Javier Sanchez

What would I do with another 45 years? If you’ve heard it once, you’ve heard it a thousand times: Life is short. But I’m beginning to think just the opposite. Life is long. Life is great. Certainly arduous. But most importantly, life is for the living.

On Mother’s Day I went to visit a friend. We talked and laughed. It had been too long since I visited Genoveva. But luckily, she was still the same. Bright smile, courteous and as always had a hot cup of coffee ready for me. Folgers crystals, thank you very much. She lets me stir in however much I want. You know—to each their own strength of coffee. We settled in and started gossiping. She told me about the rake she keeps at the front door. It’s not to ward off unwanted strangers, she made clear. Rather it’s to keep close at hand when she needs work in the garden. Sometimes the door to the garage gets stuck so now she can rake the grass or pull the weeds at a moments notice.

Mom’s are ingenious and they have a way of making life easier. Whether the moms in your life are your natural moms, or whether they are just experienced in the way of the world, we have a lot to learn from them. They are selfless, they are protectors and through some sort of magic, they never get tired. Whereas men can always take a nap under a tree while fishing, or on a lazy Sunday afternoon watching football, moms never get that luxury afforded to them. No. Their lives are about toiling or fidgeting or getting things just so. Dinner is coming up and there are potatoes to peel or pees to snap.

Life never stops. So when I started thinking about my friend and my life, I realized—I have a lot to do. Even though life is short relatively speaking, it’s even longer in reality. My friend, you see, is 96 years old. And she looks darned good. I got to thinkin’ “If god blesses me with another 45 years of life, what am I going to do with it.” That’s a lot of years. That’s the same number of years to live as from when I was six years old to now! A lot has happened since I was six years old. I did things like learn to read, learned to eat with a fork, went through puberty, learned a foreign language, went to school, then college. Got my first job…and well, you get the point.

And the point is, just when you thought you were getting older or you thought you were heading into the twilight years of your life, you’re hit with the reality that there is more to do. I feel like I am at the birth of a new age. Like everything I see I am seeing for the first time. There is a pantheon of knowledge to gain. I have to study and learn. I have to start a habit, learn a new language and find new ways of doing things. I feel as though I am six years old hungry for knowledge, experience and an awakening.

Maybe this is just a coincidence, but I was asked by a family to give some advice to their daughter who will be graduating high school next year. They wanted some words of wisdom that would encourage her to go away to college. In the deepest part of my awakening soul, I muttered a reality that I have always known to be true, yet rarely exercised in practice: all the riches in the world can’t bring you happiness unless you use them to better the world. What are you going to do to help the world get better?

I feel like now is the time. Whether it is for me or for you, we must collectively feel like a six year old, full of curiosity, wonder, and the attitude that anything is possible. We have to mold the world into a better place.

Moms (whether yours or not) have a way of bringing hope into the world. They have a way of reminding you that your life is just beginning no matter how old you are. I know my mom pushed me every chance she got. Perhaps unknowingly, she also taught me the wonder and joy of finding pleasure in new beginnings. How was your day, she’d ask me. Fine, I’d say. Did you meet anyone new? Eh, sorta. Ok, mijo. So long as you’re trying your best.

Forty five years, huh? I have forty five more years to make and find new friends. Cherish the people who are already in my life. And find ways to make them stronger. Maybe that’s all it means to make the world a better place. Find new relationships, treat the ones you already have like gold. And never get tired. Maybe we should change the dictum “Life is short” to my favorite line in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

Javier Sanchez is the former Mayor of Espanola, an independent businessman, and El Rito Media investor and columnist.

Cal Thomas

The massive cover-up of Joe Biden’s mental and physical decline, which is only now being revealed by certain media types who were part of it, reminds me of a similar event more than a century ago.

President Woodrow Wilson suffered a stroke on Oct. 2, 1919, leaving him barely able to work. First Lady Edith Wilson moved quickly to shield her husband’s condition from the press and public. Historians say she took on so many of his responsibilities that she functioned like a president. Edith Wilson went so far in her scheming that she covered Wilson’s left side with a blanket to hide his paralysis. Even Wilson’s doctor was part of the cover-up.

As described in Rebecca Boggs Roberts’ book “Untold Power: The Fascinating and Complex Legacy of Edith Wilson,” members of Congress were frustrated when they were prevented from seeing the president. A Senate delegation was assembled and a top White House aide was informed they were coming to the White House to see Wilson that very day. Edith and some of Wilson’s staff staged a “dress rehearsal” before the meeting that they hoped would allow the president to seem articulate and engaged. There was even talk of propping him up in a beach chair, but they settled on elevating him in bed. The publicist for the Democratic Party was brought in to help stage the charade.

Fortunately for the conspirators, Wilson was having one of his “good days” when the senators arrived. He engaged with the visitors, even indulging in humor. When one of them said “We have been praying for you, Mr. President,” Wilson replied, “Which way?”

Edith Wilson in essence, if not in fact, became the first female p resident of the United States. She controlled access to her incapacitated husband, made decisions on matters of state and essentially ran the Executive branch for almost two years. Employing euphemisms that might resonate today with Biden, Edith claimed she did not make decisions for her husband, but that she was only a “steward.”

If this sounds familiar in a modern context, it should. With a few changes, it resembles the script used for the cover-up of Joe Biden’s mental and physical decline, the conspiracy by some of his top staff members who helped orchestrate it and the denial by the helpful media that there was anything seriously wrong with the president. They all promoted the fiction that Biden was “sharp as a tack” and “fully engaged.”

Democrats now realize they are caught in a trap of their own making, so their response is to tell reporters they don’t want to talk about the past, but “move on” toward the future. Republicans should not allow that to happen. Democrats wouldn’t if the roles were reversed and indeed Democrats impeached Donald Trump three times during his previous administration over what amounted to nothing.

The House Oversight and Accountability Committee has announced it will hold hearings on the suspected cover-up. Co-conspirators must be called to testify about what they knew, when they knew it and why they lied. This should include former First Lady Jill Biden, who could be called the Edith Wilson of our time.

Under oath they will be required to tell the truth or suffer the penalties that go with perjury. Why the 25th Amendment wasn’t employed to remove Biden from office might be one of the questions asked. The public deserves to hear the truth and not just read books from some of those in the media who were part of the cover-up and who are now trying to wash the stain of deceit from what reputations they have left.

Readers may email Cal Thomas at tcaeditors@tribpub.com. Look for Cal Thomas’ latest book “A Watchman in the Night: What I’ve Seen Over 50 Years Reporting on America” (HumanixBooks).

Mary Sanchez

In 1981, a Missouri governor with a heart for children and an appreciation for research, backed what grew into a national program to guide parents as their children’s first teachers.

Later, after he became a U.S. senator, Christopher “Kit” Bond continued this advocacy.

The Parents as Teachers model was among the first to educate broad swaths of moms and dads about the tremendous developmental leaps that child brains make, from birth to age five.

By visiting parents in their homes, trained parent educators worked in close collaboration with families.

The program continues as a nonprofit, and focuses on meeting parents to offer resources. Parent educators are not there to evaluate or to judge parents on their educating skills, or how they are raising their children.

Bond, a lifelong Republican, died on May 13 at the age of 86.

His death preceded by mere days the 60th anniversary of the nation’s far better-known investment into early childhood, Head Start, a program that also focuses on the early childhood development of children from low-income families, including those from rural areas.

And now, Head Start is threatened.

The Heritage Foundation called for the program to be eliminated in the foundation’s script for governmental cruelty and chaos, Project 2025.

Regional Head Start offices have already been slashed by DOGE, with half of them shuttered and employees laid off.

Head Start funding from the federal government has also slowed. That, in turn, has caused some preschools that host Head Start to close.

The program had been serving about 750,000 low-income and homeless children. Parents as Teachers served about 223,000 children in 2024.

Assurances have been made in recent days that Head Start will be funded under the Trump administration’s 2026 budget. But early budget drafts don’t show an appropriation for it, adding to the unease.

Also, there’s a track record here. During his first presidency, Donald Trump tried to cut Head Start’s budget by 25 percent. Head Start includes aid that is crucial to the security of working families in that it supports childcare.

So pardon child advocates who remain leery of the Trump administration’s promises. After all, Trump is the cultish leader of a GOP that has shifted dramatically in recent years on how it supports families.

The GOP of today is not the GOP of Bond’s years.

First, families have to be the right kind of family for the GOP to believe in and care about. Their support does not extend to gay couples with children, for example.

They are also not supportive of families whose members are experiencing gender dysphoria.

Such family structures have always existed, but they weren’t paraded out there for public ridicule, as targets to be bashed for political fundraising.

Today, some of the most vocal members of the GOP argue for empowering parents who want to oversee the education of all children, not just their own.

The best examples are parents who are given a broad platform to complain about which books are available in public school libraries. Their efforts to limit some books wind up as shelves of prohibited literature, off limits to everyone.

The GOP’s latest song and dance is to push vouchers and public tax dollars for private schools.

It showers blame on low-income households as the party moves aggressively to cut billions of dollars from programs like SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program). It labels low-income parents as lazy, unfit, and basically blames them for all their household struggles.

Bond, in tributes posted after his death, claimed his Parents as Teachers program in Missouri as one of his top accomplishments – this, from a man who has a massive bridge named in his honor in Kansas City arching over the Missouri River, and a record of securing millions in funding for other prominent – some opulent – projects across the state.

Bond valued families, but with words and actions that feel so different from how today’s GOP party leaders behave.

There are deep similarities in the two programs, Parents as Teachers and Head Start.

Both lean into science and growing research on the brain development of babies and toddlers.

Both seek to work alongside families, not to treat parents in a condescending way, but to empower them as their children’s most influential early educators.

And most importantly, both programs are steeped with the attitude that the government can play a positive role in strengthening families.

But the distance between Bond’s early championing of science-backed childhood education measures and his party’s most vocal efforts today are stark and continue to grow more disturbing and harmful.

May Bond rest in peace, with the satisfaction of a job well done.

And may his party revert to Bond’s sense of moderate, measured, and meaningful support for families and children.

Mary Sanchez writes for the Tribune Content Agency.

Sherry Robinson

In August 2011 Gov. Susana Martinez stood before her predecessor’s jet, festooned with a big “SOLD” sign.

“Last year when I was running for governor, I not only promised taxpayers that I would not use this state jet as a personal air taxi, I promised New Mexicans across the state that I would get rid of this symbol of greed and excess in state government,” she said. “And today, I make good on that promise.”

Then she hugged the buyers, handed them the keys and waved as the plane taxied down the runway. Sale price: $2.5 million.

Gov. Bill Richardson’s administration acquired the Cessna Citation Bravo in 2005 for $5.5 million after the state sold his aging turboprop. The new twin-engine business jet, with a top speed upwards of 450 miles per hour, could get Richardson to Hobbs in 45 minutes and to nearly any other airport in the state in 35 minutes.

Richardson got his shiny man-toy after leaning on legislators for $5 million. It was the most expensive state aircraft in the region and the only state-owned jet in the Southwest.

Republican radio ads said the plane was proof of Richardson’s “lifestyle of the rich and famous.” It didn’t help that Richardson had used the jet to fly to Los Alamos, which took 25 minutes compared with a 45-minute drive.

Within two years, the jet’s appeal had dulled as political heat increased. Now an aspiring presidential candidate, Richardson announced in 2007 he would give up the Cessna Citation Bravo in favor of five Eclipse 500 very-light jets, manufactured in Albuquerque.

“The governor feels the time is right to convey a friendlier, folksier, more accessible image,” a spokesman told Aero News Network, “A smaller, more personable aircraft ties into this image quite nicely.” The spokesman referred to the five small jets as “the Richardson Air Force.”

But the economy tipped into the Great Recession, and the Eclipse purchase never came off. The jet became political fuel for Susana Martinez and political baggage for the Democrats. During her campaign she even had billboards declaring, “Sell the jet!”

In early 2011 the newly elected Martinez said: “At a time when New Mexicans are struggling to make ends meet, their governor should not be leading a life of privilege. We will get rid of that ultimate symbol of waste and excess; we will sell the state’s luxury jet.”

I wrote in 2011: “The jet has been more useful to Martinez on the ground than it was to Richardson in the air.” It was a simple issue that fit on a billboard, and it resonated with the public.

Now the Republicans are about to learn the same lesson.

The president wants to accept a gift from the Qatari royal family of a $400 million jumbo jet, dubbed the “flying palace” and “Arab Force One.” Yes, it violates the clause in the Constitution that bars officials from accepting gifts “from any King, Prince, or foreign State” unless Congress approves. Yes, it’s a gift from a nation that supports Hamas and hasn’t always had our best interests at heart. Yes, retrofitting the aircraft to meet security and communications needs could cost taxpayers a bundle, and the government wouldn’t even keep it. And, yes, the optics are really, really bad.

U.S. Rep. Dusty Johnson, R-South Dakota, observed: “I don’t like it. There’s a reason that people can’t even buy me a steak dinner. It’s not necessarily that you can prove I have an ethical problem, it’s that the appearance of it doesn’t look great.”

Former Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley summarized it well: “Accepting gifts from foreign nations is never a good practice. It threatens intelligence and national security, especially when that nation supports a terrorist organization and allows those terrorist regimes to live on its soil. Regardless of how beautiful the plane may be, it opens a door and implies the President and U.S. can be bought. If this were Biden, we would be furious.”

There’s one thing they forgot. Like Richardson’s business jet, this latest man-toy will be a potent symbol that won’t go away. Expect to see it flying in thousands of campaign advertisements during midterm campaigns.

Sherry Robinson is a longtime New Mexico reporter and editor. She has worked in Grants, Gallup, the Albuquerque Journal, New Mexico Business Weekly and Albuquerque Tribune. She is the author of four books. Her columns won first place in 2024 from New Mexico Press Women.