A young Navajo man sits outside the most popular breakfast place in town. Niyol sits cross-legged most mornings as I walk my boys to school, sits with the same ripped jeans, the same black sweatshirt that speaks of a thousand nights near the river. Sometimes I raid my penny jar and give him a small handful. My penny jar sits …

78 years ago a young man sat on the edge of dusty forever. His airplane’s wheels dug into dry prairie. He didn’t know the grass would soon lift from the earth, carve across the Great Plains in clouds of fury and death. You can see this man against an interior wall in the Las Vegas, New Mexico Railway Depot, his …

Three weeks before the turn of the year I turned forty-one. Turning forty was easy, was just a number, a notch on the invisible calendar under my skin. But this birthday brought a few new gray hairs, the tiny crinkle of crow’s feet around eyes that looked just a little bit… old. Old. I stood before the bathroom mirror, tried …

Are you from out of town? Every now and then, some people are surprised to learn that there’s a Las Vegas in New Mexico. If you’re at all confused which one you’re in, here’s how you can tell the difference.
You know you’re in the “other” Vegas when…
…the only buffet in town is a potluck at the Immaculate Conception Catholic Church …