I was struck by something an interviewee uttered a couple of years ago — I’m pretty sure it was either Tony Furtado or Steve Earle, both musicians — about how touring shapes one’s worldview.

The quote was basically: “Rather than listen to uninformed speculation about what people in other areas of the country were like, I went and found out for myself. And they were pretty great.”

I’ve been exposed to many fascinating insights during the hundreds of interviews I’ve conducted in this job, but that’s my favorite. It’s the thrust behind my feature story about the arts scene in Farmington (“Turning the Corner,” Page 30), as well as similar features I plan about other New Mexico cities’ offerings. A surprising number of Santa Feans have told me they’ve never been to Farmington or Roswell, while a longtime teacher I had breakfast with in Farmington says many of her students had never been to Santa Fe. I can’t fix those distance issues in the nation’s fifth-largest state by land mass, but I can at least close the gap by visiting those places and talking to real people, then telling you what they had to say.

Brian Sandford

Brian Sandford

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