Cocoposts

Turtleback Mountain Diary Vol.1 Dam Walking

I dreamed Governor Susana Martinez was on a broomstick flying above all the little people on Elephant Butte Dam. 

The Albuquerque Journal was at the Elephant Butte Dam Walk and so was I. Their thoroughly unsnarky and factual account begs amendment.

The weather was wonderful which is a big reason there are a lot of people in this part of Sierra County, if you can call 7,500 a lot.  Turn out for the event was tremendous. Possibly all 7,500 people were there. Paranoia Security meant restricting access to the dam after 9/11 and restricting access to anything makes it more desirable. 

Volunteers did a great job but there were shuttle buses involved.  The first shuttle for non-VIPs was from parking to the restaurant and recreation area for ceremonies, including a stirring rendition of all thirty three verses of Oh Fair New Mexico. The second was a shuttle to the dam itself.  Again, for all but VIPs and invalids, there was a long disorganized wait.  A meaner crowd might have mutinied. But this is New Mexico and mostly everyone was relaxed. Many, including those for whom the buses invoked painful childhood memories of bullying, walked to the dam.

It was one shuttle too many for at least a couple of impatient yankees disappointed they didn't get to see the Governor  - not that she was expected, but whatever.  They didn't want to walk or wait and didn't make it to the dam.  Instead they drove to the overlook to burn one and watch people, like tiny ants, moving back and forth across the top of the giant structure.

 

But Mostly, Chickenwire

Trees don't weep for the death of newspapers. Or beavers, for that matter.  We should read our print on hemp. But hey, we may also skip ahead to not reading at all, if you want to get all sad about it. 

It would completely revitalize our economy to retool American agriculture for hemp production.*  Maybe it scares Big Agriculture, but probably not. Maybe my tinfoil hat's talking, but if they can genetically modify and patent the weed seeds and corner markets for hemp products they're all for it.  I'd be a little surprised and disappointed if they're not doing that already. But first, you gotta #legalize.

And then, beavers. Easy to assume they are avenging slaughter of their ancestors for early 19th century top hat fashion. But they're just being beaver - murdering huge beautiful valley cottonwoods like they've always done.  On far edges of bosque places they girdle entire huge trunks in one night, inner bark for winter dinner. Cottonwoods bent by the last big valley floods a hundred years ago are doomed. Things that live in dead trees enjoy housing boom.

Painstakingly encircling the trunks with chickenwire stops their mighty teeth.  That, and maybe pepperspray.**  (On the tree bark, not the beaver himself.) 

Mr. Coyote has no doubt made a play for Mr. Bigtooth.  While contemplating a slingshot or airgun attack on this bold coyote (as an alternative to chasing him with a broom, which apparently just amuses him) I am paradoxically cheering him on in what I imagine to be his daily pursuit of that beaver, especially now that he has wiped out the neighborhood guinea fowl. I'm working on zen acceptance of his sandhill crane hunt.

 That's undoubtedly the answer to the beaver question as well.  Afterall, there are still many trees.  Especially from the viewpoint of the one holding a roll of chickenwire.

 

*It would revitalize our local economies and truly revolutionalize our culture to not just retool but also rescale agricultural production for hemp. But, alas, that's perhaps too bold a dream.

**There is such a thing a Comprehensive Beaver Management Planning but I have no comment on that.

Giving Sprawl a Pass

The El Paso Times story won't surpise some people but others will be moved just by the title (East El Paso Sprawl:  Boom Strains Services, City Coffers) as it represents admission of a problem that the building industry still flatly denies - the high cost of suburban growth to tax-funded systems like water, schools and police.

First, we don't have sprawl, Doug Schwartz, Southwest Land Development CEO

El Paso developer and chamber representatives repeat familiar homebuilder memes about growth paying for itself in sales tax and choice bits of flimsy about how the market is always right and the big picture is all net gain. But the story contains pesky specifics.

John Balliew, El Paso Water Utilities vice president of operations and technical services said "The company recovers less than a third of the full cost from developers" (...)  Now if the development is outside the service area, the recovery cost can be as low as 10 percent, said Felipe Lopez, a utility engineer who administers development agreements for new subdivisions. The rest is "passed along to all the other customers," Balliew said.

Thinking of Writing

You can get very good at finding excellent places to write but never actually sit down and do it. Trust me. The writing perches I've found are nearly perfect. Multiple comfortable quiet spots for work and concentration. Too perfect.  When time comes to write, time never comes. The more time available to write, the more time  goes toward unprecedented acts of neighborhood involvement, previously unheard of demonstrations of familial outreach, long postponed property stewardship tasks involving the hiring of multiple handymen, and reading.  But mostly reading, reading, reading.

Writing is like breaking a lock with a hammer - banging away at some draft believing there may be a good story within the words but getting annoyed with the trouble and effort.  So many other things need doing.  And there sits a stack of books by writers who've already opened the locks for you.   

The latest: Jonathan Franzen's novel, Freedom. It was most enjoyable and not as time consuming as it might have been if it were any less wonderful.  

Largest Landowners

The names apparently include a New Mexican. Here's the Land Report 100 - Largest Landlowners list.* This is not by weight.

A person with same name as one of them, Number 72, is presently requesting public funds through a LEDA grant from the Bernalillo County Commission to build another set of big boxes in an alfalfa field he owns at Coors and Rio Bravo Boulevards.

The zoning for the site was approved years ago when Teresa Cordova, stalwart protectress of valley values, was in office. As I recall, one of the arguments at the time was how the County needed its own retail development.  That huge Walmart right next door was in the evil City. (Say it with a hissss.)  So Wal-Mart didn't count except as a "changed community condition" that bolstered the argument for the conversion of more prime farmland into yet another speculative real estate venture. Sad but true.

 

 

* In spite of my much coveted position as primary steward of Whitelodge and Weed Ranch, I'm not on the list.

 

Can't Wait for War Horse

Not shoving another overdished Arabian into the limelight is a good start.  I can't wait.  Really.  I may have to get a big horse.

From Cinema Blend.com.

The Fantastic Fraudulent Floating Land Grant

The Peralta Grant scheme to defraud the government and the people of Arizona was cooked up by a clever opportunist named “Doc” Willing. Willing died long before realizing his dream and shortly after involving a St Louis real estate developer named James Addison Reavis. Reavis saw it through to the bitter end when he was found guilty by the U.S. Court of Private Land Claims in Santa Fe and sentenced to a fine and two years in prison. He died penniless in Denver in 1914.

The huge claim stretched from Silver City to Phoenix and encompassed the territory’s richest
 land. At the time Reavis got involved, the substance of the audacious movida consisted of old 
papers in a burlap sack and some carvings on a rock near Casa Grande. Like some other slick promoters and profiteers of the era, Reavis was from Missouri.  He had
 enlisted in the Confederacy but surrendered to Union forces after forging furlough papers.
Thomas Catron later recalled that Reavis had served in his artillery regiment but left to get
 married and never returned.

While the outcome of the scheme was ultimately unsuccessful, Reavis profited for years from
quitclaim deeds sold to settlers and miners.

To be continued...

Source: The Peralta Grant: James Addison Reavis and the Barony of Arizona. Donald M. Powell, University of Oklahoma Press, 1960.

Second Home Summer People

In our little corner of Colorado, the summer home phenomenon is not all about the wealthy. This subdivision is over fifty years old and those cabins that haven't been sold and converted to year-round use for town commuters, are in varying stages of decay. They are very rarely inhabited by the very aged original summer residents.  Usually it's some combination of their children and grandchildren or new owners who listen wide-eyed to stories about the antics of our fathers and grandfathers. Arizonans, New Mexicans, Texans, Canadians, Oklahomans, and the rare native Coloradan all mix it up* for a couple weekends in the summer.

These acquaintances and "howdy neighbor" relations involve those of varying political persuasions - more tolerable because exposure is limited to a week or weekend. That's how I'm now friends with a bible-thumping Baptist missionary Texan.  And she now associates with a uppity lefty Liberal.  We, after all, have more in common than we do with the bears and enjoy the opportunity to study each other like science specimens.

She asked about what I retired from - government work.  What did you do? Is that about entitlements for poor people?  I said it involved things like figuring out where to put the water lines and who gets garbage contracts.  Then I started getting a little bothered and said it involved asking rich white people where they want their parks.  I was talking a little too loud and began morphing into my Mother, who sat on this same patio arguing politics with summer people. Only the quality of the beer has improved.

 To be continued...

* I'd say "hook-up" but that would imply interstate orgies, or something.

Coyote and Summer People

He is a Trickster, everyone knows.  Or should know.  Like they should know not to put their bear-baiting trash out before garbage morning.

That coyote was close, loud and happy - alerting all the other spine-chilling forest creatures to the presence of a fat juicy cat*. He was close and loud enough to make me jump and run - down the hill clutching damp laundry, overcome with terror, trailing Big dog, who thought it no Big deal. I was out to save the cat by beating off the coyotes with a wet towel.  He was thinking, will dinner be delayed?

I was both heartbroken and relieved when I couldn't find her bloodied head anywhere and reasoned, after a deep breath or two, that a coyote wouldn't be singing with a mouthful of cat.  Nevertheless, I had fully resigned myself to her death when, a long six or seven minutes later, she arrived demanding dinner.

 

 

* Yes, yes, I know I should keep Fat and Juicy indoors.  But have you ever tried to keep a once-feral cat inside?  On a nice day with chipmunks?

Swear Never to Blog About Palin

But  The Des Moines Register shows the power of repeated rhetoric and how anger gets deflected away from our corporate masters sponsors.  "Government" is ill-defined and varied - difficult to grasp at once.  It's hard to understand and easy to over-simplify. The term is used in broad swipes at federal, state and local agencies, employees and programs. It's all about government.

"Palin slipped easily into the role of the voice of a movement that feels chained down by taxes, the federal deficit and an out-of-control government."

Sorry, but where does corporate greed fit in?  I feel chained down by bank fees and utility rates, the intelligence deficit and an out-of-control Wall Street.

Perfectly Notorious

To those who doubt the extent of corruption in New Mexico today, a look at the history of land grants may be enlightening. The troubling outcome of claims was well known when President Grover Cleveland appointed George W. Julian as Surveyor-General of New Mexico in 1885.  Julian was seventy years old at the time.

In a series of articles published in 1887, Julian broadly castigated the method and motives of previous Surveyors General charged with investigating grant claims and on Congressional action taken to confirm them.  Grant owners, beneficiaries of these judgments and Acts, such as Maxwell Land Grant beneficiary Thomas B. Catron, replied that Julian was motivated by "politics."  Julian replied, in part:

The influence of these claimants over the fortunes of New Mexico is perfectly notorious. (...) To a fearful extent they have dominated governors, judges, district attorneys, legislatures, surveyors-general and their deputies, marshals, treasurers, county commissioners, and the controlling business interests of the people.  They have confounded political distinctions and have subordinated everything to the greed for land. (...) They are simply traffickers in land and recognized captains of this controlling New Mexico industry."

 Hard to believe that was written so long ago.

(Source: Maxwell Land Grant: A New Mexico Item. William A Keleher, 1942. The Rydal Press.)

Busy, Busy, Busy

The Modern Santa Fe Ring

Oh yeah, I nearly forgot.  I have a blog!
I'm on "book leave" and I just love the way that sounds. 

I'm writing about our long-running, never-ending, always corrupt Santa Fe Ring.  Fiction, of course.

Stifling Drivers

Provocatively entitled piece in the New York Times addresses how Europe "Stifles Drivers."  My new job*  prevents depthful debate.  But know that questioning the primacy of the automobile does not mean an actual socialist European will put a pillow over your face while you're trying to drive. 

Some commenters apparently feel so threatened.  And then there is this good ol' planner hatred and distrust. 

"... public transit here will always be revoltingly filthy and agonizingly slow, more so after "planners" have their way with it. NYC is not Geneva and will never have its level ethics, civility or order.   Seems to me that "planner" types here secretly delight in making people miserable, period.

I printed and burned this comment in a delightful little secret ceremony that should give him miserable heartburn!

Thankfully, cooler heads prevail. 

It's quite telling that these articles appear, then disappear, then reappear a few years later as some sort of revelation. The oil, auto and road construction industry barons own our government, and their doublespeak defines 'freedom' as the right to drive. Even if we accept the logic of mass transit vs the private car, we are so heavily invested in this illusion and presently is such economic shambles , thanks to those same pigs, that changing the system is presented as close to impossible....

Back to slacking.

* Chief Executive Slacker Extraordinaire, Whitelodge, Inc.

Big and Domina

Apropos of nothing but a wonderful midsummer evening.  Blogging to resume in the future.