Laura Marrich

Albuquerque youth ask the City Council to approve an arts space just for them

A runty Slayer T-shirt is adrift in a lake of beige, blue and gray suits. It floats down through clumps of swollen shoulder pads, finally settling into a bank of black tops.

E-mail This To All Your Friends!—Generally, I don't read past the first few paragraphs of any story in The Onion: America's Finest News Source. The headlines and the wacky lead are the funny parts—the rest is just made-up, tired fluff. As a member of the media, I enjoy scanning its pages to see what big-buzz story parody makes the front page or which cultural absurdity will be thrown under the microscope of comedic scrutiny (i.e. "Women Who Claims Book Changed Her Life Has Not Changed"). And as a member of the media, a recent article threw my industry under the microscope with surgeon-like precision, rife with "made-up, tired fluff" and a heavy dose of reality.

Courtesey of Mike 360

Artists say the removal of graffiti murals is more than just cleanup; it stamps out a tradition of public space reclamation

Part two of a two-part series. Read Part one here.

Honoring the work of Frank Sanchez

Last week, while I was meeting with a community organizer who works for Albuquerque Interfaith, she asked me, “Who do you think of as your heroes?”

Eric J. Garcia

Dateline: England —Homes were evacuated, a main road was closed and a controlled explosion was set off after a “suspicious package” was found attached to a bridge in Pease Pottage, West Sussex. In the end, some bats were mighty pissed. The A23 and the B2110 highways were both closed for several hours after an Army bomb disposal team was called in to investigate. Several nearby homes were evacuated and motorists experienced long delays as the mysterious box was destroyed without incident. The British Highways Agency eventually identified the suspicious package as a bat box being used as part of a wildlife survey. “We are working on ways to improve identification of our property to avoid a repeat of the incident,” a B.H.A. spokesperson told the BBC.

Red-light cameras dominate the Council

So we shouldn't object to electronic surveillance unless we want to break the law, right? When it comes to red-light cameras, Albuquerque hasn't really made up its mind.