The copy editor

Taos, NM was the great love of Bill Whaley’s life and HorseFly was his love letter to Taos. As arts editor, copy editor and general factotum for his monthly journal of politics and culture, I met a wild array of crazies and creatives, many of whom remain friends to this day. As publisher and editor, Bill cast a wide net, harvesting the latest news about local and national politics, the arts, the environment, life in Taos and locals’ perspectives on it all, which ranged from outraged to educated to hilarious. Bill made clear that HorseFly was not a newspaper, but a collection of essays, which meant we didn’t have to pretend to be unbiased, but we’d damn well better back up our opinions.

He had once worked for a newspaper in Nevada, but told me that news stories there disappeared without a ripple, whereas Taoseños soaked up his writing and responded, whether in the form of passionate orations at local governmental meetings, letters to the editor, art shows, Machiavellian machinations in secret locations, threatened boycotts, alliances or angry confrontations. On any given day HorseFly offices might be the site of a Pueblo activists’ meeting, a political intrigue, or temporary digs for the homeless folks on whom Bill took pity — sometimes to our dismay. Bill dug his hands into the richness of Taos and sculpted it into a beautiful, challenging, engaging, maddening, thought-provoking gift to the community he loved.

HorseFly was part of a lineage descended from Spud Johnson’s Laughing Horse magazine, which started up here in the late 1920s and featured Spud’s column, The Horse Fly. Hopefully HorseFly has just gone underground and will pop up again in some other incarnation. I really miss it. I’m so glad I got to be a part of it. Thank you and rest in peace, Bill. Dory Hulburt