New Mexico Mercury

What Happened to Albuquerque? Part 7: Solving our own problems

For Albuquerque to thrive in the near future, our leaders must shake off tired formulas and become trendsetters in local problem solving.

Provincial Matters, 7-22-2013

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

Insight New Mexico - Margaret Randall

V.B. Price talks with poet, author, photographer, feminist and social activist Margaret Randall. They're conversation covers the meaning of feminism, International Women's Day, the patriarchal power structure and the importance of listening to the next generation of feminists.

Trayvon Martin’s murder

A 17-year old African American, child of divorce, was walking to his father’s house after taking a half time break in a ballgame to get some candy at a local store.  He was wearing a hoody in a gated community in which his father had a house. He was unarmed. An armed man, a sort of self-styled neighborhood-watch vigilante, confronted the youngster out of the blue, with no plausible provocation and shoots him dead.

All the rest of what happened that night is a tangle of interpretations, justifications, obfuscations., and a lawyer’s bag of tricks...

Provincial Matters, 7-15-2013

In this inaugural installment, V.B. Price explores a collection of appreciations of Albuquerque and New Mexico.

Insight New Mexico - Chris Wilson

V.B. Price talks with historian, professor and award-winning author Chris Wilson about rethinking and re-branding cities in an effort to survive and what Albuquerque can glean from Santa Fe's historical re-branding success.

All American family

When the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus wrote 2600 years ago that “character is fate,” he set the conditions for centuries of intense introspection on the part of perhaps millions of people. What is character? How is it formed?  How does it direct one’s life? Are we born with it?  Does it grow in us through the direction of wise and loving parents and friends?

Zach Wahls, a sixth generation Iowan, told the Iowa Legislature a few years back when it was contemplating banning same-sex marriage, that “not once” in his l9 years had he “ever been confronted by an individual who realized independently that I was raised by a gay couple. And do you know why?” he asked the legislators.

“Because the sexual orientation of my parents has had zero effect on the content of my character.”...

Pearce, Fossil Fuels, and Climate Change

How culpable are the Republican Party and Congressman Steve Pearce for the environmental havoc being wreaked in New Mexico and throughout the world?

Insight New Mexico - David Correia

V.B. Price talks with scholar and author David Correia about his new book "Properties of Violence: Law and Land Grant Struggle in Northern New Mexico."

What’s Happened To Albuquerque?  Part 6: Selling ourselves short

Honestly rebranding an intellectual and artistic hub with a chip on its shoulder 300 years in the making.