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.

Parents whose concerns with the current political and economic climate are less tangled up in vague pseudo-patriotic rhetoric and more grounded in practical matters? Them, I’d be scared of.

The debate about how Santa Fe Public Schools should close its $6.9 million budget deficit presents a good opportunity to start thinking differently about how we deliver education in our public schools.

Two overriding factors describe the current state of telecommunications. The first is tremendous interconnectivity, allowing for an unprecedented level of information exchange, and attendant advances in media, health, science, activism and overall human understanding. The second factor is the stunning level of corporate control of this interconnectivity. In Santa Fe, we apparently misunderstand both.

Here’s a good way to make sure that dropout rates at area schools remain high and that kids become even less engaged with education than they are now: Follow the advice of the Santa Fe Public Schools’ district budget advisory subcommittee and consolidate small schools into big ones. And yet that, and a host of other unpopular decisions are making the rounds in Santa Fe today.

Sometimes it’s frustrating to be in Santa Fe’s bizarre political bubble. Everything is falsely rosy and the most pressing issue is red, green or Wi-Fi? Other times our irreality bubble is pleasantly insulating: There are no outraged, militant lunatics getting violent because the government is helping them. But we should remember that what happens beyond our bubble won’t necessarily stay beyond our bubble, especially as an important election season kicks off.

When the road to the ski area is icy or snow-packed, you’d think people would exercise sound judgment about traveling. For example, those without four-wheel drives or all-wheel drives or, at least, snow tires and good winter driving skills, might choose to find a ride with someone who does. But this is not the case.

Things don’t stay the same the more they change. Alphonse Karr’s sentiment that plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose just ain’t true. It’s a tempting proverbial trope, but despite a strange counter-entropic force toward hegemonic sameness, things do change.