New Mexico Mercury

The most important book of the 20th century

Well, we could argue over a couple of other non-fiction books, but Silent Spring is somewhere at the top.

The sedge is wither’d from the lake,

And no birds sing.

John Keats’ couplet starts this book of revelation by Rachel Carson, published in 1962; my 1994 edition has an introduction written by Vice President Al Gore. The VP says it’s a humbling experience to write about this book, because the book is undeniable proof that the power of an idea can be far greater than the power of politicians...

Television and the Ghost of Washington Irving

Fifty-three years ago FCC chairman Newton Minow made a speech to the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) in which he called television a “vast wasteland” accusing the industry of an endless procession of game shows, formula comedies, mayhem, violence, sadism, murder, private eyes, and more violence. And endless commercials. Although Minow’s speech was rated one of twenty-five “Speeches That Changed the World,” today it doesn’t seem that the electronic landscape has changed that much. More networks, more profits, same drivel...

Marx, Freud and Mitt Romney: What Globalization Means

Taxation Without Representation!      

That was the clarion call the American colonists employed to rouse their fellows against the British in 1776. The American Colonies were important for the nascent capitalist economy in England, because they represented not only a growing market for their goods (tea was only one of many products exported to America), but also a new source of natural resources to bring back to the homeland and turn into goods to be sold back to the colonists. The British had already monopolized tea imports from China and were reaping fortunes selling it, not only in their own country but to the American colonists as well.

My point is that capitalism has always been in search of new, expanding markets...

Searching for today’s “Salt of the Earth”

We all know that Hollywood has made a number of films in New Mexico. But one film that gained the kind of notoriety that chambers of commerce don’t appreciate, was Salt of the Earth, an independent film produced by Paul Jarrico and directed by Herbert Biberman, released sixty years ago on March 14, 1954.

The film was shot in Bayard and Silver City and the script depicts an actual strike against the Empire Zinc Mine in Grant County in 1950. Many miners were recruited to play themselves in the film...

Through Their Eyes: Enchanted Photographers

The majestic vistas and cultural richness of New Mexico has drawn photopraphers since the inception of the medium. Their legacy of technique and perspective invite ongoing exploration. 

The Art of Clifford Berryman Or, Why Do Things Remain the Same?

George Santayana famously wrote that those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

Examples of this axiom can be found everywhere in our nation’s history. Sometimes, however, it’s necessary to look to our artists to reveal them to us.

Clifford Berryman was a political cartoonist who worked for the Washington Post during the start of the last century. He worked until his death in 1949. He was the man who in 1902 first associated President Theodore Roosevelt with a small bear cub, one he refused to shoot, thus earning him the nickname “Teddy”—the cartoon, “Drawing the Line in Mississippi” inspired New York store owner Morris Michtom to create a new toy and call it the Teddy Bear...

Word War

Let’s face it, I’m at war with words. Every battle is important. Some people crack under the strain, like soldiers at the front. Fine print, Orwellian transpositions, heroic hyperbole of all sorts; these are a few of the tactics words use against us.

I have no respect for words, they’re spineless; they lie to us all the time. Like prostitutes, they don’t care who uses them. They’re duplicitous, and they work against our happiness—but what else do we have? What can we do? We’re besieged by words, assaulted, that’s why a writer’s task is to defend us, to hold words at bay...

A look back at ‘The Time of the Assassins: A Study of Rimbaud’ by Henry Miller

Published at a time when many artists, if not world citizens, were trying to recover a little poetry in their war-ravaged lives, Henry Miller came out with this book about Arthur Rimbaud, the enigmatic French Symbolist poet who died in 1891 at thirty-seven. As a figure in culture, this poet and adventurer represented Henry’s life-long obsession, a book about the man who haunted him—in his psychic life and his work—and taunted him to see through the blunders of culture: to search his insides and live up to it—if he had the courage. This long essay on Rimbaud explores the depths of the great poet’s truncated life, and his even more stunted life in literature, and it’s clear Henry was always in awe of Arthur...

Driving on Alternating Current

I have been reading about the new Tesla Model S electric car, and its $62,400 price tag and I was drawn back to 1931 when Nikola Tesla, the man whose name adorns their car, took the gasoline engine out of a Pierce-Arrow and replaced it with an 80-horsepower alternating current (A.C.) air-cooled motor with no obvious external source of power.

At a local radio shop he bought twelve vacuum tubes, some wires and assorted resistors, and assembled them in a circuit box 24-inches long, 12-inches wide and 6-inches high, with a pair of 3-inch rods sticking out. Getting into the car with the circuit box in the front seat beside him, he pushed the rods in, and announced, “We now have power,” and proceeded to test drive the car for a week, often at speeds of up to 90 mph...

The Work of Edward Abbey—Prophet of the West

Edward Abbey has been dead for 25 years. Larry McMurty called Abbey our ‘Thoreau of the West’. Abbey, who published seven novels and a score of essays and confessions and travel books all dealing with the American West, was known for his uncompromising point-of-view, his insights, his extrapolations, that cover the whole race, and hold a special resonance for citizens of this desert country.

And, of course, this ongoing work we call fledging democracy...