By Richard S. Towne, KUNM General Manager

May is graduation time at UNM for many students, ours included. Six of our best paid student interns graduate this month and we are wishing them the very best of success as they move into the new world of work beyond KUNM.

In our News Department, we have three graduates to salute. Victor Onimole, Sarah Trujillo and Melorie Begay are graduating. Melorie will be staying on our staff for at least part of the summer. Felicidades! All three are ready to go to work as professionals in public or commercial news outlets. Each has found their journalistic voice in the time since they came to work for our News Department.

In our Development Department, we have two student graphic artists graduating and moving forward. Genevieve Valerio has been the steady artist’s hand behind this monthly e-mailed program guide. We have heard many compliments about how the look and feel of Zounds! has improved over the past couple of years. Genevieve has been a critically important member of the graphics team at KUNM.
Keith Johnston is also graduating in May. Keith made huge contributions to the look and “feel” of our new series of wearable buttons showcasing your favorite programs on KUNM. If you contributed to our on-air campaign in March and selected some buttons as thank you gifts, you will soon be wearing a bit of Keith’s great work.

Ben Montoya is also graduating in May. We hired Ben about a year and a half ago to work in our Production Department. There, he makes the short announcements you hear during our programming. Ben has a great voice (or Pipes in radio vernacular). We are moving quickly now to hire Ben as an on-call professional in our Production Department to keep his good work coming to you everyday.

KUNM is fortunate to be on the UNM campus with such easy access to the student talent pool. We love that students want to serve their communities and it brings us joy to mentor young people and to appreciate their growth in becoming journalists, artists and producers. Fantastic job to our staff for training and mentoring these students as they complete their educational degrees.

By Mary Oishi, Development Director

The card stores can’t stock all the Mother’s Day messages for every situation.

When my two mothers were alive, I never knew which ones to buy. One was for my biological mother, but I lived with her only one year of my life and it seemed like receiving my card may have been a difficult experience for her rather than a happy one. The other was for the woman I called “Mom,” but most of the pre-printed messages were not exactly what I wanted to convey to her either.

I want to celebrate my own motherhood, but I feel ambivalent about posting pictures of my daughter and I in our Mother’s Day tradition of reading poetry together and having a wonderful lunch afterward. Yes, being her mother is one of the greatest joys of my life. But each Mother's Day I also think of my friends who lost children, or who have no children and lost mothers. They neither get nor give cards, flowers, and lovely lunches. They deserve cards and honoring rituals as well. Some of them nurture children for their family members, in classrooms and domestic violence shelters--any number of ways. How about an Awesome Person Day? (Or maybe we should go back to Julia Ward Howe’s original 1870 Mother’s Peace Day: established not to celebrate specific mothers, but to celebrate the hoped-for eradication of war).

Human life is a tapestry of so many different stories and situations. The cards can’t possibly fit all of them. This month KUNM tells different mothers’ stories at 11 am on Mother’s Day. But every day of the year you hear a wide variety of stories, told on our news and public affairs programs and through the great variety of music we bring you 7 days a week, from “Gracias a la vida…” to “Motherless children have a hard time…” 

I love that about KUNM. Unlike the card shelves with far too limited options, we have something for just about everyone. Your support helps to keep it that way!

By Rashad Mahmood

In late April KUNM was awarded a prestigious Edward R. Murrow Award for our series Enduring Addiction. Public health reporter Ed Williams spent months visiting Española and developing relationships to report this series. Enduring addiction won best news documentary for small market radio in our region, which includes New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, Utah and Wyoming.  Ed Williams left KUNM in January and is now at Searchlight New Mexico. 

 

In May, Marisa hosted an episode of Let's Talk New Mexico that focused on the Farm Bill being debated in Congress, and how that interacts with our state's ongoing lawsuit around inability to deliver timely SNAP benefits.  After a class action lawsuit, a legal agreement was drawn up in court: the state would fix problems in how it processed applications, and then it would be over. But 30 years later, the Human Services Department and the Income Support Division still struggle to deliver, and the case is ongoing. We received statements from all of New Mexico's congressional delegation prior to the show, addressing where they stand on the Farm Bill. 

 

May Ortega reported on the high rates of infant and maternal mortality for African Americans in New Mexico and across the country.  She talked with experts and black mothers about the intersection of race, racism, and maternal health. 

 

In early April, the state buried a report on looking at gun violence as a public health issue. May reported that Behavioral Health Services Division Director Wayne Lindstrom’s recommendations to treat gun violence as a public health issue and tighten gun laws were not presented to lawmakers in March. His research was slated to be part of a series of presentations from around the state in response to the December shooting at Aztec High School where two students were killed.
 

Next month look for more stellar reporting from the Public Health New Mexico team. KUNM's Public Health New Mexico is funded by the W.K. Kellogg foundation, the McCune Charitable Foundation, the Con Alma Health Foundation and KUNM contibuting listeners.