It’s a damn good thing City Councilor Ronald Trujillo has taken a proposed ordinance to ban the feeding of prairie dogs and stuffed it down a mysterious hole in a city park. It makes no sense to legislate such a thing�as numerous critics have pointed out�but that doesn’t mean Trujillo’s sentiment was wrong.

The planet should collectively thank BP for the Deepwater Horizon accident. With public opinion regarding oil and gas at an all-time nadir, and 63 percent of Americans willing to pay more for clean and independent energy, the impetus to finally jump on renewables is here.

Serious business is afoot in the halls of government in Santa Fe. The city that once proposed leash laws for cats is now angling to license panhandlers and toughen up laws against nudity.

“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.