Gallup has always welcomed visitors, of any rank or significance down to the utterly desperate. Some arrive in expensive cars, some in beat up jalopies, but all find a welcome that in the writer’s experience is not always easy to find in other venues.

The road to Gallup for most has been Historic Route 66, up until the time I-40 was finished. For Dave Pickett, his personal road was not nearly as wide or straight before he came here.

It was a friend from Sri Lanka – a former Hindu priest converted to Christianity – that first sparked the interest of  Pickett to this area.

Dave had traveled through before, taking a road trip from Oklahoma to Los Angeles on the Mother-road, or...

Gallup’s PCP (politically correct police) recently created a fervor of outrage by taking umbrage to a tiny Buddhist symbol of peace (as well as other benign historical uses), a sawaustika, placed among other symbols on the Spaniard coat of arms El Morro Theater logo. It looks like a propeller or whirligig to me but apparently some associate it with the German symbol of National Socialism, the swastika, although backwards. The city reacted quickly, amending the perceived micro-aggression by removing the entire coat of arms, leaving only the lettering.

There has been a long tradition of iconoclastic forceful elimination of symbols of oppression, both political and religious, from 8th...

Another year… another ranking at the bottom of the barrel. New Mexico has ranked among the worst states in which to be a child for so long that it hardly seems like news anymore. In the 25-plus years that the Annie E. Casey Foundation has been publishing the KIDS COUNT Data Book, we’ve never ranked above 40th. Most years, we’ve ranked in the bottom five, but we can and we must do better by our kids

We have made progress in some areas. Over the last several years, child and teen death rates and teen birth rates have gone down, along with the percentage of children who lack health insurance, while high school graduation rates have gone up.

While these are positive trends, they align...

When we think of strep throat, we generally think of that infection most of us get during a lifetime where we get this sudden, painful sore throat and fever. We just go to the doctor, get antibiotics, stay home from work or school a day or two and everything’s fine.

Truth is, there are many different types of strep bacteria. Some cause more serious illness than others.

Strep throat is a bacterial infection in the throat and the tonsils. It’s caused by streptococcal (strep) bacteria, and it can be passed from person-to-person when the infected person breathes, coughs, or sneezes, tiny droplets with the strep bacteria go into the air. It’s that simple: those itty bitty droplets...