Interview with Birgitte Ginge
By Jessica Rath

It doesn’t stop to amaze me that a tiny village in New Mexico, one of the least populated states in America, attracts so many people not only from all over the U.S. but from across the globe. One of them is Birgitte Ginge who used to be a Danish citizen but now lives in Abiquiú, for over twenty years (and has dual citizenship). I was curious: what brought her here? She kindly agreed to an interview.

Birgitte was born in Odense, one of the oldest cities in Denmark. She told me that it is named after the Nordic god Odin, and that it celebrated its thousandth anniversary in 1988, although some settlements in the area date back more than 4,000 years, to the Stone Age!  With a population of about 185,000 people, it is Denmark’s third-largest city.
 
She grew up in a beautiful part of town; there was a river close-by, and living as she does now right by the Chama River, often reminds Birgitte of her happy childhood. There were walking trails everywhere; one could walk into the downtown area along ponds, lakes, and meadows. If you’ve ever visited a medieval-looking European town, you might wax nostalgic remembering streets with cobblestones, picturesque half-timbered houses, and steep-overhanging roofs.

Odense is well known for being the birthplace of Hans Christian Andersen, world-famous  author of fairy tales such as The Little Mermaid and The Ugly Duckling. Younger generations may know his stories only from Disney movies where they were sanitized and sweetened – I highly recommend going to the library and getting a volume of Andersen’s fairy tales. They’re touching and full of wisdom, and some of them are sad – but in a good way.
 
Birgitte went to Odense University  where she received her Ph.D. in archeology.  After she had finished her doctorate, she spent some time in Rome doing research, publications, and studies,  and from there she  went to Cambridge University on a post-doctoral fellowship.  Next, she  came to the United States – “It was supposed to be a one-year fellowship at Princeton University, and that's almost 40 years ago,” she told me.
I asked about the principal object of her work as an archeologist.

“I did some excavation, but most of my research was centered on already excavated material and  was taking place in museums. My focus was on the Etruscans.  I've worked in almost every major museum in Europe. The British Museum, the Louvre,  Berlin Charlottenburg, the Vatican, wherever there was something that fell within my field of interest or expertise, I traveled to those places.  Same in this country, I have worked in a lot of different museums in connection with  Etruscan pottery”, Birgitte explained.

“After I was done with my Princeton fellowship, I taught at Rutgers University, did research at the  University of Pennsylvania, and then I was teaching at Dickinson College, Gettysburg College, and Franklin & Marshall College, all in Pennsylvania. I did that for about 10 years, and then I  wrapped up my academic career by being the Assistant Provost of Gettysburg College.”

After she met her partner, Birgitte moved to Phoenix/Arizona because that’s where Madeline Williamson was a professor and piano teacher at the School of Music at Arizona State University. Birgitte’s archeological career came to an end because there wasn’t any job available in her field.  “But at that point I was almost 50 years old, and it was okay to try something else”, she told me.  “It opened a new chapter in my life, and I took a job with Borders Books, which was a hot thing at that time in the 90s. Borders was the place to be. And so I was a bookstore manager for some years, until we moved to Abiquiú. After we moved here, I got a job at the Santa Fe Opera from which I retired after almost twenty years.”
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Of course I wanted to know: what made them decide to move to New Mexico, and especially to Abiquiú?
 
“Well, it was probably by chance,”  Birgitte answered. “We were traveling home from vacationing with friends in Colorado, and we decided to take a different route from Gunnison in Colorado to Phoenix, Arizona, by way of New Mexico. We headed for Santa Fe after we had spent time in Chama where  we visited the Narrow Gauge Railroad. Driving from Chama to Santa Fe we came through Abiquiú, and we stopped to check it out. We had a meal at the Abiquiú Inn, and the Abiquiú Realty was right next door. We looked at some of the offerings and decided to spend the night at the Abiquiú Inn. We checked out some properties, and before we knew it, we had an appointment with a real estate agent and came out here in November of 2000. We bought the property right away.”

Birgitte continued: “We didn't move here immediately,  but in 2003 Madeline decided that it was time to take early retirement, and so she set that in motion, and we had friends who wanted to buy our house in the historic district in Phoenix. So by Memorial Day of 2004 we arrived in Abiquiú.”

And how did you decide on the architect? Your house is so unusual.

“There's Dwell Magazine, which is fairly well known for contemporary architecture,”  Birgitte explained. “They had just started in 2002 or 03, and we were interested in contemporary architecture and design, so we took a subscription, and there was an invitation to architects around the country to submit designs for prefabricated housing.”

You can read more about the house at the magazine’s website.

“There were about ten architects, and we interviewed with a firm in San Francisco who were to become our architects for the project,” Birgitte continued. “ They’re two brothers of Norwegian descent. We had very much the same kind of esthetic, and they quickly understood what we wanted. The house was for two people to live in, with a lot of animals, so they needed to design porches for the cats and kennels for the dogs. And we told them that we wanted music. So from the very beginning, the performance space was part of the design.”

“The architects came out to visit the site before they did the design, and they really understood and appreciated the location: the bend of the river with upstream and downstream views, and the island out there in the middle. It was their idea to build the house up a little higher, because they are environmentally conscious. Prefabricated was part of the design, and  they decided that a small footprint was less invasive for the environment and benefited the location. In September of 2006 the house was ready for us to move in.”
 
Here is the Abiquiú House at the architects’ website.

I always admired the light-filled weightlessness of the house. There are hardly any walls inside, and most of the structural walls have floor-to-ceiling windows. The few doors there belong to bathrooms, for privacy. Inside the house one almost feels as if sitting on a cloud with views of the sky, the river, and an endless parade of wildlife: ducks and geese, eagles, deer and elk, an occasional beaver. And inside one always found a number of cats and dogs, all rescued. The design of the house includes several living areas for these animals: two big fenced-in porches where the dogs had plenty of space to run around but were safe. At night they went into their crates in the “pet apartment”. The cats were indoor cats but they could spend outside-time on one of the big decks which was enclosed with a chain link fence. The idea of designing a house and deliberately including living spaces for lots of rescued animals – I can’t think of anything more praiseworthy.

“Once we had seven dogs and seven cats at the height of the population at the same time, and they all had their separate living spaces. Some of them got along better than others, so we had to keep them separate. But they all had their safe and secure areas,” Birgitte added. 
​
Next, I asked Birgitte  about the Chamber Music Festival which was already part of the design for the house before they even moved here.

“Yes, we didn't know exactly what, but we wanted to offer performances for the local community. By the time we came out here and the house was built, Madeline decided that she wanted to have a New Music festival. So we thought about New Music. Basically, what was envisioned as a New Music festival became a regular chamber music festival where we offered both new music and traditional classical music. I think it really worked well, because people loved coming to hear Mozart and Haydn and Beethoven, but they also were eager to learn something new. And a lot of people in our local and supporting community really thought that probably the new music was the major part, because they learned so much, they took away so much from each concert.”
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I remember that they often had young composers there, and I asked Birgitte about this.

“Absolutely,” she replied.  “Young composers and  young performers were there right from the beginning. We didn't know what to expect for the first season, but once we had a foothold and the reputation, we knew people would be coming. Madeline would bring in soloists and major artists from all over the country and from all over the world. Some came over from Italy several times, and we had some Russian and some Chinese artists, and we had some local collaborative musicians.”
​
I wanted to know– how did you find the more famous musicians, such as the pianist from Italy, Emanuele Arciuli?

Birgitte explained: “Madeline just went online to look for people who were doing interesting performances and were well-known performers in their field. Emanuele had been coming to the United States and New Mexico for a few years, but he didn't really perform much here. So she just brought him in. The same with Matthew Aucoin, for example, a young composer from New York who won the MacArthur Fellowship (called the genius grant) in 2018. So Matthew was here before he was truly famous. And now he's very famous.”

That sounds fantastic. Which brought me to more questions: how did the festival  grow over the years? How many people attended a concert during its  twelve seasons? Did you always have a full house?
​
“We could seat 100 people, and there weren't 100 for each concert in the first season, but I would say there were probably between 50 and 70,” Birgitte told me. “We never advertised, it was all word of mouth. We left  postcards at the post office, hung posters in local businesses, but we never paid for advertisements at all. I would say over the years about 7,000 people walked through the front door to hear music.”

“It went on for twelve years. It started in 2008 and then the last season was 2019. Of course, we didn't know that COVID was going to happen, but Madeline got a medical diagnosis in 2019 that made us decide that we couldn't continue with the festival. As it turned out, we would have had to discontinue anyway.”

At the same time, Birgitte was also working at the opera. Those summers must have been busy!

“Yes, during the season, it's pretty intense to be an employee at the Santa Fe Opera”, Birgitte confirmed.  “We had six concerts here. Every other Sunday from mid June through mid August we had concerts. So yeah, I didn't really have time off in the summer but I was working every day. Having a concert here basically meant that you got up in the morning and you just started with the setup and the planning and everything getting ready. And of course, there had been rehearsals at the house for a couple of days before, they usually came out on Friday to  rehearse, sometimes also Saturday, and then gave the concert on Sunday.  There was always a reception for the supporters, the donors, and the musicians as well.”

“Plus,  we had to find accommodation for the artists. Luckily, the community was very supportive. A lot of bed &  breakfasts around here donated overnight stays for the artists. That was an extra draw, because they loved to come out here and just stay at a bed & breakfast. And then there was fundraising, and I did that as well. During the off-season, I raised money.”
I remembered that:  there were silent auctions and things like  that.
​
“Yes, silent auctions, art shows at Abiquiú Inn,  plus, we had good support from our local communities. And in the end, I also managed to get  some grants. I raised about $50,000 a year to make the concerts happen and to pay the musicians.”

I had to ask: did you ever make a penny from all your endeavors?

Birgitte chuckled. “No, this was for the good of the community. We had a lot of expenses in the beginning because we had nothing, no funds to start with. Everything – buying the umbrellas and the chairs and everything else, it all came out of our own pockets. But eventually we could break even. Once we got started and had some ticket revenue,  once the fundraising was going well, we could raise enough money. The art shows were really important in the beginning, because they provided a lot of money that we wouldn’t have had otherwise.”

This is so impressive – Birgitte and Madeline  produced all of this  out of nothing. There was no precedence, there was nothing to base it on. It just all started and grew into this really fantastic thing.

“Yes, we had only just arrived and the house was barely completed when we started that first summer. You don't know how many people are going to show up. It was very much of an experiment but it really paid off.” Birgitte continued: “People loved it because it was in person. It is such a different experience when you can be with the musicians. And sometimes we had the composers here too. For example,  Jennifer Higdon  had the premiere of her opera Cold Mountain at the Santa Fe Opera, and so we performed her piece, and she came out and enjoyed it, and people got to meet her.”

I remembered another award-winning composer, Ingrid Stölzel. She was from Germany.
​
“Yes, Madeline found her online and really liked her music, so we commissioned a piece from Ingrid, and it was performed, and she was here for the world premiere.”

And then there was the classical music composer Ruth Lomon, a friend of Madeline’s I believe. She attended several Abiquiú Chamber Music Festival seasons before she passed away in 2017.​​​​​​​

What an impressive legacy. I’m sure that everybody who was able to attend a concert or a whole season has fond and priceless memories. My warm gratitude to Birgitte for opening her house to us, and for letting us look behind the scenes of the Abiquiú Chamber Music Festival. For a taste of the music, please play the YouTube video below.​

Marie T. Pearlingi, LMT
Right at Home Massage LLC. NM MT9497
Online at rightathomemt.com
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Really, it’s a thing. We spend an inordinate amount of time on our phones, laptops, and desktops whether it’s required or not. Why? Well, it’s fun! There is an unbelievable amount of information to be found on our technology, including this article I’m writing, and the corroborating information found elsewhere.

So, what is it and how do you know if you have it? Well, neck pain for one. But it also can affect your upper back and your shoulder girdle aka the rotator cuff.
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Let’s start first with the head which weighs, on average, 10 lbs. Your 10lb. head is being balanced on a narrow stack of bones and is supported by many muscles and tendons. Picture a bowling ball resting on a fat marker (just to simplify) attached to a bunch of rubber bands of various thicknesses, lengths and strengths. For every inch that that bowling ball drops in any direction, that is an additional 10 lbs. that those rubber bands must support. If you are looking down at your phone and your head is leaning forward 3 inches, that’s 30 lbs. your neck muscles are holding. If you hold it steady for any significant amount of time (like a YouTube rabbit hole) those muscles will begin to tire and get sore. The fun thing about the neck, though, is that there are itty bitty muscles that will remember that position and will begin to like it, so they will stick in that position. Eventually, their little muscle friends will follow, and you will feel discomfort when you decide to move in a different position.

​Finally, the shoulder girdle. By now, I think you have it. Staying in one position causes forward rotation. Muscles get tight and cause discomfort. If it’s left to its own devices, it can eventually lead to dowager’s hump (humpback) when those muscles lock up and there is nothing that can be done to help.

​So, what can be done? Before you go and schedule surgery, a lot of this pain can be resolved with massage therapy. Why not a chiropractor? Chiropractors specialize in the displacement of bones. Why are the bones displaced? Because of tight muscles. Chiropractors often employ massage therapists for this reason. When used in conjunction, this is a best case scenario.

My business model is to help people feel better in the comfort of their own homes. My price is reasonable. I have been a massage therapist for over 25 years and have worked on thousands of people. Massage therapy is one of those gifts that doesn’t collect dust and makes people feel better. Interested? Give me a call or text at (505) 209-0152 or shoot me an email at [email protected]. I’m looking forward to meeting you (or seeing you again)!

AKA, I'm carding what friends I have left.

By Zach Hively

Despite any previous claims I have made to the contrary, I have actual friends all over this country. All over the world! That way, I know I am loved in several time zones, but I don’t have local people infringing on my free time for frivolous activities like “birthday parties” and “driving you to the airport” and “being there for you when you need emotional support.”
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All the maintenance required for friendships abroad is the biannual phone call or email. For those, you don’t have to put on going-out clothes or find parking downtown— you can sit at home in your scuzziest pajamas and decide partway through the process to wear no clothes at all. This is extra true when you don’t use FaceTime.

Essentially, long-distance friendships enable me to enjoy all the benefits of being alone without any of the crippling drawbacks of loneliness. It’s a perfect setup—or so I thought.

You see, everything has a cost. The cost of my friendship strategy is that correspondence takes time. And I always have something else to do with my time. Things like, saving the nation from runaway fascism. I’ve started to suspect that, by gum, I am the one person on this earth with the smarts, the looks, and the God-given destiny to stop the insanity that’s happening so fast that no single individual can keep up with all of it.

I mean, I see all kinds of ways out of this. I just need Congress to listen to me, and the state governors, and the National Guard, and NASA, and an assortment of woodland creatures. I’d have the whole kerfuffle dusted by Valentine’s Day. If not this year’s Valentine’s Day, then certainly some year’s.

But then I decide to read the internet. That’s when I get downhearted. All … this … might just be shiny head fakes designed to distract us plebes from the actual shifts in power structure that will ultimately send us spiraling into a world where we’d consider cannibalism a reasonable alternative to swallowing this much doodoo.

Taking on the new world order makes me tired. So I take lots of naps. And when I wake up to discover that nothing has changed for the better, that makes me really, really, really want to talk to my friends. Except that I know we’ll just end up rehashing the latest madness. And like I said, I have lots of other things to do with my time. Like writing Christmas thank-you notes.

These glittery, wintry cards have been sitting in their original packaging on my coffee table since December. And not the most recent December, either. You may be thinking that I should just pick up the phone and call my friends and family to say thanks. Maybe have an actual conversation while we’re at it. But why do that when I can send them a card? A card is a tangible representation of my affection. A card also says, “Hey, friend and/or family member, you are special enough that I don’t want our conversations to be electronically traceable in any way.”

That’s right: in these recent times, I have become a paranoid survivalist. I don’t want the government and other billionaire-run organizations tracking any of my activities, even if it’s just me thanking my grandpa for sending me a check instead of wrong-size socks. I don’t want the wrong people knowing where I shop, where I hike, who I talk to, or how much time, exactly, I spend reading listicles instead of working.

Basically, I am taking preemptive action here. The only way to stay entirely safe is to cease to exist. I mean, crazed fans aren’t lining up to assassinate Meat Loaf, amirite?

But isn’t that exactly what they want, the people you know who I’m talking about? To divide us, to isolate us? That’s what will happen when we choose to live in fear and submission. And the antidote to division—isn’t that connection?

Connection doesn’t have to be on a large scale. Million-person marches. Grand demonstrations. It can also be two people who genuinely care about each other sending notes in the mail, calling each other just to say hi. Even if they end up discussing the Atwoodian amusement park at hand—isn’t open communication precisely what brings us together?

So that’s it. No more excuses. As an act of compassion and resistance, I’m going to call my friends. Right away. No stalling for nothing. I mean it. As soon as I figure out how to tie off this piece.
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In which I, for some reason, am trusted as a film critic.
​By Zach Hively

Have you ever experienced the joy, the admiration, the raging jealousy of watching someone you love on stage or screen? I haven’t. (Kidding! Of course I have. I absolutely adored my little sisters’ school symphony concerts and didn’t ever even once snore.)

But I got to, recently. I watched a screener of the new movie Laws of Man, and there, right there, was my beloved home state of New Mexico, playing the role of Nevada and maybe also of Utah—convincingly so, I might add, especially if you’ve never been to Nevada or maybe also Utah.

This isn’t the first such time I’ve felt such pride. I’ll always remember how 2000s Albuquerque played a fine 1980 El Paso in No Country for Old Men. And it had a shining, starring role as itself in the docudrama Breaking Bad.
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This may not mean much to you New Yorkers and Hollywood types, but I, an informal member of the New Mexico press, am happy to qualify to review this movie based on my geography alone. And I will say this with confidence: It is, in fact, a movie.

Here’s the premise:It’s 1963 in Nevada. It’s also 1963, we presume, in Utah. Two U.S. Marshals, played by the well-typecast Jacob Keohan and Jackson Rathbone, must serve a warrant on Benjamin Bonney (Dermot Mulroney, who you have seen somewhere before and you’ll spend the movie trying to remember where).

It seems ol’ Bennie is murdering anyone who lives near his Nevada ranch and burning their houses down, then buying up their land at a pittance. But arresting B.B. is more complicated than the marshals expect.

For starters, some flashbacks to Frank the elder marshal in World War II keep getting in their way. So do all the characters one expects to see in a town with a motel but, as far as we know, no houses: the sassy prostitute, the gentle barmaid with more going on than meets the eye, the too-cool itinerant preacher parked in an Airstream.

Then the villains are pure storybook. The Bonney clan lack their daddy’s screen presence but make up for it with ominously biblical names: Noah, Ahab, and Joe. (In my defense, I thought it was Job for three-quarters of the film.) The throwaway bad guys who open the film have teeth rotting out, and they drool spittle, and they are called the Crash Mooncalf Gang, after their founding member, Moonraker. No, wait. That’s not right; Roger Moore wasn’t James Bond until the 1970s.

Yet despite all the stock characters, this—as Frank tells his younger, brasher partner, Tommy—“this isn’t a cowboy movie.” “Yeah, well. Sometimes a cowboy’s what you need,” Tommy fires back.

(Unspoken, but implied: “You know, like when the cattle are straying and you’ve got some beans that ain’t gonna eat themselves. You packin’ a harmonica there, pardner?”)

Now, no spoilers, because frankly you wouldn’t believe me if I told you. I guess I should have put more stock in the straight-outta-Fleming villain name at the start, because there’s something fishy going on here turns real quick into a volcano-lair-level climax—but unlike a Bond-level resolution, the ending to Laws of Man is shaken, not earned.

It could have been earned, though. This is what breaks my moviegoing heart. At one point, the trippy itinerant preacher (Harvey Keitel) asks Marshal Frank why he ended up at this motel. “It’s the only motel in fifty miles,” Frank says. “It was this patch of concrete or a tent.”

Frank—or rather, Frank’s writers—chose not to go with Option B. This was the great mistake. Had they stuck the marshals in a tent, this whole thing would have been a whole lot campier.
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This reviewer, for one, could have gotten really into this flick if it had leaned into the camp already there. Campiness would have allowed them to heighten the tropes, and thereby justify them. Let the lawmen and the villains be bigger than life. Let the caricatures know they are affects. Let this ridiculous and ginned-up ending feel right at home, inevitable, instead of what-the-hellable.

Either that, or lean hard into the people and forget shooting for orbit.
Laws of Man was never going to be Oscar bait. But not every movie needs to be. Not every movie can be.

I sometimes forget that there is cinema beyond the blockbusters. Films on low budgets. (Low in movie terms; I could still live on one of these budgets quite without complaint.) Directors trying things out and getting creative.

There’s an immense freedom in blowing single-digit millions instead of three-digit millions, and in these movies we might see more of what artists really want to make instead of what executives think might sell.

So I can admire Laws of Man for that. And for showing true love for the genre in places. But I can’t feel that it succeeded. Like Frank, torn between playing it straight and taking justice into his own hands, it didn’t choose a direction and commit.

The real reason why the film doesn’t bring it all on home is perhaps right there in the script: “It doesn’t make sense,” Frank says of the case, but arguably also of the conclusion he senses coming. “It doesn’t have to.”
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Not even New Mexico’s rock-solid performance can overcome that.
Laws of Man, directed by Phil Blattenberger, is available in select theaters and on select digital streaming platforms.

By Ted Alcorn, New Mexico In Depth 
New Mexico In Depth

The first cars arrived before dawn. By 9 a.m., vehicles snaked through the food distribution event at the state fairgrounds in Albuquerque. It was a week before Christmas, and thousands of families would come for groceries to get them through the holidays.

The scene is a familiar one in New Mexico, where many people lack adequate food, let alone secure housing,  affordable healthcare, and fair-paying jobs.

But by the numbers, so gradual it’s difficult to detect, changes to state tax policy are softening the bite of poverty. 

Federal data released last fall show that, after accounting for government benefits, over the last decade the share of New Mexicans experiencing poverty declined more than in almost any other state.

That coincides with a period in which state lawmakers significantly altered tax rates to reduce the burden on low-income residents. They enacted and expanded tax credits and rebates that annually return hundreds of millions of dollars to working families. And they instituted other benefits including a constitutional right to early childhood education.

The changes have vaulted the state’s tax structure from one of the most regressive in the country, where lower-income people paid a bigger share of their incomes in taxes than the wealthiest, to among the most progressive, where the poorest residents now pay a lower share of their income in taxes than any other group.

The policy changes have caught the attention of poverty experts around the country, who say they are having a profound impact.

“The state tax system is a powerful tool,” emailed Arloc Sherman, a vice president at the Washington, D.C.-based Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, “and New Mexico in recent years has been a leader in using it to help keep more families above the poverty line.”

Improvements in the state’s poverty ranking don’t help pay the rent or put food on the table for every resident who is still in need. But in an interview, House Speaker Javier Martinez, D-Albuquerque, said that only sharpens his motivation to tackle poverty during this year’s session. “As long as I’m Speaker, this is going to be a top priority for me.”

Kim Obregon was just a few blocks away from the food distribution, in Albuquerque’s international district, but she couldn’t afford to wait in line because she was at work.
She’d spent years as an educator and then during the pandemic, when she found she couldn’t juggle teaching and taking care of her own kids, she started Mustard Seed Flowers. But she’s struggled to get the business off the ground.

She was displaced from a previous location after an electrical fire broke out in an attached unit. A city inspector found the building was hazardously wired and ordered it vacated. When she finally found a new space, she tried to make the most of it by inviting a local artist to decorate the walls with vivid murals of sunflowers and lisianthus. And to appeal to kids walking home from school, she added a candy section. But that December morning, only one customer browsed the offerings.

“I have set a deadline that if I’m not able to really survive and cover all of our financial needs by summertime, I’m going to close up,” Obregon said.

As a working parent earning less than $30,000 a year — about half the median household income statewide — she lives below the poverty line. Historically in New Mexico, that is commonplace. As of a decade ago, the state had the highest poverty rate in the country: 22% of residents earned less than the official poverty line, according to surveys conducted by the U.S. Census between 2013 and 2015.

By the government’s “supplemental” poverty measure, which many experts say is superior because it adjusts for the local cost of living and takes into account government benefits people receive, the state was not much better-off: 17.1% of residents still fell below that threshold, higher than all but four other states.

But in the years since, there’s been a substantial change.

The share of the population earning more than the official poverty line has only declined a few percent, but the share below the “supplemental” poverty threshold has fallen by more than a third, to 10.9%. That amounts to 120,000 fewer New Mexicans experiencing deprivation. And it’s a larger decline in percentage than almost any other state.

The share of New Mexicans with incomes below the official poverty measure has declined modestly since 2013 but the supplemental poverty measure, which accounts for government benefits, has fallen much further: from 17.1% to 10.9%.

​In the legislative session the following year, lawmakers began reordering the tax system to shift the burden from poorer residents to the wealthiest ones. A bill co-sponsored by then-vice chair of the tax committee Rep. Javier Martinez also raised the amount returned to low-income working parents through the Working Families Tax Credit.
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In an op-ed published that summer, after the bill’s passage, he characterized it as “the first step in a multi-faceted approach to overhaul our outdated tax system.”

In 2021, legislators further increased the value of the Working Families Tax Credit. They also increased the amount of money returned to filers through the Low-Income Comprehensive Tax Rebate, and broadened the group eligible to receive it. Voters passed a constitutional amendment guaranteeing residents early childhood education.

In 2022, legislators exempted Social Security income from taxes, issued across-the-board tax rebate checks, and enacted a new Child Tax Credit, which has since been expanded to $600 a year per child. (It is also “refundable,” meaning even eligible people who earn too little to owe any taxes still get the money.)

And in 2023, they again revised income tax rates and lowered the gross receipts tax, which disproportionately burdens poor New Mexicans.  

Together, these laws amount to a sea-change in how the state collects taxes from its residents. 
In a report published by the non-profit Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy in 2015, New Mexico had the 33th most progressive tax structure in the country. The poorest 20% of filers were taxed more than double the share of their income as filers in the top 1%. 

By 2024, New Mexico had jumped 25 rankings to the 8th most progressive spot. The poorest 20% of filers pay a lower share of their income in taxes than any other group. 
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“No state has in recent years been more aggressive in using the tax code to boost the prospects of the lowest-income earners,” emailed Jon Whiten, the institute’s deputy director.

According to experts who analyzed the U.S. Census data on the request of New Mexico In Depth, those changes in tax and fiscal policy deserve credit for the decline in the state’s supplemental poverty rate. 

Danielle Wilson, a researcher at the Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University, said she is “confident” that without even a handful of the policies — the Working Families Tax Credit, the Child Tax Credit, and tax rebates — poverty in New Mexico in 2022 would have been about 25% higher than it was otherwise. And her analysis does not take into account the change in income and gross receipts tax rates. 

“The decline in poverty in New Mexico in recent years is meaningful, and is driven in part by the tax policies that the state chose to implement,” she emailed. 

Some local analysts have been more cautious in drawing conclusions. In a report issued in 2023, the Legislative Finance Committee, which provides the state legislature with non-partisan fiscal analysis, downplayed the importance of a decline in the supplemental poverty measure, in part because it is the product of government programs rather than increases in household income. 
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“Benefits provide assistance but do not lift families out of systemic poverty,” the report read. It touted education and training programs to increase labor force participation, where New Mexico lags at 57.6% in November 2024 compared to 62.5% nationally. 

Minority floor leader Sen. William Sharer, R-Farmington, went further, arguing that benefits undercut true prosperity if they deprived people of the impetus to work. “Giving people supplemental support actually steals that much-needed stress, that sense of purpose,” he wrote in an email. 

Rep. Christine Chandler, D-Los Alamos, who was among the class of lawmakers first elected in 2019, and co-sponsored several of the pieces of legislation, disagreed. “You can’t be a productive member of society if you’re worried about whether you can feed your child, or whether your child is going to go hungry, or whether you can pay for the child’s medical bills.”

Whether lower-income New Mexicans are feeling these changes is another matter. 

Jeffrey Ledbetter supervises the tax preparation for about 10,000 lower-income families each year, as director of Tax Help New Mexico. “I see the positive effects of the changes that have been made,” he said, but many clients “don’t feel that way.”

That blind-spot isn’t unique to low-income filers. “You, me, most everybody who ever does their taxes has no idea what’s in them,” he said. Eligible low-income filers receive the new and expanded tax credits whether or not they are aware of them, but the impact of any particular credit is often obscured by other taxes the person owes, or other credits they receive. 

Obregon’s income makes her eligible for all of the major tax credits New Mexico has enacted in the last five years. She specifically recalled receiving the federal Child Tax Credit a couple years ago, when it was increased, but drew a blank on the others. “I can’t honestly say whether or not the tax credits have been helpful,” she said. 

Any improvements in state tax policy have paled against the cost of housing, she said.

According to the Federal Housing Finance Agency, in the last five years the price of single-family homes in New Mexico has risen by 56%. 

Obregon says she spends about half her income on a 900-square-foot apartment, where she’s raising seven kids: four boys in one bedroom and three girls in another. “We just keep it pared down to the absolute essentials,” she said. “I’m not really utilizing any of the community programs like Toys for Tots because we may end up with toys that we do not have space to keep.”

Her outlook is also skewed by dysfunction in her neighborhood, she said. In separate incidents in late 2023, someone smashed the window of her delivery vehicle and three of her shop windows, and she had to spend $2,500 in profit from the busy holiday season on replacing them. “There’s so many people on the streets now,” she said. “It’s hard for me to see past that.”

Speaker Martinez said there is work still to be done. A change in the state’s poverty ranking “doesn’t mean that our problems are solved.” But he argued that Democrats’ legislative agenda this year, including a program to start savings accounts for every New Mexican at birth (colloquially known as baby bonds), was poised to help. 

Lawmakers are also pursuing a bill that would double the Child Tax Credit for people with children under six. And Martinez said his colleagues will renew efforts to create a paid family and medical leave program, which narrowly failed last session, if they can find the necessary compromises to win passage. 
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“We are up against 500 years of policies that never took our communities into account,” he said, “and now that folks like me are in positions to make things happen, we’re not going to waste our opportunity.”

NNMC
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The Ben Lujan Library at Northern New Mexico College's Espanola Campus is making room for new books, and we need your help! 
 
Please browse our selection of used books recently withdrawn from the library's collection in January. Explore our displays featuring an eclectic mix of books covering every topic in the Library of Congress. Feel free to take as many books as you'd like—there's no need to worry, as we will replenish our stock. 
 
Bring your family and friends to share in the experience of the Big Book Giveaway at 921 Paseo de Oñate, Espanola, NM, 87532. Library hours this week are from 9 am to 3 pm, Monday to Thursday, and 9 am to 1 pm on Friday. Starting January 21, Library hours will extend to 9 am to 5 pm Monday to Thursday and 9 am to 1 pm. 

By Karima Alavi
Image Courtesy of Dar al Islam
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If you’ve visited Abiquiu’s Plaza Blanca, you’re familiar with the sensation of feeling heat rise from dusty paths while breathing in the calming scents of chamisa, junipers, and sagebrush. Under the right conditions, hikers can convince themselves that they’re watching heatwaves dance through the sandy arroyos like spirits rising with the breeze. (They’re really watching how light will bend, mirage-like, as hot air rises to mix with the cooler air above. No less magical than if visitors actually detected a mysterious apparition guiding them across the land.)
 
Whether you’re familiar with the hiking trails of Plaza Blanca, or you hope to enjoy them sometime soon, good news has arrived in the form of a grant received by Dar al Islam from the New Mexico Outdoor Recreation Division. Funds will be used to map and clear the paths, along with further plans to bring improvements to the grounds that will make the experience of hiking even more pleasant as visitors explore the pristine beauty of the area. The long-term goal is to develop even more sustainable hiking trails within the landscape that is known for its sandstone formations. While stunning, much of the area is also fragile. Measures to prevent ecological and natural harm will be listed along with clear guidance on where to hike and how to protect the site. As a result, potential for harm to the natural lands will be minimized.
 
The majestic beauty of Plaza Blanca, situated on two-hundred acres at the Dar al Islam education center and mosque, came to national attention when the artist, Georgia O’Keeffe, felt drawn to paint the sense of wonder she experienced when visiting Abiquiu. As a result of her fascination with the landscape, there has been an ever-increasing desire of tourists and local people to experience the site. Over the past three years, Dar al Islam has maintained records of visits to Plaza Blanca through a system of registering people and giving them a gate-code that enables access. During those three years, more than 10,000 people registered. It is assumed that a truly accurate number would be much higher because most cars that enter the gate leading to the Plaza Blanca trailhead have more than one person in them. In addition, repeat visitors are not included in this count since the code enables them to enter multiple times.
 
The purpose of this grant is to ensure that the fragile ecosystem of Plaza Blanca is protected through a natural landscape preservation plan, while balancing the desire of tourists and locals to enjoy the beauty of the location. To that end, plans are in place for several improvements, beginning with a geological assessment that will also consider the vulnerability of some areas. Existing hiking trails will be mapped out, and potential new ones will be identified and possibly developed, to assure that tourists have a pleasant experience while, at the same time, protecting Plaza Blanca from overuse.
 
Layout of the grounds will be initiated through the use of drones. It is Dar al Islam’s intention to utilize volunteers to map out existing trails and explore opportunities for additional pathways, along which will be installed signs marking flora and fauna at this popular destination that attracts not only national visitors, but international tourists as well.  
 
Several short-term and long-term jobs will be created through this project. It is also hoped that many local Abiquiu businesses including hotels, restaurants, and galleries will benefit from Dar al Islam’s effort to attract more people to this special terrain.  
 
This project was initiated with the October 2024 Trail Mapping Weekend, led by Matthew Schumann. (See his October 23, 2024 Abiquiu News article for more information)
 
Those interested in touring Plaza Blanca are welcome to request an access code that will open the gate to the parking area situated at the trailhead. Click here to register: https://daralislam.org/plaza-blanca.aspx
 
That same website will link you to a slide show of Plaza Blanca images available on the Dar al Islam YouTube channel. Enjoy!

WASHINGTON - Today, Senator Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, announced a $6.95 million investment from the Infrastructure Law he passed for two projects aimed at reducing the risk of severe wildfires by enhancing forest and watershed health, and supporting agricultural production while reducing water losses in New Mexico.

“Across the West, growers are feeling the undeniable strain of less predictable rainfall and extended droughts, while our communities are facing the growing threats of more severe, erratic wildfires,” said Ranking Member Heinrich. “I’m pleased to welcome nearly $7 million in Infrastructure Law funding to invest in water-smart solutions to help producers keep putting healthy food on our tables and supporting rural economies, investing in the proactive work necessary to bolster our watersheds and reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfires – all while boosting New Mexico’s long-term water security.”
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New Mexico Projects Selected:

• Chama Peak Land Alliance, Cross Boundary Watershed Protection in the San Juan Rio Chama Region: $5,000,000
  • The funding will support a variety of strategies to reduce fire risk in watersheds that supply drinking water to Albuquerque, Santa Fe, numerous Tribes and Pueblos, and many rural and disadvantaged communities. Mitigating the risk of severe wildfire will improve forest health and create greater resilience in the region’s water supply. This project is proposed in partnership with the Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority and numerous stakeholders that have been involved in the development process.
• NM Acequia Association, Supporting Agroecological Capacity in Traditional Agricultural Acequia Communities: $1,950,000
  • The New Mexico Acequia Association, in partnership with the Acequia del Llano, will restore resilient ecologic function supported by traditional farming practices to the middle reach of Santa Cruz River, a tributary to the Rio Grande. This project will restore the riparian ecosystem and reconnect floodplains along 1.6 miles of the Santa Cruz River, install brush weirs and other structures to attenuate floodwaters in surrounding uplands, and update and strengthen acequia infrastructure to improve access and flood resilience. This project will build the capacity of the local land and water managers to mitigate flood energy in the upland watershed, restore recharge in the riparian floodplain, and increase ecological health and habitat in the riparian area, while protecting traditional agricultural practices.

To read more about the selected projects, click here.
To see a map of funding and announced projects in New Mexico through the Infrastructure Law, click here.

By Margaret O’Hara [email protected]
Shared with Permission from the Santa Fe New Mexican

​EL RITO — The library’s back room was anything but quiet.
 
A group of people gathered one recent Thursday around a table in the El Rito Library. On one side of the table, two sewing machines hummed. On the other, sewers dug through boxes of fabric scraps. The weekly quilting circle — which celebrated its 25th year this month — was in full swing.
 
Desiree Maestas sat at the corner of the table, crocheting a creature with leaves on its head.
For her family, the rural library in the remote Rio Arriba County community has served as “a place to grow up.” Her two children, 13-year-old Anelicia Maestas and 17-year-old Andres Maestas, have been active participants in library programs since attending its summer reading program a decade ago. On Jan. 2, both teens joined the quilting circle.
 
“We found a really great community of people who are in El Rito and who support both my children and me,” said Maestas, who also serves as one of the library’s volunteers.
 
Advocates of rural libraries across the state, many that serve as community centers in far-flung areas, are expected to return to the Legislature this year, calling for lawmakers to continue to contribute state funds to the Rural Libraries Endowment.

Though lawmakers have contributed $30.5 million to the fund since its founding in 2019, Shel Neymark, director of the New Mexico Rural Library Initiative, an advocacy group, said the state is only “halfway there” in terms of guaranteeing about $45,000 in consistent annual funding.
During this year’s legislative session — which begins Jan. 21 — Neymark plans to push legislators to contribute another $29.5 million, for a total of $60 million, for 60 rural libraries.
He could face a tough challenge.

Sen. George Muñoz, a Gallup Democrat and chair of the powerful Legislative Finance Committee, said the committee’s initial budget framework doesn’t include additional funds for the endowment.

That proposal provides an outline of what the state’s budget bill might look like, but the final spending plan will be hashed out during the 60-day legislative session.

Nonetheless, Muñoz said the Rural Library Endowment’s current payouts — which Neymark said should total around $20,000 per library next year — are adequate.

“I don’t know what else they want. I mean, they’re such small libraries,” Muñoz said Tuesday.
Neymark, who has been advocating on behalf of rural libraries for more than seven years, remains committed to the cause.

“I’m not young; I’m 73,” he said. “I’ve taken on this big project and kind of increased my workload instead of lessen it, like people my age usually do — but it’s so gratifying.”
Keeping doors open Neymark is more library lover than lobbyist.

In the 1990s, he was one of a group of people who established the Embudo Valley Library and Community Center in Dixon. After the library opened in May 1992, Neymark said, “It was immediately successful. We had no idea what was going to happen. People started using it right away. We started doing programming.”

It enhanced the sense of community in the unincorporated area, which, until the library was established, didn’t have a central meeting place beyond the school, post office and houses of worship.

“Once we had the library — especially when we bought the property right in the middle of town — I just saw things changing. People got to know each other,” Neymark said.
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But there are challenges that come with establishing libraries in New Mexico’s rural towns. Libraries often rely on funding from the counties or municipalities in which they’re located, but Neymark said such funding isn’t available in unincorporated communities.

As he spoke to other rural library officials in Rio Arriba County, Neymark said a consistent question emerged: “How are we going to keep our doors open next month?”

The idea of a rural library endowment started to percolate.

More than two decades later, in November 2017, The New Mexican honored Neymark as one of its 10 Who Made a Difference for his volunteer work with the Embudo Valley Library and Community Center.

After that, Neymark was determined to increase his impact.

“I have to up my game,” he recalled. “That night, the night of the award ceremony, I said, ‘OK, I’m going to go after this rural library endowment.’ ”

He did, and he was successful. During the 2019 legislative session, a bill establishing the Rural Libraries Endowment garnered near-unanimous support from lawmakers. The state budget bill included a $1 million appropriation to establish the fund.

Hoping for the ‘bare minimum’ In the years since, lawmakers have repeatedly contributed additional dollars to the Rural Libraries Endowment, allocating $2 million in 2020, $10 million in 2022, and $15 million in 2023, state budget documents show. During the 2024 legislative session, legislators set aside another $2.5 million for the endowment.

Neymark said he’d like to see a $1 million endowment per library, a sum that would yield about $45,000 per library each year.

“$45,000 a year is the bare minimum to keep the libraries open, to have a poorly paid executive director for the library,” Neymark said.
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The first significant payout from the endowment came during the current fiscal year, when each library received $15,363.84, according to the New Mexico State Library.

Camille Ward, a spokesperson for the New Mexico House Democrats, was mum on whether more library funding might be considered this year.

“We cannot comment on specific line items in the Legislative Finance Committee recommendations until they are published on Wednesday, January 15th,” Ward wrote in an email.

She added, “Going forward, the state is in a fortunate position to be able to provide funding for critical programs like these without necessarily relying on long-term trust funds, which may be less flexible and responsive to the needs of our communities.”

Neymark said he doesn’t understand hesitancy to fund the endowment. “If they want to help rural areas, this is such a good way to do it. ... They say a lot of words about wanting to support rural New Mexico, but they haven’t really figured out an efficient way to do that.”

At the El Rito Library, the $45,000 annual payout from a fully funded endowment would be a “lifesaver,” said Lynett Gillette, who has served as the library’s director since 2015.

It would cover nearly half of the library’s annual budget, she said; it would make the difference between hoping to do more community programs and actually doing more programs.

“Libraries have existed for so long because they’re where we store our past and the hopes for our future — in each one of those books,” Gillette said.
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She added, “I just think there’s not a better thing that the state could invest in — a place that archives the past and has information and entertainment to make our future better.”

Carol Bondy

A reader this week reached out to us.   Her property and the property along their road about 1/4 mile north of the Chevron station have seen the water table rise significantly in the past two months as the river water levels have risen. Water is flooding three out of six families living here.   This is downstream from where the channel work was done.

Water is seeping up from the ground so that the road has been continually wet since November and is worsening significantly. Minerals are leeching from underground and killing all the vegetation.  

We are wondering if the people living north of us are having similar issues. We believe this situation has something to do with the flood mitigation efforts up river. We would like to organize all being effected by this so we can get help before the spring run-off. 

I have lived here 32 years, since I bought my property at age 25. I have never seen anything like this here. I have worked very hard to build a home for my daughter. Watching what is happening to my neighbors is frightening. As for the three of us not flooded yet, we will be by Spring.

Abiquiu News has reached out to various agencies.   We urge the agencies to have a joint town hall meeting.   

This is a story in progress.   Please leave comments if you are continuing to be affected by flooding.​

Despite dry weather the road has remained wet.