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This month Hal Wingo delves into the world of mind-body connection and alternative health care with Dr. Larry Dossey, New York Times best-selling author, world traveling lecturer, and consultant. Hal joins our staff of monthly columnists after a career as editor of Life and People magazines.

In his March column, Dick Stolley examines why the Santa Fe River is a dry river bed and a proposal by the Santa Fe Watershed Association to bring it back to life. Dick is founding managing editor of People Magazine, author, and award-winning reporter and editor for Life magazine.

There comes a time in the life of every city—usually when it is at a critical cross-roads, when its future is at stake—when it has to decide which other city it doesn’t want to be.

That was true for Portland, Oregon in the early 1970s.

It’s true for Santa Fe now.

Back in the 1970s I was an assistant to the young mayor of Portland who had run for office on a campaign that said, “Ours is a city with much to cherish, much to save, and too much to lose to remain idle.” In fact, Portland was at an inflection point. San Francisco to the south was established as a sophisticated city; Seattle to...

Every city likes to think there’s something special about it.

Boston, for example, likes to tout its combination of blue-collar toughness and Harvard intellectualism. New York will always be the place where, if you can do it there, you can do it anywhere. Chicago has big shoulders and Mid-Western pragmatism: it’s the city that works! Los Angeles, on the other hand, isn’t about working—it’s about glamour, glitz, and gold.

Look around America and you’ll see it’s true: Cities of all sizes, shapes, histories and heritages have something they can point to that let’s them say, We’re different.

In Santa Fe, democracy in action is not always pretty to watch – like sausages being made, as the saying goes. An example is the controversy over traffic calming.

Traffic calming, for the uninitiated, is the weird term for trying to persuade or force motorists to obey the speed limit on city streets while also watching out for other cars, bikes, runners, hikers, children and pets.

It has become a big issue here, as vehicle congestion increases. Leroy Pacheco, city traffic engineer, recently listed 22 streets that have taken action on traffic calming or are considering it. In June, the...

My connection to the Santa Fe River begins with my birth in 1977, just a road’s width away from the bosque. It begins with a sky so blue it hurts the eyes, hills spotted with juniper and cactus, and green splashes of cottonwood along an intermittent stream. It begins in a land of contradictions, a high arid landscape stretched south beneath a sweep of rustling aspen in the mountains above. Through this landscape cuts the lifeblood of Santa Fe – its River – the reason for Santa Fe’s existence itself, and a potent part of my own personal history.

My earliest memories are interwoven with...

Mayor David Coss’s city hall office looks more like the setting for a flamenco dancer. Sitting within its bright pink and yellow walls, the 53-year old Illinois native who grew up in Santa Fe speaks just above a whisper, as if by contrast with his surroundings, while reflecting on the fun and frustrations of his first term.

It isn't often that you'll hear nice things said by some city officials about the design of the Eldorado Hotel.

But compared to a “busy-looking” development that's been proposed for the site across the street, the Eldorado's simple architecture doesn't look so bad, members of a city committee said Thursday.

The committee voted to recommend changes to the design of the condo/retail project in what is now a parking lot at the corner of San Francisco and Sandoval streets just steps away from the Lensic Performing Arts Center.

“This will impact people's feelings about downtown,” said Karen...

What are the chances of having someone who actually marched with Martin Luther King, Jr. at Monday's Roundhouse celebration in Santa Fe, where less than 1 percent of the population is African-American?

Internationally known quilt-maker Mary Lee Bendolph— part of the "Gee's Bend Quilts and Beyond" exhibit at the Museum of International Folk Art— was patiently waiting for a seat in the Capitol rotunda among about 200 attendees.

"I walked with Dr. Martin Luther King in Gee's Bend (Alabama) when he came down," said Bendolph, 72, before the ceremonies for the King birthday holiday.

With all of these near-record icy-cold days and nights we've been experiencing lately, there sure is a lot of talk going around about the weather. It always seems that when it gets too hot we want it to be cooler and when it gets too cool we want it to be warmer.

Then, when it doesn't snow for a while, we want it to snow, and when the fluffy stuff does finally come fluttering down from the heavens, we don't want it to snow any more. The same can be said for sunny days, rainy days and just any slew of days in general. Oh, how we long for fair weather— and even that gets old after awhile.