
FYI: No April Fools are contained herein.
The day the music died
In a surreal and tragic twist, Liverpudlian rock duo Her's (Stephen Fitzpatrick, 24, and Audun Laading, 25) and their manager (Trevor Engelbrektson, 37) were killed a few days after playing a show at Meow Wolf in a collision on an Arizona highway. The pair had just played Phoenix during a 19-stop American tour when the vehicle in which they were travelling hit a wrong-way driver head-on. They played Santa Fe on Sunday, and the crash occurred on Wednesday.
Step right up
Santa Fe resident and former CIA spy Valerie Plame is apparently eyeing a Senate run as a Democrat. She would have a few hurdles to overcome, like some arguably anti-Semitic tweets from 2017. But no matter who runs, the seat about to be vacated by Udall seems to be safely Democratic.
Never mind then
Two Santa Fe cops who shot and killed a man in 2017 have been cleared by a panel of three district attorneys. Luke Wakefield and Jeramie Bisagna were on a SWAT team that broke into an apartment were Anthony Benavidez had holed up, and were under the impression that Benavidez was armed and dangerous. There were many issues with the way police handled the situation, as SFR outlined in a cover story from 2018, and Benavidez' family settled for a paltry $400,000 from the city for his death (SFR explains why the amount is so low).
Decolonizing gender
The Word shares this story with a nod toward yesterday's Trans Day of Visibility: A few powwows across America are doing away with gendered dance competitions and are opening up to trans Native Americans. The Two-Spirit Powwow in Arizona ($) in March is profiled in the Washington Post (and brought to us via The New Mexican), as a reminder to folks that gender fluidity is considerably older than the idea of a binary.
Let them smoke pot
New Mexico's Medical Cannabis Advisory Board has again recommended opiate addiction as a qualifying condition for medical marijuana, and a more weed-friendly (and addict-friendly, and generally human-friendly) administration is expected to approve it. Super weird that the government is taking advice about health care from doctors rather than shareholders, right? In other weedy news, three dispensaries in Santa Fe were broken into in the last week or so, but sounds like the would-be stoner thieves didn't get anything but a few T-shirts from Kure Cannabis. All three shops (Kure, Fruit of the Earth and Shift) have beefy security systems that precluded the hammer-wielding burglars from making it to the dispensary areas.
Edward the menace
A man colloquially called the "Menace of Madrid" ($) is wreaking havoc no more. Edward Laird, 53, has been arrested (again) and might actually stay incarcerated this time, perhaps ending his multi-year cross-country crime spree that often stopped in the Madrid-Cerrillos area. After strings of robberies and break-ins over the years, Madrid residents took matters into their own hands and formed neighborhood watch organizations and some residents installed cameras. It was a camera in a shed that captured a clear image of Laird that helped pin the sprees on him. Most notable of Laird's heists was a Van Gogh sketch from a Santa Fe home valued at up to $1 million. It was recovered in a consignment store in Raton, priced at $250.
A sign of things to come
Crews quickly contained a small wildfire in Los Alamos on Friday, but it's a reminder that no matter how much glorious precipitation we've had this winter, the risk of burning forests is ever-present. Officials have not released info on a suspected cause.
Yeah, about that dip…
How 'bout this weather we're having, amirite? After a bit of snow yesterday (or rain, depending on where you lay your head), we're supposed to get back to 60-ish today and soar into the 70s later in the week. Welcome to spring?
Thanks for reading! The Word went to a show at the Kiva Auditorium last night and was so very pleased by how attentive, kind and respectful the audience was. What a way to start the week. Onward!