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Columns

  • Work of Art: Who’s being sensitive?

    It’s happened twice in less than a week: This old man has found himself getting choked up. The older I get, the easier it is to become dewy-eyed.

    Let me explain:

    I delivered a brief eulogy for my father-in-law, Stanley Coppock, in Springer last Thursday. Why me? Why not one of Stanley’s four daughters? Well, to a (wo)man, they emphasized they’d be unable to carry it out — too emotional.

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  • Publisher's Note: Reasons to believe

    “Struck me kinda funny, seemed kind of funny sir to me,
    How at the end of every hard earned day people find some reason to believe.”
    — From the song “Reason to Believe” by Bruce Springsteen

    If you’re starting to think that the world is going to hell in a hand basket, I suggest you pick up last week’s Time magazine. There’s a series of articles in there that may lift your spirits considerably.

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  • Dulcey Amargo: The issue of social promotion

    We’re all familiar with the phrase, “Biting off more than we can chew.” For the past few weeks I’ve been mulling over that concept, but finally decided to share my viewpoint on the issue prompted by Gov. Susana Martinez and the effort to end social promotion.

    First, let me say that I’m not omniscient; then let me say that a good portion of my career, from 1968 to 2010, was focused upon literacy education as well as developmental education.

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  • Nuestra Historia - The Americanization of Old Town Plaza, Part 2

    This is the second of two articles which I invited from resident scholar and historian Marcus C. Gottschalk, who has done extensive primary research concerning the development of the Old Town Plaza. As noted in our previous entry, in 2001 Marcus published Pioneer Merchants of the Old Town Plaza, and we appreciate his contribution to this column.

    By Marcus C. Gottschalk
    Contributor

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  • Orgullo del Norte - ‘Tiny’ Martinez and the Brown Berets

    “There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.”
    — Elie Wiesel

    Desperate people have desperate ways. Many groups of color were organized during the 1960s and 70s. The Black Panthers, AIM (American Indian Movement), and the Brown Berets (Chicanos) were the three largest.

    Their common cause had to do with Civil Rights and poverty.

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  • Work of Art: Enough wire to gift-wrap Texas

    “There sure wuzzn’t a shortage of baling wire on the farm where you grew up, Trujillo.”
    There are many things one can say about this, not the least of which is that, for me, there was no farm to grow up on. I’m a Las Vegas city slicker.

    Baling wire? Oh, you mean that two-story pile behind the barn? Those tons of metal wrought by decades of having hay loaded on to the loft in the barn?

    Let me explain:

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  • Publisher's Note: Why the population drop?

    We’re in God’s country. Beautiful land, good people, rich in culture and diversity, with a live-and-let-live approach to getting along.

    So why are more people leaving than coming in?

    Recently released U.S. Census data show that Las Vegas and San Miguel County had a net loss of people last decade. The city lost 812 and the county 733. Las Vegas lost 5.6 percent of its population while San Miguel County took a 2.5 percent hit.

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  • Another Perspective: Dispatch from Japan

    I can’t think about the future, I can only concentrate on each second. I don’t know what is going to happen.

    I’m on alert for the next warning of an earthquake, tsunami, and explosion. I’m worried about the situation with the nuclear plants. A lot of people are panicking and stocking up on basic necessities. There are a lot of empty shelves at the stores.

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  • Nuestra Historia - The Americanization of the Old Town Plaza

    Resident scholar and historian Marcus C. Gottschalk has done painstaking and meticulous research into the original layout and early development of the Old Town Plaza. In 2001, he first published Pioneer Merchants of the Las Vegas Plaza, a work that includes the development of the Plaza from its settlement through the territorial period.

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  • Orgullo del Norte - ‘El Tigre,’ Reies Lopez Tijerina

    “Tijerina was truly the right person, in the right place, at the right time.”
    — Maurilio Vigil, historian

    As a young boy I recall a monument being erected at Apodaca Park in Las Cruces. It was a sculpture representing Native Americans. This event stuck with me because of a comment my father made as we drove by.

    “First they commit genocide on them, and then they build monuments in memory of them,” he said.

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