Serving the High Plains
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A Wall Street Journal story over the weekend headlined “Rural America is the New Inner City” concludes that rural America, not central cities, is now the focus of poverty and despair. In short, America’s breadbasket is now also its basket case. Quay County is a textbook example, as are surrounding counties. I learned this recently by summarizing statistics for the East Central New Mexico Stronger Economies Together initiative that involves Quay, Guadalupe, De Baca and Torrance counties. We’re getting help from U.S. Department of Agricul...
Making a dream come true often requires drudgery. On Monday, Logan residents Glenn Lubera, his son, Jared, and friend Justin Osborne spent the morning offloading hundreds of boxes from a 40-foot container propped up on the loading dock of Tucumcari's old broom factory on the northeast side of town. The boxes held enough handles and heads for brooms and shovels to produce the first 2,700 units of Lubera's inventions, the 3D Shovel and 3D Broom. Lubera wants to get them assembled and distributed...
Tara Swart, a brain scientist with business savvy, has officially told journalists they don’t treat themselves right. Further, she says, because of their self-neglect, journalists score lower than average in “executive functions,” that include “abilities to regulate their emotions, suppress biases, solve complex problems, switch between tasks, and think creatively and flexibly,” according to the Business Insider, an online business publication. Swart is a senior lecturer in the Sloan management school’s executive education division at the Mass...
Because mosquitoes have built-in chemical analysis labs and a local scientist has been working in fuel cell technology, Quay County can now play a role in helping South Pacific islanders combat the Zika virus and other mosquito-borne infections. Bob Hockaday, a local independent Tucumcari scientist, has invented a device called a BugZing that can be worn like a wristwatch and puts out a scent that mosquitoes find repulsive, but the wearer cannot detect. While Hockaday's device is not yet...
While anti-borehole activists and the Quay County Commission agreed Monday they all want to stop the proposed drilling of a three-mile-deep borehole near Nara Visa, they could not agree on how to do it. The commission voted to proceed with the plan that Warren Frost, the county attorney, proposed in which the county would hire a consulting firm to help oppose the project in National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA) proceedings, which may begin within the next several months. Anti-borehole...
President Donald Trump signed an order Thursday that effectively overturns a law prohibiting tax-exempt organizations from political activities for or against individual political candidates. The chief beneficiaries of this order are conservative Christian churches whose leaders have been clamoring to repeal the tax-code measure for decades. They say this measure violates their First Amendment religious rights. I beg to differ. It is Trump’s ruling that effectively restricts religious freedom to all but those religious conservatives who apparen...
The Tucumcari City Commission added its voice to the rising chorus of opposition to a proposed borehole field test project at their April 25 meeting. In a unanimous vote, commissioners voted to oppose the borehole project and, whether or not the borehole project would bring nuclear waste to Quay County, any plan that would result in nuclear waste being stored in the county. The U.S. Department of Energy has been looking at the Nara Visa area to test boreholes as potential storage for smaller forms of nuclear waste, promising local residents...
I think I said I wasn't going to write about the Nara Visa borehole project again, but I'm going to anyway. The lesson from the borehole project's sponsor has been how to shoot yourself in the foot. The self-inflicted wound belongs to the U.S. Department of Energy, although it probably won't feel the effect because it's a thousand-legged creature that thinks it can get along fine with serious damage to one of its feet. The DOE has yet to make an appearance or respond to an inquiry from any of the local folks who need a serious, unequivocal...
Some say you should work in an area that you are passionate about. Others say that’s a lot of landfill fodder. When I was a teacher, I used to encourage students to pursue passions first. They were young enough to make changes if their passion went south. Even if their passion fizzled, I reasoned, they would have the experience of giving it their all. They would know what dedication feels like and find ways to bring it to whatever came next. I’m doubting the wisdom of that advice, however. Following a passion doesn’t seem to work for many...
Breaking with usual city commission business Thursday, Tucumcari City Manager Jared Langenegger read a 12-page response to criticisms leveled at the city by those sponsoring a recall of three city commissioners. A recall special election will be held June 13. Instead of his usual report on events and developments, Langenegger read a statement describing actions designed to help reverse the city’s economic decline that commissioners and city administration have taken since he became city manager two and a half years ago. The statement also a...
Breaking with usual city commission business Thursday, Tucumcari City Manager Jared Langenegger read a 12-page response to criticisms leveled at the city by those sponsoring a recall of three city commissioners. A recall special election will be held June 13. Instead of his usual report on events and developments, Langenegger read a statement describing actions designed to help reverse the city’s economic decline that commissioners and city administration have taken since he became city manager two and a half years ago. The statement also a...
On Easter Sunday, the world was holding its breath as tensions between the U.S. and North Korea and the Syrian conflict stood to blow up. Congress may be again be careening toward a government shutdown, and key policy conflicts loom on health care and tax policy. The big fight to Democrats in the street, however, is President Donald Trump’s tax returns. They are demanding stridently, belligerently that he release them. Presidents since Nixon have done so voluntarily. It’s a show of transparency. But it has always been their option. Pre...
I am writing this column in a state of writer’s block. Writer’s block occurs when a writer can’t think of anything to write about. If you’re not a writer, you don’t get writer’s block. If non-writers can’t come up with something to write about, they don’t worry about it. In fact, they are probably relieved. It means one less thing they feel compelled to do. A writer, however, worries about not having anything to write about, because writers are supposed to write. Writer’s block, then, carries burdens of guilt and despair for a writer. Guilt b...
I’m going to take completely unfair advantage of my weekly column to promote two events that I have been fortunate enough to be involved in. I don’t want to draw attention away from Rawhide Days on May 5-6 at the Tucumcari Convention Center, or from other community events listed in today’s newspaper. The events I mention today, however, can make people healthier while they have fun. The first is Step into Spring, a month-long, informal walking competition that starts Saturday and ends June 8. The Quay County Health Council has devised this...
Ordinarily, free markets based on choice are the best test of whether a product or service is sustainable. Healthcare may be an exception to this rule. The Republicans fumbled the ball last week to enact healthcare reform, but the pause gives us time for reflection. The debate over health insurance is about whether a right to healthcare is more important than freedom of choice. The Affordable Care Act’s intent was to make health insurance, and reasonably priced healthcare, a right and a duty by requiring everyone to be insured. But the o...
The Quay County Commission approved on a resolution to clarify its withdrawal of support for a borehole project in a 2-1 vote Monday during the county commission meeting. The borehole project is designed to test whether the three-foot-deep boreholes are a possible solution to permanent storage of highly radioactive nuclear waste, such as spent fuel from nuclear power plants and nuclear weapons manufacturing. The commission withdrew its October resolution supporting the project on Feb. 13 after two meetings that were attended by hundreds of...
Tucumcari city commissioners are expected to appoint a new District 5 commissioner on Thursday. Former District 5 Commissioner John Mihm died suddenly in December. Three candidates expressed interest in the position and all were interviewed by commissioners during an executive session on March 16. The candidates are Todd Duplantis, regional coordinator for emergency communities for Quay, Harding and parts of San Miguel County; Allen Manley, co-owner of a Tucumcari construction firm; and Bill Menges, a retired building trades instructor and form...
I have to admit I’m a little hacked by recent developments in Tucumcari, but I’m more puzzled than angered by the situation. Einstein is credited with saying the definition of insanity is doing the same thing the same way over and over again and expecting different results. Tucumcari needs to change some things if it expects to improve its economic situation in the foreseeable future, but not everyone seems to see it that way. Tucumcari voters may be going to the polls in a couple of months at a cost to the city between $6,000 and $7,000 to...
I’ve got a cold. My lower back is sending red alerts and I might have to see the doctor about a possibly infected sore. This is the wrong frame of mind for viewing the Mansion section of the Wall Street Journal, which seems to be there to remind me that among the half-million Americans who earn more than $1 million a year, one of them isn’t me. They make up a small fraction of the U.S.’ 318 million people but enough to justify very visible competition for their considerable discretionary income. In the Mansion section, a typical ad shows a beau...
Proposed amendments to Tucumcari’s nuisance ordinance would reduce fines but would also authorize the city to use criminal proceedings against property owners. Amendments to the city’s nuisance ordinance received a first reading Thursday at the Tucumcari City Commission meeting. The amendments include reducing the initial fine for failure to correct property violations from $100 to $50 but also authorize the city to use criminal proceedings against property owners who fail to respond to citations. Other changes would eliminate fines for per...
The Tucumcari City Commission authorized city employees on Thursday to seek $340,000 in state grant money to help resurface Second Street in Tucumcari’s downtown area. Ralph Lopez, a project manager in the city’s community development department, said in a special meeting Thursday that the grant is a re-application of a grant request that was turned down last year. If successful, any money received from the grant would be added to other funding the Second Street project has already received, Lopez said, including $180,000 in legislative gra...
I will briefly respond to letters about my views on the Nara Visa borehole project, and then move on: The German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck observed, “Politics is the art of the possible.” I bow to this reality, as two county commissioners and Logan School Superintendent Dennis Roch did on Feb. 13. I accept defeat but do not stand corrected. Here is a quote from Franklin Orr, the U.S. Department of Energy’s under-secretary for science and energy, about the borehole project, which he leads: “Importantly, no nuclear waste will be involved in th...
Quay County government should consider paying more to receive ambulance services from the city of Tucumcari, according to city officials, who debated the issue with Quay County commissioners Thursday in a joint work session. City Manager Jared Langenegger showed ambulance service statistics indicating that 17 percent of city ambulance calls are from outside the city. While ambulance services were originally designed to be self-sustaining, Langenegger said, large infusions of money from the city’s general fund have been necessary to keep the s...
Quay County commissioners authorized routine tax fund allocations of $500,000 to fund operations for Dan C. Trigg Memorial Hospital in 2017. Vince DiFranco, who has added the Trigg administrator role to his administrator duties at Plains Regional Medical Center (PRMC) in Clovis, formally requested the allocations from the commission on Monday during the commission meeting. Commissioners approved allocations of $250,000 each in February and May. DiFranco also addressed concerns of commissioners about the impact of sharing an administrator with...
On Feb. 17, I was declared an enemy of the American people. That used to be a favorite Communist epithet, substitute “Russian” or “Chinese.” On Feb. 17, however, it was the president of the United States who gave me this title. I earned my apparent “enemy” status by committing the unpardonable crime of journalism. I gather facts about recent developments and present them as news. Sometimes what I report makes elected officials look good, sometimes not. Facts are funny that way. President Donald Trump seems only to recognize as facts the b...