Continuing a seven-part special by Richard F. Kontz on a Vietnam vet he met while running the Bread of Life Christian Bookstore in 2011 through mid-2015.

As time passed, I took Don to my church one Sunday morning.  He was very impressed with the size, the music and the preaching.  Toward the end of the service, one of the Ushers came to get me. He said an older Navajo lady had asked if I could come out and talk with her — it was an emergency.

Bessie [not her real name] was in the entry way of the Church.  I recognized her from a series of Spiritual classes I had taught and she was one of the class participants.   Long story short her father was in the hospital and not expected...

Hard-working families in our state are drowning. Families should never have to choose between buying healthy groceries and paying their utility bills, but they do. Kids should be focusing on their work instead of their grumbling stomachs during school, but they cannot help it when their hard-working parents can only provide one meal a day. Workers should not have to take out payday loans for exorbitant fees to afford back-to-school supplies for their kids.

I’ve heard too many devastating stories about the challenges that New Mexico’s minimum-wage workers face, and I believe that hard-working New Mexicans deserve better.

A minimum wage increase is long overdue – it hasn’t been...

Part 3 of 3

Continued from last week.

The mining activity has basically depleted much of the underground water and caused a significant increase in multiple chronic diseases in the impacted populations.  The studies indicated that the logical place to start was in the health of children with uranium being the primary contaminant of concern along with the exposure to other mixtures of metals which can cause birth defects and life-long health issues.

The exposures can be physical, chemical, societal, medical and psychosocial.  Radiation scans in homes to the birth records and reproductive outcomes were assessed and the results included the fact that some sources of exposure include...

Part 2 of 3

Continued from last week.

Holtec Int’l. proposes to transport high level radioactive waste on U.S. Interstates that contains the same long-lived radioactivity released by the Hiroshima and Nagasaki Atomic bombs on Aug. 6 and 9, 1945.

There is no data that addresses the temperatures of up to 1,475 Fahrenheit and the number of days or weeks that the radioactive waste will be on American highways, the heat vaporization of the radioactive materials in the air, land or waterways. There is no data regarding the inhalation of radioactive particulates that cause cancer, liver and kidney disease, growth retardation, birth defects and other fatal diseases in human and animals.

There...