It must be the holiday season – I’m about to spend my third weekend making biscochitos and tamales! All of us will be caught up in the flurry of holiday activity, it’s hard to avoid it. Why, even at the Laboratory we’re in the midst of our Holiday Drive, gathering donations of food and gifts for families in Northern NM. And, even though Lab staff have been wrestling with issues like the pending management contract announcement, we managed to surpass last year’s United Way contributions! It’s been a pleasure to see that the staff are definitely in the spirit of giving back to the communities in which we live and work. And, I’m sure that many of them are baking and cooking up a storm too!

As always, if you have any questions or issues that you’d like us to check into, please let us know. Best wishes for a safe and fun holiday season!

New Mexico now offers more than 30 incentives for businesses—including incentives for job training, rural jobs, high-wages, and manufacturing investment. Finding the incentive program applicable to a particular business can be daunting and time-consuming.

Val Alonzo, SFEDI’s Workforce Development Director, and Robert Griego, Santa Fe County Planner, developed the new local program to help with the process. During a personal, on-site visit, they gather data on the business’s activities, size, projected growth, and other factors. They then correlate the data with State business incentive criteria that determine if the business qualifies for the credits or payments—which can be substantial. The data is also used, confidentially, to gather statistics on Santa Fe County businesses to help in job and workforce development.

Contact Val Alonzo at 984-2842 for more information.

In presenting the history of the Camino, the Heritage Center’s exhibit notes the importance of Ohkay Owingeh—the Pueblo of San Juan—highlighting its place in history as the northern terminus of the Camino and the first capital of New Mexico. The exhibit also depicts the trail's use for millions of years as a seasonal migration route for birds and mammals and for thousands of years as a major trade route for America’s indigenous populations.

The award-winning Center was designed to evoke the image of a sailing ship rising out of the middle of a wilderness. A spectacular bridge allows visitors to go beyond the history exhibit and feel what it was like to be a traveler in the forbidding Jornada del Muerto, which stretches from north to south as far as the eye can see.

You’ll find the El Camino Center at exit 115 on I-25. It’s open Wednesday–Sunday, 9 am–4:30 pm. Admission will be free through June of 2006.

MESA is designed to reduce the cost of developing new drugs. Finding a new drug can be expensive because of high failure rates from adverse protein-drug interactions. MESA opens the door to measuring these interactions quicker and more efficiently. This could save hundreds of millions of dollars in drug-development costs as drug companies go down fewer blind alleys.

This summer the MESA process won a prestigious R&D 100 Magazine Award because of its promise of speed in the disease-fighting process. According to MESA inventor and Caldera founder, Ben Warner, “We can do in eight minutes what others do in a day.”

Winners of the $250 awards were Jason Goodhue, Taos Valley Honey; Aspen Noelle, Aspen Noelle Couture, Espanola; Rosemary Lonewolf, Artist, Pueblo of Santa Clara; Sue West, Sue West Productions, San Miguel County; and Michelle Martinez and Lisa Maestas, Little Bug Child Development Center, Taos.

Española City Councilor Joseph Maestas was the master of ceremonies. “The EBS network is what rural economic development is all about,” he said, “coming together to help small businesses gain access to the services they need to grow and be successful.”

Roybal said Small Business Program staff are working on several fronts to continue making progress. He listed the recently launched forecasted opportunities website that alerts businesses to upcoming purchasing opportunities, a small business mentoring program, and strong implementation of small business subcontracting plans as important initiatives.

"The results show that our efforts are working, but we still have more work to do," Roybal said, citing the need to increase procurement by businesses that qualify under the categories of woman-owned and service disabled veteran-owned.

Lighting of Ledoux Street is an annual Taos event ushering in the holiday season. Named after two French fur trappers, Ledoux Street is situated on a slight ridge where several adobe structures were built at the beginning of the 19th century most probably by the brothers Ledoux. At that time there was a bristling fur trade in Taos. With the influx of artists in the years after 1898, Ledoux Street became the community’s first art district.