I added a new page to this site. I wrote a rant on the state of our high schools, a rant fueled by my son’s negative experience attending Robertson High School in the City Schools district. Keep in mind that my words are a rant and not a fully crafted story.
I’m working full time – I have to do so …

The face of a man – curiously missing eyes, missing teeth, his brain seemingly evaporated – almost grins from a pedestal in Burris Hall. Spikes protrude from his head, evidence of a piercing gone mad, of the torture of migraine, of a troublesome mauling with oversized golf tees, perhaps, or martini stirrers. Matthew C. Wicker’s, “Stacks,” is both disturbing and hilarious at once. An artist from New York, Wicker is one of over eighty professional iron artists in Iron Tribe.

“I was trying to describe this group of people,” explains David Lobdell, NMHU Department of Fine Arts professor, and curator of the Iron Tribe exhibition, now on display through Friday, March 6. “We are willing to spend our extra money to do this – we’ll drive across the country, drive for 30 hours one way. We didn’t go to school together. I learned it after school, when I was just started out at Highlands. We’re not necessarily friends. We come together out of our mutual interest. The world Tribe seemed to suit the group best, especially for the name of a program that happens in New Mexico.”

by Birdie Jaworski
Yunus Peer remembers the sting of apartheid in the early ’70s when he was 13 years old and ranked the number two tennis player among non-whites in South Africa. An Indian, he wanted to compete against all talented players his age, to swing the racket to the best of his ability across the court from any worthy opponent.
"My …

by Birdie Jaworski
Karoline Puentes’s voice remains level as she talks about the night a young man named Rodrigo Baca attacked her, left her for dead on the side of dimly lit Santa Fe street.
"He beat me nearly to death, leaving me permanently disabled. It took me months to recover some sense of normal life."
Puentes didn’t allow the horrific attack to …

My boys don’t sport the tidy uniforms I see some other students wear. They wear frayed t-shirts over mud-splashed jeans, the uniform of the most non-uniform, like all their peers at the Rio Gallinas School. They don’t spend every hour with butt in desk seat, every hour calculating minutes to the end of the day. They let the outdoors grant …