Wes Naman

With a national energy crisis looming in the near future, where does Albuquerque stand on quality public transportation?

It would seem that all our worst predictions are catching up with us: Overpopulation, global warming and now, in the wake of two nasty hurricanes that bombarded our oil-rich Gulf Coast, a looming energy shortage, evidenced by the president's plea last week for people to start conserving precious fossil fuels. It would also seem that the time has come to stop making predictions, and start acting on solutions.

As a longtime Journal subscriber, I'm used to a certain level of meanness pervading the majority of the Journal's news coverage. This year's mayoral profiles were typical Journal fare, although Chavez, the paper's chosen one, seemed to escape the brunt of the paper's fury. Maybe that's because during the last mayoral election cycle he got absolutely smeared in the Journal's election profiles.

As I get older, I find I am spending almost as much time reading the obituaries in the morning newspaper as I am reading the sports page. The obituaries can be dull, inspiring or frustrating, much like the people whose passing is being noted. But I've gotten very fond of scanning them daily.

Getting ready to settle in for the night and discuss the day's outcomes with a colleague over a glass of wine, I made my way to the Las Cruces hotel bar to borrow a wine opener. (They don't stock the rooms with them, unfortunately.) As I passed the newspaper machines, a headline caught my eye and I was suddenly transported back to my role as an extra on the J-Lo movie, Border Town, shot in Albuquerque earlier this year.

Scott Rickson

Dateline: Poland—An armed man stormed into the Tschenstochau Salon in the southern Polish town of Czestochowa and demanded a free haircut for his girlfriend. The man, who has not been caught, forced the salon's owner to dye, cut and style his girlfriend's hair at gunpoint. The hair-crazed gunman was obviously unhappy with the results, however, as he returned the next day, gun in hand, and demanded that the hairdresser fix his girlfriend's do. This time, he insisted on hair extensions to fix the length.

Brad Greenberg, MD

An interview with Diane Rimple, a doctor from the University of New Mexico Hospital who spent 10 days in the aftermath of Katrina

A college professor once told me that in order to write about big ideas, one first had to write about small ones. Everyone wants to tackle love, or life, or the profound influence of one's mother, she said, but hardly anyone can do it well, or in a way that a thousand others haven't done it before. To get there, one has to start with threads, buttons, the way her rosary smelled. The small things paint the scenery. The subject is implied.

State treasurers' prosecution is good news

The arrests of New Mexico State Treasurer Robert Vigil and his predecessor, Michael Montoya, brought a big smile to my face.

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