Serving the High Plains
Serving the High Plains
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A little thunder and lightning did nothing to diminish Friday's gathering of Tucumcari High School graduates at the Tucumcari Convention Center to kick off the Rattler Reunion. Graduates came in from all over the U.S. The classes of 1988 and 1968 seemed to dominate the gathering as grads and family members socialized and enjoyed a hearty meal of beef, gravy, potatoes and salad catered by the Tucumcari Elks Club. Meanwhile, Tucumcari Middle School students patrolled the room with water and tea...
Leave it to Californians. In the state whose air carries a permanent brown stain of exhaust while millions of cars waste millions of hours standing still in traffic, their new solution to environmental contamination is to outlaw plastic drinking straws. These are the same Californians who won’t give up the “freedom” of having their cars at work. They pat themselves on the back for giving up the right to sip beverages from sturdy plastic tubes while their cars continue to pump ozone and oxides of nitrogen into the stale air. I started using...
A single rose in a vase marked the place where the mayor pro tem, Tucumcari District 4 Commissioner Robert Lumpkin, would have sat at Thursday's city commission meeting. Lumpkin passed away on July 17, and the commission spent some time to honor Lumpkin's memory at Thursday's meeting. Lumpkin's daughter Shannon Lumpkin addressed the meeting. Her father was "passionate about what he could do in the city. He was all about the people." She told of walking with Lumpkin at Sipapu Lodge as she...
On July 20, President Donald Trump sat down with New York Times Publisher Arthur Gregg Sulzberger. At Trump’s request, this meeting was “off the record.” Sulzberger is 37 years old. The president, at 72, is almost twice Sulzberger’s age. On Sunday, the one who is old enough to know better fired up the Twitter account — by which we get real-time impulses, not deliberations, from the world’s most powerful human — to break the “off-the-record” agreement. Trump tweeted he had met with Sulzberger to discuss “the vast amounts of Fake News being put...
Robert Lumpkin’s persistent Oklahoma drawl echoed in Tucumcari City Council chambers for a dozen years and in the halls of public service for many more. That voice has been silenced. Lumpkin died last week, succumbing to cancer. It wasn’t that long ago, in fact last fall, when I joined Lumpkin and others to help clean up the city’s new disc golf course, a project he championed for months before it became reality. He seemed healthy then, doing his share and more in the cleanup effort. And he was putting his time, effort and money into somet...
Without the challenge, it would not be fun. That's how Tucumcari's new city manager Britt Lusk feels about his new job of managing day-to-day operations of city government. Lusk has been on the job since June 1. "I'm excited," he said. "I see lots of challenges. The city has laid some good ground work and we need to keep up the momentum and figure out solutions." Immediate challenges, he said, include getting control of the city budget, making sure the city is a "good steward" in maintaining its...
The Tucumcari City Commission Thursday approved funding for the planning and design of improvements on Second Street from downtown Tucumcari to Historic Route 66. The commission approved $45,431 in funds, of which $11,358 will be in local tax funds, to be used in 2019 and 2020 to plan and design the resurfacing of Second Street from Main Street to Route 66, Ralph Lopez, a community development project manager, told the commission. The remaining $34,073 in the package will come from the New Mexico Department of Transportation. The project will...
On Thursday, Democrats found their Oliver North. North, we of a certain age will recall, was the U.S. Army colonel who apparently masterminded the Central Intelligence Agency’s Iran-Contra affair in the 1980s. He acted on behalf of the Republican Reagan administration as he sat at the controls of this sad affair in which proceeds of shady dealings with a hostile Iraq were used to finance the Contras, a rebel band trying to oust the Communist Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua. When it was all over, North faced down a Democratic majority in C...
Ranked at 46th among states in exports, New Mexico still has a stake in trade wars against friends and foes, which seems to be a goal of President Donald Trump. Trump still thinks global trade is a problem we need to solve 30 years after world-based commerce has become the norm. There are a lot of manufactured goods made in our state that could see sales affected by foreign tariffs, according to federal census and trade data on websites, but in eastern New Mexico, dairy and agriculture stand out. Dairy products are just behind tree nuts like...
The issue of who’s third in line to conduct a meeting became an issue before the Tucumcari City Commission Thursday. Mayor Ruth Ann Litchfield, in her duties as mayor, conducts commission meetings. In her absence, it becomes Mayor Pro Tem Robert Lumpkin’s duty. If neither could attend a meeting, Litchfield suggested that District 5 Commissioner Todd Duplantis be appointed to attend such meetings. However, District 1 Commissioner Ralph Moya objected, saying he had not been consulted on the idea. Moya suggested that in such cases, the rem...
OK. President Donald Trump gets another U.S. Supreme Court nominee. Guess what? He or she will be a conservative. The majorities vary between the U.S. House of Representative and the U.S. Senate, but they are Republican in both cases. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D- N.Y.) is saying we should put off an appointment until after the November election. Why? Because that's what they did to President Barack Obama when he tried to appoint a justice after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. Sorry, Chuck, it won't work. This time the president and majorities...
It would be useless to add my voice to the protests against the unconscionable separating of parents and children at the U.S. border in the name of cracking down on illegal immigration. With that sentence, of course, I have added a voice, but a more radical idea has been proposed by both conservative and liberal thinkers in recent months. They are proposing that we ease up on immigration enforcement. There are several reasons for this. Some are humanitarian. One is that currently, widening areas of Central American countries are ruled by...
A ban on some fireworks for 30 days received final approval Thursday from the Tucumcari City Commission. District 1 Commissioner Ralph Moya cast the lone “no” vote because, he said the ban came after many fireworks dealers had already received airborne fireworks for resale. The main reason for the ban, other commissioners said, was the continuation of severe drought conditions in the county, despite a few recent rainstorms. The ban is limited to missile-type rockets, helicopters, aerial spinners and stick-type rockets, and does not cover all...
Two Tucumcari Police officers who entered a burning house to assure occupants got to safety received "wreath of valor" awards from Police Chief David Lathrom Thursday during a Tucumcari City Commission meeting. Patrol Officer Reyes Gonzales and Corporal Stephanie Coon were the first to arrive at a house fire near Rankin Avenue and Mountain Road just after midnight on Feb. 22, Lathrom said. Gonzalez thought there were people inside the house, so he walked past flames on the porch to enter the...
I don’t know what to make of the Horowitz report, which President Donald Trump hoped would show that Hillary Clinton was a criminal and the FBI was biased, and therefore, his campaign did not collude with the Russians. (Anybody miss that non sequitur, I mean, besides the president?) The New York Times and Washington Post say the Horowitz report makes everybody look bad, but it shows that the FBI was not politically motivated in its investigations of Russia’s possible involvement with the Trump campaign. The report does nothing to discredit Rob...
California calls it a “jungle primary.” There, you don’t declare a party, you just come out and vote. So the law of the jungle applies. You get the most votes or the second-most, or you’re out. Party makes no difference. It makes the general election a runoff contest between the two top vote-getters in the primary, whether they’re Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians, or members of the Green Party, Peace and Freedom Party or no party at all. Independent voters aren’t sidelined for the California primaries, as they are in New Mexico. I t...
Review and changes may be in the works for the city’s nuisance ordinance and its enforcement after a Tucumcari City Commission discussion held Thursday as part of a special meeting. The ordinance requires cleanup and demolition of properties that pose health and safety hazards, imposing fines and even a “clean and lien” provision under which the city can take corrective action and place a lien against the property to cover its costs. The nuisance ordinance has been a source of friction since it was passed in July 2016, when newly elected Distr...
The Tucumcari City Commission at a special meeting Thursday postponed a discussion of limiting or banning the use of some airborne fireworks and heard a review of the city’s interim budget for fiscal 2019, which starts July 1 and ends June 30. The commissioners decided to delay discussion of any fireworks ban after City Manager Mark Martinez pointed out that the ban could only be in place for 30 days. A ban that began Thursday could only remain in effect until June 30, which would not affect fireworks use on July 4. Commissioners directed C...
Roseanne Barr and Samantha Bee both delivered nearly unforgivable insults last week... One resulted in cancellation of a hit TV series; the other, an apology that was deemed sufficient. Barr tweeted that Valerie Jarrett, a former aide to President Barack Obama, was what happened when “Muslim brotherhood and planet of the apes had a baby.” Jarrett, who has been relatively obscure of late, was born in Iran and was a fierce defender of Obama as an adviser. I don’t know what she did recently to get on Barr’s radar. Almost immediately, ABC, Roseann...
Tucumcari is entering the competition for the state’s sixth racetrack-casino license fully prepared to be a serious contender, Warren Frost, a principal of Coronado Partners LLC, told the Tucumcari City Commission Thursday. Frost said Coronado Partners has even found another car dealer to replace the late Don Chalmers, an Albuquerque auto dealer, to front much of the initial capital to construct a $75-million horse-racing and casino gambling complex in Tucumcari. Chalmers died of cancer in 2015. As currently proposed, Frost said, the racino w...
Quay County’s population dropped from 8,381 in 2016 to 8,306 in 2017, a total drop of 64 or about 0.9 percent, according to U.S. Census estimates released on May 24. Its county seat, Tucumcari, saw its population drop from 4,962 to 4,915, by 47 or nearly 1 percent, in the same period, the census estimates showed. Since 2010, Quay County has lost 8.1 percent of its population and Tucumcari’s population has declined 8.4 percent. The county’s 2010 population was 9,041, and the city’s was 6,363, according to the estimates. Also, according to the...
Debate has been raging since last year about whether the electric guitar is dying. As a musician with a long history of playing rock, this is a serious issue to me and, according to the Washington Post article that started the debate a year ago, it should matter to you. That article was cleverly headlined, “Why my guitar gently weeps — the slow, secret death of the six-string electric. And why you should care.” The writer, Geoff Edgers, is a national arts reporter for the Post who was wetting his first diapers when I was 20. That makes him 48 n...
Carrying on a tradition that goes back as far as anyone can remember, Tucumcari Elementary School third-grade through fifth-grade students teamed up and faced off Friday for the school's annual Track and Field Day at Tucumcari High's Rattler Stadium. The recognition consisted mainly of winners knowing they had won. The students competed in individual events that included the 100-yard dash, shot-put and long jump contests, said their physical education teacher Gary Hittson, who coordinated the...
For a graduation class of eight students, San Jon High School's Class of 2018 walked away with a big share of financial aid for higher education. At Friday evening's graduation ceremony, the biggest scholarship announced was a $12,000 "starter" scholarship from Eastern New Mexico University, which went to Brevin Stoner, the class valedictorian. Stoner plans to study biochemistry at ENMU, San Jon Schools Superintendent Colin Taylor, who acted as master of ceremonies, said to people attending...
“Heeeeeee-wack!” That was the sound of Playboy founder Hugh Hefner’s circular bed in rotation as described by Tom Wolfe, who died last week at the age of 88. Wolfe was one of the pioneers who in the 1960s combined fiction and journalism into a new form that was and still is called “the New Journalism.” He wore ostentatiously white suits, a style he called “neo-pretentious” and wrote like a 12-year-old super-genius, describing the contemporary world with all the energy, imagination and exclamation points an excited child can bring to a story. Co...