artdirector@sfreporter.com
COVID-19 by the numbers
New Mexico’s health department yesterday delivered the state’s first COVID-19 for 2022: 7,313 for the four-day period of Dec. 31 through Jan. 3, bringing the total number thus far to 357,480; DOH designated 311,304 of them as recovered.
Bernalillo County had 2,469 new cases, followed by Doña Ana County with 950 and Santa Fe County with 690. Of Santa Fe County’s new cases, 239 were in the 87507 ZIP code, which ranked fourth in the state for the most new cases. The state’s seven-day test positivity rate also rose sharply from 11.9% to 17.9%; the state target is 7.5%.
DOH also reported 11 additional deaths, nine from more than 30 days ago, including one from Santa Fe County: a male in his 90s from who had been hospitalized. Santa Fe County has now had 205 deaths; there have been 5,866 statewide. As of yesterday, 472 people were hospitalized with COVID-19, 42 fewer than last Thursday.
According to the most recent DOH vaccination case report from Dec. 27, over the last four weeks, 75.7% of COVID-19 cases have been among those who are not vaccinated, as have 83.4% of hospitalizations and 87.5% of deaths.
Currently, 89% of New Mexicans 18 years and older have had at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine and 75.9% are fully vaccinated. Among that demographic, 35.7% have had a booster shot. In the 12-17-year-old age group, 66.9% of people have had at least one dose and 57.3% are fully inoculated. Among children ages 5-11, 28.5% have had at least one dose of the Pfizer vaccine and 17.3% are fully vaccinated. In Santa Fe County, 99% of people 18 and older have had at least one dose and 85.7% are fully vaccinated.The Food and Drug Administration yesterday amended the emergency use authorization of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine to include booster shots for people 12 through 15 years of age; shortened the time between the completion of primary vaccination of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine and a booster dose to at least five months; and allowed for a third primary series dose for certain immunocompromised children 5 through 11 years of age. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will need to approve those changes, which could happen as early as mid-week (at which point New Mexico’s Medical Advisory Team would then review and, presumably, approve here).
New Mexicans can register for a COVID-19 vaccine here, schedule a COVID-19 vaccine booster here and view a public calendar for vaccine availability here. Parents can add dependents to their vaccine profiles here.
You can read all of SFR’s COVID-19 coverage here.
PNM/Avangrid appeal merger rejection
Yesterday, PNM and Avangrid filed an appeal with the state Supreme Court over the Public Regulation Commission’s rejection last month of its proposed merger. In a news release, the companies said they also extended their merger agreement to April 20, 2023. “We believe this merger is unquestionably in the best interests of the state,” Pat Vincent-Collawn, PNM’s chairman, president and CEO, said in a statement. “It keeps the local, reliable PNM utility in place and offers a stronger parent company backing to allow PNM to do even more for our customers, our employees, our environment, our state, and our children.” PNM’s parent company, PNM Resources, announced the proposed merger in October 2020. On Dec. 8, the PRC unanimously rejected the plan, largely upholding PRC Hearing Examiner Ashley Schannauer’s recommendation the month prior. According to PNM’s news release, the companies will have 30 days to file their legal arguments with the state Supreme Court, which has no statutory timeframe for action. “We have demonstrated that this is a huge benefit for our customers,” PNM spokesman Raymond Sandoval tells the Albuquerque Journal. “The estimated economic benefit to this was $300 million to the state. It doesn’t make any sense to walk away from this kind of benefit to the state.” In its news release, PNM says the merger received approval last year from five federal agencies and the Public Utility Commission of Texas, leaving only the PRC’s approval remaining. “If we did not believe this was right for New Mexico, we wouldn’t keep pursuing it,” Vincent-Collawn said.Martinez Johnson announces new run for Congress
Alexis Martinez Johnson announced yesterday she will run for a second time to represent New Mexico’s 3rd Congressional District. She ran and lost in 2020 on the Republican ticket against Democrat Teresa Leger Fernández, garnering 41% of the vote in the race for an open seat previously held by US Sen. Ben Ray Luján, D-NM. Martinez Johnson also ran for Santa Fe mayor last year in a three-way non-partisan race, earning approximately 10% of the vote. “I think this district really encompasses my life experience,” Martinez Johnson told reporters yesterday regarding the 3rd Congressional District. Lawmakers redrew the maps for the state’s three congressional seats in a special redistricting session last year. In a fundraising email at the end of the year, Leger Fernández’s campaign describes District 3, historically a Democrat stronghold, as “highly competitive” due to the redistricting and its “inclusion on the National Republican Congressional Committee’s 2022 target list.” Lawmakers’ work on District 2, typically a Republican stronghold but now also competitive for Democrats, garnered criticism from US Rep. Yvette Herrell, who currently holds its seat: “The gerrymandered map New Mexico Democrats have proposed shows how desperate they are to try to save Nancy Pelosi’s majority,” Herrell said in a statement last month. “I look forward to running and winning in 2022, and providing New Mexico voters the conservative representation they deserve.” The start of the new year has brought a renewed emphasis on the midterm elections next fall and Democrats’ fear of losing their majority in the House.
SFNF ponders post-snow burns
Santa Fe National Forest yesterday announced it is considering prescribed pile burns as early as Jan. 6, spurred by the recent snowfall. According to a news release, “winter is an optimal time to burn piled slash and woody debris from earlier forest restoration work because snow on the ground keeps the fire from spreading to adjacent vegetation.” Pile burns, SFNS says, generally “produce less smoke and burn with less intensity than broadcast burns across a larger landscape,” although in some places, “smoke may settle into lower elevations overnight due to fluctuating atmospheric temperatures that produce nighttime inversions.” The decision to proceed will depend on snow pack, fuel moisture levels, air quality, ventilation, forecasted weather and wind and resource availability, but the projects under consideration are in the Coyote, Española, Jemez and Pecos/Las Vegas ranger districts. SFNF also announced yesterday it would be closing several roads in the Cuba and Jemez Ranger Districts due to inclement weather, but would be patrolling roads to ensure sure forest visitors are not trapped behind locked gates.
Listen up
In its most recent episode, the intermittent Instruction Interrupted podcast spotlights Las Cruces high school teacher Lorynn Guerrero, the 2022 New Mexico Teacher of the Year, in an interview with last year’s Teacher of the Year Alisa Cooper de Uribe. The podcast focuses on New Mexico teachers’ stories, teaching philosophies and advice. Guerrero talks about her own experience as a teen parent who pursued her education, and the importance of expanding educational opportunities to include diverse needs and life experiences. Yesterday, the Public Education Department announced Guerrero’s platform for the year will focus on expanding pathways for students to graduate; she will receive up to $10,000 from the the New Mexico Oil and Gas Association, the title sponsor for the New Mexico Teacher of the Year program. “The traditional pathway can’t be the only pathway,” Guerrero said in a statement. “I didn’t really understand before, but my students face so many obstacles. Parenting is just one. They are working jobs to help support their families, and then the one car for a family of seven breaks down. Listening to my students’ stories made me realize it doesn’t matter when you get your high school diploma as long as you get it.”
Guiding light
Analog Forever—an online and print publisher of contemporary analog photography—features Santa Fe photographer David Scheinbaum in an essay written by another Santa Fe photo expert: Anne Kelly, director of photo-eye Gallery. Kelly studied with Scheinbaum when she came to Santa Fe to attend the College of Santa Fe in 1998. Scheinbaum has been here since the late 1970s, relocating to the Southwest in the hopes of meeting photo historian Beaumont Newhall. Meet him he did: Scheinbaum and Newhall developed a long-term relationship and Scheinbaum would end up being named Newhall’s executor after he died in 1993. Scheinbaum’s career and work has been robust and varied (we’re partial to his hip-hop photographs), but the COVID-19 pandemic spurred what Kelly describes as his most “personal” project to date: an exploration of ENSŌ. “Traditionally, the ENSŌ is a hand-drawn circle with Sumi ink on paper, in one brushstroke expressing a moment in time,” Kelly writes. “As a photographer, David opted to explore the ENSŌ with light and chemistry instead of Sumi ink—returning to the origin of photography. Over one year… [Scheinbaum] made it a regular practice to spend a few hours per day, four to five days a week, in a sacred space, his darkroom, depicting the powerful form of the ENSŌ by exploring with a calligraphy brush, silver gelatin paper, and chemistry, making latent brush marks (on paper). Each image is a single stroke and occurs in one breath—a journey inward.”
Food for thought (and eating)
If nothing else, January provides the perfect milieu to cozy up at home with warm sustenance. Enter Edible New Mexico’s late winter edition, just hitting the stands. You can browse the magazine here (not all of the stories have hit the magazine’s website yet), which includes a feature, starting on page 61, of broths, stocks and “winter comfort in a bowl.” We flipped to page 65, which features recipes for umami vegetable broth, as well as a vegetable and parsnip soup. Thematically, the edition focuses on fiber and the connection between “what we eat and what we wear.” In New Mexico, that connection “is embodied in sheep,” the magazine’s introduction notes, and you’ll find a story on the historical and cultural importance of the Navajo-Churro sheep on page 51 (and online)—along with a host of other news and interviews with food folks from across the state, including Palace Prime in Santa Fe.For more fodder on the coming year in food, Forbes magazine spoke with 34 chefs across the country and asked for their 2022 predictions; they included David Ruiz, executive chef of Albuquerque’s Vara Winery & Distillery, who predicts a rise in lab-grown meats: “This has become a hot topic among chefs around the world,” he says, “being talked about on popular food podcasts and on TV shows. With the supply chains in shambles, we will see lab-grown chicken in grocery stores and adopted into casual and fine dining restaurants by the end of the year. We will also see the rise of specialty mushrooms on menus across the country as mushroom farming has become more popular especially here in the southwest region.”
Stay in the sun
Perhaps we’re acclimating to winter, but yesterday didn’t seem quite as cold as we feared...at least in the sun. Let’s hope today brings the same warmth; the National Weather Service forecasts a sunny day with a high near 43 degrees and northwest wind around 15 mph.
Thanks for reading! The Word is wondering if someone is planning a mashup of AA Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh and Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, as both entered the public domain on the first of the year, along with a whole lot of other amazing works (and sound recordings for the first time).
