Letters to the Editor

By DAVID HAMPTON
Member, LACM 

My friends, our Co-op needs your help! Last year sales ran at $60k/week, which is enough to sustain, this year we’re running only $50k/week and will close in June without improvement.

If you had problems in the past, please check us out again. Our selection is better, produce is better, prices are more competitive, and it’s only 2 minutes farther away from our downtown than the other alternatives. AND…there is rarely a line! 

Also, did you know that you can now donate to the Co-op through a 501c3 and deduct your donation on next year’s taxes? Read More

By ADELAIDE JACOBSON
White Rock

The children and adults of Los Alamos will be celebrating our 30th annual Kite Festival this weekend. The following is a poem written by Refaat Alareer (1979-2023), an acclaimed Palestinian professor and poet who, in a targeted killing by the Israeli military, was killed in December 2023, along with his brother, sister, and four nephews.

IF I MUST DIE

If I must die,
you must live
to tell my story
to sell my things
to buy a piece of cloth
and some strings,
(make it white with a long tail)
so that a child, somewhere in Gaza
while looking heaven in the eye
awaiting his dad who Read More

By WILLIAM C. MEAD
Los Alamos

The Op/Ed by Connor Dermody on April 19 misinterprets the electricity rate information given on the Los Alamos County Public Utilities website.

According to the County website, the single rate usage price, as of July 1, 2026, will be $0.151 per kWh until a time-dependent rate structure is implemented.

The planned time-dependent rate structure, after the dual-rate pricing is implemented, the rates will be $0.11 per kWh from 11 p.m. to 5 p.m. and $0.197 from 5 p.m. to 11 p.m. Read More

By RICK NEBEL
Los Alamos

This is a response to the recent letter by Gorbin Lars about Eastern New Mexico joining Texas (link). The reality is that this isn’t a fight about culture, it’s a fight about money. New Mexico treats the “oil patch” counties as its cash cow. They supply over half of the revenue to the state of New Mexico and It’s hardly any wonder that they resent that. They only get a tiny fraction of that cash in return to spend in Eastern NM. 

However, I don’t think that sending Eastern NM to Texas is the best solution. A better solution is for New Mexico to annex all of West Texas from the present Read More

By BILL CABRAL
Los Alamos

I would like to clear up some confusion about who owns the conduits in the streets within the Quemazon Community. Hello my name is Bill Cabral and I previously owned the “Los Alamos Community Network”. I originally started the network from my computer store “Bill’s Computer Shop” in the “Central Park Square” shopping center. I had run fiber optic cable around the shopping center to the other businesses in the steam tunnels below Central Park Square.

I was approached by Sid Singer and the Watermans around Spring 2000 to put the same fiber in their Quemazon Development that Read More

By GORBIN LARS
Los Alamos

In 1978 HB25 was introduced on the floor of the New Mexico House of Representatives. The objective of the legislation was to build a moat around New Mexico to “keep them friggen Texans out.” The bill was revenue neutral as funding for the moat construction was to come through confiscation of all Texan ski equipment found in the state.

The bill of course was a joke. It was introduced during the YMCA model legislative session that year. While it was introduced in jest, it illuminated a fascinating and very real difference in perspective depending on where people lived in NM. Read More

By GERALD ANTOS
Los Alamos

Are you out of your stinking minds? $4.15 plus for gas and $5.70 plus for diesel? Never has there been such disparity in the fuel market as there is now! I watch the price of oil and gasoline every day on https://www.oil-price.net/ and you seem to be making the highest amount of profit in all of Los Alamos History!

This war we are fighting is not the reason for the high prices, it’s your greed. The US is self-sufficient in regards to fuel and oil. You’re just forcing your big fat lie on the citizens of Los Alamos! Empty oil tankers flock to US to load up with oil and gas Read More

By NORA HAASER
Junior Girl Scout
Los Alamos

At the County Council meeting today, April 7, my friends and I are all going to ask the County if we can have a four-way stop up at North Road and Urban Street. I think the County should do this because Dr. Easton died there because of an accident and I don’t want any more people dying from accidents.

Dr. Easton was a pedestrian, just like everyone who lives here and me. If people can stop at Quemazon, then they can stop at this intersection. Along with this accident, I don’t want these two other accidents to happen again when a person was driving peacefully until Read More

By BONNIE EDWARDS
Los Alamos

There is no denying that at this moment in time we have had some life changing incidents happen in our country. In the last few months, we have seen two people killed while protesting. We have seen a person killed on a college campus as he spoke. Children have been killed as they prayed. We tend to blame these incidents on our leaders, on the system, on something other than ourselves but are we scapegoating? Is this a sign of who We the People are becoming? Is there more intolerance, anger and unwillingness to expend energy to find the truth in each of us?

We seem to deal in caricatures Read More

By WILLIAM CLODIUS
Los Alamos

The Angry Staffer on X provided a summary of Trump’s, April 1, 2026, speech on the war with Iran that those who didn’t have the time to listen to the speech or were confused by the speech might find edifying.

Iran won’t close the Strait

Iran better open the Strait

Iran has 2 days to open the Strait

Iran has a week to open the Strait

NATO, open the Strait

I’ll bomb your critical infrastructure if Strait isn’t opened

I don’t care about the Strait

No ceasefire till Strait is open

Trump’s speech didn’t seem to be intended as an April Fools joke.

  Read More

By GEORGIA STRICKFADEN

Sunday afternoon a couple of weeks ago was gorgeous, so after working with my horses in the Stable Area, I walked into where FEMAville had been 25 years ago, an area being master planned as North Mesa Park.

Thanks to community action a generation ago, the area is a park. The far east end of North Mesa Park is a remnant of native mesa top grasses, forbs, and trees, encircled by a well-used hard-surface trail (first photo) frequented by residents of adjacent neighborhoods. An official small sign says it is a “Natural Habitat Area”, but the new North Mesa Park Master Plan has a bike Read More

By MATTHEW SNOWBALL
Los Alamos

Until now, I have sat quietly on the sidelines watching the discussion of the healthcare provider crisis in this state play out on social media and the news. I’ve watched as lawmakers tell us they have the ‘golden ticket’ solution to a crisis that has been building for decades, and all we have to do is ram through a few bills with less than 4 weeks of debate. I have felt more and more anxious, with an internal dialogue that grows in disgust and even anger while watching as the pleas of victims of medical malpractice are drowned out by the shouting on all sides.

Malpractice Read More

By KAY GRADY
Los Alamos

Well done Los Alamos County for initiating a lease with Piñon Pool to help while the County Pool is out of commission. 

First, I am pleased you are using a facility already in the community. I am also excited to see White Rock have access to a community pool in their neighborhood. 

So many memories from my girls growing up in White Rock. As soon as chores were done, they would pack a lunch or find some way to buy snacks at the pool. They were off on their bikes and so excited to go to the pool, visit with friends, or just swim to their heart’s content. 

I remember sitting at the pool Read More

By BRUCE WARREN
Los Alamos

I joined the protest march staged by Los Alamos High School students on Jan. 30 and was very impressed. The march was well organized by students, and was orderly and peaceful. All of the student speeches were excellent: Well thought out, to the point, well delivered and passionate. Congratulations to all the students who worked on and attended the event.

However, I was disappointed in the Los Alamos Schools response to the event (link). It is true that students have a responsibility to attend classes. It is also true that they have a wider civic responsibility to be Read More

By GREGORY BUNTAIN
Los Alamos

Alarm bells immediately went off while reading Daymon Ely’s February 3, 2026, opinion piece in the Los Alamos Daily Post, “Reasonable malpractice reform benefits every New Mexican” (link). Mr. Ely asserts that the amendment weakening House Bill 99—inserted by Rep. Liz Thomson, one of the top ten recipients of contributions from the New Mexico Trial Lawyers PAC—“benefits every New Mexican.” That claim deserves skepticism. It certainly benefits Mr. Ely.

Mr. Ely is not a neutral observer. He is a longtime malpractice trial lawyer and a direct beneficiary of the Read More

By ANTONIO MAGGIORE
Los Alamos

I’m writing this letter in support of our youth.

I congratulate them on seeing through the lies that the current administration is peddling. Good on them for recognizing a cold-blooded murder when it floods their social media feeds for the second time in three weeks.

I want to encourage them to engage and exercise their First Amendment right to protest. 

That being said, times are dangerous. I am confident, and yet I put this out preemptively to ensure that our local government and our local police department will be present and vigilant at any and every local protest Read More

By KEVIN HOLSAPPLE
Los Alamos

Councilors – Please take action to support the establishment of an MRA Commission that will evaluate MRA proposals in the light of day, operate in a manner that is transparent to the public, and make recommendations on proposals prior to the County Council about funding them.

In my experience, the County staff is inexperienced in the kinds of proposals that may come forth, is not committed to true transparency or public participation, and lacks a good grasp of local business community priorities.

The Council seems to lack the bandwidth to conduct in-depth evaluation Read More

By BRUCE WARREN
Los Alamos

I was sorting out some old paperwork recently and came upon this essay, which I wrote when I was 13 and a student in the Freshman Class at Sutherland, Nebraska.

The America it describes is no longer recognizable today. All of the freedoms it mentions are under attack by the current administration.

The Constitution is being shredded in order to give Trump authoritarian powers.

In 1956, memories of World War II and its epic battle to defend democracy were still very strong.

Today, we need to fight the internal enemies of democracy that are running our government.

Essay: What Read More

By LESLIE LINKE
Los Alamos

I implore Los Alamos County to install streetlights on Diamond Drive along the golf course.  It is a very dangerous stretch of road.  Instead of spending millions of dollars to reconfigure our children’s baseball and soccer fields and install AstroTurf at exorbitant cost, this money would be MUCH better spent on making our community safer.

About 6:40 p.m. on January 15, 2026, I hit a deer.  I’m the most careful driver I know, and I always go through that stretch of road slowly, watching for the deer.  He was not there, then he was two inches from my front left bumper.  There Read More

By GARTH READER
Los Alamos

Hey Los Alamos, how would you feel if development of public lands occurred with:

• No/limited input from the surrounding community
• No/limited input from user groups
• No approval from oversight entities
• No environmental or engineering reviews
• No consideration of the long-term impacts of the development

Now, how would you feel if this occurred in Los Alamos County and our surrounding Federal public lands? Well guess what, it is happening right here, right now.

There has been an explosion of “user defined” trails being carved out of your public lands. These trails are Read More