Merilee Dannemann is a contributing columnist with the New Mexico News Services syndicate, writing for community newspapers throughout New Mexico. As a champion of small business and local focus, she is proud to be a print journalist once again, writing for locally owned newspapers.
Merilee was a reporter and columnist with the Taos News more than 30 years ago. With other miscellaneous adventures between, she spent most of the intervening decades working for the State of New Mexico Workers’ Compensation Administration as a public policy specialist, speaker and educator.
Merilee also writes in miscellaneous other places and for various causes and interests, including small business, workers’ compensation and Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP). She trains her attention on issues that are not in the limelight and that most other writers are not writing about, such as the effects of regulations on small business because — well, somebody needs to be paying attention!
So here it is: Triple Spaced Again. Please get yourself a fresh cup of coffee, come hang out with Merilee, and do send your comments.
The workers’ comp section is where you’ll find articles about the New Mexico workers’ comp system. Workers’ comp affects almost everybody, and it is one of the most complicated areas of our legal system, but it is usually outside the limelight of public attention. It’s a hidden cost of doing business, affects business opportunity and job growth, and dictates what happens when people get injured at work, so it is worth watching.
The NLP section will contain items of interest that might invite the curious to learn more about this fascinating approach to human communication and behavior.
You can still purchase a copy of Merilee’s very old book, Taos by the Tail, selections from the original Triple Spaced, direct from the publisher (Merilee) from the few remaining original never-opened boxes, pristine as they were 27 years ago, with original Taos News cartoons by the inimitable Chuck Asay. Here on the site, read a column from the counterculture days of the 1970s, and see one of Chuck’s great cartoons.
Hey Merilee! Congratulations and well done! I look forward to many interesting articles and conversations.
good luck mer
Good work on the blog! Great to visit with you in Angel Fire!
Merilee is back in town!!!
I am happy to see that you are back in the saddle. It was wonderful reading in the Taos News and I look forward to reading more from your point of view.
A wonderful surprise from my globetrotting friend!
Won’t this private health insurance become unnecessary if the Obama care passes and continues? Maybe even single payer will happen. Maybe by next year only persons who need private supplemental health insurance will be admitted high risk behaviors, i.e.
smokers and skydivers, bungie jumpers and extreme glacier skiers, obesity, etc.
E. Kelly
Merilee,
Thank you for your balanced approach in “Rethinking humane treatment of horses”. I’ve written our governor and others who have taken the opposite, extreme anti-slaughterhouse opinion and asked them to be more open-minded and allow the slaughterhouse, so horse owners and the BLM will have more options for dealing with unwanted and overpopulated horses. You many have already read Ted Williams article in Audubon on the costs and problems associated with feral horses in America. If not, please do. Unfortunately, the discussion has been waylaid by the “horse mafia” and hysteria prevails over reason. Living in Bloomfield, close to the “wild” horse santuary in the Carson NF, I have no doubt some horse owners have released their unwanted horses there to exacerbate the burden and co-mingle with the Jicarilla horses that have wandered over from the rez.
Jane Goodall has stated there are no wild horses in America. Horses are beautiful animals when well cared for and where they belong, which is not loose on public ground! I wish more of our political rule makers were more open to a reasoned horse discussion as you are. And I hope your article stimulates this by opening their minds and eyes to America’s horse conundrum.
Thank you.
Howard Bradley
member Audubon, Nature Conservancy, Nat’l Wildlife Fed, Albq Wildlife Fed, NM Wildlife Fed, DU, Delta Waterfowl, NWTF, PF and others.