Laura's Page

Yay! I know I've looked for Neil Young's "Albuquerque" on You Tube before, so I could post to it. I obviously haven't done that search since sometime before last spring, though.

Here you go, DCFers:

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Okay, okay, I never in a million years (or rather, "never in my 30+ years") imagined I'd really care about things like school systems, but here I am. A mom. A mom considering a move back to Albuquerque.

(This is a move I desperately want on a personal level because honest to god, there is no place I love more than the Rio Grande valley. Crazy, huh? You'd have my head checked if you saw the beautiful, quiet, sweet, peaceful place I've been living the past year.)

But then a friend emailed me thi… Continue

Sheesh, it's so good to be home...Green chile, good friends, familiar faces and the city I love more than any other. Oh, Albuquerque, I won't drone on and on about how I always have to leave you, but know that I miss you more than you could ever imagine.

It's Day Nine of my visit to New Mexico and because I'm one lucky fool (I'm cramming a bunch of reporting trips into this visit), my "work" here has included climbing Mt. Taylor, visiting with the Zuni, backpacking in the Gila, meeting some kic… Continue

So, I haven't been gone for long, but holy crap, I am so excited to be coming back to Albuquerque for ten days. (Yes, yes, I moved. Personal reasons, blah blah blah. I've spent the last 12 years trying to live in Abq and periodically getting booted out of the city for one reason or another.)

But whatever, hell yeah, I can't wait to see the Rio Grande, eat some kick ass food, visit with friends, (go to my best girlfriend's engagement party!) and walk around downtown, Nob Hill, the University are… Continue

So, what's this about Brian O'Brien's burning down? I saw the raw footage on the Abq Journal's website, but can't find a dang news story about it.

I guess it's confession time: I used to work at that bar. Yes, I worked at the bar with the freaking dumbest name ever. In 2002, I returned to Abq from Europe--where my impending marriage had just crumbled--and I needed to line up some work so I could save up enough money to move to Colorado and start an internship with High Country News. (I had left… Continue

This makes me so unbelievably happy: The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance has launched a "Women Protecting Wilderness" campaign (and no, it's not just for Utah!)

Check out the website here and learn how to submit your photo and wilderness testimonial for the group's wilderness quilt here.

By the way, I heard about this through the… Continue

So, I was house sitting for some friends in western Colorado. (That's the kind of thing you get to do when you're a freelance writer, and you can work from pretty much anywhere.) I was up there from July 7 through the end of last week.

Whenever I'd check the news, weather, etc. I'd read all about flash flooding and rain and all sorts of wonderful things like that. When I returned, I saw that my tomato plans were outrageously humongous--one has even attached itself to the lower branches of a tre… Continue

Manifesto:
The Mad Farmer Liberation Front
by Wendell Berry

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to di… Continue

So...for about a year I blogged about environmental issues in New Mexico. There are a number of reasons why I started doing that, and a number of others why I stopped.

But really, none of those reasons are very important right now, when I'm trying to procrastinate work on a Sunday afternoon and when I have an Inbox full of emails from people who are writing to me about environmental issues in their communities or about events going on within their organizations.

(And I'm not even going to get… Continue

I'm psyched about the plant growth these days -- the vegetable garden is in and everything is currently thriving. The flower seedlings (such as cosmos and nasturtium) are coming up nicely and there are even flowers already blooming around the yard, brightening things up after what s… Continue