New Mexico Mercury

Ojo Caliente: Metamorphoses

1.
The summer has been shattering.
Too much pressure and heat
change the nature of stone.
For this, we walk a dry path
under the spiraled flight of two eagles
disappearing into blue.

2.
The lightness of letting go is good to sink into.
Golden and afloat, leaves drift, sonorous
in their descent.  We pass ancient villages,
small mounds along the stony path. Peaks
blue in the distance, shimmer under snow...

The stupendous week that was

If you are President Obama surveying the scene from the Oval Office, here is what you might have seen last week:

• A House of Representatives committee finally negotiating a bipartisan deal on immigration, and doing so at the 11th hour just before negotiations would have collapsed.
Although it differs substantially from the bill moving through the Senate, the deal goes a long way toward assuring that some kind of immigration reform will eventually emerge from the congressional sausage factory.

• Meanwhile, the Congressional Budget Office, the nonpartisan, authoritative judge of all things budgetary, saying the unexpected strength of the recovery has increased tax receipts and reduced expenditures to a major degree...

Big foot and the tea party

New Mexico paranormal investigator, journalist and filmmaker Tony Della Flora has heat-imaging evidence Big Foot has been hanging around in the Valles Caldera. Not many people know this, but Sasquatch is the Grand Poobah for New Mexico’s Tea Party and he’s really pissed off. It seems the IRS has been asking a lot of vague questions about the NM Tea Party re. their 501 (c) (4) status.

Big Foot and his Tea Party friends want to edumuhcate New Mexicans about their ideas that are anti-government, anti-tax, anti-Obama, anti-immigration, anti-econ. stimulus, and anti-16th and 17th amendment. New Mexico’s Tea party wants to audit every family in New Mexico for constitutionality and purity. That’s why they can’t understand why the IRS wants to audit them about their non-profit status.

Paolo Soleri Amphitheater—monument to a dream

A writer's name appears on the cover of his novel. A painter signs his canvas. A playwright is credited on the program. A star's name adorns a marquee. But what of an architect?

His creation obscures rather than announces him. He lives and works in the shadows of his buildings, which are named for their location, function or owner, not their creator.

However, there are two famous exceptions: the Eiffel Tower in Paris and the Paolo Soleri Amphitheater in Santa Fe...

UNM’s Honors College: Bigger isn’t better

In a world of future shock, where nothing seems stable and change often happens for no rhyme or reason, institutions with continuity and humane values are worth preserving, even as they evolve.

The crucial thing to avoid is ruining a great and on-going achievement while trying to make it bigger and better.

The University of New Mexico’s new Honors College has morphed this year from the Honors Program, which is one of the gems of the American Honors movement. It’s regularly ranked as one of the top three programs in the nation...

Dan Foley for Gov.

Former New Mexico state rep. Dan Foley has been getting a lot of ink lately. He’s the tall, handsome guy who has appeared every week for just about forever as a conservative policy wonk on Gene Grant’s KNME TV show, New Mexico in Focus. Because of his superior wisdom and insight, Dan Foley consistently hits the nail on the head, so I always prick up my ears when Big Dan lets another brilliant and poignant pearl of wisdom fall from his lips about the insider maneuvering in New Mexico’s amazingly great state legislature...

Weekly Poetry: Officer Smith

What I wish I would have said to the soldier this morning as we stared each other down for a three second eternity in the *Smith’s parking lot (AKA “Officer Smith” poem)

I wonder
if this is what it feels like
standing on the other end
of your rifle
or are your eyes always that big
and soft
would you take offense?
if I said
that you are the only part
of that uniform
that makes me proud to be an American...

Salinas Pueblo Missions: A Lesson in Resistance

Margaret Randall explores the architectural remnants of imposed culture.

Believing in human potential - An interview with Ian Tregillis

Ian Tregillis represents two sides of New Mexico’s collective brainpower: the sciences and the arts. By day, he works at Los Alamos National Laboratory. By night—and on weekends and days off—he writes sharp trope-busting fiction. The ink is still cooling on the final volume of his Milkweed Triptych, Necessary Evil.

Is the series science fiction, or is it fantasy? Ian blends the two genres as artfully as he does physics and creativity. Through the expanded parameters of these genres, the trilogy pokes and prods at the very human issues and choices that face us today. The writing is far smarter than the dust jacket would have you believe, and the entire series bolsters New Mexico’s literary cred.

Courage in Mora County

If you knew that fallible human beings were going to drill for oil or gas through your precious groundwater would you feel confident about drinking and washing with that water? Not if you valued your health.

Of course you can’t see what actually happens when corporate persons out for profit pollute your ground water.  But it doesn’t take much imagination to suppose pollution will occur many times, if not most times, when drilling rigs and all their gear and goop go at it...