Columns

On Today’s Small Business Saturday, Haaland Urges New Mexicans To Shop Local, Strengthen Community Economies

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Gubernatorial Candidate Deb Haaland

From the Deb Haaland for Governor Campaign:

ALBUQUERQUE – On Small Business Saturday, Deb Haaland, candidate for Governor of New Mexico, encouraged New Mexicans to shop small and support local businesses. Haaland views New Mexico small businesses as a key way to address the affordability crisis by growing opportunities for good-paying jobs across the state and providing an alternative to large corporations that price gauge. 

As a single mom, Haaland started selling salsa to help make ends meet and provide the flexibility to care for her young child. Read More

Op-Ed: Response To Wallace Piece On Nuclear Weapons Testing

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By CHICK KELLER
Los Alamos

In response to Terry Wallace’s recent article about previous underground testing of nuclear weapons (link),  I’d like to first support his complete opposition to any atmospheric testing. I suspect President Trump isn’t serious, but is merely trying to scare other countries into cessation of any nuclear testing.

I recall the disaster of the Baneberry underground test that broke through and emitted radioactive material to the atmosphere.

I was a junior scientist working on determining how to contain the very first moments of underground tests. Soon after that Read More

Local Love: Do You Have Some To Give?

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By KEVIN HOLSAPPLE
Board Member
Places and Spaces Los Alamos

Los Alamos and White Rock are communities defined in large part by their independent spirit and local businesses. If you tuned in to the Los Alamos Local Business Coalition forums earlier this year, you will understand that many of our local businesses continue to struggle with maintaining pre-pandemic cash flow and revenue margins. Challenges like difficulty finding workers, increased labor costs, and high operational costs persist in our uncertain economy. To ensure our small businesses fully recover and achieve sustainable

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Tom’s 2025 Thanksgiving Thankful List

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By TOM GARRISON
© 2025 Tom Garrison

Each November. I compose a “Thanksgiving Thankful List” for the preceding year. My wife, Deb, and I enjoy our life in red rock southern Utah and have many things for which we are thankful.

I hope sharing them brings a smile and acknowledgement that even the seldom thought of can be a source of thankfulness.

Below is my 2025 list.

  1. Southwest Utah has grown enormously in the last 15 years. Because of that I’m thankful for street signs. I’m an old guy and getting around is hard enough. Without street signs to guide me, I’d probably end up in the twilight zone.
  2. I’m thankful
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There’s More To The Pilgrim Story Than Thanksgiving

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Jean Leon Gerome Ferris, 1863-1930, The Mayflower Compact 1620, Oil on Canvas. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. Courtesy/Wikipedia Commons

By CHRIS BROWN
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ASENATH KEPLER
New Mexico’s Mayflower Society

This Thanksgiving marks 70 years since New Mexico’s Mayflower Society was founded by descendants of the ship’s 102 passengers. Our mission is to keep the Pilgrim story alive and relevant to New Mexicans today.  More important than the first Thanksgiving that half of the passengers survived to celebrate only with help from their native benefactors, Plymouth’s settlers

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Op-Ed: Vaccines – Who Can You Trust?

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By RICHARD SKOLNIK
White Rock

The Republican Trump administration has “gone to war” against vaccines. This includes recently changing the CDC’s website on childhood vaccines at the direct request of the Secretary of Health and Human Services to imply that “vaccines cause autism.” This is despite the complete lack of scientific evidence for this idea.

Secretary Kennedy’s battle against vaccines appears to have four pillars, dealing with trust and the destruction of key vaccine institutions:

  • Reduce trust in vaccines
  • Take over the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP)
  • Make
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Op-Ed: New Mexico’s Economic Freedom Now Dead Last

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By PAUL J. GESSING
President Rio Grande Foundation

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MATTHEW MITCHELL
Canadian free market think tank
Lives in Angel Fire

In a study published earlier this year, we highlighted the fact that New Mexico was the only state in the US to have lost economic freedom since 1981. We now know that it is worse than we thought.

People are more economically free when they are allowed to make more of their own economic choices; economists measure this freedom by looking at the degree to which government spending, taxation, and regulation limits choice.

We relied on data from the Fraser Institute’s Economic Read More

Weekly Fishing Report: Nov. 24, 2025 

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By GEORGE MORSE
Sports and Outdoors
Los Alamos Daily Post 

Happy Thanksgiving. 

Snow is now beginning to fall in the higher elevations and the beautiful white covering on the mountains is a most welcome sight. When planning a trip it will be increasingly important to keep track of weather and road conditions at and going to your destination. 

Several lakes will begin to freeze over and it will be awhile before the ice is thick enough to allow for ice fishing. Santa Cruz Lake and Monastery Lake do not allow any ice fishing. 

Eagle Nest Lake, Fenton Lake and Lake Maloya are popular ice fishing destinations Read More

Daily Postcard: Male Evening Grosbeak Visits Overlook Park

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Daily Postcard: Male Evening Grosbeak visited Overlook Park last week. Evening Grosbeaks are fairly large finches that often travel in large flocks. These birds may be found in Northern New Mexico all year round, but their numbers can vary considerably each year. Over the last fifty years, the population of Evening Grosbeaks has declined by 50% and the decline has accelerated in the last decade. Photo by Richard Skolnik Read More

Home Country: Last Person On Earth

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Home Country
By SLIM RANDLES

As I lay there in my super-duper borrowed-from-the-Army mummy bag, I had time to think about things. Mostly, I pondered how stupid I’d been to take a dog team out across the North Slope of Alaska in November.

As I can now contemplate, 50 years later, it was a dumb thing to do, making the first crossing north to south from Prudhoe Bay’s frozen oil fields to the Brooks Range. Brooks Range roughly translates to “that frozen rockpile there to the south.”

But even then, in the deadly silence of the arctic, I knew my doing this was… well, me. I guessed at the time it would cost me my life, Read More