Serving the High Plains
Serving the High Plains
Sorted by date Results 126 - 150 of 1622
“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...
Thanks to the so-called culture wars, debates about events on college campuses are being employed as useful weapons for attacking the gradual democratization that has occurred in higher education since the 1950s. Those of us who are academics and see education as crucial should be alarmed at the specter of partisan attacks, not to mention the garish and outlandish headlines that adversely affect many people trying to make sense of and understand their lives. Academic freedom, a term the American Association of University Professors developed...
I don’t blame the public for not wanting to put the Republican Party back in power in Washington. As the GOP proved again in the House last week, it’s incapable of accomplishing anything of importance. The big vote was over the reauthorization of a reformed version of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act – aka, FISA. FISA is the controversial act that permits U.S. spy agencies to gather foreign intelligence by collecting the communications of non-Americans located outside the country. It’s considered by government officials to be a cruci...
Question: Why did the cat change its mind about crossing the road? I actually saw that happen while driving down Tucumcari’s Lake Street recently. My first thought was the cat had tried crossing unsuccessfully eight times before and decided not to take any more chances when a car was approaching. In this case, the cat had plenty of time before I’d get to the crossing point. Still, perhaps the cat realized it had only one life left to live. That’s all any of us have, for there’s a (singular) time to be born and a (singular) time to die after whi...
The capital outlay bill passed by the Legislature this year provides just under $290 million for 136 projects throughout the state, including $20 million for steam tunnel and electrical infrastructure upgrades at New Mexico State University. NMSU will also get $10 million for facility construction in the Creative Media Institute and $1.575 million for road improvements on the Gadsden campus. All 136 projects will be funded without any kind of ranking system to determine what our top priorities are, or vetting process to ensure that the projects...
Leave it to the right to make a cheap attempt to capitalize off human tragedy. For most people, the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore was a disaster of horrific proportions. Americans across the political spectrum expressed their sorrow and prayers toward the victims and their families. But for many in the bombastic world of right-wing conservatism, it presented an opportunity to partake in one of their favorite hobbies: injecting racism into the issue at hand. As first responders frantically plunged into the frigid waters...
The end of last month must have been especially rough for the people still living in the contaminated eastern Ohio town of East Palestine. On March 26, only hours after the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore Harbor was knocked down by an out-of-control container ship, they had to watch President Biden come on national TV and promise to “move heaven and earth” to reopen the port and rebuild the bridge “as soon as humanly possible.” They also had to see Biden pledge to have the federal government pay the entire cost of the accident and hea...
I’m seeing a particular objection to Christianity repeated often on the internet. It started, I believe, among some Muslims, but has spread to the larger culture. The objection is this: In the Bible, Jesus never claimed to be God. He never said, “I am God. Worship me.” I’m not sure what has made this criticism so popular recently. Can I be harshly direct and say it’s stupid? Maybe not. Maybe I should be lighthearted about it and say it’s “all hat and no cattle.” It’s a vacuous statement either way, especially if you’ve ever bothered to read th...
Spring fever is in full bloom at Head Acres, evidenced by tissue boxes, allergy meds and decongestants. There are also dozens of little plantlets growing in cut-down toilet tissue holders, and peat cups scattered around the house. They all look alike to me, but my husband Wayne can tell me what’s in each little set. We’ve tried longer than not to get tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers of all kinds, and various other veggies to grow with fair to little success. The other day, Wayne surprised me with an assortment of sunflower seeds, in beautiful sha...
An anonymous reader sent a letter last week reprimanding the newspaper because it “refuses to publish” an important story. “There is a big cover up,” the letter read. Our reader is referencing a lawsuit settled in February by the state’s Children, Youth and Families Department. The lawsuit alleged improper handling of a 2020 case in which a Clovis child was placed in her father’s home after her mother died. The father, Juan Lerma, subsequently killed the child, Samantha Rubino, and left her body in a garbage can. Our newspaper reported on...
Recently, Land Commissioner Stephanie Garcia Richard, after pushing the Legislature for a 25% tax hike on New Mexico oil and gas producers, made the decision to pull those “highly valuable” tracts of land and not lease them. That decision has raised concerns that her actions may violate her fiduciary responsibility to maximize revenues from the lands under her control. Garcia Richard told the Albuquerque Journal, “It’s worth it to temporarily forgo the dollars (from leasing immediately) to make billions more in the future by leasing out the...
The world as I know it has ended. I agree with Ron DeSantis on something. On March 25, the Florida governor and former mini-Trump wannabe signed into law a state ban for children ages 13 and younger from social media while also requiring 14- and 15-year-olds to get parental consent. Forget the fact that Florida’s new law will almost certainly be challenged in court, it’s still a step in the right direction. We’re facing a mental health crisis among our children, and social media has a lot to do with it. That and the COVID pandemic. Natio...
Most have likely heard the phrase, “In like a lion, out like a lamb; in like a lamb, out like a lion,” regarding March weather. There’s much discussion about meanings, with some relating lion weather to harshness because lions are fierce, while others relate it more to the lion’s coat as giving a sunny or warm feeling. For the lamb, the harsh weather is related to the whiteness of snow indicated by the lamb’s wool, while the fair weather is related to the gentleness generally attributed to a lamblike disposition. Generally, the concept i...
Lately I’ve been thinking about old age, and for good reason. Two close friends of mine, one a few years older than me, the other about three weeks younger, have given me pause about my own future at this point in my life. My older friend died after a heart attack. My younger friend had a bad fall and must now retire into an assisted living facility. They are just two of many fellow baby boomers I’ve known who have either passed on or been overcome with illness or disability. There but by the grace of God go I. At age 68, I have a couple of hea...
The geographic political divisions in New Mexico have become so entrenched that both parties have just stopped trying in areas of the state where the other side has the advantage. Of the 42 seats up for election in the state Senate this year, only 15 will be decided in the general election. Democrats will claim 17 seats and Republicans will win 10 without posting a yard sign, shaking a hand, making a campaign promise or kissing a baby. Democrats have apparently given up on the seat they held from 1989 to 2020 when John Arthur Smith was in...
You’d never expect a tax revolt to start in the blue California city of Oakland. But a bunch of angry, over-taxed and under-protected local business people there have said, “Enough is enough.” The owner of a restaurant has called on other Oakland small businesses to stop paying local taxes until their city starts doing what it should be doing – protecting them from a recent wave of robberies and thefts. Big businesses like Tesla or Oracle can escape the madness and high taxes in California by moving to Texas, and they have. But the poor gu...
In my regular Bible reading, I was back in Genesis the other day and here’s the thought that struck me as I went through the life of Abraham: Abraham and Sarah did not have the kind of marriage that a lot of evangelicals promote as ideal. Specifically, a lot of modern conservatives, such as the Duggars on television and those informed by material from men like Bill Gothard, advocate for a “biblical patriarchy” in which the husband rules over everyone else. He gets the final say about everything, over everyone, and things are ordered according t...
In the great red-blue divide that is America these days, we live in an atypical state. New Mexico is not as politically divided along rural and urban lines as other states. For years now, Democrats in New Mexico have dominated politics in enough rural counties to add to their “urban” majorities in Albuquerque, Las Cruces and Santa Fe. Meanwhile Republicans have held a grip on other rural area and many smaller cities, with a lock in the southeastern corner of the state, a region deep in agriculture and rich in oil and gas. Overall, however, it...