Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
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My three brothers and I are back down at our maternal grandparents’ old homeplace at Robert Lee, Texas, for a few days. Since all of us are pastors (a couple are supposedly retired, though they don’t look much like it to me), getting as much as possible done early so we can get out of our respective towns and covey up together is always challenging. And since we all seem to be connected with non-prophet organizations (bad pun), much else often surprises us. But for around 40...
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,...
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 outsi...
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 inadvertent...
With recent incidents of earthquakes in the New York City area and in Taiwan I got to thinking about earthquakes in my life. Ever since somewhere along life’s pathway someone told me that if you’re looking out over open fields during an earthquake you see the land quiver like a big lake on a choppy day, I’ve wanted to see that. But while I’ve been in a few earthquakes I’ve never actually gotten to appreciate that I was in one. Case in point, the 3-point-something quake that hit Roanoke, Va., around 1968. My grandpare...
In last week’s column, I said government had made up a new holiday and superimposed it over Easter. I suggested this may have been done as an intentional slap in the face to a major segment of the population, intended to provoke a reaction. I was wrong. Government made up that holiday — or official declaration — and set the annual date for it back in 2009. The only reason I heard about it this year was because it coincided with Easter, which generated the outrage that then...
Congress is once again in the throes of trying to cobble together a piece of legislation that will provide Ukraine with some money in support of its war effort. The amount of money being discussed has changed several times in the past few months, but it generally comes down to about $60 billion, so let’s use that figure for discussion purposes. Supporters of the war would have you believe that the $60 billion has to be provided, right now, and that is already too late. The m...
Earning a bachelor’s degree is a lot more complicated than it used to be. Not necessarily harder, just more complicated. Set aside for a moment affordability, which is skewed toward the middle and upper classes along with straight-A students who test well. Getting into college is easier than staying in college, and staying in college to earn that degree requires lots of delayed gratification. I have long contended that a bachelor’s degree does more than show your developing “expertise” in a particular field or two. It show...
We Americans are increasingly skilled at finding things that divide us, but last Monday legions of us found a common interest … even if only for a few minutes. The experts estimated that about 32 million residents of the continental United States lived in the path of that well-publicized total solar eclipse that spread like a beauty queen’s sash from Texas all the way to Maine. Untold millions more of us — present company included — made a pilgrimage to the path in hopes o...
We can hardly be too careful when we’re choosing what we’ll worship. Most folks don’t read the Old Testament prophets for comedy, but the prophet Isaiah made brutal fun of down-on-their-luck idol worshipers who couldn’t afford to commission a metalworker to cast a custom-made god and hire a goldsmith to overlay it. A high-quality idol can be pricey. Instead, the poorer folks were forced to go with cheaper gods by searching carefully for wood that wouldn’t rot and hiring a work...
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...
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 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 ensur...
I don’t like taking drug tests, but not for the reason you may think I don’t like taking drug tests. I don’t like taking drug tests because the whole shebang takes up precious time. It’s a drive over to the drug testing place, most likely sit in a waiting room waiting your turn, do the drug testing “thingy,” and then mosey on. The first drug test I ever had was for a construction job in Albuquerque years ago. I already had the job, I just had to report for a test. After a few days passed I wondered what became of my drug test...
Is government trying to provoke you? I believe it is. It’s setting a trap. If, by doing provocative things, government can trigger you into acting, your actions become an excuse to crack down harder -- which will trigger more people to act. Like a feedback loop. It’s part of the reason for anti-gun legislation. It’s part of the reason the two main factions of authoritarians love the fight over the issue of “immigration.” It’s why the real solution to crime is criminalize...
Most conspiracy theories are based on kernels of truth. This is true for the terrorist attack that occurred in Moscow on March 23 and resulted in more than 100 deaths. The U.S. government issued a statement asserting it provided a warning to the Russian government, that the Russians failed to heed, which led to the loss of life. A public statement was issued by the U.S. Department of State on March 7 that read, “The Embassy is monitoring reports that extremists have i...
If there’s anything I know for sure, it’s that crime in Clovis is on many minds. I read on Facebook that local crime is spiraling out of control. Mostly it’s Joe Biden’s fault. But the anecdotal evidence shared on social media does not match up with the statistics, which suggest crime may be dropping … dramatically. Consider: In 2013, Clovis police recorded 2,646 arrests. That number has been steadily decreasing since. In 2023, CPD recorded 1,061 arrests – a 150% drop. Jail...
Words of wisdom can turn up in the most unexpected places, and sometimes from people who have already left us. That happened to me on a couple of occasions recently. The first was a little over a week ago at the memorial service for Leroy Thomas, a retired pastor, tireless community servant, and the longtime owner of the Print Shop in Portales. He died March 24 at the age of 89. He and Gaynelle, his wife of more than 72 years, were steadfast supporters of every good cause you...
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, Way...
Too much stuff. In our society, that seems to be the exact amount of stuff that most of us have. Not exactly a technical term, two words are nonetheless quite nicely descriptive: too much. Stuff storage. It’s big business and growing all of the time because, well, see Paragraph One. People who have as much stuff as we do, and are continually adding more to their mounds of stuff, eventually run out of places to put it. Perhaps we don’t want to disappoint archaeologists who will...
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...
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...
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 Ru...
Once I had a job, a lazy soul’s dream, low stress too, I got paid to drive cars all day. I remembered it when a Facebook memory popped up from eight years ago, a photo of the car I got to drive, a Toyota FJ Cruiser. I don’t know if you’re familiar with this vehicle but it’s kind of an oversized Jeep in bright colors, looks like some kind of big ol’ toy. I drove it and discovered, eh, I didn’t like it so much. I’m glad I didn’t spend “big coin” on one and find I didn’t like it.. It was big and clunky, it was more vehicle than...
January’s contract renewal for Eastern New Mexico University Chancellor James Johnston is “not valid.” That’s according to the Government Counsel and Accountability Division of the New Mexico Department of Justice. The DOJ issued a letter to ENMU regents Friday in response to complaints from The Eastern New Mexico News and New Mexico Foundation of Open Government. The complaint was that regents violated the state’s Open Meetings Act when they renewed Johnston’s contract on... Full story
