste, but then hit a snag in the housing market, abandoned the project, and left Albuquerque and Rio Rancho with its salt waste and poison blowing around in the wind and making its way into populated areas...

A Museum Experience in Farmington

I didn’t know Farmington had an art museum and decided to check it out. In fact, the city of 46,000 in the northwestern corner of our state does not have a museum dedicated exclusively to fine art. But its city museum just finished giving a three-month run to one of the best collections of painting, sculpture, photography, prints and relevant ephemera I have seen in New Mexico—or anywhere else. “An Adventure in the Arts,” a 73-piece collection of 20th Century masterworks on loan from the Guild Hall Museum in East Hampton, New York, opened on July 20th and closed on September 21st...

‘For in the end, hate could kill us all’

Twenty-seven years after the end of World War II, two families who had survived that conflict, one of them German Jews and the other German Nazis, fight a different kind of war on a street in Manhattan: the war of the delis. This is the core of a drama penned by a Sandia Park playwright and scheduled for a reading this weekend in Albuquerque.

The story could have been told as a comedy, however it is anything but; rather, it is an explosive tragedy in which old wounds bleed again onto 55th Street. That there is a beacon of hope, even potential salvation, at the end, does not dim the soul-destroying conflict between two families on the same street trying to sell sandwiches, salvage their self-respect and pay back for their history...

Meet the secret Republican infrastructure buying Albuquerque’s elections

What happens when you get caught hiding a Republican political-hack firm inside your non-partisan global public relations firm?   Albuquerque's DW Turner/Agenda Communications is about to find out.

Weeks ago we started asking questions about big money donor Jerry Ginsburg who gave $40,000 to start a special interest PAC attacking progressive City Councilor Isaac Benton.

That PAC reported using Ginsburg’s money to hire a shadowy California business to run the campaign. Yesterday, Benton’s campaign shed some light on the shadowy group supporting his Republican opponent...

Countdown to Health Reform II

With less than two weeks to go, a critical component of the ACA, the New Mexico Health Insurance Exchange, unveiled its new look and commitment to becoming part of the landscape of New Mexico starting October 1, 2013.  The new website was unveiled Tuesday morning and you can check it out at: BeWellNM.com. In addition, the Exchange is getting ready to initiate a campaign of radio and television advertisements touting its services shortly...

Rick Bayless

El Machete

A Sordid Tail of Campaign Abuse

Anyone who wants to witness the wonderful result of the Citizen’s United decision can just take a gander at what is going on in the District 2 City Council race where Isaac Benton faces Roxanna Meyers.

The city has never witnessed such a downright dirty, nasty attack campaign in a little old local race that usually features the kind of bland optimistic campaign statements about some general ways to promote the city and keep constituents happy...

What some see as border security, others see as border hysteria in Mexico

As Congress gets back in session the question of immigration reform will be front and center. The danger is that fanatics will dominate the debate and that the key question once again will be border security and an excessive hysteria about Mexico.

About every three weeks I cross the border into Mexico at Juárez, Santa Teresa just to the west, Palomas south of Columbus, N.M., or on foot at Nogales and Tijuana. What actually happens just across the border? Here are the kinds of people you would actually meet...

The benefits of owning a polling company (updated)

Last week, the Albuquerque Journal ran a story that stated "Most Albuquerque voters favor a city proposal to build more trails and other recreational access through the city's riverside bosque….The support is widespread across political and demographic groups, the survey found."

Apparently the hundreds of naysayers that showed up in vehement opposition to the mayor's Rio Grande Vision on September 4th were just the vocal riffraff who only represent a small minority of people who "oppose the city's proposal to increase access to the Rio Grande and the Bosque."

Or so the Journal would have you believe...