Councilor wants a task force to investigate neighborhood and homeowners groups

Democratic. Transparent. These are words often linked to government—city, state or federal.

The demolition of Santa Fe’s teen arts center nears

In a room once too dark to navigate its stacks of audio-visual equipment and art supplies hangs the future of Warehouse 21 (W21). Bright, white lights illuminate the now almost barren space, which serves as the final stop in a journey through the history of the teen-arts center.

Snow Saturation—It snowed. A lot. I keep having visions of breaking my teeth on the ice as my inappropriate shoes take baby steps across sidewalks the city is ill-prepared to melt.

Bob Aul

Oregon man suspended for showing "¡Ask a Mexican!" to coworker

Robert Diefenbach took his annual vacation two months ago in Albuquerque. While there, the Newport, Ore., resident picked up a copy of the Alibi. He read "¡Ask a Mexican!," the column in which yours truly answers readers' questions about Mexicans. The questions that week concerned the Mexican love affair with chickens and the similarities between Mexicans and the Irish.

What do you get when you cram 112 state legislators, hundreds of eager staffers and more lobbyists than ticks on rez dogs into a four-story building for 60 days? Besides several respiratory infections, sleep deprivation and more handshakes than a three-armed Kiwanis club member, you get another strange and wonderful New Mexico Legislative Session.

... And what we should do to help them

This year we visited relatives in Chile during the Christmas season. On New Year’s Eve we were in the port city of Valparaiso for the mammoth fireworks display with which Chileans traditionally welcome in the New Year at the stroke of midnight.

Eric J. Garcia

Dateline: Norway--A Lithuanian held on suspicion of theft at a Norwegian jail slipped out of custody recently by stripping naked, smearing himself with vegetable oil and sliding through the prison bars. “He slipped through the bars on Christmas Eve,” said Sven-Erik Jacobsen, operation leader for the Oest-Finnmark Police District. Another Lithuanian, held as an accomplice in the same cell, tried to use the same slick technique as his partner in crime. Unfortunately, he proved to be just a bit too large to squeeze through the window at the Vadsoe Jail. “It was a good effort,” Jacobsen said. “But all he did was get his head and part of his shoulder through the bars.” According to Norwegian police, the oily escapee, 25-year-old Yuris Sinkevicius, is still at large.

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