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This year's Best of Santa Fe issue features some new successes and longtime favorites--and SFR contributor Chicken Joe (yes, it's a pseudonym) has a companion piece on the quirks that make Santa Fe the City Different--but ultimately, these pages are all about why we can't help loving Santa Fe.

After all, we're still here.

“A representative government is dependent upon an informed electorate.” Thus begins New Mexico’s Open Meetings Act, which makes transparency a central responsibility of public officials. In Santa Fe, that transparency exists in the form of City Council meetings, which are held biweekly and are open to the public. 

But in recent years, city officials have found ways to circumvent that requirement, meeting behind closed doors when taxpayer money is at stake.

Recently—although it now seems impossibly remote—I was lounging on the back of a boat in the Pacific. A friend from New Mexico, now a boat captain in Hawaii, leaned over and said in a low, rapt voice, “I think they’re going to let us do a blue-water swim.” I’ve spent many years of my life in coastal places, but I’m sure I looked back at her with utter confusion. “The water is so clear—there’s no pollution, no algae, nothing—that it’s perfectly blue,” she explained. “You can open your eyes underwater, and it doesn’t hurt at all.” Sure enough, the captain, a friend of hers, stopped the boat. We were out in the middle of the ocean, bobbing in a way that made our high-powered craft seem tiny. My friend and I dove in before he could finish explaining (to the paying customers) what a blue-water swim was. I just wanted to see that ocean: pure, perfect blue, just as my friend had described it. I dove—eyes open—as deep as I could into the seemingly endless abyss of color. It was silent and magical.

Even we summer-lovers have had that moment of heat-induced ennui, in which we run out of things to do and contemplate just sitting inside, watching the full 16-hour Lord of the Rings trilogy (with extra footage) on Blu-Ray. But wait! Your friends at SFR have come up with a painstakingly curated, totally awesome list of the 50 must-do activities in Santa Fe this summer. A six-pack of beer to the first person who can prove to us that you’ve done them all (ie provide photographic evidence)—not to mention, of course, the glorious feeling of a summer well spent. Ready…go!

In a scathing dissent from the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision, former US Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens wrote that, by equating corporations’ campaign spending to individuals’ free speech rights, the Court’s opinion was “a rejection of the common sense of the American people.” The ruling prompted an explosion of campaign spending: The 2012 elections are expected to be the most expensive in US history, and multimillion-dollar TV attack ad campaigns are already flooding airwaves—even as Congress becomes increasingly unproductive. In such a climate, it can be tempting to repudiate the whole charade and refuse to vote. But to disenfranchise ourselves is to abrogate our duty as citizens of a republic.

In Santa Fe, summer has a sort of springlike effect on the arts scene. As soon as May loses its last vestige of winter, every corner of the city suddenly bursts with art. The galleries and museums blossom with new exhibits; the Plaza hums with the reverberations of the popular, twice-daily Bandstand music festival; the Railyard plays host to outdoor movies and concerts; the opera attracts aficionados from all over the globe; the libraries and bookstores and parks and summer camps offer various artistic outlets for hordes of children blissfully free of classes and homework.

In fact, Santa Fe’s summer arts scene is so extensive that we found it necessary to dedicate an entire special issue to helping you navigate the season’s festivities. In these pages, you’ll find local arts leaders’ recommendations for don’t-miss events, and you’ll gain some perspective on the work it takes to bring those events to Santa Fe. We don’t mind if you rip out the festival calendar on page 22; you may need it to keep track of all the major festivals slated to hit our city this year. Parents, we haven’t forgotten about you (or your children)—on page 21, find a rundown of all the great activities that let Santa Fe’s kids express themselves, artistically and otherwise. And if your idea of a perfect summer afternoon involves lolling in De Vargas Park, just within earshot of the Cowgirl’s band du jour, that’s fine, too.

Lisa Gansky describes herself, somewhat improbably, as “a monkey with one trick”: starting companies. Gansky has made a career of spotting potential trends, then molding those ideas into wildly successful business enterprises. And while Gansky herself has thrived in the current economic system—Ofoto, a mobile photo-sharing company she cofounded in 1999 and then sold to Kodak two years later for somwhere under $100 million, according to the Wall Street Journal, is just one example—her latest venture involves upending that system. In Gansky’s view, a new economic paradigm is emerging with the potential to recast the way we think of buying, selling and creating wealth. She calls it the Mesh, and its premise is as simple as a kindergarten aphorism: We all need to learn to share.

The book chooses the reader. I believe this; however, I also believe that the reader has an obligation to make himself available to the book.

Listen: Years ago, I stopped taking advice on reading material. First, every reader has his own tastes; second, some readers just aren’t very discerning—they’ll read anything; and finally, RIYL only applies to people who want to read books like the ones they’ve read. Moreover, as a literature and creative writing student, I struggled to split my time between the assigned texts and the books that interested me, and the required readings only interested me after they ceased to be assignments. Maybe I’m coming off as contrarian—as someone who just doesn’t like being told what to do—but really, I’m just a slow reader, and I only absorb materials out of personal interest rather than obligation.