“Are you watching this?” The phone call from SFR publisher Andy Dudzik came early in the morning. 

Olivia Tsosie has been on my mind lately. Olivia was an activist, writer and long-time resident of Agua Fria Village, and was one of the first people I interviewed for the Santa Fe Reporter in my early years as a staff writer in 1992, following my introduction to the paper as an editorial intern in 1991.

Environmental issues are important and, for some people, they are interesting. But for Harvey Stone, the most pressing environmental issue of our time—climate change—had all the built-in elements required to write a fiction thriller.

US nuclear testing occured in the Marshall Islands between 1946 and 1958, during which time the US detonated 67 nuclear bombs, including the 1954 “Bravo” test, which was larger than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Artist and documentary filmmaker Adam Horowitz first went to the Marshall Islands in 1986 and made a 16 mm film, Home on the Range, about nuclear testing in the area.

We wrap up 2010 with a look back at the top stories that shaped the roller coaster of the last 12 months. True, not all of these stories woke us at 3 am with our teeth chattering. But the pervasive sense of seditious intent from the powers that be did fuel our thinking as we wrapped up the year. So we present not just the top 10 stories, but our own take on the conspiracies behind them.

Black Friday began at a civilized hour at the Santa Fe Women’s Club, the venue for an annual weekend gift fair featuring local artisans and vendors.

A cowboy searches the desert for an old man; a woodcutter loses his prey to another hunter; a political candidate ponders deficits of all sorts. These are the characters who populate this year’s winning fiction entries in SFR’s annual writing contest.

US Sen. Tom Udall, D-NM, has received “more than a couple hundred pieces of correspondence,” mostly from New Mexicans, conveying concerns about invasive Transportation Security Administration procedures for airline travellers.

Beverly Allen is ready for anything. Anything. Public information officer for New Mexico’s Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, Allen has multiple survival kits—including ones for her dogs.

In the long run, the worst aspect of the historic Pink Adobe restaurant’s shuttering during the first weekend in November may be the loss of a local landmark.