Here’s your guide to Red Dirt Black Gold

Three days of live music, food, craft vendors and homemade beer await partygoers from southeast New Mexico during the Red Dirt Black Gold Festival in downtown Artesia.

‘The Nation was unprepared.’ The 9/11 Commission Report

The 9/11 Memorial and Museum in New York provides educational resources for everyone, attempts to foster a deeper understanding of the most intense terrorist attack on U.S. soil in history, and actively engages with family members, survivors, and first responders as the healing process continues.

Welfare, politicians and money

According to the Census Bureau, 20% of New Mexicans are on welfare, the highest percentage of any state in the nation. This is measured by families on Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), General Assistance or SNAP and does not include Medicaid, Medicare, housing vouchers, school lunch programs, unemployment insurance or tax credits. According to the state Medicaid website, 702,063 New Mexicans were enrolled in Medicaid or CHIP assistance as of May 2025. That’s 33% of our population.

NM becomes first state to offer free universal child care

New Mexico will offer free universal child care to all residents starting Nov. 1, becoming the first state in the nation to do so. This will remove any past income eligibility requirements for no-cost childcare.Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham announced the news during a press conference Monday.

Whom to identify with?

Do you identify with the Pharisees, the ones who rightly saw the dangers of too close an association with the “wrong crowd.”

Newborn death case debated

A police bodycam video allegedly showing an Artesia teenager confessing to suffocating her newborn son was at the center of a New Mexico Supreme Court argument regarding the admissibility of comments made by the defendant while under medical care.

Eddy County accepts 2025 tax rates

Eddy County taxpayers will see mostly minor decreases in municipal property tax rates for the 2025 tax year, running from Jan. 1 to Dec. 31, after county commissioners voted unanimously to approve the tax rates Sept. 4.