Muy calentito for Hanna!

As most of you know, I am muy calentito for Hanna Skandera. In her fervent desire to determine the Final Measure of education, the perfect test that would for all time determine whether a student is edumuhcated to New Mexico standards, Hanna has gone to near super-human lengths in discovering and tracking down the Great Exam written by the finger of God on adobe tablets that exist somewhere south of the seventh sphere.

Undesignated Secretary of New Mexico Ed., Hanna displays an exactitude and rigor I find positively thrilling.  There are no excuses in Hanna’s world. Never mind the truth that New Mexico kids are the poorest in our wonderful milk, Internet, and honey nation. Never mind the truth that the education system here spends more on low-income kids who need social services than in most other places that don’t have the problems we have here. Let’s not let truth get in the way of the mission.

“It is not OK,” Hanna growls, “to use poverty or any other excuse in the name of serving our kids and putting them first and delivering for them.”  Though I don’t quite detect the rhetorical twist she effects here, I am yet very excited with the fire of conviction that glows incandescent behind these precious and considered words. Hanna, you go, girl.

As for all you lackluster, slobbish NM kids, just because your parents, grandparents, siblings, and all your neighbors have no jobs, just because dad is revved up on oxycontin and Jack Daniels and passed out in the bathroom, just because there’s no food in the house, just because mom is all sauced up crawling down the driveway screaming and waving dad’s Vietnam pistol, just because the baby  got shot last night in a drive-by, all these damned silly excuses lead to only one conclusion. Get a life already. Take the Test and see if you are really a human being worthy of life here beneath the brutally honest blue New Mexico sky.




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James Burbank

James Burbank has written and published over 200 articles for regional and national publications such as Reuters International News Service, The World & I Magazine, National Catholic Reporter, Farmer’s Almanac, Los Angeles Herald Examiner, La Opinion, New Mexico Magazine, Albuquerque Journal, Albuquerque Tribune. He is author of Retirement New Mexico, the best selling book published by New Mexico Magazine Press, now in its third edition. He is also author of Vanishing Lobo: the Mexican Wolf in the Southwest, published by Johnson Books.

As a professional writing consultant, he has written and edited publications, video and radio scripts, annual reports, and investment information for a wide variety of corporate clients. A Lecturer II for the Department of English, Burbank has specialized in teaching technical writing and professional writing. His interests extend from composition and writing theory to environmental and nature writing. He has played a leadership role in developing and implementing the English Department’s teaching mentorship program.


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