New Mexico Mercury

Insight New Mexico - Pete Dinelli

V.B. Price talks with attorney and Albuquerque mayoral candidate Pete Dinelli about his vision for the city.

With All Our Sun and Wind, Why Isn’t New Mexico Number One?

The extent to which the fossil fuel industry’s powerful lobbies have New Mexico’s vision of its future in their thrall can best be seen in a head-shaking omission. New Mexico is not competing to be the solar and wind power capital of the world. And we all can guess why.

It’s not about the price of technologies, not about batteries, not about the “intermittency” of wind and solar sources. These matters are handily dismissed by money, incentives, legislative will, and executive vision. It’s all about who will lose money from transitioning to renewable energy and who won’t...

Provincial Matters, 9-30-2013

V.B. Price's weekly collection of appreciations and observations.

Insight New Mexico - Fred Harris

V.B. Price talks with former U.S. Senator and presidential candidate Fred Harris about immigration reform and "economic democracy."

Desalinization for Sprawl

I wonder what it would be like to have huge mounds of salt laced with arsenic sitting on the ground west of Albuquerque. Suppose a developer wanted to build a massive subdivision miles from the center of the city and worked a deal with Sandoval County to drill deep into the aquifer around the Rio Puerco and tap into the brackish water known to be there.

Suppose this developer started the project, used a process of desalinization, to clean the water, making promises to clean up the salt and arsenic waste, but then hit a snag in the housing market, abandoned the project, and left Albuquerque and Rio Rancho with its salt waste and poison blowing around in the wind and making its way into populated areas...

Provincial Matters, 9-23-2013

V.B. Price's weekly collection of appreciations and observations.

Insight New Mexico - Virginia Scharff

V.B. Price talks with historian, scholar and author Virginia Scharff about her book "Seeing Nature Through Gender."

Provincial Matters, 9-16-2013

V.B. Price's weekly collection of appreciations and observations.

Insight New Mexico - Kirk Gittings

V.B. Price talks with photographer and longtime collaborator Kirk Gittings about New Mexico as a place of sacred power and how that is experienced through its land and culture.

I Pray Nadine Is Not In Syria

When I think of Syria. I think of Nadine.

I don’t know her last name. I met her when I was seven on a playground in Santa Monica. She told me she came from Syria. She had a beautiful smile and loved kickball. And her eyes were of the deepest brown and looked at me with what I felt was supreme kindness. She was sensitive and shy, but graceful and full of laughter. And she befriended kids who seemed to be alone.  Obviously, I’ve never forgotten her.  How could l?

She could still be alive. I pray she’s not in her homeland...