Satire vs. Fundamentalism
On Wednesday, January 7, 2015 three armed men burst into the offices of Charlie Hebdo, the satirical paper that has published a number of extreme caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in recent years, some of them frankly pornographic. The men were Muslim fundamentalist extremists, out for revenge. They opened fire on an editorial meeting, killing the editor and several cartoonists. Before the horrific incident was over, 12 people were dead.
In the finely honed spirit of French satire, Charlie Hebdo has been poking what some would term religious fundamentalism’s defensive self-image since 2006...
Fool’s Gold: Bench Oppressed
I guarantee that I am WAY ahead of everyone else’s New Year’s resolutions. Check that box, notch that belt, color me successful—we’re just skidding into January, and I have already outgrown my naïve resolution to exercise at the gym.
I should mention that I already owned the killerest biceps of the entire English Department Class of 2007 at the University of New Mexico, so far as I could tell through the graduation gowns. And unlike my peers who went on to earn doctorates and professorships, I let neither my body nor my mind slip...
PRC should reject PNM’s fossil fuel-laden plan
Esteemed Public Regulations Commissioners,
I humbly request that you reject both PNM’s proposed power replacement plan for the San Juan Generating Station and the proposed rate case on economic, public health, and environmental grounds to make way for clean, renewable energies in the Land of Enchantment.
Spending a combined $576 million on gas, coal, nuclear energy purchases and generating capacity does not serve the best interests of the public. Similarly, a dramatic rate increase falling disproportionately on residential customers has no benefit for the vast majority of New Mexicans; contrarily, it bodes well for PNM’s investors (who received an 8.1 percent dividend increase on December 9th)...
Thank you
As the year comes to an end, the fate of immigration reform remains stuck in a bitter political impasse and faces an uncertain future. Nonetheless, there are many individuals and organizations here in New Mexico that are deeply committed to bridging the gap between the United States and Mexico. I would like to say a year-end thank you to three that I’ve worked with that are located in Santa Fe...
The Christmas Truce 100 Years Ago and Today
A century ago on the holiday’s eve, weeks of miserable rain gave way to the stillness of a freeze. Tiny ice crystals held the earth, and, with the sun long retired, warm breaths condensed into motion.
“English soldier, English soldier, a merry Christmas, a merry Christmas!” Frederick Heath, a British private, wrote in a letter home as he remembered hearing the greeting in his trench along the Western Front. “Come out, English soldier; come out here to us.” Heath’s 1914 letter continues describing what is known as the First World War’s Christmas Truce...
Fool’s Gold: The Unsinkable Friendship
So I hear that adult-aged people have a ton of trouble finding other adult-aged people for romantic and/or sexy times. While I sympathize with the plight of the lovelorn, I think the whole can’t-find-a-date-for-Friday-night problem is overblown. Unlikely people fall in love in movies all the time. But I never see movies where people fall in friendship...
The Best and the Worst Economic News
Due to the vicissitudes of our flailing media, the best and the worst economic news of the year, both released over the holidays, seem to have gone entirely unreported. The explanation is that the media are short staffed over the holidays. But so what? News is news.
First, the worst. It has been repeatedly reported that the state’s long term population growth has slowed sharply. This downturn is due to the fact that more people have been moving out of the state than into it. But it had also been repeatedly reported that due to natural population increase—the excess of births over deaths—the population was still growing. Now we know that comforting thought is a fiction...
Forever Gov Chooses Tourism Head to Run CYFD
Our once and forever governor has once and forever shown the brilliant executive smarts to tap State Dept. of Tourism head Monique Jacobson to run CYFD because Monique knows two things: how to market stuff, how to bleed more money from Nuevo Mexico to feed vampires from out of state who seem to be Monique’s and Susana’s best friends...
Trolls of Yuletide Carols
Last year, I journalismed an exposé on the Krampus. He’s this man-goat-demon who accompanies ol’ St. Nick and whips the naughty children. No one had ever heard of him, because mothers generally don’t approve of an eel-tongued creature scaring you so severely that you don’t sleep for a month. But once I unveiled him for the world, Krampus lost his chompers. Now, even everyday people like you can make Krampus cards for Christmas.
You’ll never hear me say this again, so take note: I was wrong. I should not have limelighted the Krampus. He is just a front to cover up an even nastier demon running among us...
When fiction meets life: “Last Night of Ballyhoo”
On Saturday night, I sat in an Albuquerque theater as actors discussed the hospital in which I was born, the street on which I lived, the store that my father managed—and it was all transpiring in my native city within eight months of my birth. As assimilated, non-practicing, non-believing Jews living in a city notorious for earlier incidents of antisemitism, my family could have been the subject of this play—except for the fact that unlike the play’s characters, my family never discussed Judaism. For two hours, the parallel tracks of fiction and life did indeed seem to meet, even if in the far distance.
Such was the moving but rather unnerving experience I had watching Last Night of Ballyhoo, an effective and affecting comedy being staged by Mother Road at the Tricklock Performance Laboratory...