COVID-19 by the numbers
New Mexico health officials yesterday reported 167 new COVID-19 cases from 19 counties, bringing the statewide total so far to 189,893. The health department has designated 172,520 of those cases as recovered. Bernalillo County had 67 new cases, followed by Doña Ana County with 24 cases and Lea County with 22. Santa Fe County had two new cases.
The state also announced three additional deaths from San Juan and Lea counties; there have now been 3,892 fatalities. As of yesterday, 115 people were hospitalized with COVID-19.
The state health department will reportedly launch a contact-tracing app today: NM Notify. As SFR reported in September, 2020, the state previously said it wasn't ready to launch a digital contact-tracing app, leading to several schools and other entities either creating their own or using ones already available. The City of Santa Fe, for example, signed a contract with the NOVID tracing app at the end of the year.
You can read all of SFR's COVID-19 coverage here. If you've had experiences with COVID-19, we would like to hear from you.
Christus plans drive-through vaccine clinics
Christus St. Vincent Regional Medical Center Chief Medical Officer Dr. David Gonzales said yesterday during a news conference Christus is planning, when vaccine supplies increase, to offer a drive-through vaccination clinic in Santa Fe County. So far, he said, the hospital has administered just over 19,000 COVID-19 vaccines, and has been working with the state health department on outreach to specific Santa Fe County ZIP codes: 87507, 87505 and 87508. In Santa Fe County, approximately 35.1% residents have had at least one shot and 19.2% are fully vaccinated. Statewide, as of yesterday, New Mexico had administered just over 1 million COVID-19 vaccines, with 648,041 people—38.6%—having received at least one dose, and 394,173 people fully vaccinated. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ranks New Mexico first for doses administered per population, with Newsweek magazine proposing it may be one of the first states to reach herd immunity. As of last week, New Mexico was slated to receive 98,390 vaccine doses this week, an increase of 2,000 doses from the week prior.
Mayor proposes $1.8 mil GRT for affordable housing
In a news conference yesterday, Santa Fe Mayor Alan Webber said he wants the city to allocate $1.8 million in gross receipts tax revenues to its Affordable Housing Trust Fund. That money, which would be earmarked for the fund if the City Council adopts a resolution doing so, would help the city continue its COVID-19 emergency housing response with efforts such as its eviction and mortgage foreclosure prevention, and could also go toward capital investments in new affordable housing projects. The proposal comes, the mayor notes, as the city's economic outlook improves more quickly than expected. "It's very gratifying that we are in a position to make it happen at a time when, as we come out of COVID, it couldn't be more important and more significant to the people of Santa Fe," he said. "It's a game changer." Housing advocates have consistently identified funding the housing trust as a key measure to improving the city's housing crisis, with a December 2020 Santa Fe Housing Action Coalition report strongly suggesting immediate funding to "triage" the situation and recurrent funding from "a diversity of revenue sources." Webber said yesterday finding recurrent funding will be the next step, and mentioned the possibility of a housing bond as one option.
City ISO of artists for “Multicultural” mural
Despite what might be described as a challenging year locally as it relates to public art and cultural dialogue (to say the least), the City of Santa Fe has put out a call for artists to undertake a "Culture Connects: Multicultural Mural Public Art Project" on two of the Santa Fe Community Convention's exterior walls. The Request for Qualifications, issued yesterday, offers a short narrative of Santa Fe's multicultural history, concluding: "It is a dynamic rather than static social environment, made rich by people whose values, experiences, histories, traditions, languages, philosophies and creativity make Santa Fe unique among world cities." The public art project's all-inclusive $50,000 budget is open to applications from artists or artist teams led by an experienced artist residing or working within the City of Santa Fe and Santa Fe County. As for the name, Arts and Culture Department Director Pauline Kanako Kamiyama tells SFR any association with Gilberto Guzman's "Multi-Cultural" mural on Guadalupe Street was inadvertent. The pending "retirement" of that mural by the state Department of Cultural Affairs to make way for a new museum wing has led to protests from groups such as Keep Santa Fe Multicultural. "Earlier on, we had been in conversation with the state to understand the process with that," Kamiyama said, "but this is not part of that—though I could see that, now that I think about it, that people would think that. But this is a celebration." The deadline to apply is April 15. More info here, where one can also find a call for artists for a $50,000 interior art project for the new Southside Teen Center, as well as an open application for city historian.
Listen up
The most recent episode of KUNM's University Showcase program discusses "There Must Be Other Names For The River," a new University of New Mexico Art Museum installation that opened yesterday, on World Water Day. The installation features singers embodying river flow data at six points along the Rio Grande, and features a web-based sound installation and virtual community space titled "Tributaries," where viewers can contribute their voices to the project. Guests include artists Marisa Demarco, Dylan McLaughlin and Jessica Zeglin. This Friday, March 26, the artists will also be joined by Arif Khan, director of the UNM Art Museum, and Traci Quinn, former curator of education and public programs, for a virtual program discussing the development, goals and artistic processes behind the exhibit. Find out more and register here.
Finding lost history
Tonight at 6 pm via Zoom, the Center for Contemporary Arts, in partnership with Collected Works Bookstore, presents an online conversation showcasing a documentary that grew out of Bettye Kearse's The Other Madisons: The Lost History of a President's Black Family. As described by CCA, the film "documents the process by which an oral tradition preserves an important social record, both in spite of and in response to suppression and racism." The program will livestream the 37-minute documentary, followed by a panel discussion moderated by Pamelya Herndon, president and CEO of the KWH Law Center for Social Justice and Change, with Kearse; the film's director Eduardo Montes-Bradley; and First Amendment Museum CEO Christian Cotz. Tickets available for $10 here.
MoMA collection features Santa Fe photographer
Santa Fe-based photographer Cara Romero, an enrolled citizen of the Chemehuevi Indian Tribe, features heavily in the Kornblum Collection, 100 works of photography by 76 women spanning the entire 20th century. Helen Kornblum recently donated the collection to the Museum of Modern Art, adding "significant examples of women artists' pioneering achievements across the field," MoMa said in an announcement. Kornblum, a psychotherapist who practiced in St. Louis for 40 years, says photography wasn't taken as seriously in the early 1980s when she began collecting, and she sought out many of the artists. "Cara Romero is foremost," she said. "She's bold, she's political. I first came upon her at a panel in Santa Fe, and then I sought her out to know her work." Romero expressed mutual admiration in an interview BuzzFeed: "It is so meaningful to be part of such a major acquisition of women in the arts and to be part of Helen's vision to bring gender parity in such a significant way."
Spring snow
We've got ourselves a little spring storm action this week. In the immediate future, today Santa Fe has a slight (20%) chance of rain and snow showers after 3 pm, and will otherwise be mostly cloudy, with a high near 53 degrees and southwest wind 5 to 15 mph. Tonight, chances for precipitation rise to 80%, which looks like rain and snow before midnight and snow thereafter. More snow expected on Wednesday as well.
Thanks for reading! The Word thinks this is a good morning to watch underwater manatees.
