One Woman's Viewpoint
Merritt Hamilton Allen, whose work is published previously in the Edgewood Independent, will also provide her columns to the Grant County Beat.
The state of travel in 2023
- Category: One Woman's Viewpoint One Woman's Viewpoint
- Published: 23 December 2023 23 December 2023
I am a fairly frequent flyer. There are some basic survival skills and etiquette points modern airport travelers should know: never check a bag if you can help it; don't crowd the boarding area ahead of your boarding group; the armrest is for the center seat; if you bring a meal on a plane, consider its aroma; keep your shoes on; exiting the plane is done by row, not a mob rush.
But none of these can prepare travelers for times when airlines show complete disregard for their staffs and their passengers. Dear readers, I present to you American Airlines in 2023.
The GOP's ethics problem won't go away with George Santos
- Category: One Woman's Viewpoint One Woman's Viewpoint
- Published: 08 December 2023 08 December 2023
Former Congressman George Santos of New York is not a loveable character. Facing federal charges of conspiracy, wire fraud, false statements, falsification of records, aggravated identity theft, and credit card fraud around misuse of his campaign accounts, he is also a shameless and prolific liar.
Santos has claimed: to be the descendant of Holocaust survivors; a Wall Street executive with Goldman Sachs and Citigroup (both firms have no record of his employment); that his mother was a 9/11 victim; that his mother died of cancer; that he played college volleyball at a college he did not graduate from before getting an MBA at another university he did not attend; that he had employees at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando the night of the mass shooting; that he was never a drag queen.
But, more worryingly, he is accused of using his campaign account for shopping sprees for luxury items. That sounds fairly ho-hum. The federal charges also detail allegations that he fraudulently used donor credit cards to make charges in their name. That's a new one.
One person, one vote should mean something
- Category: One Woman's Viewpoint One Woman's Viewpoint
- Published: 01 December 2023 01 December 2023
It's interesting to me how unbothered many New Mexicans are by the decades of gerrymandering that have taken place in our state. The November 27 affirmation by the state Supreme Court of the lower court ruling upholding the 2021 redistricting plan signed into law by the Democratic legislature was similarly anticlimactic.
The all-Democrat Supreme Court simply agreed with the previous District Court ruling that well, yes, the Democratic legislature gerrymandered the 2nd Congressional District to improve Democratic performance in that district by 12 percentage points. But that wasn't an "egregious" gerrymander.
Meh. Politicians are going to politick. What are you gonna do?
The gift of creativity
- Category: One Woman's Viewpoint One Woman's Viewpoint
- Published: 27 November 2023 27 November 2023
Thanksgiving is not my favorite holiday, but it serves as a modest kickoff to the best time of the year: the Christmas and winter holiday season. I start the day after Thanksgiving and keep it going right up until Ash Wednesday. For me and my household, these winter months are a time to celebrate what and whom we hold close.
The house we live in now is the house we have lived in the longest. It is where we cared for both of my parents until their deaths. It is where we reimagined our lives and managed a business through the shock of the pandemic. And like many New Mexico homes, it is filled with art from local artists. None are from Santa Fe or Taos.
A number of the works are gifts. In the 1990s a Silver City artist drew an astonishing charcoal portrait of me and one of my mother, and one in color of one of my sisters. Nancy Sims worked full time in management at Gila Regional Medical Center but was drawn to the human face, perhaps from her career in nursing. Despite long hours at the hospital, she made beautiful art to give away. I don’t know if she ever had a formal show before her death.
Good soldiers struggle to fight just wars
- Category: One Woman's Viewpoint One Woman's Viewpoint
- Published: 18 November 2023 18 November 2023
"But, say they, the wise man will wage Just Wars. As if he would not all the rather lament the necessity of just wars, if he remembers that he is a man; for if they were not just he would not wage them, and would therefore be delivered from all wars."
St. Augustine of Hippo, "The City of God"
St. Augustine was the first Christian theologian to suggest the theory of a just war. Over 1600 years later, theologians, ethicists, politicians, and soldiers still wrestle with the topic of killing others for a national purpose.
The right to be left alone
- Category: One Woman's Viewpoint One Woman's Viewpoint
- Published: 13 November 2023 13 November 2023
In school we all learned the basic tenets of classical liberalism upon which the United States was founded: liberty, equality, capitalism, freedom of religion, private property ownership, free trade, and limited government, to name a few. These concepts were considered radical at the time of the founding of the United States, the first nation formed out of the Age of Enlightenment.
So far, it has been successful experiment, although not without its missteps and tragedies.
The new Speaker faces the most uncertain world our generation has seen.
- Category: One Woman's Viewpoint One Woman's Viewpoint
- Published: 27 October 2023 27 October 2023
Three weeks in, the House GOP caucus finally got its act together and elected Congressman Mike Johnson from Louisiana as Speaker of the House on Wednesday. The day prior, Congressman Tom Emmer of Minnesota, Majority Whip, saw his candidacy derailed by social media posts from former president Donald Trump. Emmer voted to certify the 2020 election results, making a permanent enemy of the loser of that election.
Johnson is a reliable Trump company man and apparently the moderate majority of the caucus had had enough and just voted for him already to get this nightmare over with after rejecting hardliner Jim Jordan in a previous vote.
How to put an end to tribalism.
- Category: One Woman's Viewpoint One Woman's Viewpoint
- Published: 20 October 2023 20 October 2023
We've seen for most of 2023 what it looks like when a minority of a narrow majority pulls the strings in the House of Representatives. Because this small segment of the GOP caucus is also among the most voluble, vocal, and visible, it's easy to assume they represent the mainstream of the caucus.
They do not.
Complicating the optics is the role of conservative media, which, to drive advertising dollars, encourages maximum staged drama in on-air appearances. This is not news. This is theater.