Pasatiempo

17 hours ago | santafenewmexican.com | Alaina Mencinger

BERNALILLO — One man's trash is another man's treasure. AJ DeForest, owner of furniture company Pfeifer Studio, points out an end table, fashioned out of pieces of faceted, bleached wood — almost resembling two stacked jewels. The elm used to make the table is an invasive species, DeForest said. Wood pulled from the landscape would otherwise have headed to the landfill. Now, it's a piece of furniture.

19 hours ago | santafenewmexican.com | Alaina Mencinger

How do you know you're safe at work? "You trust it," said Kathy Jenkins, a longtime New Mexico Highlands University employee and faculty and staff association co-president. That trust was shaken at the school in Las Vegas, N.M., last year after a chemical leak was discovered in a science building, setting off a chain reaction that resulted in a citation from the New Mexico Environment Department.

1 day ago | santafenewmexican.com | Cormac Dodd

An Indigenous woman donning an elk-tooth dress is painted in the ecstatic throes of the traditional Crow Hop dance against a backdrop of a landscape awash in deep purple. The artwork appears on a postage stamp as part of a new series featuring the work of noted painter Mateo Romero, an enrolled member of Cochiti Pueblo, who brought the image to life on canvas from his studio in Pojoaque Pueblo.

1 day ago | santafenewmexican.com | Alaina Mencinger

Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver didn't always support open primaries. "I used to think if you want to be a member of the club, then be a member of the club, and then you get to vote for members," Toulouse Oliver said at a news conference Wednesday. That changed when she became Bernalillo County clerk. She recalled watching staff and poll workers turning away would-be voters. "They made a plan to come vote," Toulouse Oliver said.

1 day ago | santafenewmexican.com | Cormac Dodd

Her father was a paratrooper in the South Vietnamese army, Terry Ngo recalled. Her pregnant mother and other members of her family fled by boat, venturing out into the turbulent sea April 30, 1975, as the bombs fell. "I want to pass down our families' experiences and stories and culture," said Ngo, who was born in the U.S., describing her family's part in the mass exodus after Saigon fell to the Viet Cong.