Letters to the Editor

News, July 5: “Entrada Trouble”

Change it Up

Change the Entrada! Old school! Give honor to the Native Americans where it should be!

Liz Montoya
via Facebook

Web Extra, July 6: “Hot Wheels”

Goooooo Cops!

I support [police on Segways]. There are too many homeless on the Plaza to the point it makes you uneasy. Tourists spend a lot of money to get here and spend more money shopping the Plaza. They deserve to feel safe and unhasseled by vagrants. A active police presence with new mobility vehicles will provide that.

Candis McKinzie
via Facebook

In Da Hood

Your tax dollars at work (or maybe rest)—I have never seen a policeman on foot patrol in my neighborhood! Maybe now they can hit all the hoods!

Harry A Jones
via Facebook

$34K Well Spent?

While public school teachers live paycheck to paycheck, and students come to school hungry. Get your head out of your ass, Santa Fe.

Dru Libby
via Facebook

Watch Your Mouth

"If a motherfucker..." Perhaps the Segway-equipped officers can provide assistance to Mr. Hastcoat by towing his wheelchair to the RailRunner station? Perhaps the merchants association would like to start a GoFundMe page to pay for his ticket back to Albuquerque? Perhaps Mr. Hastcoat can learn a few dollars by providing training to the police academy on the very definition of "aggressive panhandling"?

Judy Kaminsky
SFReporter.com

A&C, June 28: “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?”

We Miss Bowling Tho

You can call it what you want, it's something that's changed an abandoned bowling area to a unique attraction and changes the way people experience art. Meow Wolf is actually marketing to an audience that isn't wealthy, white, retired, "cultured" people, but the entire community, and if you ask me, that's more important than putting up another conventional art gallery with art pieces most real residents of Santa Fe are never able to afford.

Joseph Chavez
via Facebook

It’s Gotten Personal

Politics and personal grudges find a platform in Eric Killelea's critical forum on Meow Wolf, most of which centers around the age old dorm-room discussion topic: "Is it art?"

Back in the day I used to enjoy late-night ruminations on subjects such as this. That is, until local (and late) artist Max Friedenberg delivered the proverbial mic drop, when he answered the question thusly: "If you frame it and ask people to look at it, it's art."

Bam. To this day, this is as thorough a definition of art as I know of. It blasts through a lot of fanciful subjectivity and—much to the chagrin of late-night art school conversationalists everywhere—cuts the potential discussion time significantly.

Yes, Meow Wolf is art, by any definition. The real question Killelea's panel of malcontents are circling, then, isn't "Is it art?" But—is it fine art?

It depends, of course, on how you define 'fine'. Artist Tim Reed, the most vocal critic in the article, offers this: "Fine art is one of the most important tools we have to healing in a troubled society."

Which of course, begs the question—who's doing the healing, who's getting healed, and how? … Giving hard-working people a place to congregate and contemplate the fantastical, the modern day mythological, … might. …

Personally, I prefer the warmer and more inclusive definitions of "fine." Community and story are very fine things. … And if an art space can provide a place for families to come together in wonder and imagine what is possible, in a way that grows love in our community, then that is very fine indeed.

Josh Schrei
Santa Fe

Letters, June 28: “Local Gadflies”

So-Called Science

The so-called science of current Forest Service "management" around Santa Fe is just unproven hypothetical theories. See George Wuerther, Idaho State University: "Summary of peer-reviewed research: Fuel reduction is not useful in preventing wildfires and in fact causes wildfires to be worse by opening the forest floor to wind and dryness." ...

We need more gadflies like ... Arthur Firstenberg and a lot less taxpayer-financed destroyers of nature.

Fred King
Santa Fe

Cover, June 14: “Flight Plans”

Ask the Residents

The city and county government's lack of representing their constituency outside of the airport boundaries is deplorable. In the SFR article, I am surprised the journalist who wrote the story did not interview any of the local people who resided next door to the airport about their input relating to quality of life, public safety, flight path restrictions, airport operations, and noise abatement concerns. Since the early '80s and afterwards, the city and county have ignored our concerns and eventually, we will have to rise once again, resist, object, and denounced future city/county plans for any type of airport expansion and projects at this location. By the way, who cares on what the passengers see when they pass by the old auto junkyards as well as smelling the chit coming downwind from the WWTF. Here in La Cieneguilla, we have to see and smell this chit every day and what has the city and county governments accomplished in addressing the land-use issues for our community south of the city and county limits? Nada!

Jose L Villegas, Sr.
La Cieneguilla

SFR will correct factual errors online and in print. Please let us know if we make a mistake, editor@sfreporter.com or 988-7530.

Mail letters to PO Box 2306, Santa Fe, NM 87504, deliver to 132 E Marcy St., or email them to editor@sfreporter.com. Letters (no more than 200 words) should refer to specific articles in the Reporter. Letters will be edited for space and clarity.

Santa Fe Reporter