What is New Mexico? Just an idea, really. Just words to help us think and talk about an arbitrarily framed area of the planet we call Earth. And what is the news? It’s people doing something. People doing nothing. Events, and eventlessness. Inspired by Félix Fénéon’s Novels in Three Lines, this feature presents news from New Mexico, briefly, written by author Mike Smith and illustrated by ¡Brapola!Bad news today for everyone in New Mexico: eventually you will die and the Universe is so vast your life will have meant basically nothing.At least 248 horses were rounded up on Navajo land last week, horses that were starving, dying of thirst, or lacking necessary permits. Breaking Bad gives folks the mistaken impression that Albuquerque is completely overrun by meth. But really heroin is just as big a problem.It’s unconstitutional to deny gay couples the right to marry, ruled a District Court Judge. And so marriage equality comes to Bernalillo County. New Mexico Republicans say they’ll attempt to block marriage equality. People who love each other can get married here now, and that’s distressing. Alexander the Great may have done gay things, "but he married a woman,” said State Senator William Sharer. And, he said, New Mexico’s gays should do the same. Murder today is a crime, but in the Old West it was neat. This year’s Bible school carnival theme, in Roswell, was High Noon on the Pecos.It appears a strange fever was responsible for killing a herd of 100 elk, on a ranch near Las Vegas. The fever is caused by insect bites. Steve Crawford spends May to September alone, in a firetower, near Grants. "This beautiful forest was born out of chaos," he mutters, alert. Past 75, and nothing making sense anymore, he slipped from an Alamogordo nursing home, into the night, into an alley, where he died, alone. "Love now legal in Bernalillo County," says a beautifully satirical headline in the Daily Lobo. Same-sex marriages are now legal here. A 10-year-old Belen boy’s defense team says the boy was always around violence and guns, and was abused. That’s why he shot and killed his father. "I’m here to urge you to take your children and grandchildren to Africa," big-game hunting, says an Artesia man, before an elk burger lunch. A pick-up truck drove into and over a bicycle-riding homeless man, 57, in Las Cruces. The truck continued. The man remained. A Socorro man sitting in a truck with his child was shot four times in the arms and neck. "Hey, don’t do that here, I have my kid," he said. “We’re going to take care of this right now,” said a Los Lunas man to his ex-girlfriend. “Let’s do this," she replied. Then they fought with knives. Members of SASS, or the Single Action Shooting Society, met in Edgewood for a special event involving a miniature donkey under 3 feet tall. No one really knows what it’s like to be anyone else. And so, we are all ultimately alone. And so, literally everyone is a mystery."More gay couples getting marriage licenses," gasps the top headline of the Roswell Daily Record, not quite panicking, but maybe about to. A bad hailstorm half-destroyed Santa Rosa; then 12,000 tons of storm debris were carted to an area landfill, much of it containing asbestos. The U.S. takes YOUR money to educate children, says an Alamogordo Daily News column. "And it’s the kids who suffer the most because of it." Appropriately enough, the part of Earth known as Angel Fire rolled through a cloud of comet debris, every piece lighting up against the sky. Megafires are a new way of life in the West, but there are some things you can do. For example: learn to enjoy everything being on fire."Let’s take off our shirts and fight!" is probably not something four men said in Española. But they could have—because then that’s what they did. And then she was in Española, at night, by a Walgreens, puking around a red-and-white Camaro, her evening, unbelievably, about to get worse. Police arrested some adults in some apartments by Farmington High. They confiscated a gun. And they’re still trying to learn what happened. Former Senator Tim Jennings was "roasted" at an event in Roswell. "We’re very fortunate to have each other as friends," zinged one speaker. Today, again, all afternoon, the state grew darker, and by late evening, there was no light at all, no warmth, no sign it would ever return.A Bloomfield man slammed his girlfriend into a cement driveway. He went to jail, got out, begged her to meet him, and stabbed her to death. Late dusk on UNM campus, and a dozen robed young men and elflocked young women are preparing their lightsabers for the weirdness to come. Plastic grocery bags, wafting over a freeway in Albuquerque, like jellyfish over the Gulf Stream. Beneath them, as smooth as dolphins, cars.Everything happens for a reason. And that reason is that other things happened before whatever thing, and led up to it.
New Mexico News: Late-August 2013
5 min read
