New Mexico Mercury

Yucatán Journey, Part II: Where poison and antidote are seldom far apart

This is the second and final column about a Yucatán journey. Read Part 1 here.

We traveled around Yucatán exclusively by public bus, which does have the advantage of giving you lots of idle time to study the people and countryside. Everybody has their own opinions on when and where the buses run, so you have to be resigned to long waits and occasional dead ends. Even though the distances in Yucatán are modest by U.S. standards, it takes a day or two to get just about anywhere by bus...

Susana Whiffed on Behavioral Health

Two years after blowing New Mexico’s community behavioral health system to smithereens and bringing in companies from Arizona to replace it, spending $27 million in the process, the topic of behavioral health drew nary a mention from our Governor in her State of the State speech.

Nor did any of the press releases that accompanied her proposed budget for next year mention the topic.  It is not the subject of any legislative proposals sent down from the Fourth Floor.  She has no position on Albuquerque and Bernalillo County’s efforts to address the needs of the mentally ill and addicted populations, which include requests for additional taxes here and for increased State appropriations for services...

McMartinez Wants to Slash McDrug Court Money

The rumor is spreading, but I don’t believe a word of it.   The McGovernor’s trusted McAdvisor, Jay McCleskey runs the McMartinez Administration from an opulent underground chamber ‘neath the McRound McHouse. Perhaps Jay hisself is responsible for the latest McIdea to come from McSusana: Let’s slash funding for New McMexico’s Drug Courts!

We can save beaucoup McBucks.  And we can help at least a hundred deadbeat human garbage addicts back into the criminal justice system where they belong...

Fool’s Gold: Tipping Point

Welcome to the Fool’s Gold Advice Column for Smarties. It’s just like “Dear Abby,” only with deeper expletives.

This week, our topic is: TIPPING.

Tipping is the act of giving money to the waitstaff at a restaurant so that their hornswaggling bosses don’t have to. Tipping perplexes many otherwise intelligent diners, possibly because it involves calculating percentages on a full stomach. So how can you know, quickly and reliably, how much to tip your server?

Answer: Generously, unless you’re a complete chumbucket.

Well… that’s that. It turns out that tipping is not as difficult as scurvy bilge rats make it out to be. So let’s go on to talk about something else that annoys me....

Weaponizing Children

It has been done before—weaponizing children. Of course in the US we aren’t talking about explosive belts but about the use of children to undermine public education and further political ambition. The term “social conservative” is a case of contradiction—what is being conserved has not to do with society at large. What is being conserved and expanded is wealth for a relative few while the remainder of society is being disenfranchised and impoverished—slowly perhaps but inexorably. And the impoverishment goes beyond money as it destroys dignity and self-respect. Taking over public education is an instrument of impoverishment, a weapon directed against children...

Goodbye, Tony

Albuquerque, New Mexico, the world of justice, and poetry lost E. A. “Tony” Mares just after noon on January 30, 2015. Tony was gentle and kind but tough and righteous when the situation called for those qualities. With deep roots in this land and its people, his scholarship extended to Spain and Mexico in search of early events and figures of relevance; and showed up in his prolific poetry, articles, and in the memories of generations of grateful students...

We’re Number One!

The affluent and prosperous First World United States where everybody regardless of color or creed can get stinking rich proudly records more kids needing food assistance than any other civilized country except… Romania.

New Mexico, since we’re by most measures second poorest state in the U.S., does the United States proud. We here in NM in every way equal Romania. We are tied for number one! New Mexico and Romania have more starving children than anyplace where there’s a Walmart, except Romania doesn’t have a marketing tzar to head its skeletal child welfare services. We do!...

Fool’s Gold: A Love-Hat Relationship

I recently treated The Darling Fiancée to a staging of Chicago, the classic and ever-popular musical. The evening’s performance had everything a girl wants: friendship, love, danger, well-coordinated outfits, a rousing finale.

Oh, and Chicago was pretty good, too.

A gentleman never discloses the details. But mere gentlemen don’t pull off date nights like I do—so I am spilling. Hear ye, all people (gentle or otherwise) interested in wooing a woman, this is my recipe for how to roll...

Susana’s Trojan Horse

Here we go again, more of the relentless pursuit of public education, public school teachers, and the future of New Mexico’s children. The Governor’s empty meme about ending social promotion is intended to appeal to an audience that knows nothing about teaching and learning. Holding kids back is not educating them—it is humiliating them and nothing more.  Public humiliation of children is not and never was, a proper or true pedagogical method...

Yucatán Journey, Part I: The most beautiful beach in the world

On a warm, bright morning, with high white clouds scudding over the dense tropical forest, four Frenchmen, four Germans, a Dutch couple, an American couple and three Mayas, jabbering in half a dozen languages, including Spanish and Yucatec, puttered slowly down a canal dug 1,500 years ago by residents of the Mayan city of Muyil.

For centuries their descendants stubbornly fought off the Spanish and Mexican governments with the result that the canal is still there and so are the Maya, as well as the magnificent ruins of their old city. Soaring above the jungle panoply, it is a victory over time and endless tribulations...