Let’s show our support for moms—not just on Mother’s Day, but every day!
On this Mother’s Day, the staff at New Mexico Voices for Children wanted to tip our hat to all of the moms out there and celebrate them for doing all they do. As a working new mom myself, I thought we might also talk about some of the unique challenges that working moms face.
Working mothers are now the primary or co-breadwinners for two-thirds of American families (see Figure 1). Among low-income families, 39 percent are headed by mothers, according to the Working Poor Families Project. Yet, just as there is a wage gap between men and women, there is a significant wage gap between mothers and fathers...
NM Twittersphere: ABQ City Council, Mother Jones, Gov. TV Ads
This is the first in an ongoing installment that takes a weekly look at how New Mexican's are utilizing Twitter to digest, comment on and reformat the news of the day. For those unfamiliar with Twitter, it is a social web application that allows users to connect and "follow" other users, giving the ability to post messages and view messages of the created network in real time. Each post is limited to 140 characters. The brevity of the format, its accessibility by smartphone, and its ability to reach large audiences immediately, has transformed the world of "breaking news"...
The James Boyds of Juárez
It’s Sunday morning and I’m driving through the desert east of Juárez, Mexico, only a few miles from the New Mexico border. Suddenly I see a scraggly line of some thirty or forty men and women coming towards me in the sandy pathway that parallels the two lane highway. These are mental patients in Visión en Acción, a private asylum founded by Pastor José Antonio Galván, an ex-addict who repented and has spent the last eighteen years caring for approximately one hundred of Juárez’s mentally ill. These are the James Boyds of this city that has suffered so much...
Time for Leadership and Action
Last week, while sitting at the Sunport, I picked up a copy of The Economist, and in the United States section, an article leapt off of the page that was much closer to home: “Breaking, and Bad,” a piece about Albuquerque’s struggles with our police force and our floundering economy. As I read the article, I hoped that other readers would believe that these struggles are part of a recent one-off phenomenon that we will move past, because I love this state, where I was born and raised, and am grateful for the opportunity to raise my own family here.
But reflecting on the story, I couldn’t help but recognize that many of our current issues have been with us for a long time...
The Machine
It is truly sad to see how the Albuquerque Journal has become part of the GOP machine. Today's editorial decrying the peaceful but noisy civil disobedience in the city council meeting Monday evening seems to forget the importance of such actions to this nation's history. Gee, remember the Tea Party? And all to protect the Mayor who was once again no where to be seen. And then the Journal puts in a snippet about how the adjourned meeting might have cost the city $200,000 in higher interest charges because some bonds were not purchased. How about the tens of millions of dollars that the city has paid out in lawsuits for the killing spree from APD?...
Get some air
Go outside. Get some air. This used to be something mothers routinely urged our children to do. Most adults who are able enjoy walking outside, enjoying nature and breathing in that clean crisp air we all need in order to survive. New Mexico, with its vast space, huge cobalt skies, and beautiful mountain trails, is an ideal place for this. Or was.
It’s not so easy to breathe fresh air today. Not anywhere. According to figures recently released by the World Health Organization (WHO), pollution killed seven million people worldwide in 2012...
Hualapai Canyon: A hard paradise
The preposterously vivid green-blue river flows wide and fast. Lush groves and gardens fill the canyon between red ferrous walls rising nearly vertically for thousands of feet. Two horses leisurely bathe and play in the river. Butterflies flit among purple aster, red penstemon, giant white cholla blossoms, orange globe mallow, purple lilac and yellow prickly pear blossoms, and large feathery yellow plants I can’t identify.
Life in paradise is not easy. The scenic beauty of Hualapai Canyon, part of the Grand Canyon, is about as close to paradise as you are likely to find in the United States...
Weekly Poem: City Life
Bent screws.
Yard bricks displaced.
Wooden fence posts splintered.
A late night car hopped the curb,
ramped up my neighbor's driveway
and took out the corner of our fence.
A short fence, anyone could step over it with almost no effort,
but it kept people out,
kept us safe from bums,
random drunks, and passers through
that call this part of the city home
too...
Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks designation would boost economy in southern NM
Recently I had the privilege of participating in a convening of business owners from the Taos area to celebrate the first anniversary of the Rio Grande del Norte National Monument in northern New Mexico. The consensus among these business owners was clear: just one year in and the Rio Grande del Norte National Monument has been good for local businesses.
As our community discusses the prospect of a new national Monument in the Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks region, I think it’s important to look at the data and lessons from our neighbors in the north...
Dispatches from the DOJ community meetings: Part 2
Editor's note: We received this dispatch from a person who wishes to remain anonymous. Their previous dispatches from the two earlier public meetings can be found here.
The so called "war zone" showed they know how to organize a meeting and keep order as the DOJ passed out numbers for people to wait in line to tell their stories in private with top DOJ officials who sat in another room. Women from the Peace and Justice Center - Maria Bautista & Dinah Vargas took the lead in keeping order. About a hundred people at the Cesar Chavez community center gathered to meet with the DOJ tonight. Compared to the meetings at Alamosa & Palo Duro Centers the crowd was patient and peaceful...