Serving the High Plains
Serving the High Plains
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Eastern New Mexico Pride, hosted by Eastern New Mexico Rising, will return for its second year to Curry and Roosevelt County. A question I am asked constantly as a gay woman is, “Why do we need Pride?” First, to honor those who fought for our freedom to be who we are at the Stonewall Riots and the first gay pride marches. Pride began June 28, 1969, with the Stonewall Riots, where police tried to raid a gay bar in New York City. This raid quickly got out of hand and erupted into more protests in the following days, with activists demanding the...
EPCOR and the city of Clovis celebrated another successful event on May 7-8. This year’s two-day Clovis Water Carnival drew participation from 12 local elementary schools, engaging approximately 550 fifth-grade students, and benefiting from over 500 volunteer hours contributed by EPCOR employees and community volunteer partners. For the second year, EPCOR and the city partnered to bring an interactive educational platform focusing on teaching the principles of water conservation and management through a series of engaging and fun activities. T...
It occurred to me that this year, Memorial Day will fall about halfway between Mother’s Day, which I wrote about in my last article, and Father’s Day, which I’ll write about in a future article. All three holidays were established to remember specific people. While it’s easy to recognize who we remember on Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, the focus of Memorial Day has changed over the years — from concentrating on those who gave their lives in military service to America to all Americans who’ve passed on as indicated by the decorating of m...
The last time the Democrats and the Republicans held a White House rematch with the same two contenders was 1956, when Ike beat Adlai Stevenson for the second straight time. Earlier, there were redos with William McKinley and William Jennings Bryan (McKinley won both in 1896 and 1900) and Grover Cleveland vs. Benjamin Harrison (in 1888, Harrison defeated the incumbent Cleveland, who then staged a comeback victory in 1892). In the pre-Civil War days, before the GOP existed, when there were Whigs and such, Martin Van Buren beat William Henry...
If you ask me, history is speeding up. Used to be, things didn’t change much from one generation to another, but with the onset of the 20th century, it all began to accelerate. And, now that we’re a couple of decades into the 21st century, we’re living as if the past doesn’t matter anymore. But of course, it does. History is how we got here, and it portends where we’re going. My baby-boomer generation has been through some incredible history. We were raised during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and ’60s, which led our nation in a...
What’s happening on CNN and MSNBC is disgusting, but not surprising. Some of their so-called pundits and reporters have been downright giddy while watching Donald Trump on trial in New York City. They think the New York DA’s office is doing God’s work, not Joe Biden’s. They love watching lying lowlifes like porn star Stormy Daniels and Trump’s former fixer Michael Cohen testifying against the ex-president. It doesn’t matter to losers like Joe & Mika and Jen Psaki that the Democrats are using the Justice Department as a weapon to interfere w...
My last column addressed the objection that says the Bible can’t be trusted because of how often it has been translated and hand-copied through the centuries. My point was that the documented history (in over 5,000 ancient manuscripts) shows the result is really the opposite. That is, the many manuscripts, from different centuries and regions, prove there has been stunning consistency over the last 2,500 or so years. By comparing old ones with newer ones, we can see plainly where any copyist errors or bad translations were made. This is not s...
It seems silly to write a column about the recent college protests. It’s not really news when privileged students who have never been in the line of fire and whose most pressing concern is what pronoun they’ll use on any given day decide to rise up against the establishment. And yet, here we are. Across the nation, college students have been raising their voices against what some call a “genocide” and others call “Zionist oppression.” They have been supported in their misguided crusade by politicians like Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, women...
History on the rerun. Ghosts of Mississippi. Magnolia State maintains its horrendously racist image. Any of the statements could be used to describe the images shown across the nation at the University of Mississippi at Oxford. Dozens of students at the university’s flagship campus gathered to protest Israel’s war in Gaza and to call for the school to be transparent in its potential dealings with Israel. These demonstrators were confronted with hundreds of counter-protesters, in contrast to the few dozen pro-Palestinian protesters. Less than an...
It’s that time of year, when just about every newspaper in the state gives front-page attention to at least one local graduation. They’re always a big deal, especially to those who walk across that ceremonial stage and make their families proud. It’s also the time when yours truly offers some less-than-conventional advice to those who are about to move on to bigger and better things: First, let’s dispel the notion that you can be anything you set your mind to becoming, because you can’t. If you’re short, you won’t likely make it to the NBA no...
Mother’s Day is this coming Sunday and, while many will celebrate with their mothers, others of us will fondly remember our mothers and be grateful for those who were godly and led us in paths of righteousness so we could know that, despite their passing away from this life, they still live, as Jesus promised (John 11:25-27). The name of the holiday is singular possessive because it’s set aside to honor each one’s mother, as is the case for Father’s Day, while Grandparents’ Day is plural possessive, likely because we all have several grandpare...
I just want the world to know that all this “catch-and-kill” National Enquirer-style of so-called journalism is a disgusting exception, nowhere close to the rule of how newspapers behave. In my 30-plus years of newspapering, I’ve worked at big dailies and little weeklies and others in between, and I can confidently attest to the fact that I never, ever saw an editor or publisher “buy” the rights to a story, much less buy the right to bury it, as the Enquirer’s Pecker said he did for Donald Trump. That just doesn’t happen, at least not at any of...
Here’s to the deep state, or, what we used to refer to as the federal government. With little fanfare, the Federal Trade Commission has leveled the playing field for millions of workers. The FTC freed an estimated 30 million employees who are now bound to their current employers through non-compete clauses. On a 3-2 vote, the commission found that the clauses are an unfair method of competition and therefore a violation of Section 5 of the FTC Act which prohibits “unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce.” There’s an exem...
What a good week it should have been for Republicans. Dozens of campuses from UCLA to Columbia University were being wracked by pro-Palestinian protestors who set up “Gaza Solidarity” encampments, spewed antisemitic hate speech, took over buildings and intimidated Jewish students. The protestors demanded their schools condemn Israel’s invasion of Gaza, come out in support of Palestinians or divest themselves of any Israeli investments. The riots were so heavily covered by the national media and criticized by conservatives that some spineless “p...
The noise may be more pronounced elsewhere, but here in New Mexico, we’ve got plenty of hot topics of our own. Hottest at the moment, I suppose, is the lawsuit that’s been filed challenging the Public Education Department’s new rule requiring 180 days of classroom instruction per year per school district, which effectively nixes the four-day schedule that dozens of school district have been operating under. There are two questions before the 9th Judicial District Court in Curry County: Whether to order an injunction that would prevent the P...
For almost a decade, Donald Trump has sent the Republican Party and much of the mainstream media into a political whirlwind. Trump’s bombastic behavior and searing personal attacks have angered many establishment Republicans while endearing him to hard-line conservatives. But it’s nothing new for the Grand Old Party. Over the past half-century, Republicans have engaged in behavior that has allowed individuals like Trump to rise and flourish in their ranks. Much of it can be traced back to the 1964 Republican National Convention in San Fra...
Another week, another round of Republicans attacking each other. This time it was over the Ukraine funding bill that was passed by the House and ultimately became part of the big military aid package for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan that Congress passed late last month. The Republican controlled House, led by Speaker Mike Johnson, passed the Ukraine funding bill after what seemed like years of delays by a vote of 311-112. All the “no” votes came from Republicans and Johnson had to rely on Democrats to get the bill over the finish line. That, of c...
“Pastor, how can you believe in the Bible when it’s been translated so many times?” That’s a common objection. Meaning no insult, but it’s an argument based on ignorance. The objector doesn’t know anything about how the Bible came to be and assumes the worst: a shadowy history littered with corruptions both accidental and nefarious. It’s assumed that we got the Scriptures through a process much like the old party game, “Phone Message.” In that game, you line up several children in a row. A long sentence is told to the first child. He takes o...
We could learn a lot from the animal kingdom. Hundreds of critters have passed through the gates of Head Acres over the years. We’ve had Spanish bulls, emus, hogs, ducks, horses, snakes, chickens, lots and lots of chickens, chickens, feral cats, and most recently a “not-my-peacock” named Chicky. Chicky’s screeches did take some getting used to but now we look forward to his call. Some of our animal friends were destined to go on to rescue; we were a safe albeit temporary place for them to land. Others were destined to stay, whether they we...
While traveling back from Albuquerque recently and knowing we’d get home in time for supper for a change, I asked the family whether we should stop along the way or pick something up for supper in Tucumcari. The teenage grandson immediately said he was hungry, which is his typical response, even shortly after lunch. So, we opened the package of beef jerky we keep in the car for such purposes. After finishing the package, I noticed my wife reading the label and asked, “What does it say, ‘Best if used by yesterday’?” After a momentary pause, sh...
Imagine living in a household full of smokers. Whether you like it or not, you’re stuck with each other, so if you want to overcome your problem, you’re going to have do it together. More than one doctor has told you as much, but not everyone in the household believes what the docs say, opting instead for a quack’s opinion that the whole problem is better off ignored. The problem is, you’ve all got to quit together or you will all get sick and die by either first- or second-hand smoking. All that coughing and hacking around the house are obv...
For those too young to fully remember the OJ Simpson trial, it was a television spectacle with all the makings of a Hollywood blockbuster. Sex and violence, interracial relationships and marriage, infidelity, alcoholism, sexual deviancy and a host of lurid details that titillated and fascinated the public. Stories covering the trial became daily tidbits, as just about every outlet – from weekly tabloids to highbrow magazines and newspapers – intensely covered the trial. You also had a real life cast of characters that would have been a fic...
“Death to Israel!” “Death to America!” It sounds like something you’d hear chanted by hundreds of brainwashed young people in the streets of Tehran. But as we saw last week, those are the chants of our own children on college campuses. People can agree or disagree on what the Israeli military is doing to the Palestinians in Gaza to punish Hamas for its attack on Oct. 7, or what our State Department is doing wrong in the Middle East. And am I seriously worried about Joe Biden’s weak, confused and destructive foreign policy in the Middle East...
I was reading one of the thousand or so articles that pop up on my email homepage, about why people reject religious faith: “17 Challenges Atheists Have for Believers.” These are always good for a chuckle. One objection caught my attention. It was this: If God exists why doesn’t he show himself? Well, how big a show would it take for you to believe? Would 10 consecutive, pre-announced plagues, reducing the world’s most powerful nation to rubble, be enough? How about splitting the Red Sea so people could cross through on dry land? You simply...
We have some big, rich and powerful neighbors, but that could change in the years ahead. Let’s start with Texas. New Mexico is heavily influenced by our neighbor to the east. In fact, a good number of New Mexicans on the east side of our state are wannabe Texans, aligning themselves to Texas values more than New Mexico’s. There’s a lot of chili (without the “e”) being eaten in eastern New Mexico. And the last time I visited the resort city of Ruidoso, I saw so many Texas license plates I wondered if I’d inadvertently crossed the state line...