Columns

By Rick Kraft

“There is an eagle in me that wants to soar, and there is a hippopotamus in me that wants to wallow in the mud.” Words of wisdom by Carl Sandburg. With both an eagle and a hippo inside you, you will decide if you will soar or wallow in 2015.

Life is cyclical. It follows nature’s schedule. Because it takes the earth 365 days for it to circle the sun one time, our lives are measured in years. Because it takes 24 hours for our planet to rotate once, our days consist of one set of 24 hours.

My family of five siblings, two parents and a bachelor uncle lived in a tiny house on Railroad Avenue: eight of us in a house with two bedrooms and one bathroom. Night-time required a degree in logistics, as the living room needed to remain pristine and was not for sleeping. Severino and I rolled out a foldaway bed at night and wheeled it into the kitchen-laundry room combo in which Tio Juan also slept.

By Rick Kraft

Do you bring about positive change in the life you live? When you go to bed at night, is the world a better place than it was when you woke up because of some action or actions you took during the day?

Do you have the ability to take a negative thrown at you and respond with a positive? Are you able to bring about positive change to those around you without yourself being consumed?

Maybe you are a catalyst. Maybe you are a catalyst for change.

When was the last time someone from another state failed to realize that we New Mexicans also live in a state? No doubt at least once you’ve been asked what the rate of exchange is for pesos and real dollars, or whether one needs a passport to enter the borders of this untamed land.