Dispaches from the land and water wars http://santafereview.com 05 2010 08:00:00 MDT (Please note the new address for the RSS feed: http://santafereview.com/feed/. This old one will go away soon.) http://santafereview.com/index.php 2009 08:00:00 MDT (Please note the new address for the RSS feed: http://santafereview.com/feed/. This old one will go away soon.) http://santafereview.com/index.php 24 Nov 2009 08:00:00 MDT I should have taken the Cash for Clunkers deal. . . . (Please note the new address for the RSS feed: http://santafereview.com/feed/. This old one will go away soon.) http://santafereview.com/index.php 15 Oct 2009 08:00:00 MDT Almost as soon as I entered the lobby of the Lensic on Saturday night, I could see that the audience was different from the usual symphony crowd. I spotted Geoffrey West, a physicist and theoretical biologist whose work I wrote about years ago in the New York Times, and Doyne Farmer, who appears in my book Fire in the Mind. There were other scientist friends like Joseph Traub, the Columbia University mathematician. Sandra Blakeslee, fellow science writer and cohost of the Santa Fe Science Writing Workshop, was in the audience. And during intermission I nearly collided head-on with Murray Gell-Mann, the Nobelist whose exploits I chronicled in Strange Beauty. I don't think he has ever forgiven me. I felt for a few hours like I was living in a small town . . . (Please note the new address for the RSS feed: http://santafereview.com/feed/. This old one will go away soon.) http://santafereview.com/index.php 10 Oct 2009 08:00:00 MDT Last night Channel 13 News in Albuquerque broadcast an embarrassing report about Santa Fe's Cuarto Centenario. At least it was supposed to be embarrassing. "After pouring [sic] over hundreds of expenditures involving more than $1 million," Kim Holland reports, "News 13 found gaps in receipts, contracts and reports about what exactly the money was spent on." The text of her story, So many candles; so few receipts, appears, typos and all, on the station's website. . . . Please note the new address for the RSS feed: http://santafereview.com/feed/. This old one will go away soon. http://santafereview.com/index.php 09 Oct 2009 08:00:00 MDT In Sunday's Journal, Kiera Hay continued her investigation of what Santa Fe got from the half a million dollars it spent on "creative tourism" . . . Please note the new address for the RSS feed: http://santafereview.com/feed/. This old one will go away soon. http://santafereview.com/index.php 08 Nov 2009 08:00:00 MDT In 1988 the United States Supreme Court dealt New Mexico a devastating blow. It ruled that since the 1960s it had been cheating Texas out of 10,000 acre-feet a year of Pecos River water. New Mexico was ordered to pay $14 million in restitution and to make sure that this never happened again . . . Please note the new address for the RSS feed: http://santafereview.com/feed/. This old one will go away soon. http://santafereview.com/index.php 05 Nov 2009 08:00:00 MDT It's been a year of anniversaries. Both the Santa Fe Symphony and the Santa Fe Institute are celebrating their 25th. The Reporter celebrated its 35th and, I realized belatedly, The Santa Fe Review turned five years old. It seemed like a good time to spruce up my do-it-yourself design. First I had to think harder about what the Santa Fe Review actually is . . . Please note the new address for the RSS feed: http://santafereview.com/feed/ http://santafereview.com/index.php 04 Nov 2009 08:00:00 MDT Earlier this year at a Santa Fe Symphony benefit dinner at El Farol, I found myself seated next to Maurice Bonal, the liquor license broker, lobbyist, and former city councilman who serves as chairman of Santa Fe 400th Anniversary Inc., the nonprofit corporation charged with organizing the Cuarto Centenario. . . . Please note the new address for the RSS feed: http://santafereview.com/feed/ http://santafereview.com/index.php 02 Nov 2009 08:00:00 MDT Please note the new address for the RSS feed: http://santafereview.com/feed/ http://santafereview.com/index.php 01 Nov 2009 08:00:00 MDT It's Sunday morning now and the Journal's Mark Oswald has done it again, with a superb piece of explanatory journalism on the collapse of Thornburg Mortgage. Thornburg is one of the 10 largest corporate bankruptcies in the United States since 1980 -- a list that includes Enron, WorldCom, and Lehman Brothers. Why the New Mexican doesn't find this fertile ground for reporting remains a mystery. http://santafereview.com/index.php 31 Oct 2009 08:00:00 MDT There was an orange sign taped on the door of the McDonald's on Pacheco Street: Please Remove Halloween Masks Before Entering Restaurant Thank You! When did the holiday become so dangerous? . . . http://santafereview.com/index.php 29 Oct 2009 08:00:00 MDT The Reporter has moved again to the front of the pack with the most incisive look yet at the latest developments in the Thornburg Mortgage bankruptcy. In the story, Thornburglars, Corey Pein interviews two parties in the case and poses the crucial question . . . http://santafereview.com/index.php 28 Oct 2009 08:00:00 MDT Mark Oswald, the editor of Journal Santa Fe, has written to note that he had the story on the appointment of a Thornburg trustee on Saturday, two days before Reuters. Apologies for missing that. Unlike the perfunctory brief in the New Mexican, the Journal had a full report, including some helpful context . . . http://santafereview.com/index.php 27 Oct 2009 12:00:00 MDT Inez Russell, an editor and columnist at the New Mexican, has sent me a news release from Pojoaque Pueblo that explains why its Buffalo Thunder gambling and golf resort has opened a storefront on Lincoln Avenue, half a block from the Plaza. . . . http://santafereview.com/index.php#63.8 27 Oct 2009 08:01:00 MDT There was more bad news last week for Thornburg Mortgage. According to Reuters, a federal court has taken control of the company by appointing an independent trustee to oversee the bankruptcy proceedings. This is a very big deal but the news got only a brief in the New Mexican -- followed today by another Bob Quick puff piece about Thornburgh's other venture, Thornburg Investment Management. The paper might just as well have reprinted the company's press release. http://santafereview.com/index.php#63.8 27 Oct 2009 08:00:00 MDT When a doctor is falsely accused of malpractive, the result is a lawsuit. A journalist who is similarly maligned is supposed to sit back and take it. I suspect that is what Anne Constable will do in light of the fulminations by the Fiesta Council, which has further embarrassed itself by publishing them verbatim in Sunday's New Mexican. The statement by the council's president, Alberto Montoya, appears both as an op-ed piece and as a paid advertisement. At least the latter will marginally add to the newspaper's bottom line. http://santafereview.com/index.php#63.8 20 Oct 2009 08:00:00 MDT Five years ago, just before Santa Fe's annual Fiesta, three members of Don Diego De Vargas's cuadrillo were suspended for drinking and rowdy behavior at a Mariachi celebration at the Santa Fe Opera. Interviewed by the New Mexican, the president of the Fiesta Council was forthcoming and the incident was quickly forgotten. If only the Council's present leadership was so savvy . . . http://santafereview.com/index.php#63.7 19 Oct 2009 09:00:00 MDT As if it weren't difficult enough to be optimistic about the future of the Railyard Cinema, I just read the latest scoop by Corey Pein in the Santa Fe Reporter's blog. . . . http://santafereview.com/index.php#63.7 19 Oct 2009 08:00:00 MDT I feel a little foolish having become so exercised over the disappearance of the Burrito Company, only to learn that it has been temporarily commandeered by Hollywood. I remember a similar incident, a few years ago, when my wife and I passed through Madrid on the way home from Albuquerque. The town was bedecked with carnival lights and filled with colorful amusement park rides. A banner hanging over Main Street said Madrid Chili Festival. The Texan spelling should have been a tipoff . . . http://santafereview.com/index.php#63.7 18 2009 08:00:00 MDT I haven't been here long enough to remember Zook's Pharmacy, Bell's Department Store, the Canton Cafe on San Francisco Street, or the Union Bus Depot (now the Coyote Cafe). These are among the downtown institutions whose passing marked for some longtime residents the moment when Santa Fe no longer felt like home. For me it will be the Burrito Company. I headed down there this morning for breakfast, as I often do on Sundays, only to find it gone, replaced overnight by some horrible thing called the Coffee Beanery . . . http://santafereview.com/index.php#63.6 12 Oct 2009 09:00:00 MDT I received a call last week from Senator Tom Udall's office apologizing for the delay in getting back to me about the demolition of the Santa Fe Indian School. (Please see my earlier reports for details.) A staff member said that the Senator has been assured by the Inspector General of the Interior Department, which oversees the Bureau of Indian Affairs, that an inquiry is under way, which will result in a legal opinion on whether federal laws were broken. . . . http://santafereview.com/index.php#63.5 12 Oct 2009 08:00:00 MDT While the New Mexican business desk lumbers along, the Journal has been pursuing the scandal at bankrupt Thornburg Mortgage. . . . http://santafereview.com/index.php#63.5 05 Oct 2009 08:00:00 MDT As most everyone in Santa Fe knows, Carlos Fierro, the young lawyer whose future once seemed so bright, was convicted last week of killing a man with his car. In addition to the excellent trial coverage in the dailies by Jason Auslander and Vic Vela, there have been two thought-provoking analyses. In the Journal Mark Oswald wrote about a question that has been simmering on low boil: Why was Willee's Blues Club (I just can't bring myself to capitalize that inner l) cited for serving Mr. Fierro one too many, while the Rio Chama Steakhouse got off scot-free? . . . http://santafereview.com/index.php 04 Oct 2009 08:00:00 MDT We've written here before about the great boondoggle of 1930, in which the City of Santa Fe was persuaded to give the most valuable piece of its Northwest Quadrant to a real estate speculator (and later governor of New Mexico) in return for a small cut of the proceeds. (Please see The Dempsey Papers, April 9, 2007.) The parcel, 2,000 acres of public commons granted to the town by King Philip V of Spain, is now the site of Don Tishman and Eddie Gilbert's Zocalo condominiums, the Las Estrellas subdivision, Garrett Thornburg's corporate headquarters, and numerous Northside mansions off Bishop's Lodge Road, including Governor Richardson's . . . http://santafereview.com/index.php 01 Oct 2009 08:00:00 MDT There is more good reporting (and writing) this week in the Reporter from Corey Pein, who provides a context for the Zocalo auction that has been missing from the dailies. His article, which includes scenes from a so-called "practice auction" by Kennedy Wilson, the company handling the Zocalo sale, explores the possibility that selling unwanted condos to the highest bidder is primarily a variation on the subprime game -- a way to suck in barely qualified buyers and lock them into onerous (and profitable) mortgages. Another impressive piece of journalism comes from Kiera Hay in the Journal, who inquires into the city's $450,000 investment in something called "creative tourism." http://santafereview.com/review2.9.php#62.4 27 Sep 2009 08:00:00 MDT As weak as it is on the business beat, the New Mexican has done a riveting job covering the Fierro trial, Santa Fe's Bonfire of the Vanities. (The Journal's reports have also been excellent.) Mr. Fierro, a local lawyer with political connections, was driving blind drunk with his headlights off when his black BMW struck and killed a pedestrian, William Tenorio. Mr. Fierro just kept on going. He said he thought Mr. Tenorio was a rock. When he was apprehended a few blocks away his blood alcohol level approached three times the legal limit . . . http://santafereview.com/review2.9.php#62.3 27 Sep 2009 08:00:00 MDT After my previous post I was reminded of another of Santa Fe's mighty, Edward M. Gilbert, described a couple of years ago in New Mexico Business Weekly as a friend of Mr. Tishman's and an investor in Zocalo. Fans of classical music may recognize the name as part of "Eddie and Peaches Gilbert," who are frequently applauded from the stage of the Lensic Theater for underwriting another performance by the Santa Fe Symphony Orchestra . . . http://santafereview.com/review2.9.php#62.3 22 Sep 2009 08:00:00 MDT The New Mexican finally got around to covering the Thornburg story last Friday, but it wasn't worth the wait. The editors might as well have run a wire service rewrite from the AP. No details or insight were offered beyond what others had already reported. All the flattering stories about Thornburg the New Mexican has published over the years didn't even earn it an exclusive quote from a company insider. When it comes to covering business, Santa Fe's paper of record is rarely more aggressive than a farm town gazette enthusing over the opening of a new hardware store -- or in these days, I guess, a McDonald's. That might be tolerable for most towns this size, but Santa Fe is home not just to Thornburg but to powerful national real estate magnates like William Zeckendorf and Donald Tishman. They get the same fawning treatment as Garrett Thornburg . . . http://santafereview.com/review2.9.php#62.2