New Mexico Mercury

Insight New Mexico - Joan Gibson

V.B. Price talks to philosopher and ethicist Joan Gibson about her new book Pause: How to Turn Tough Choices Into Strong Decisions

Public Square: Improving Child Well-Being

How do we improve New Mexico’s child well-being?  In this program, we bring together a family in need, advocates, and experts in early childhood for a candid, and often challenging, solution-based conversation.

Lack of Mental Health Treatment, Facilities Has Consequences for Families like Mine

Several years ago, my teenage son, out of the blue, began exhibiting signs of mental illness.  It was a cruel twist that most families don’t expect, but what followed the diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia, was the deepest cut of all. It was the Kafkaesque search for psychiatrists, and for treatment programs and facilities that would provide a sense of safety and a hope of recovery.

I called every psychiatrist in the phone book and couldn’t get him seen.  I called my friend Nancy Jo Archer, then director of Hogares. She got Neil an evaluation, a treatment plan, a community support worker, a therapist, and a psychiatrist all available through her agency. Both Neil and I felt hopeful. But then Neil lost his therapist when Hogares was taken over by an Arizona company in the summer of 2013...

Time for Something Else

In a world ravaged by corporate capitalist plunder, the fostering of community may be the most radical and accessible solution.

Assaulting Women

“He tried to fork me to death,” the trembling woman said as we stood in her living room in Adams County, Colorado. I was the Public Defender appointed to represent her husband in this wife beating case. My wife, Julie came with me to help with this interview.

Julie and I were puzzled as to what “fork me to death” meant until this woman rolled up her sleeve and showed us a series of tiny marks – four black and blue dots – where her husband had repeatedly jabbed her with a fork. Then she took Julie into her bedroom, removed her clothing and showed Julie that her whole body was completely covered with these marks. The husband had jabbed her hard enough to cause pain and leave the black and blue marks but not enough to break her skin...

America’s For-Profit Health Care Dilemma

America's poor health outcomes have more to do with systemic profit incentives than merely access to health insurance. 

Fool’s Gold: Cracking the Health Nut

I take pretty good care of my body. I floss before every dentist appointment, and I am so flexible that I even touched my toes once. So you should absolutely take me seriously when I tell you that I have no idea what, exactly, is the normal condition of my prostate.

No one ever told me that I have a prostate, and I completed four whole levels of sex education in school, plus a college semester in Europe and several rounds of the board game “Operation.” I used to think—and I am surely not alone here—that prostates were lumps of tissue, or possibly gremlins, that developed only inside old man bodies...

Retirement: Is it death deferred?

Is retirement an end or a beginning? We talk about retiring from, almost never retiring to. We talk about what we are leaving behind rather than where we are going.

We focus on what we no longer have to endure. We’ve spent our lives on the concerns of living: the job, the commute, the burdens, the worries, raising kids, paying the mortgage, keeping a boss or employees or colleagues happy, and supporting those who depend on us.

Then we retire. Now what?...

New Mexico Women: Statistics for Conversations and More

The New Mexico Community Foundation has created a new organization, NewMexicoWomen.org, which is a resource for anyone interested in the status of women and girls in our state.  Its mission is to "advance opportunities for women and girls statewide, so they can lead self-sufficient, healthy, and empowered lives."  In New Mexico, women comprise a majority of the population, 51%, and girls comprise 49% of the state’s under-eighteen population...

The Queen of Junk

Vivid memories of paths crossed and "junking" in this ode to friendship.