Cocoposts

Cassandra Yazzie-Hotchkiss

Sad news from the Durango Herald:

Family and friends this week are mourning the death of Cassandra Yazzie-Hotchkiss, a 30-year-old Fort Lewis College graduate and Native American activist killed Monday in a car accident.

Yazzie-Hotchkiss graduated from FLC in May this year with a degree in political science.  While at the school, she started Small Axe, Small Steps, a group dedicated to working on environmental and social justice issues, particularly within Native American communities.

Chris Jocks, who was a faculty adviser for the group, said Yazzie-Hotchkiss had the unique ability to inspire people.  "She just had a way of really getting people involved. She would come up with really great ideas and then she'd just recruit people," he said. "Suddenly, we were spending all kinds of time on it."

Yazzie-Hotchkiss also had volunteered for Our Sister's Keeper, a tribal coalition that provides assistance to survivors of domestic and sexual violence.  In a statement heralding her accomplishments, the organization recognized Yazzie-Hotchkiss' rise from a hard-scrabble youth that included foster homes and living on the streets in Albuquerque.

Information about her funeral and a memorial fund for her children, who were seriously injured in the crash, is here at the cassandrayazziehotchkiss site.

Campaign to Inspire

 A detour in recent reading veered away from the regimented non-fiction book diet.   American Wife, a novel by Curtis Sittenfeld modeled on the life Laura Bush is reviewed here in the NYTimes by Joyce Carol Oates who does a better job than I can.  The First Lady, Alice Lindgren Blackwell, confesses she didn't vote for her husband either time.

“All I did is marry him. You are the ones who gave him power.”

Back with the reading program is The Last Campaign: Robert F. Kennedy and 82 days That Inspired America, by Thurston Clarke, 2008.   This on the heels of reading the 1967 account of  JFK's assassination, The Death of a President.   The endings are where similarities between the books stop.  The Last Campaign is an intimate look at the mood and spirit and very special qualities of Robert's presidential campaign.   

Chavez Cashes In

The Albuquerque Journal reports our lame duck Mayor got a back injury in 2004 while pretending to be MacGyver - jumping a fence during a bosque fire.   Now he has filed for workers' compensation and is getting a pay-off.  

It is a little flabbergasting both because this is the first we heard of it and because, you know, he's the Mayor.   

[Council President] Winter said. "How do you negotiate a settlement when everyone works for him? I don't get that."

Water and Community at Quail Ranch

The Albuquerque Journal reports yet again on the stalled "progress" with west side development.  These repetitious articles attempt to present this is a bad thing.  You see, Quail Ranch is being "hurt" by water issues.  The "massive Quail Ranch community" still doesn't have water or roads. 

So what?!  This "community" only exists in the heads of promoters and our morning daily.  The "community" is 6,500 acres of range land.  Not having water is not news. 

There are actual communities without safe drinking water.  For that matter, there are many many other locations for new industry and jobs, jobs, jobs that already have water. But this is about real estate boosterism, not community development.  And I'm sick of hearing about it like it's important news.

Mary Jane and The Alvarado

Just finished devouring Mary Colter: Architect of the Southwest, by Arnold Berke with color photographs by Alexander Vertikoff.  It is a beautiful book.  If it can be faulted it may be that this beauty nearly outweighs the substance.   Clearly this is an architecture book, not a biography.  It contains precious little of personal note about Colter herself - in spite of its apparent thoroughness about her work. 

Moon Water

Are we really gonna believe a guy waving a five gallon plastic bucket?   We found lots of these! Who told him to bring the prop? 

Peter Gleick writes in the San Francisco Chronicle: 

Why do we care? Obviously, this water isn't going to help solve any of our water problems here on earth. But if we do, as a species, move out into space, water is the single most important resource we can find. It is too heavy to move water from the surface of the Earth into space, but if we can find it out there, it can be used for drinking water, to make oxygen for breathing, hydrogen for rocket fuel, and to produce food. (...)

I have mixed feelings about the value of the space program, and without a doubt, this is probably the most expensive water we've ever found. But, if we go to the moon, it could turn out to be among the most valuable as well.

If water is really the single most important resource we can find in space in the future,  it should be the single most important resource to protect and manage here and now.  

This smells like space boosterism to me.  I have a nose for it.  It is a serious delusion, especially in our State - second or third only to real estate boosterism and water project boosterism.  (You really have to wonder when and where they coincide.)   Otherwise reasonable people will believe in the most unlikely things.  Like the Spaceport - a massive runway being built in the middle of nowhere on the vague promise that those with more money than brains will pony-up for joy rides into space.  Sound use of public funds in our impoverished State?  Well, it sounds like fun.  Close enough.   

Beware of water bucket waving. 

Cowboy King

Kate Nash wrote about how Governor King rode a horse to the Roundhouse and I remembered this great biography cover photo on him riding in a parade.  He died last night - just rode off to heaven from his Stanley ranch. 

It seemed sometimes that Governor King knew most every one of his constituents by name.  He had a masterful memory and was a marvel at the warm handshake and sincere expression of regard.  We were so sorry to hear about your mama.  He was frequently  surrounded by admirers he would greet in the first person.  Undoubtedly more than one was thinking, Now there is a great New Mexican.

Il Divo

Just watched the film about a notorious Italian politician - Giulio Andreotti.  It may be appropriate to call him Italy's Richard Daley but we've already established that I see Daley's ghost in all public corruption.  And in the grocery store. 

Andreotti was interviewed last spring about the portrayal in the London Times Online here. The film is reviewed there too.  From the first link:

Despite its popularity Andreotti dismisses the film, saying he believes he will in the end be judged “on his record”. So the mysteries remain. I asked him if was true that when he turned 90 he had said he would “take his secrets to the grave”.

“True. In my life I have made many, shall we say, delicate choices. Some people played a double game, claiming to be on one side while being on another. Some things you don't see at the time because you are blinded by the light. You think you understood everything, then you see you didn't. But the past is the past. It is better to look to the future.”

CO County Hearts Fracking

Durango Herald reports that the three member County Commission of Garfield, Colorado has decided they don't want the feds to regulate hydraulic fracturing. 

The concern about regulating the practice is being trumped up by the oil and gas industry.  I'm so shocked.  They've worked county boards into a tizzy with a model resolution endorsing a continuation of the fat frack exemption that Cheney snuck in for Halliburton and the rest of the industry boys in 2005.

Colorado Independent covers this, as does the Aspen Times.  From the Times:

In a wide-ranging discussion before the vote, Martin and Samson [Commissioners voting for anti-reg resolution] framed their decision in terms of upholding states rights against unwanted federal interference, arguing that the state could regulate the industry better. (...)

Samson, who represents voters on the western end of the county, submitted a resolution that essentially mimicked a resolution adopted on Sept. 11, 2009, by Club 20, a Western Slope business organization. The organization lists a number of well-known energy companies as its sponsors, and nine of its 22 member counties have come out against the FRAC Act.

States rights - to do what the industry tells them to do.

Random Motor

Between the frustratingly few showings of my for-sale home, for which I scurry to tidy and exit for the coco and goat movies,  I inhabit my house thoroughly - reading and packing and reading AND READING.  Shh!  

Among the other interruptions are the barking dogs, covered previously, and the sound of traffic.  The engine noise is a background constant punctuated by astonishing roars and rackets.  It ebbs and flows with the rush hours but never goes away entirely.

Mighty mistake to leave the house in the car in this mood.  I drove the speed limit to Santa Fe and nearly died risked getting rear-ended in the right lane.  Remember when it was 55 mph?  Now 75 is not fast enough.   No soft driving.  No calm traffic.  No hypermiling here.  People I wouldn't trust crossing a parking lot are hurdling by me at 95 mph.  I've an imaginary ray gun mounted on the dash to turn them into rickshaws.

The ability to accelerate alone does not constitute a driving skill.  Oh, and if I can hear a motor over a half mile away it is too damn loud.  :wags finger: 

Men Who Stare at Mules

The "goat movie," as people buying tickets referred to it, was great.  Goats, Clooney and it was filmed in New Mexico.  What is not to love?  White Sands National Monument is a Middle Eastern desert again.  Just like in the 80's Sean Connery movie bomb, Wrong is Right.

In downsizing and packing there is a growing pile of must read books - books that can not possibly be packed before they're read.  These join the many borrowed books which must be read before they get returned.  Once this system was established it seemed imperative to apply it retroactively and begin unpacking already packed boxes.  Luckily, I don't have time.  I'm too busy reading and watching goat movies.

Reading versus Blogging

It's hard to do both.  A good book can eclipse everything - bathing, cooking, blogging. The most recent addition to my retirement reading list* is The Death of a President by William Manchester.  I was intrigued about it after reading the October 2009 Vanity Fair story, A Clash of Camelots.  It describes the controversy over the publication of the book and how Jackie (or Mrs. Kennedy, as Manchester refers to her throughout the book) attempted to get it stopped. 

It is now out of print.  So I paid $45 on ebay for a first edition without a dust cover.  It was filthy - the book itself, not the content. It looked like it had been taken on a picnic and used as a cheese plate.  But I still couldn't put it down.  If it wasn't so dirty and hadn't cost so much, I would have taken it everywhere and eaten on it too.  I nearly didn't go anywhere until I finished it. 

Curiously, two sections of the 40 year old book appear to be from a separate printing( P173-266 and 365-394).  They are discolored - or rather, they remain ivory tone while the majority of the book's pages have yellowed.  This might not be suspect in any other book but in light of the fight over this one it may indicate that changes were made to books that had already been printed, if not already bound.  Hard to know what the excluded material contained, although VF suggests it may be as mundane as how much Jackie smoked and how Caroline was told her father had died. 

* The List is growing precipitously.  Soon I won't keep track.  Right now I'm enjoying How to Be Idle by Tom Hodgkinson.  It's keeping me busy. 

Halliburton Fracking Loophole

This New York Times editorial notes Cheney's gift to Halliburton in the 2005 energy bill - free-for-all-fracking - and what it is doing to water supplies.  There's a bill in Congress to study the risks, which are poo-pooed by the industry.  And another important bill to restore EPA's regulation of the matter. 

The industry argues that the chemicals are proprietary secrets and that disclosing them would hurt their competitiveness. It also argues that the process is basically safe and that regulating it would deter domestic production. But if hydraulic fracturing is as safe as the industry says it is, why should it fear regulation?

Because pleading ignorance and asking forgiveness is a lot easier than doing the right thing and having to ask  permission before putting the nation's water at risk. 

Shirley Does Daley

Joe Shirley Jr. is channeling Mayor Richard J. Daley.  Although to be fair, since reading the aforementioned 600 page biography my head feels thick, my face feels jowly and everyone sounds like Daley.  I think I saw him in Smith's yesterday.

The New Mexico Independent and the Arizona Republic told us recently about how the Navajo President was suspended by the Tribal Council and is being investigated for shenanigans involving  tribal contracts.  (Can you say kickbacks?) 

Now he's complaining about outsiders coming in and stirring up trouble about his pet Desert Rock.   So Daleyesque! 

From the Arizona Republic:

"They came onto our land," Shirley said. "They didn't tell me, 'Here, Mr. President. Here are other green jobs.' They just shut us down, put more people into impoverishment. You want me to accept that? 

Last month, Shirley criticized the Sierra Club, Grand Canyon Trust and other green organizations for interfering with Navajo sovereignty and caring more about insects or fish than the lives of Native Americans. The rebuke was especially stunning from the leader of a tribe that has for years aligned itself with green groups in political causes.

And I hear a tinge of the old boss in Shirley's global warming denial. 

"There's no signs that have told me it's a problem," he said. "There's a lot of people running around out there saying, 'The sky is going to fall down. It's going to be the end of the world.' I don't believe that. I don't know what global warming is about. . . . Maybe I'm blind, I don't know. Maybe I don't have the intelligence. But where are the signs?"

Chamber's Discount Drug Card

If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is - like the news in the Journal of the discount prescription drug card generously offered by the Chamber of Commerce.  What's in it for them?  A dollar a card for marketing and distribution.  What's in it for the company?  Data Mining.  Here's how it works.   And you thought a prescription was private.