Weekly Poetry: The Mother and The Daughter
I haven’t written a poem in your likeness for some time.
I tried. I took the broom and beat the cobwebs.
Lit one hissing cigarette after hissing cigarette,
Let a dish fall to the floor, a porcelain scream.
I let the quiet shattering happen but could not eek it out.
Then I thought of this. You the young mother,
a knotted belt at your waist, slim and attractive
in photos. Your teeth gleaming and straight
like a string of pearls...
Anti-women petition on the city ballot
It looks likely that a petition to ban abortions in Albuquerque after 20 weeks will make it on to the ballot this October in the municipal elections.
Chances are this blatantly sexist, sinister, anti-woman initiative will make this city election one of the most hotly contested since the l970s.
Any candidate who thinks they can skirt reality and not take sides on this matter should be banished from politics and never heard from again...
My journey through racism
Race and racism are back on the national agenda due to the furor over the killing of the black Florida teenager Trayvon Martin, the acquittal of his killer, the more than 100 demonstrations across the United States recently and President Obama's dramatic declaration that he could have been Trayvon Martin 35 years ago.
These emotional events, producing a roller-coaster of passions, have reopened the temporarily suppressed debate over what it means to be white or black in America.
Against this background, there is, I believe, new relevance to an essay I wrote in 2008 after Obama's election as President, an essay that is a chapter in my anthology published last year, A Reporter's World: Passions, Places and People...
Behavioral health drama reeks of ALEC (updated)
Does this formula sound familiar: A motley crew of conservative legislators, libertarian philosophers and free-market carnival barkers label a public sector entity as inefficient, wasteful, fraudulent, full of ne’er do wells living high on the hog. An orchestrated crisis ensues. Inexplicably, a host of typically for-profit corporations are waiting in the wings with a solution, salivating for the key to those hefty public coffers...
Death comes to The Range
Every journalist in the state must see the death of their profession lurking over their shoulder. The demise of the Raton Range because of falling revenues, population, and readership was just a matter of time. Small newspapers are going fast around the country. Unless they are big enough to be bought by rightwing corporations headed by the likes of the Koch brothers, then there are no lifelines for them.
The Albuquerque Journal's ever diminishing content and ever increasing right-wing view of the world cannot be offset by doing their editorial cartoons in color...
Sunland Park’s Missing Minutes
The New Mexico Attorney General’s Office (AG) has reaffirmed its dismissal of a citizen complaint against a former administration of the border city of Sunland Park, New Mexico. Filed by resident Ken Giove, the complaint raised more questions about the extent of previous, alleged electoral hanky panky as well as the mystery of important government documents missing from Sunland Park City Hall.
Giove’s complaint centered around the January 2011 passage of a City Council ordinance that lowered the salaries of the mayor and city councilors to $1.00 per month, an action which was subsequently reversed with the City Council’s approval of a February 2012 ordinance restoring the earlier salary levels retroactive to August 2011...
Weekly Poem: Nature is Inevitable
Don’t think about what’s inevitable, give it corn.
Give it a pint of cow dung, give it your underwear.
Not everything that’s inevitable is
You think the world’s coming to an end, give it the finger.
After all you’re not killing anyone, you’re not executing.
You’re just commenting. You have a right to choose what you say.
I’ve come back from the costume of my past & I’m inevitable.
And I’m not causing a little girl with flaming arm crying for help
to face the future you’ve given her: the power-mongers who
stick money up their ass & fart gas, are —
causing this war against the spirit, this war against the Earth
this war against the god of my parents...
Local ‘Bastards’ infiltrate film scene
With a name like the Burque Bastards, one has to ask not only what are they all about, but should I trust anyone who is a self-proclaimed bastard?
I might be biased, but the answer is yes, these are the bastards you’re looking for.
In the spring of 2012, Diego Gomez and I began meeting after class to discuss our recent screenplays over a couple beers. This quickly became our favorite day of the week. We loved having an avenue to share our love of writing. After a few meet-ups, our number began growing steadily. Soon we were large enough to do table reads (each person reads a different character’s lines) for each script and provide critical feedback to the writer. This was how the Bastards were born...
The Great Shrinksters: Another wondrous lesson in conservative economics
Welcome to another lesson in conservative economics. You will recall a few months ago we talked about how the Sequester would become the great centerpiece of our inspiring philosophy of smaller government and ever more money for good old us.
As in life, so it is in economics. You can’t change the established order. You can’t mess with the Nature of Things, which has been determined by God.
We would much rather cut social programs that are so darn wasteful and that support all the parasites we have to drag around as dead-weight meat...
Outrage follows migrant deaths in Arizona
The deaths of three young men in the Arizona desert last month have prompted Mexican non-governmental organizations to renew demands for actions and changes from the Mexican and U.S. governments. In a statement signed by scores of human rights, migrant, labor, civic, and faith-based organizations, the groups demanded meaningful policy shifts at a time when current U.S. legislative proposals for tighter security amount to a “virtual state of war on the border"...