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Morning Word
Mother and daughter will fly to space next month from NM
Virgin Galactic’s next flight window opens Aug. 10, with its first private astronauts on board, the company announced last week. The flight, which will be livestreamed on virgingalactic.com, marks the company’s seventh spaceflight overall, its second commercial spaceflight and third spaceflight this year. At the end of June, Galactic 01 carried into space 13 research payloads and three crew members from the Italian Air Force and the National Research Council of Italy. Next month’s flight will include a three-person crew, who will board VSS Unity for a 90-minute flight from Spaceport America, the company announced today, and will “will achieve a number of historical milestones,” including: the first astronauts from the Caribbean; the first mother-daughter duo in space; the first Olympian to go to space; the second-youngest person to go to space; and the second person with Parkinson’s to go to space. Specifically, Keisha Schahaff, 46, an entrepreneur and health and wellness coach from Antigua and Barbuda, will be on board with her 18-year-old daughter Anastatia Mayers, a student at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland. Keisha, the company says, is the beneficiary of two spaceflight seats from a sweepstakes that raised $1.7M in grants for nonprofit Space for Humanity. Jon Goodwin, 80, competed in the 1972 Olympic games in Munich (canoeing). Diagnosed with Parkinson’s in 2014, he will be only the second person with the condition to travel to space, Virgin Galactic says. Chief Astronaut Instructor Beth Moses, in charge of training and preparation for the flight, also will be on board.
June murder suspect slated for hearing today
Crime rates in Santa Fe last month were relatively unchanged from May, with slight upticks in burglary and assaults, and a decline in larceny, according to monthly crime stats Santa Fe Police Chief Paul Joye is slated to present at tomorrow’s 4 pm Public Safety Committee meeting (see the crimes mapped here). Crimes categorized as burglaries, along with breaking and entering, rose 6.6% last month compared to the month prior; assaults rose 5.4%. Larcenies declined by just over 19%. The city also had one more sex offense last month than it did in June and a homicide: Raul Rene Montejano Jr., 27, who died after being struck by gunfire June 19 at a residence in the 4300 block of Camino Alhambra. Suspect Francisco Javier Grado-Flores, 29, was subsequently located and arrested for the crime in Wichita, Kansas. According to court records, Grado-Flores has been charged with first-degree murder and aggravated battery and will have a preliminary and detention hearing today. The state is requesting Grado-Flores be detained without bond, and says in addition to killing Montejano, Grado-Flores also injured another person and fired into the house where he lived (with Gladis Carrera-Anchondo, who previously dated victim Montejano and with whom she had a child) while children were inside.
Feds talk to NM SOS about 2020 election
CNN reported on Friday that federal prosecutors in recent months spoke with New Mexico Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver as part of an ongoing investigation into attempts to overthrow election results in the 2020 presidential race. Toulouse Oliver’s spokesman Alex Curtas confirmed to the Associated Press Toulouse Oliver’s conversation with federal prosecutors and declined further comment. According to CNN, special counsel Jack Smith has sent subpoenas to seven states—Georgia, New Mexico, Nevada, Michigan, Arizona, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin—that were “targeted by Trump and his allies and where Trump’s campaign convened the false electors as part of the effort to subvert the Electoral College.” Toulouse Oliver also gave a national interview last week on New Mexico’s participation in the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), which Toulouse Oliver describes as “one of the best, most effective tools we have to keep our voter registration database accurate.” She also weighs in on the threats artificial intelligence could pose to election security, a topic of discussion at the National Association of Secretaries of State’s recent summer conference in Washington, DC. “I don’t think any election administrator in this country is not worried about this issue,” Toulouse Oliver says, adding that “we don’t know where it’s going; we don’t know how it’s going to be used yet. So we’re spending this time in the lead up to 2024 getting as educated as we possibly can about the potential implications of AI and building plans to be able to fight back against the miss- and dis-info that we anticipate will come.”
Fairs fare well
The state Tourism Department says it’s upping its investment in statewide fairs and festivals following year one of its Tourism Event Growth and Sustainability Program. The department spent $177,000 in the inaugural fiscal 2023 year for the program; for fiscal year 2024, the state will lay out over the next 12 months $460,692 in grant funding for 35 tourism-related events, including several in Santa Fe. “We created this program one year ago because we recognized that New Mexico’s fairs, festivals and events require a more specialized form of assistance from the New Mexico Tourism Department, and the growth we have seen just in the second year demonstrates how much demand there is from local communities for this type of support,” Tourism Secretary Jen Paul Schroer said in a statement. “Our hope for this program was that it would help take to new levels the events that New Mexico communities rely on for tourism—and we are already seeing that take shape.” In total, the state is supporting 14 events through sponsorship, nine events through cooperative marketing support and 11 events through the event accelerator. In Santa Fe, the 2024 Native Treasures Art Market, International Folk Art Market, Currents New Media Festival, International Film Festival, Santa Fe Wine & Chile Festival, Santa Fe Indian Market and Zozobra all have or will receive sponsorship assistance—$50,000 worth in the case of Indian Market and Zozobra. Traditional Spanish Market and Nakotah LaRance Youth Hoop Dance Championship are each receiving support through the state’s event accelerator program. The Indigenous Ways Festival is the only Santa Fe organization awarded assistance—$8,510—in the form of cooperative marketing support.
Listen up
People aren’t the only creatures struggling in the heat this summer. KUNM’s Bryce Dix reports on the extreme heat’s impact on birds species, such as goldfinches, who dehydrate quickly, or birds such as the curve-bill thrasher, who live in the desert and can’t relocate to a cooler climate. Dix speaks with University of New Mexico Biology Professor Blair Wolf about the risk some birds face right now, and how you can help.
Everyone loves New Mexico
More wins for New Mexico in Travel & Leisure’s annual readers’ choice awards (ICYMI, Santa Fe made T&L’s annual list for both the world’s and the United States’ best cities last week). Vermejo, one of Ted Turner’s reserves, in Raton, won first place for readers’ favorite resort in the West (a third of the resorts on the list are located in Oregon, FWIW). “The property is an outdoor adventurer’s dream, with on-site activities including hiking, archery, mountain biking, geocaching, fishing, horseback riding, and more,” T&L writes. Its readers concur: “I felt like my family had our own private national park,” one T+L reader says. “Bison up close, herds of elk moving through the property, deer on the lawn every morning at dawn, just special.” As for last year’s No. 1 resort—Bishop’s Lodge, Auberge Resorts Collection in Santa Fe—it remained on the list, but dropped to No. 8., with one reader praising its vibe: “This is one of the best places for [rest and relaxation] in the world. No hustle, no bustle—just nature, great views, amazing staff, and outstanding culinary [creations].” On yet another T&L list, Ten Thousand Waves came in at No. 12 for the 15 best domestic spas. If this whets your appetite for list of things other people love, the countdown is on for SFR’s Best of Santa Fe edition, the OG roundup of the city’s best everything, publishing July 26, with a city-wide BOSF party to celebrate the winners 5 pm, July 28 in the Railyard.
Counting down
The cast of Christopher Nolan’s forthcoming film on J. Robert Oppenheimer and the making of the atomic bomb, Oppenheimer, walked off the London premier of their film last week in preparation for SAG-AFTRA’s now ongoing strike, joining screenwriters, who began walking a picket line in May. The film’s US red carpet premiere in New York also has since been canceled (and Cillian Murphy, after discussing with Deadline how he “transformed” himself to play Oppenheimer, also said he supports his colleagues). One of the reported sticking points includes the use of artificial intelligence, and actors’ pushback against the digital replication of their likenesses. Nolan, as it happens, has drawn comparisons between the creation of the atomic bomb and AI. “The rise of companies in the last 15 years bandying words like algorithm—not knowing what they mean in any kind of meaningful, mathematical sense—these guys don’t know what an algorithm is,” Nolan said recently in a moderated discussion following a screening of his film. “People in my business are talking about it, they just don’t want to take responsibility for whatever that algorithm does.” 109 East Palace author Jennet Conant also recently wrote an essay for Alta Journal regarding the lessons the race for the atomic bomb can teach those pursuing AI (only available with a subscription; it’s a good read). Finally, Murphy, Emily Blunt and Matt Damon spoke recently to The Hollywood Reporter about the film and its creation on set in New Mexico. Oppenheimer opens July 20 at Violet Crown and July 21 at Center for Contemporary Arts.
Hot air
The National Weather Service has Santa Fe under a heat advisory today from noon until 8 pm, with high temperatures in the 94 degree range; northeast wind 5 to 15 mph becoming west in the afternoon. Record-high temperatures expected throughout the state and, yes, according to this NWS weather map, portions of Santa Fe County could reach 100 degrees.
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Correction: The date of the city’s Public Safety Committee meeting was incorrect in an earlier version of this edition of the Morning Word. The Word regrets the error.
