New Mexico Mercury

What We Savor: Food that Makes Memory

A definer of culture and health, food is also our common bond of ingenuity, comfort and hospitality. 

Poetry That Tells Us Who We Are

With Our Eyes Wide Open: Poems of the New American Century, edited by Douglas Valentine, is just out from Albuquerque’s own West End Press. This handsome volume should be on the bookshelf of every poetry lover and everyone concerned with our global struggles, how the US is perceived throughout the world, and how conscious poets here are setting the record straight. Rather than keep the book on your bookshelf, enter it often. You will find plenty to make you whole...

Another Way of Seeing: elin o’Hare slavick

The North Carolina artist explores "spaces of otherness" in her photographic and collage work. 

Enfranchisement: Right or Duty?

In June, 2013, the US Supreme Court struck down the most important aspect of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), thus paving the way for the flood of states that have since, either legislatively or judicially, opened to marriage equality. It was a pivotal moment for LGBTQ citizens and our allies. At the same time, in Shelby County vs. Holder, the Court gutted Section 4b of the Voting Rights Act, achieved through struggle and sacrifice at the height of the Civil Rights Movement in 1965. That decision was as disappointing as the other was joyous...

Friday Voyage: High Road to Taos

Margaret Randall takes the high road in a journey from Santa Fe to Taos, exploring the essence of New Mexico in the communities that dot the way.

Authority and the Art of Lying

A great dichotomy grips our social interaction. On the one hand we are taught—by our parents, in school, and through every cultural and consumerist message—that the world is divided into experts and the rest of us. Those leaders we vote into power by such dubious “democratic” process know what’s in our best interests. We are conditioned to ignore the fact that so many of them are bought and paid for by commercial or geopolitical interests.

I was motivated to write this rumination after listening to V.B. Price’s illuminating interview with Dan Hancock.  Hancock is a true expert. He knows a lot, but doesn’t pretend to have all the answers...

Friday Voyage: Lincoln County

Pride and shame in southern New Mexico. 

Farewell to Books?

A friend wrote the other day to tell me her novella had been published. Where can I get a copy? Here’s the link, she responded. And when I went to it I discovered her book was only available on Kindle. No hardcopy at all! This was my first experience with what I fear may become commonplace, a gradual replacement of physical books with their digital imposters, something like cloning gone wild.

Call me old-fashioned. I like to read real books, material objects with pages I can turn, a cover that draws me in, inked pages that in some cases even smell of the old bookmaking craft...

International Women’s Day 2014

Remembering and honoring those who tell our stories here and abroad.

Not Just Fiftieth

Sadly, in New Mexico we are used to hearing that we are fiftieth on the lists that measure poverty, health care, employment, prison overcrowding, or what percentage of our high school students graduate. From year to year we compete with Mississippi for the dishonor. Sometimes we are only second from last, sometimes at the very bottom.

One percent of New Mexicans enjoy 72.6% of our economic growth. That same 1% has shown an increase in income of 119.3%, with only ten other states showing a larger percentage of growth for their top tier. Overall real income growth in New Mexico, from 1979 to 2007, was only 14%, making it the seventh lowest among all fifty states...