For the second year in a row, city officials in Santa Fe are lobbying the legislature for a bill that would give cities the option to require new condominiums to meet city zoning requirements.

It may sound uncontroversial, but last year's veto of the same bill makes the issue remain Santa Fe's top legislative priority. Because of a loophole in the state's condominium law, city clerks are forced to sign in new condominiums regardless of whether they meet proper zoning laws.

City Land Use Director Matthew O'Reilly calls the current loophole a serious consumer protection problem. He estimates that nearly 1,000 condo units in Santa Fe are out of compliance, which prevents owners from adding additions and gives them trouble if they want to sell their property down the line. In the most extreme case, if an unzoned condo burns down, the city wouldn't allow the owner to rebuild it.

"For so many people, their home is the biggest investment they have," O'Reilly tells SFR. "To have that compromised in any way is a huge financial issue."

Many families buy out-of-compliance condos unknowingly, O'Reilly says, because developers aren't required to meet the city's zoning laws. A common case is when a developer illegally turns a one-unit condo into two units to rake in more money.

Sen. Peter Wirth, D-Santa Fe, is again carrying the bill to fix the problem. Last year, Wirth's bill passed unanimously in both chambers before being pocket-vetoed by Gov. Susana Martinez. The governor's office expressed concern that not all local means had been exhausted to correct the issue.

O'Reilly says he's been working on this issue for two years and has tried every local means to stop it, to no avail. The city recently wrote a letter to the governor's office explaining that the problem could only be corrected through state law. Wirth concurs.

"Without this change in the law, the local government only learns about the illegal condominium after the fact," Wirth tells SFR. "It puts the [local] government in a difficult decision."

The fact that the governor put the bill up for consideration during a budget year is a good sign, Wirth says. As of yesterday, his legislation has passed through three Senate committees.

If the bill passes, current out-of-compliance condos would still be a problem, which O-Reilly says the city is working to address.

Perhaps you should never fully trust anyone whose business card reads “Belief System Re-Patterning through Psychobiology.” In fact, anytime someone describes his or her profession with a series of prefixes followed by the vague “-ology,” you should definitely be wary.

In my defense, I wasn't given his card until after I had gone for the treatment. Actually, my first warning sign was that this specific remedy had been recommended by a phone psychic located in Amsterdam.

“My office is located in an artist studio complex near some trees off of Canyon Road,” he directs me after setting an appointment time. The practitioner has the soft, assuring voice that alternative therapists apparently spend long hours cultivating at every Academy of Metaphysics and Complementary Biophysical Medicine. This voice is friendly and excitable, as if to convey to their clients “Yes, I am as enlightened as my flowing outfits and patchouli-scented body portrays, and if the force is right, I will gift some of this illumination upon your sick and quivering soul.” In reality, it only hides their deep concern over a lack of clients and mounting unpaid bills.

I initially imagined this man to be in his mid-40s, gentle, with a long, horsey pony tale, decked in shirts with colors named after deep-ocean-swimming fish. But as soon as I hang up the phone, I am flooded with doubts. Who is this creepy old man, now balding (but still with the ponytail) whom I have just agreed to meet on a Wednesday afternoon, sight unseen? I imagine an office filled with old doll heads and his greeting me with a casual—absolutely way too casual—"So while we do this treatment, you need to be naked...and clearly, for scientific reasons only, I need to take pictures." I shrug off my day-mare; by now I’m willing to try anything, and ozone therapy sounded about as legitimate as the previously failed Fixing My Mysterious Disease Experiments #1 through 687.

Prayer flags hang under every portal and doorway. He is standing outside, waiting for me. He doesn’t fit my mental picture, and I begin to relax, a smile creeping over my face. He is young, tall and clearly works out; muscles bulge out from his tight-fitting polo shirt and curve through his khaki pants. But as he turns to head inside, I become tense again. A ponytail swings wildly halfway down his back. His office smells like goddess love and day-old feminism. The décor is neo-Asian fusion, and I half expect him to offer me a pork belly spring roll with ginger cardamom dipping sauce. But alas, he only asks me to take off my shoes, revealing another surprise inside his own boring brown shoes. It is frighteningly clear that he hides his true self in this sock choice, his preppy outfit just the beard to his gay hippie interior. These socks are truly freaking me out. They are the brightest pink, decorated with mushroom-high psychedelic swirl patterns and bubbly unicorn horns curling up his ankles.

The first 10 minutes feel like a bad date. I am telling him about my medical problems. If I stop speaking, there is just this terrible silence (except for the smug bubbling of the portable rock waterfall sculpture in the corner), and he is looking increasingly confused. To be absolutely thorough, I begin to explain a minor genetic blood condition that I have, when suddenly he interrupts me, perking up for the first time since my tirade began. This of all things apparently got his attention. 

"Did doctors tell you that you have this condition?" he says very slowly and deliberately. I nod. “That’s very interesting, because you know, not all genetic traits are permanent. Just because you have the gene doesn't mean you are stuck with the condition forever." I am speechless, but in my head I am screaming, “No, I am pretty sure that is exactly what GENETIC CONDITION means. If my DNA tells half of my red blood cells to be deformed, then that is what they are going to do!” My internal rant is interrupted by the metaphor spilling out of his mouth: "You see, DNA is an antenna."

This would not be the last metaphor of our illustrious session. Some of my other favorites included the absolutely brilliant, "Ozone therapy is natural wildfire that helps the forest to regenerate, but we don't want a big huge blaze that burns everything down" and my personal favorite, the priceless and illogical, "Ozone is the gas pedal in your car and when you press it down, your engine receives gasoline and can then have power and move, but that doesn't happen when there is a banana in the tail pipe." I mean honestly, what is this guy talking about?

We move on to the diagnosis phase. Muscle testing is not for the faint of heart. It is a highly unscientific and often ticklish procedure. This method involves testing those things that make your body weak, as the patient holds something in one hand and the practitioner tests the strength of resistance in her other arm. We begin with a control test. He hands me a beer, nice and cold and expensive enough to indicate that he's not that far behind on his bills. I hold it to my chest with my right hand while my left hand is held out to the side. With two fingers, he pushes down my left arm. "See that?" He's really glowing now, beaming two inches from my face. "Even though you may have wanted the beer, your body knew it was not good for you, so it made you weak."  The truth is that my body did want it, and it wanted it badly, because it was a hot summer afternoon and I hadn't had a beer in six months. 

Control test number two: he hands me a cordless phone and turns it on. “The electromagnetism from this phone will make you weak,” he says. He pushes on my arm, but I know his game now, and I make my arm strong. He is actually struggling to push it down, so he pushes harder, and we are both beginning to sweat a little with the effort. He gives up (victory!) and places the phone back into its receiver, mumbling, “Well, that was just to prove a point.” I almost feel bad. I can feel his shame in so obviously failing to do just that.

With the control test phase over with, we begin the diagnosis phase in earnest. One by one, I hold tiny glass bottles filled with strange substances and he does the arm thing. Now I am the one having fun. I can’t help myself so I ask, honestly curious, “How can my body know if it wants these things when I don't know what they are and there is a glass barrier between them and my hand?” When his pause turns into prolonged silence, I think I’ve stumped him. Actually, he is just drawing in an enormous breath so that he can spend the next five minutes explaining that everything in the world has a different vibration, even diseases and viruses, and plants and teletubbies, without the annoying distraction of having to stop and inhale oxygen. “Your body has an electric field, so it picks up on all these vibrations all the time, even through glass!” Shit, he is even more animated now than ever before.

Eventually, he announces that the magical vibrations show that I have a mycoplasma infection and some mild candida, and do I have problems with my teeth? 

And so the treatments begin.

Step 1: Headphones go into my ears, and I feel a strange coldness as ozone gas is pumped into my head. A whiff of it leaks out from my ears and stings my eyes and nose, sending me coughing and gagging. All I can wonder is whether this shit can get you high; thankfully, we quickly move on to Step 2.

As my earlier prescience predicted, this involves me getting undressed. Seriously. Then I squeeze myself into a giant white egg-shaped ozone steam-box that sits on his porch. My head sticks out the top, and my neck is wrapped in a towel to create a bondage-type seal. He latches the door with great force, making sure each clasp is good and tight. Now I am fully trapped. I notice that he is wearing Armani jeans and realize that he must not be too desperate for clients at all. But there is really nothing I can do at this point, now that I am naked and locked in an egg. I really wish he would leave so I could just sit there and sweat buckets in peace, absorb this ozone wildfire without anymore of his input, but he sits down and gets all chatty about books and movies and biodiesel. When he makes some comment—"those magpie birds in the trees behind us are just such characters"—I begin to feel the sad desperation that an egg must feel just before it is cracked open to become an omelet.

The treatment ends, and I take a shower in his closet-sized bathroom, scrubbing off ozone sweat as fast as I can because the door doesn't want to stay latched and it’s possible he’s already standing in the bathroom watching. He gives me a jar of the ozonated water and two small tubes of pills that cost me more than most things I own. They are sugar pills coated with the vibrational essences of flowers, and I figure, what the hell, I’m in this deep already. The label reads—and I really take this one to heart—"Look to the vibration of flowers for peace of mind, happiness and harmony."  

I am about to jump out the door, but not before he regales me with one last lesson. He imparts upon me the dictionary definition of colonics, with all the unnecessary and unpretty details. In my discomfort, I half-jokingly mention a friend who believes coffee enemas can heal anything, and while I talk he stares back at me with a look like coffee enemas had saved his life. As a final gift, he hands me directions for a do-it-yourself coffee enema that were so worn and tattered he must have been holding them in his sweaty palms the whole time.

In the end, the best part about the whole thing was that I was now $120 poorer, my savings merely becoming a vital contribution to his ugly sock fund. Free to be me and you.

 An Ortiz Middle School teacher is resigning effective Feb. 29, citing "unsavory practices within Santa Fe Public Schools" and a district-wide "dangerous situation."

Darryl Waller, a choral director and piano teacher at the middle school, wrote a letter addressed to the district Jan. 30 notifying the administration of his intent to resign. In the letter he states that he was assaulted Jan. 25 and then put on administrative leave while "the student and his fellow perpetrators have been allowed to remain in school with nothing less than what appears to be a verbal warning."

In the letter, Waller also alleges that:

 - SFPS administrators condone poor student behavior and "clearly send a strong message to students and faculty members that students are allowed to behave in any way they choose"

 - Ortiz assistant principal Steve Baca has refused to address Waller's concerns and made "extremely unprofessional" comments, telling Waller if he didn't like the situation at Waller, to ask to be transferred

 - Ortiz principal Denine Mares told him that letters documenting the problem "do not scare her"

 - When Waller was hired, he was promised a salary that he never received

 - The district uses "suspicious hiring practices"

Neither Ortiz leadership nor SFPS superintendent Bobbie Gutierrez returned calls for comment.

Ortiz isn't the only SFPS middle school that allegedly has serious discipline problems. As SFR previously reported, DeVargas Middle School had five fights in six days after removing an assistant principal who was able to control the students more effectively.

Waller's letter specifically exhorts the SFPS Board of Education to "investigate, develop and enforce strict policies before a student or faculty member is severely injured."

A Jan. 6 letter to SFPS from DeVargas teachers also cited safety concerns,  describing numerous assaults by students on teachers and concluding that "these students are clearly running the school."

BoE vice president Glenn Wikle says there has been followup to the concerns raised about DeVargas, but declines to elaborate at this point. He said he put middle school discipline on the agenda for discussion at the BoE meeting Feb. 7.

"I saw [Waller's] letter, it was very moving,' Wikle says. "I'll be talking it about other board members at our upcoming board meeting."

Caldera Gallery and Counter Culture Cafe in the Baca Railyard present a dinner theater event, Feb. 29. Tickets are $75.

Click on the photo for more information, and stay tuned to SFR for deets the week of the event.

 Roughly 35 people attended a community meeting last week at Sweeney Elementary School as part of the Southwest Area Planning Initiative, which aims to give residents a say in the area's rapid commercial and residential development.

At the meeting, residents shared their concerns about the community's most-pressing issues. Brenda Fierro, who lives near Las Acequias park, says she struggles with the area's lack of health care and child care access.

"I have to look for people to take care of my children," Fierro, a mother of five, tells SFR through an interpreter. "I have two girls who don't get access to Medicaid. They don't get help."

Miguel Acosta, who helped spearhead the community meetings last fall, had attendees fill out surveys to mark their biggest community concerns. Lack of public parks, health clinics and the area's high rate of crime came up frequently.

Ed Moreno, who's helping with the Planning Initiative, estimates they've held at least 25 similar community meetings since November. Acosta and Moreno are wrapping up the first phase and plan to open the next phase this month, which will target organizations and nonprofits in the South Side. The idea is to eventually build a master plan to present to the city.

City Councilor Carmichael Dominguez and Blanca Ortiz, a 14-year-old Capital High School student, also helped organize last Thursday's meeting.

Ortiz, who is working on a film documenting south side residents' daily struggles, says she had to press five people to attend the meeting. Residents are often skeptical that people in power will take them seriously, Ortiz says. Her biggest obstacle was convincing them that wasn't the case.

"Some people don’t take me seriously because I’m 14," she tells SFR, "but when they know I actually care and I want to participate and I’m enthusiastic about it, they see it differently."

 "I fell on my head a lot as a child, so I have no sense of smell. So, to me, farts are just funny noises people make with their butts."
 - Gentleman to clerks at Video Library

"…recycling water directly from sewer to tap…"
 - Overheard from an environmental report on KUNM radio

"Our doctor must be running a little behind."
 - Overheard in a local proctologist’s waiting room

This is how cute I think I am: Before I go driving with my 15-year-old daughter, Poppy, I burn a CD of songs loosely related to piloting an automobile. The playlist runs the gamut from "Sober Driver" by Dengue Fever to one of Poppy's favorites: Arcade Fire's "Keep the Car Running."

Whenever we begin these weekend jaunts (which vary from repetitive loops on Siringo Road to stop-and-go errands during which I introduce Poppy as my chauffeur), I feel proud. After all, I am the parent who is participating in this coming-of-age ritual (a task her mother cannot stomach) even though Poppy’s driver's ed instruction was shite, she won't need a driving test to receive her license and our state's fatality rate is 30 percent above the national average. I tell myself that Poppy is just like every other young driver and that I should just chill out even though she cannot successfully park in an empty lot and hugs the curb tighter than a camel's ass in a sandstorm. 

Sitting shotgun with Miss Poppy, I feel my teeth clamp together, so I return to the driving CD, whose songs have become playful. The Beastie Boys' "Car Thief" sounds like nothing more than a nursery rhyme for heads, and the "Car Salesman" bit from the Jerky Boys almost makes me laugh. I tell Poppy to follow Old Santa Fe Trail toward Mountain Cloud Zen Center, and I try to go all namaste on my own candy ass and enjoy the allure of the snow sparkling in bursts between juniper bushes and white-tipped mountains taking over the windshield no matter which direction my daughter steers me.

Just after the abandoned former dictator's school, I ask Poppy to turn, and it happens. "Wreck on the Highway" by Bruce Springsteen fills the cabin, and we are now facing Old Las Vegas Highway, a road that took the lives of two of my former students, Kate Klein and Alyssa Trouw. A road that I swore Poppy would avoid. I don't believe in signs or fate or that everything happens for a reason, but behind my sunglasses, I well up because I miss those girls, only a year older than Poppy when they left and because, like the speaker in the song, "Sometimes I sit up in the darkness/and I watch my baby as she sleeps" and because all the wrecks I've witnessed or participated in scroll across my mind like a relentlessly grim banner: ruptured radiators, shattered windshields, blood bubbles. And yet those goddamn beautiful mountains like fat lightning rods for the sun's white rays won't let me tell Poppy to pull over so I can take the wheel or grab a bottle at the gas station to gulp in front of the Patriots game. 

We approach the patch of dirt near the highway that people call Sticks and Stones, where we once haggled for a crooked Christmas tree. Mark and Keira live across the street, their dog recently mauled by a runaway pit bull. I almost tell Poppy to slow down so we can swing by for a visit, but I'll just spook her with my last-minute request, so I keep quiet and think of how the bull terrier's owner did the right thing by paying for the vet and putting her pet down—and how Mark and Keira got a new puppy from the breeder and the girls named it Pepper. My teeth unclench a bit as I recall Cora's smile when she uttered those two syllables—"Pep-per"—and I cannot help but remember the way my daughter said her own name when she was Cora's age: 

"Pop-py."

"Dad," my driver says, annoyed, "which way?"

We are at an intersection of a major highway, a minor highway and an ancient road. "Wherever you want, darling," I say and try not to close my eyes. 

Robert Wilder’s most recent book is Tales from the Teachers’ Lounge. Daddy Needs a Drink appears the first Wednesday of each month in the Santa Fe Reporter.

We've all been mad--hot, steaming mad; cold, calculating mad; or something in between. And most of us have been mad in both meanings of the word: crazy and angry. Although crazy doesn’t always look angry, anger often looks crazy. But one thing is for certain: Trying to keep angry feelings inside can be crazy-making, for you and for the people around you.

Most of us grew up afraid of anger. We were hurt by being the target of anger from other people, especially the anger of parents or teachers or friends. And we were often punished for showing anger, especially toward parents or teachers or friends.

Fearful as it is, being mad is an unavoidable, necessary part of everybody’s life. And it’s not a necessary evil: Anger can be valuable and validating and motivating. It’s just part of being human, part of who we are.

Being afraid of anger doesn’t make it go away. Just like physicists believe in the conservation of energy, shrinks like me believe in conservation of anger. It doesn’t go away; it just gets expressed in other dishonest forms that are often distorted, disguised, amplified or stealthy. When someone is too dangerous for us to be angry with, a snide comment to someone else can give it voice. Ignoring someone, “forgetfulness,” sabotage, belittling, rumormongering and sarcasm are anger coming out in indirect, but harmful and hurtful, ways. Even jokes can be a stealthy form of expressing anger.

As my good friend, young-adult novelist Richard Peck, says, “Humor is anger that was sent to finishing school.”

For me, it has always been helpful to think of dragons when I think of anger. Maybe this comes from reading JRR Tolkien when I was young. Now that I am a geezer, I think this line from The Hobbit is wonderful when considering anger: “It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him.”

How are anger and dragons related?

Dragons spew fire, just as angry people often spew invective. And the fire coming from a dragon or an angry person is meant to keep enemies away, or to maim or kill.

Dragons are heavily defended. Unless there is a chink in their scaly armor, nobody can wound them. Dragons not only protect themselves, they have been known to protect things they value--hoarded treasure, for example.

When somebody is blasting you with flames of anger, it is wise to back off, emotionally and physically. Regardless of how unfair the anger is, it is not worth having your face melted to hold your ground. It is also not especially useful to morph into a dragon yourself.

Once you have backed away from the dragon and are relatively safe (emotionally and/or physically), it is often useful to ask yourself what the dragon is afraid of or what the dragon is trying to protect. Often, the flame-spewing dragon is simply trying to protect something tender or something it values. Sometimes it is protecting a suspected chink in its armor or an actual chink, which makes vital organs vulnerable. Sometimes the dragon believes that you are so threatening that defending against you is a matter of emotional life or death.

If you are a student, a fire-spewing teacher may be afraid you are making him or her look stupid, or that you are confirming his or her fears of being a teaching failure. A fire-spewing parent may be afraid you are growing up spoiled and entitled and defenseless in a difficult, dangerous world. A fire-spewing friend may be afraid of betrayal or abandonment or judgment.

Let’s take dragon-taming to the next level. When you become a raging dragon, it is useful to ask yourself (when you are able) what you were afraid of, what you were trying to protect. Perhaps you were trying to protect your dignity or your sense of being smart and/or attractive.

It is useful to discover what is fearful to another person or to yourself, to discover what in them or you needs protecting. This knowledge can become a shield against another’s anger, and a bridge between your dragon self and your nondragon self, and a bridge between you and the person you are angry with.

Learning how to express anger without becoming a fire-breathing dragon, or without expressing it in sneaky ways, honors your anger while honoring yourself and the people you are with. Healthy ways to express anger will be the subject of a future blog, so stay tuned!

In the meantime, treat yourself to the animated movie “How to Train Your Dragon.” Really. As an extended metaphor of dragons as anger, it is a gem. Even for geezers like me.

Marc Talbert is a psychotherapist in private practice and a novelist and poet. He lives in Tesuque with his wife and two daughters.

On my desk a list of thank-you letters to write lies next to a pile of notecards. Okay, the notecards are still in a drawer. I’m behind. I’m behind on many things, all the time—but it’s weighing on me that I’m behind in gratitude. Tardiness here seems, well, ungrateful.

Of course, it’s not the actual gratitude that I’m not attending to. But I’ve given telepathic correspondence a really good try, and it’s proven consistently ineffective. Email seems insufficient. The promise of nice notecards, a good pen and maybe a cup of tea, plus time to really think about each addressee, is a lovely vision.

Unfortunately, the letter-writing ambience I’m holding out for is about the same distance from reality as it was last week. I will write these notes eventually: Don’t fret, you thoughtful gift givers, eagerly checking your mailboxes; you will be so pleasantly surprised to get a note from me in March!

I know I should teach—and model—the etiquette of gratitude for my children. I’ve suggested to Theo that he draw thank-you pictures for his gifts—an idea with two minutes of traction that so far has produced one drawing of Santa Claus (which I’m considering copying for everyone). But I fear we’ve passed the point where a thank-you note has any relation to the toy/book/shirt for which we are giving thanks. This mills about in my well-populated Dept. of Desultory Parenting.

But maybe Theo will draw a garland of shamrocks or flowers around Santa’s neck for a spring delivery. Will this teach him the art of creative adaptation? Or, better, that expressions of gratitude are appropriate and welcome whenever they arrive!?

Postal protocol aside, larger ideas about gratitude and time are preoccupying me. 

In the past weeks, I’ve followed two links (below) addressing time and gratitude in different ways. (In my experience, these topics rate high in terms of the percentage of forwarded emails devoted to them.)

One link was to a TED video in which an elderly gentleman talks about the importance of being grateful for the miraculous nuances of each day. I got teary when I watched it and thought: Yes. I am deeply fortunate. I should be more attentive to the miracle of each moment of each day. Because it’s true: Days are short, I am surrounded by gifts, the universe is a constant though capricious benefactor, and I believe that great beauty and magic abound.

It’s also true that I don’t feel grateful every moment of every day. I feel frustrated, sad, angry, harried, tired, and sometimes just zoned out in addition to feeling joyful, loving, energized, and grateful (I actually never feel rested). I also, often, feel guilty about not feeling joyful and grateful all the time. This Scrabble bag of daily/hourly emotional states is normal, right? Is that why we need so many reminders to be grateful?

The other link I received was to a blog post in which the mother-writer muses on the phenomenon of older mothers addressing younger ones in these terms: “This time with little children is so precious. I loved it all, and it went by way too fast. Make sure you enjoy every minute of it, honey, every minute.

Little-kid time is precious and short-lived and full to the brim of moments that make my heart ache with their humor and sweetness and impermanence. But enjoying every minute does not seem realistic. Maybe it should be, but it’s not.

Incessant whining, for example, does not inspire graciousness in me. Neither do poop blow-outs in grocery stores or my son clocking his sister with the hook of a bungee cord because he’s fishing and she’s the fish. I do try to adopt the 4 am magnanimity advocated by Zen Mama—and sometimes I can settle into this dark, timeless period with serenity and gratitude for the gift of cuddling a small, soft, sweet body whose every facet I utterly adore. But I can’t always do this, and my occasional ability is severely hampered when vomit is involved.

For me, the consciousness required to actively appreciate and note the brevity of and be intentionally grateful for every minute of every day and every minute of my children’s days creates a running nostalgia for moments even as they happen. This premature wistfulness-in-the-moment kind of cancels out the freedom of just being in the moment. (I am sure there is a Zen way around this, and finding that is definitely on my to-do list.)

Does my tendency to take too much for granted, to dwell too seldom in contentment, to even, yes, sweat the small stuff—mark me as spoiled? I am so often running late that I physically trip over myself and my kids (and shoes and furniture), not to mention our moments. Is this rushing a damning sign of inattention? Maybe in accepting these tendencies as human, flawed as it is to be human, I can claim a gratitude that feels more like celebration and less like a mandate.

The other mother blogger distinguished between the Greek chronos, or chronological time, and kairos, which is more qualitative; she called it God’s time.

According to the dictionary, it literally means “opportunity.” According to the Great Oracle Wikipedia, kairos “signifies a time in between, a moment of indeterminate time in which something special happens.” I’d add that it also can be a moment in which nothing special happens, and that can be just as remarkable.

Understood this way, there are infinite kairos moments in a day. Recently for me: my daughter discovering cookie dough; the sound of her singing to herself and the dog in a patch of sunlight on our filthy floor; my son’s tangled head on my pillow during our morning cuddle; the got-it! catch of his feet on the pedals of his bicycle, his green vest and orange bike against wheaten January grass; the purple-gray sky of a resting snowstorm and the cold dot of one flake on my eye; the release of just leaning against my husband’s shoulder.

They aren’t always happy or cute; they aren’t always any one thing at all. I wonder if they carry an element of knowing everything could fall away, that the specter or reality of loss is always at the deckle edge. But maybe that consciousness is too far beyond the actual moment to qualify. I’m sure my grasp of the whole concept is superficial, but very often for me, kairos is simply tied to a certain angle of light.

It takes time to register kairos, so even these out-of-time moments are temporal: As much as it might be the inspiration for pausing, kairos is defined by the fact that I took the time to pause. And breaking from my chronos fixation prompts a blush of quiet gratitude—something like saying grace without even knowing the words.

I couldn’t logistically do this for every chronological minute even if I felt compelled to. But I can regularly cup my hands around a gathering of kairos moments—and I’d do well to end the day curled around their little glow instead of dialing in tomorrow’s schedule.

They don’t make kairos date books or iCal applications, which is good; I’d take way too long deciding which color I’d want. And kairos seems removed from chronicling anyhow, though I don’t know how to talk about kairos moments in aggregate without resorting to terms like “collection,” “handful,” “reservoir.” They are that, but perhaps they’re more akin to offerings: donations that aren’t quantified or expected, but whose noting is both a privilege and a responsibility.

How I experience kairos changes my perspective about moment-to-moment priorities. This includes letting myself and others off the hook for delayed thank-you notes and even for not remembering what discrete kairos moments were years hence. I will remember some of them. I am astonished by the countless many I’ve forgotten (I almost wrote “appalled,” but that judgment kind of defeats the purpose of what I’m trying to get at).

 SFR wraps up its city council candidate pop quizzes with District 4, where two former councilors are vetting to get back into the game.

Bill Dimas served on the council from 1984 to 1987 before leaving the body to work in the city’s police force. Carol Robertson-Lopez served the council from 1998 to 2006 before losing an election to Ron Trujillo. Both are vying for the seat Councilor Matthew Ortiz is vacating.

For an overview of the council candidates in other districts, check out the pop quizzes for District 1, District 2 and District 3. Also check SFR's videos of debates between District 1 candidates and District 3 candidates.

Now back to District 4. The rules: Each candidate has one minute to answer the each question.

Questions

1. What was your biggest accomplishment on city council?

2. What year was ranked choice voting passed by city voters? BONUS: Why hasn’t it been implemented yet?

3. True or false, new city condominiums have to be compliant with city zoning laws?

4. If all three GO bond proposals are approved this March, how many construction-related jobs does the city project it will create?

5. What is the most pressing issue facing District 4?

 Bill Dimas, 66, former city police officer and Santa Fe County magistrate

1. There were several. I was appointed police commissioner by the mayor and council at the time. It was a liaison between the council and the police department. We changed the promotional system in the police department. Back then it was what I like to call the Good Ole Boys system. The chief would appoint whomever he wanted to appoint into higher ranks. We changed it into an actual tested promotional system.

2. 2008. I don’t have any idea why the council hasn’t acted on it. I don’t think it’s even come up with the council.

3. False. I’m aware of that bill. The governor vetoed it last session, but she put it on the call this session.

4. 157.5.

5. Burglaries and crime. This is a real passionate issue with me. Last year 115 arrests made for burglaries. For drug trafficking, there [were] nine arrests made. The root problem for burglaries is drugs. Ninety-five percent of the burglars were drug related. I lost my daughter last year. She died from a blood disease called sepsis, just from dirty needles. My daughter was an addict for many years. We need to start taking these drug traffickers off the streets. I want to work with the district attorney’s office. Just like they’ve implemented all these sentences to DWI, we need to do the same with drug traffickers. If we start doing mandatory minimums, we send a clear message that Santa Fe is not going to be a drug store. 

 Carol Robertson-Lopez, 62, retiree from New Mexico Department of Transportation 

1. The completion of the south side library, which brought library services in the middle of failed schools and to a part of town that didn’t have library services.

2. I don’t think it passed. It’s never been implemented. I believe there have been problems with the voting machines themselves, the programming and figuring it out. The council did not take the necessary action to implement.

3. I know we had a state law … true. The state law is passing now—as long as they meet all the code requirements. It’s been a huge problem and we tried to get county clerk not to enroll [un-zoned condominiums] and she said no.

4. 120. Glad they put [the bonds] out to the voters. If the voters approve them, I’m promising to make sure every penny is spent for the purposes they are created.

5. The economy and economic downturn is the most pressing issue. I would really push for job creation in Santa Fe. By job creation, we have this problem with police officers commuting from Rio Rancho. I want the Community College to create a law enforcement program that would actively recruit people to law enforcement. Other thing is I think we have to be pushing the governor on the cap for film production.

Key

2. 2008. City Clerk says voting machines aren’t capable and only the legislature could approve new ones. 

3. False. The city clerk is required to sign in new condominiums regardless of whether they meet city zoning law. Sen. Peter Wirth’s SB10 would fix this.

4. 157.5

 Santa Fe County will receive $150,000 in federal funding as part of the US Department of Agriculture's Secure Rural Schools program, US Senator Jeff Bingaman, D-NM, announced today.

Twenty-one New Mexico counties besides Santa Fe will also receive payments, with over $3 million (the biggest chunk) going to Catron County, in the southwest part of the state.

The Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act was signed into law by former president Bill Clinton in 2000, and reauthorized in 2008. Its purpose is to help counties that "rely economically" on national forest land, ie counties that contain national forest land (such as Gila National Forest, located in Catron County) and therefore less privately-owned land. Privately-owned land is a usually a source of county revenue through property taxes. The Secure Rural Schools funding therefore benefits some of the same services that would ordinarily be partly funded through property taxes, such as school and road improvements.

New Mexico received $ 18 million in Secure Rural Schools money in FY 2008 and FY 2009, and $13.7 million in FY 2010, according to the USDA website.

 "I would say that 2 inches never felt so good!"
- Overheard in the morning at Ski Santa Fe after a small storm

"This state's motto should be Stupid and Proud of It."
- Overheard at a dinner party

 Many gathered this morning to rally in protest of Gov. Susana Martinez' third attempt to repeal the law that allows undocumented immigrants to receive driver's licenses. Click here for the video.

 As a crowd rallied to oppose the latest attempt to repeal the state's immigrant driver's license law this morning, Republican House members unveiled an ideological plan for the next 100 years in New Mexico.

Dubbed the "Republican Centennial Plan for New Mexico," the blueprint calls for less government, better education and an end to government corruption and waste.

"We are being regulated to death," Hose Minority Leader Tom Taylor, R-San Juan, said at the press conference. "This plan is a new plan for the century. We've spent the past 100 years without balance in New Mexico."

Among the challenges for the next 100 years, Taylor says, is making the state legislature is more accessible to the public. Another is changing "the very foundation" of public education.

"If it was up to me, I'd undo 90 percent of the regulations in education," Taylor says. 

To curb waste, Taylor expressed interest in a House Republican Caucus-funded private audit of several state agencies.

When pressed for specific bills this session, he pointed to Gov. Susana Martinez' bill to end "social promotion," which would hold back third graders who don't meet proper reading levels.

Taylor adds that Republicans would soon be working to strengthen penalties for public officials involved in corruption. 

"I think if anyone breaks those rules, they ought to lose their pensions," he says. "We ought to banish them from state government."

But he has no plans to introduce anti-corruption measures this year. Only Martinez has the authority to allow bills unrelated to the state budget to be heard this session. 

The Republicans' announcement came one day after Senate Democrats unveiled a "jobs" plan.