New Mexico Mercury

A spoonful of cinnamon: Poetry is better in doses

When V.B. Price asked me to curate the poetry section of his online venture called the New Mexico Mercury, I told him I thought the way poetry was being delivered actually worked against people enjoying it.  I thought that having too many poems at one time only catered to the audience that loved poetry.   What about the audience that might be interested in poetry or the audience that didn’t “understand” poetry?  So I argued that we too often give people who might be a little wary of poetry too big of a dose...

Governor to remodel roundhouse

Excited by all the great response to the gov.’s $100,000 taxpayer-funded remodel of the state mansion kitchen, Susana Martinez has decided to turn the Roundhouse into the Legislative Kitchen.

“There’s nothing like food to draw people together,” Martinez said. The first gentleman also wants to come down from the gov’s office to the floor of the Roundhouse in his jammies and slippers to have a fresh bowl of popcorn any time he wants without having to go all the way back to the mansion for goodies...

A constitutional crisis

Suffering through this epic drought with the grim prospect of getting a mere tenth of its normal water allocation, members of the board of the Carlsbad Irrigation District voted unanimously last week to make a “priority” call on the Pecos River.

This may seem like an obscure event in an obscure region of what many consider the Nation’s most obscure and foreign state. But it is a drastic measure...

IAN MCLEOD – 1935 to 2013

A message came this morning that Ian McLeod, a beloved friend, valued member of our extended family, and long time transplant New Mexican, died of heart failure, on April 5, in Aberystwyth, Wales.

Ian lived his life by his own standards. He was both frugal and philanthropic, an investor and a saver and a risk taker. He was a cosmopolitan traveler and a deeply rooted person, a violinist and a maker of violins, a stone in the shoe of mindless bureaucrats and a person of self-amused and elegant eccentricities...

Elegy for Johnny Tapia

Johnny,
did you die the way you wanted to?

Did you want the mystery
to cloud your demise?
Everybody arguing
as to what finally killed you.

It was the pisto.
Nah the method.
The coca.
Or was it the pills the doctor
gave you to kill the phantoms
of chingasos,
la vida loca?

Syncretism for the twenty-first century: Some notes from Mexico

The word syncretism generally describes a blending of two disparate, often antagonistic, elements. One dominates, but sensitive observation easily unearths the other. The conquered culture remains, often in powerful ways.

Obama’s political framing of immigration reform lacks depth

President Obama’s understanding of immigration and border policy is fundamentally political. For Obama, immigration reform makes good sense politically.  As such, the president’s vision of immigration reform is framed by political platitudes and slogans – such as the stress on combatting transnational crime, deporting and excluding “criminal aliens,” and fortifying border security.

College ballin’

UNM students got a crash course in American economics and priorities on Tuesday when regents approved a 13.2 percent increase in tuition for students taking under 15 credit hours.  The hike included a nearly $1 million increased student subsidy to athletics.  That equals $165 per student and $4 million total.  In the past two years at UNM, student fees for athletics have doubled.  If UNM is going to strong arm the student body into doling out welfare for a system where $2 million a year isn’t enough money to retain a coach, students should be demanding added security for their college athlete peers...

Fairness in America’s poorest state

When you think about the governor signing into law tax breaks for incoming corporations and vetoing a dollar hike in the minimum wage, and add to that the more than 13 % tuition hike passed by the UNM Regents yesterday, you get the feeling that reality has slipped a cog in our poor state, the poorest per capita in the nation according to Census Bureau data released in January...

Weekly Poem: Preface

Nineteen-thirty-six: I hurried as always
but was late. Eight centuries
or ten thousand years,
my small story fixed to my back.
Food came weighed and wrapped,
shelter engorged, surplus.
My own, my own, my own
was a mantra I could sing
in any season.
I could be who I was
and also anyone else...