It’s that time of year: is it spring yet? Or is it summer? Wait, is it going to get cold again? What? There’s snow in the forecast this week? Marpril in Central Indiana is like a box of chocolates, assuming that box of chocolates was insane and had a personal vendetta against you and your garden.

Enter the shacket. While in New England, a shacket is another name for a yellowjacket or hornet, I’m not talking about flying insects with miniature needles on their butts. No, I’m talking about a piece of clothing hybrid of a shirt and a jacket. It’s a shacket. Picture a thick, slightly oversized flannel shirt for which retailers can charge $130 and you’ll get a good idea of what...

New Mexico is a land with many valuable assets – from our rich cultural diversity to our stunning physical beauty, to our mineral wealth. These assets belong to us all and while it’s impossible to put a price on some of them – our culture and natural landscape, to be precise – we can and do put a price on our mineral wealth. And that price needs to be fair so that we are all receiving the benefit of the bounty beneath our feet.

That’s why we support State Land Commissioner Stephanie Garcia Richard’s pause on certain leases on land in the Permian Basin. Commissioner Garcia Richard rightfully paused the leasing until the state increases its royalty rates to market values...

Well, folks, this is it. Today marks my final Grammar Guy column. After seven years, I’ve decided to hang up the typewriter and retire from the lucrative freelance newspaper column side hustle.

To leave you with one last “word nerd” lesson, I’d like to talk about the power of words (for better or for worse). In Dead Poets Society, Robin Williams’ character Mr. Keating tells his students, “No matter what anybody tells you, words and ideas can change the world.” This quote causes me to “sound my barbaric yawp,” as Walt Whitman writes.

Words have the power of life or death. It seems as though — in the age of social media algorithms and always-on partisan news — we...

There is no magic bullet when it comes to retiring successfully.

Hard work, meticulous planning, and years of dedicated wealth-building are the main ingredients needed to facilitate a prosperous, enjoyable retirement.

Here are just a few of the things people do that can create lots of frustration, hardships, and headaches later in life:

1. Waiting too long to start saving: Survey after survey confirms the fact that most people regret waiting too long to start planning retirement. The majority of folks wait until they are in their late 40’s or 50’s to start thinking about retirement planning.

2. Borrowing from a 401(k) plan. Even if you are several years away from retiring from...