News, Sept. 20: “The Same, but Different”
Long time listener
This is the first time in 39 years of reading the Reporter and the like that I have been sufficiently motivated to respond to a newspaper article. …
If the young children in New Mexico are to have any chance in the future of competing in the National job market they will need to be educated in the best possible way. Children from so many other parts of the country get better educations. In fact, we see, year after year, that the New Mexico educational statistics are at the bottom or near the bottom for the entire country.
During my almost 40 years living in Santa Fe, I have seen a continuum of politicians who choose to undereducate New Mexico kids. Money is never provided to attract or keep top-notch teachers. Classrooms start every year on a shoestring. Parents are begged to support teachers with supplies that responsible school systems provide with no second thoughts.
Apparently most folks working in the Roundhouse like it this way. What, if anything, can be done to change the direction of New Mexico?
It would take a great effort to change the "system" but nothing will happen while Republicans control the purse strings.
Paul Reindorf
Santa Fe
Dagnab it, dogma
Education Secretary designate Christopher Ruszkowski should never be confirmed by the New Mexico State Senate. Instead, he should resign. Any person willing to water down science should not be in charge of how it is taught in our schools. Mr. Ruszkowski and fundamentalist Christians are entitled to believe whatever they want, but the rest of us do not have to abide by their religious and fossil fuel industry nonsense. Evolution is a fact. Man made climate change is a fact. Willful denial of facts is not science. Obfuscation is not education.
With leadership like this, it is no wonder our state education system lags behind much of the nation. What credibility will Mr. Ruszkowski have when encouraging our youth to pursue careers in science? Why would any science faculty member take him seriously? As the Dalai Lama has said on many occasions, when your dogma and science collide, it is probably your dogma that is wrong.
Jeff Sussmann
Santa Fe
News, Sept. 27: “Affordable Reality”
Don’t forget us
Here's a demographic I hear little to nothing about: single women, age 60 and over. We may be widowed, divorced or luckily single. We are retired professionals, but not rich transplants. We are educated and now have more or less fixed incomes and very little possibilities in this housing market (here in Santa Fe). We are not greedy. We want energy-efficient. We want 650-800 square feet domiciles. We want clusters/pods for social support, a renaissance of the "community feel." We want the term "affordable housing" to die as the "code word" for the shame of needing a healthy support system as part of one's rights as a citizen.
It is not to be defined as a population that needs Medicaid or belongs to one particular ethnic group or are seen as "lesser than;" some kind of victims of poverty. (This is not a derision of humans receiving Medicaid, but it is backed by a strong opinion that "poverty is not a natural state for humans" and we need to get over it and do something about it, and housing is a great place to start). We are a population of real people, real women who need a city to take the upper hand for reasonable rents that meet the needs of all strata of real people in Santa Fe.
Morgana Morgaine
Santa Fe
Where are the experts?
Where might we find the local expertise needed to solve the multi-leveled challenge of Santa Fe's economic and social development issues? Sometimes, often for me, it's like sitting here watching the wheels go round and round in Santa Fe politics and community activism. Have yet to spy a real expert in the crowd, including in the so-far announced crop of mayoral candidates.
Greg Malone SFReporter.com
Drip drip drip
All important points regarding desperate need for rental properties at all levels in Santa Fe. Strange though that no mention of Railyard Flats project currently going up across from park in the Railyard that will provide 58 brand-new market-rate units (rental only—no condos). … May be a drop in the bucket, but a significant one. Hope to see both the Siler Road and LINC projects coming on line soon too!
Sandy Brice Marketing Director, Santa Fe Railyard Community Corporation
Short-term, -sighted
Many tourist destinations have had to limit short-term rentals due to their destruction of the local population. Our mayor instead allowed the removal of restrictions that has now started the downward spiral into what has happened everywhere that has allowed this to happen.
Short-term rentals are short-term thinking except for those who over-invested and now expect renters to cover their "balloon note" fiasco.
Karl Hardy
SFReporter.com
7 Days, Sept. 13
We’re more mad about priest sex abuse, but ok
I find it interesting that a paper such as yours that claims to support culture would slander a religion and culture that is widely practiced not only in Santa Fe but throughout the world. In [7 Days], you depicted the Pope as a dog next to a pee-puddle as well as claiming the church is trying to put a band-aid on "forced conversions" of Natives in the Americas. If it was any other religion or culture, would you be as insulting? I guess it's no surprise that your article on the protest was also slanted.
The bad taste continues, however, by featuring a love advice column that uses not only bad advice, but profanity frequently.
I guess there's a reason your paper's free.
Ellen Baker Mora
Daily newsletter: “The Morning Word”
<3 Matt Grubs
Please give my profound thanks to The Word.
I love every bit of it, from its inclusion of news from all over New Mexico, to useful summaries that remind the reader that he ought to remember the last time a name or storyline was mentioned, to the bemusement/bewilderment that stops short of full-on snark, to The Word's own musings on the Teenage Word … I even look forward to the Positive Energy Solar ad mid-Word, which fires up long-neglected Powdermilk Biscuit neurons.
I think I would not be half so informed about New Mexico news without it.
Matt Johnston
Santa Fe
Editor's Note: You can be as happy as this letter-writer by signing up for the Morning Word, our weekday morning news digest written by Matt Grubs, along with all of SFR's newsletters, at sfreporter.com/signup.
