Writer Dave Maass belted in for the 2009 Dustball 1500 and copped rides between some of the 30 teams participating in the 1500-mile road rally across the American Southwest. Launching from El Paso, Texas, teams were handed a manila envelope filled with instructions, directions, visual clues, riddles and math problems that must be solved in order to earn points and, in some instances, find their way.

Using undercover sources, agents from the FBI and the US Bureau of Land Management spent more than two years infiltrating a tight-knit community of looters in the Four Corners area who dig up graves and pillage archaeological sites on public lands, then sell the items they find to dealers and collectors.

The Southwestern Association of Indian Arts, along with the Shadow Catchers Institute of Indigenous Arts, this year adds another component to Indian Market weekend: (Re)presentation: An Indian Market Literary Arts Event.

A review of felony domestic violence cases, along with recent police reports and protection orders, reveals a troubling pattern: The state often fails to protect women who have been threatened, beaten or worse by men they live with, share children with or once upon a time dated. And even when police, prosecutors and social workers know offenders’ names and addresses, they can stay beyond the reach of the law.

With nearly 1.2 million registered voters in the state of New Mexico, it would take a statewide candidate 833 days working around the clock to spend a personal minute with each one of them. And you wonder why candidates are announcing more than a year (and in some cases, more than two) ahead of the 2010 election.

Under a questionable partnership, the Fish and Wildlife Service has managed to give away its statutory responsibility to recover endangered species to a consortium of agencies, allege critics of the way wolf introduction is being managed in the southwest. Wolves are being removed—or killed—by the very people charged with reintroducing the animals to the wild.

Police say “Reno” Leyba killed his girlfriend, Sarah Marie Lovato, her unborn child, Isaac, and her father, Bennie Ray Lovato, Sr.

Perhaps no one else should be surprised. The story of Reno and Sarah is one of families destroying themselves while their community, looking on, does nothing.

It has long been rumored that several Yale students—among them Prescott Bush, father of former President George Herbert Walker Bush and grandfather of former President George W Bush—dug up Geronimo’s remains in 1918 while taking artillery training at Fort Sill.
The bones were allegedly taken to Yale, where some believe they’re used to this day as ritualistic props by an elite student society called the Order of Skull and Bones.

Last February’s defeat, once again, of a domestic partnership bill, is a reminder that the final stretch to full marriage equality won’t be easy. LGBT rights activists in New Mexico are also grappling with the same topsy-turvy national debate as everyone else. The gay community is caught in a dizzying one-step-forward/one-step-back shuffle as individual states and the Obama administration grant and revoke and promise and backpedal.

When we started working on the Reporter’s 35th anniversary issue, the notion of looking through 35 years worth of papers seemed daunting and possibly overkill. But once I started, it was hard to stop reading. Through all its various incarnations, the Reporter has always been an active voice and investigator of the contemporary issues that have defined Santa Fe—from politics to water to development to prison reform to the arts—and the list goes on.