“It’s the end of the world as we know it,” REM’s Michael Stipe sings in the eponymous song, “and I feel fine.” It’s an old song, but it’s also a kind of philosophy problem.

How do you pronounce CSF's new name? Is it sfoo-ad or is it sfwad?

There's nothing to like about asphalt. It's an extractive petroleum product that, once spread out for roads and parking lots, acts like a heat sink and contributes to climate change. It also disrupts natural drainage and prevents maximum recharging of precious aquifers.

After City of Santa Fe Public Works Department staff and New Mexico Department of Transportation honchos decided that yellow X marks and “no parking” signs were failing to stop drivers from stopping in advance of the train tracks, new white X marks were placed instead, to the tune of $20,000.

Two things are certain in New Mexico politics regardless of what happens in the Nov. 2 election: The Land of Enchantment will have a woman as governor for the first time, and some large, powerful state-level departments are going to be merged as cost-cutting measures.

There have been occasional rumors over the years that a final curtain call was in the works for the Paolo Soleri Amphitheater located on the campus of the Santa Fe Indian School. But current fears have a pressing sense of reality to them in the wake of the school’s poorly handled destruction of several historically significant buildings on its campus.

We may never know what Santa Fe County Commissioner Kathy Holian was smoking when, at an April 13 Board of County Com-missioners meeting, she suddenly proposed a moratorium on development. It was probably a potent blend of do-gooder liberalism and the mistaken belief that one’s close advisors make up a populist bloc. Certainly her drug of choice was laced with a helping of economic blindness.

Santa Fe’s Theater Grottesco recently returned from teaching at the Festival Iberoamericano de Teatro de Bogotá. At an open salon in its rehearsal space, Grottesco invited the public to discuss ideas and questions that had been raised in Colombia, including: Have contemporary politics and marketing corrupted the English language?

Last week I touted the Rail Runner’s free WiMax internet service, and noted that East Coast commuters and people in other train-centric communities have better public transportation connectivity and less bias toward government spending on trains than New Mexicans.

May 8 is National Train Day. It’s a coast-to-coast celebration of America’s love of trains. Or at least, that’s what the front of my ticket book for the “Hiawatha” train between Chicago and Milwaukee says it is. New Mexicans, still suspicious about the Rail Runner, may not even notice the passing of National Train Day. Here, as in most places in the US, “America” and “love of trains” don’t really go together.