Forest Service: SF Mountain Thinning, Burning Project Will Go Forward

Forest Service: Santa Fe mountains project will proceed

The Santa Fe National Forest and Forest Stewards Guild will be hosting a Facebook live webinar on prescribed fire at noon this Friday, April 21, during which Forest Supervisor Shaun Sanchez and Deputy Supervisor Jeremy Golston will discuss practices and procedural changes following the national 90-day pause on prescribed burning, and Forest Fire Management Officer Terrance Gallegos will talk about implementing the seven tactical changes from an operational basis. The webinar will be moderated by a representative of the Fire Adapted New Mexico Learning Network and include a question-and-answer session. The webinar follows SFNF’s announcement last Friday that it intends to move forward with the controversial Santa Fe Mountains Landscape Resiliency Project, which will include vegetation thinning and prescribed fire treatments of close to 39,000 acres over the next decade or so east of Santa Fe on the Española and Pecos/Las Vegas Ranger Districts. In a news release, SFNF says it followed the National Environmental Policy Act “to analyze the proposed action, alternative proposals, potential effects and venues for public input” as required by NEPA and found “the issues raised in objection were adequately addressed.” Those objections include a January letter from Santa Fe County Commissioner Anna Hansen, in her official capacity, which contends the Forest Service unnecessarily restricted public comments on the project, and opposes the plan for myriad other reasons, noting: “You have addressed the problem of risk in our forests in the cheapest, riskiest, and least discerning way, but are not accepting the reality then, that such an approach cannot work where extreme care is needed, or when the potential costs are so high as to negate the approach itself.” SFNF’s Friday news release says the decision has not yet been signed.

Gov. Lujan Grisham worried about national abortion ban

New Mexico remains front and center in the evolving national landscape over access to reproductive health care. The US Supreme Court on Friday issued a stay through Wednesday of US District Judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk’s April 7 ruling in Texas that suspended the Food and Drug Administration’s 20-year-old approval of mifepristone, a key drug used in medical abortions. A mixed decision from a federal appeals court followed that restored FDA approval’s, but allowed other portions of Kacsmaryk’s ruling to hold. Last Friday morning, the Biden administration asked SCOTUS to intervene. Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last June, abortions in states where the procedure remains legal have increased significantly, with the Society of Family Planning’s most recent #WeCount Report showing New Mexico has provided 232 more abortions per month since that decision. Yesterday, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham appeared on CBS News’ Face the Nation to discuss, in part, the Reproductive Freedom Alliance, of which New Mexico is a member. “If we’re going to use the federal courts as a way to bar and ban access, we are looking at a national abortion ban and more,” Lujan Grisham said. “And I think states have to band together to do as much as they can in opposition to that.” The governor recently signed two bills passed in the most recent legislative session codifying abortion bills in the state; she said during yesterday’s television appearance the state also is examining ways to expand abortion access on tribal lands. “I want to make sure that…the women and families in their Pueblo or sovereign nation have equal access, irrespective of distances that they might have to travel,” she said. The governor is expected to return from Washington, DC today where she traveled April 10 to meet with federal officials and have knee surgery.

NM tax rebates to start in June

On Friday, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham announced the state will begin sending out tax rebates—$500 to single filers; $1,000 to couples filing jointly—in mid-June. Heads of household and surviving spouses also will receive the larger amount; any state resident who filed 2021 New Mexico personal income tax returns and was not declared as a dependent on another taxpayer’s return will automatically receive rebates, either by mail or through direct deposits (eligible residents have until May 31, 2024 to file a 2021 state personal income tax return and still qualify for the rebate; residents whose income levels exempt them from filing income taxes will be able to apply for first-come first-serve relief payments at a later date, with those payments forthcoming in July). “Prices for basic necessities continue to be high across the nation,” the governor said in a statement. “Our state today is in a fantastic financial position, and it’s important to me that New Mexico’s families are sharing in that success.” Taxpayers who have moved to a different address since filing their 2021 returns can update their addresses using the Taxpayer Access Point self-service portal or by submitting Form RPD-41260, Personal Income Tax Change of Address Form to the Taxation and Revenue Department as soon as possible. Taxpayers whose banking information has changed since they submitted their 2021 returns will receive the rebate by mail.

Farmington police release video of shooting at wrong address

The Farmington Police Department on Friday released body-worn camera footage and 911 stemming from the April 5 police shooting that captured national headlines, in which local law enforcement responded to a domestic disturbance call at the wrong address and shot and killed 52-year-old Robert Dotson. According to a news release, Dotson’s family and attorney reviewed the video footage at the San Juan County District Attorney’s Office prior to its public release. The New Mexico State Police is investigating the incident; the three police involved—all of whom fired their weapons—have not yet been identified and are on paid administrative leave while the investigation is ongoing; the question of “why officers approached the wrong address”—5305 Valley View Ave versus 5308—”remains part of the ongoing investigation,” the news release states. In brief, after police arrived at the wrong address, announced themselves and realized they were at the wrong house, resident Robert Dotson opened the screen door at his home and pointed a firearm at the officers, at which point they fatally shot him. Shortly thereafter, his wife appeared and also began firing at the officers; as reported after the incident, she stopped firing upon realizing they were officers and is not being charged. “All of us—the men and women of the Farmington Police Department—recognize the severity of this incident,” Farmington Police Chief Steve Hebbe, who ordered the release of the records, said in a statement. “We will do everything possible to more fully understand what transpired here.”

COVID-19 by the numbers

Reported April 14: New cases: 271; 677,736 total cases. Deaths: 0. Santa Fe County has had 403 total deaths; Statewide hospitalizations: unavailable at press time; patients on ventilators: unavailable at press time. The state health department will stop reporting daily COVID-19 cases on May 11.

The Centers for Disease and Prevention most recent April 13 “community levels” map shows improvement for New Mexico, with the entire state turning green, which indicates low levels (last week Union County was yellow, for medium). Corresponding recommendations for each level can be found here.

Resources: Receive four free at-home COVID-19 tests per household via COVIDTests.gov; Check availability for additional free COVID-19 tests through Project ACT; CDC interactive booster eligibility tool; NM DOH vaccine & booster registration; CDC isolation and exposure interactive tool; COVID-19 treatment info; NMDOH immunocompromised tool kit. People seeking treatment who do not have a medical provider can call NMDOH’s COVID-19 hotline at 1-855-600-3453.

You can read all of SFR’s COVID-19 coverage here.

Listen up

Nonprofit Kitchen Angels’ annual fundraiser Angels Dine Out is just a few days away (Thursday, April 20), in which more than 40 participating restaurants will donate 25% of your tab to Kitchen Angels to help it continue delivering meals to homebound Santa Fe and Northern New Mexico residents (and this year, three bars, Santa Fe Brewing Company’s headquarters; Santa Fe Spirits’ downtown tasting room; and Tumbleroot, also will donate proceeds from specialty drink menus, as will Artisan’s Bottega at Black & Silver Gallery.) On the most recent episode of the Cline’s Corner podcast, host Lynn Cline talks with Kitchen Angels Development Officer Dwayne Trujillo about the popular event and Kitchen Angels’ important mission.

Silko on her writing life

These days, native New Mexican and renowned writer Leslie Marmon Silko (Pueblo of Laguna) lives in Tucson, Arizona, but her home state factors significantly in her personal and literary history, as she recounts in a recent New Yorker interview. Her 1977 debut novel Ceremony, which she wrote in Alaska, led to her receipt in 1981 of the MacArthur “genius” grant. She did not anticipate the enduring power Ceremony would have, she says: “I wasn’t even sure it was a novel, so I didn’t have any ideas like that at all. I was in a crisis. It helped me get through the move from the Southwest to southeastern Alaska, which was extremely difficult. I wrote Ceremony sort of to save myself. Every day, when it was raining and dark in Alaska, I was writing about the Laguna-Acoma area and the sandstone and the sun. For me, writing Ceremony was a way to remake or re-create a place and a sense of being where I belonged.” After finishing Ceremony, she and her husband moved back to New Mexico—where she had previously dropped out of law school—and “when my marriage sort of went to hell in Albuquerque, I came down to Tucson, and then I got the MacArthur Fellowship, and I quickly quit teaching,” she says. She describes the novel she’s been working on as “a fraternal twin to Almanac of the Dead,” but says its topical concurrence—it addresses the “rise of the right wing, and neo-Nazism”—has turned out to be “disconcerting” and she’s backed off it a bit as she thinks about “different ways to write it.”

O’Keeffe’s vision

The Wall Street Journal weighs in on two current Georgia O’Keeffe exhibitions: New York’s Museum of Modern Art’s Georgia O’Keeffe: To See Takes Time, (through Aug. 12). which features 120 small paper works; and the traveling Georgia O’Keeffe, Photographer, currently at Ohio’s Cincinnati Art Museum (through May 7). O’Keeffe, WSJ writes, “is having a big moment right now.” But not for the usual fare of “large, suggestively sensual flower paintings…nor for her pared-down, arid oils of animal skulls and New Mexico’s desert landscape.” Rather, both shows offer “windows into her home and private life, her sources and studio practice.” The exhibit at MoMA, the review says, “attempts to make a case for O’Keeffe as an abstractionist.” Yet while the artist “wanted to transform her subjects…into iconic forms and to elevate them above their humble origins,” she nonetheless “never fully relinquishes horizon lines, three-dimensional space and organic motifs.” As for the traveling show of O’Keeffe’s photographs “the first major investigation of O’Keeffe behind the lens,” the show and catalog “offer yet another view through the eye of the artist,” WSJ notes. “But the exhibition is more informative than it is aesthetically gratifying” and “the strongest images here are the portraits of O’Keeffe taken by others, such as her husband, the American photographer and art dealer Alfred Stieglitz.”

The calm before the wind

The National Weather Service forecasts a mostly sunny day with a high temperature near 71 degrees and east wind 5 to 15 mph becoming southwest in the afternoon. Enjoy the day: Higher winds return tomorrow along with critical fire weather. Flood warnings continue in Jemez Springs, although the Jemez River receded somewhat over the weekend thanks to lower temps; satellite images show how rapid the snow melt has been in the Jemez Mountains since the start of April.

Thanks for reading! The Word managed to catch Phantom of the Opera during its 35-year Broadway run, and watched its final curtain call.