Cocoposts

Coco Ranchito Foundation

A future non-profit dedicated to the care of decrepit horses and planner(s).  Meanwhile, some mortifying ironicificationating on my part about contributing another 850 square feet of sprawl. 

Too late.  Bills are paid.  Concrete is curing.  Party is scheduled.*  The houseboat gets delivered in about a week.  

*April 30th

Mayor's Sprawl Policy

The Mayor has announced his plan for economic development to the only people that matter to local government around here - real estate developers.  From the Albuquerque Journal:

"As mayor, I cannot create jobs — only you in this room can create jobs," Berry told a capacity crowd of more than 600 businesspeople at the monthly luncheon of the New Mexico chapter of NAIOP, the Commercial Real Estate Development Association. "So I always start from the standpoint of what I can do as an elected official and policymaker to make it easier for you."

The plan.  Easy.  Assume all economic development means new construction.  No new or expanded business worth their salt would think to locate in an existing vacant building.  Every business must be located in a brand new custom shiny business park at the far edge of a previously undeveloped tract of raw land. 

Next, encourage construction of more shiny new business parks by reducing regulations and costs and maximizing developer profits.  Give developers regulatory relief. 

The relief act is designed to give the business community a voice in the city's policymaking process, he said. The act would open the way for establishing an advisory panel of appointed members to review proposed city ordinances and other legislation from the perspective of their impact on private sector businesses.

Be sure that the regulated are happy and content with regulations.  Give them an even greater voice to finally drown out those that might disagree and confuse the simple issue of developer profits.

Lastly, help them pay for new public infrastructure with taxpayer dollars.

In the area of business recruitment, Berry's main innovation would be to set up a capital fund for use in providing infrastructure such as roads needed to attract a new company to Albuquerque. Money for the capital fund would come from shifting finances within the mayor's part of the city budget and would not involve tax increases, Berry said. The fund will likely take several years to build up, he said.

Tijeras Canyon Internment Camp

The Albuquerque Journal North has a story about an English professor from Ohio, Gail Y. Okawa, researching her grandfather's internment in Santa Fe during the War. 

Of the 120,000 interred Japanese prisoners nationwide, 4,555 men were held at the Santa Fe camp until April 1946.  Okawa said local New Mexicans could be hostile, but because so many community leaders were placed in the camps, culture thrived there. Prisoners painted, carved and created brilliant works of calligraphy. They put on plays with elaborate costumes made from whatever materials could be scrounged. There were sumo tournaments.

Okawa spoke about the six-ton boulder at present-day Frank S. Ortiz Park, near the Casa Solana subdivision, where the camp once stood. She said she followed news articles in 2004, when New Mexican veterans of the gruesome Bataan Death March protested memorializing the camp.  "I have to credit New Mexicans," she said, "because you acknowledged this as part of your history."

Nearly everyone has forgotten.  

Though it is not included in a map of Japanese camp locations, my father told me there was an internment camp of some kind during the war in lower Tijeras Canyon - west of Kirtland AFB.  Later the place was a Forest Service facility and City open space offices are out there now.  The land in the vicinity has been completely sacrificed to off-road vehicles.   Montessa Park madness. 

Swingin' Circus Tricklock

Regulars at the Reptilian Lounge don't need to be told - the Tricklock Theatre Company features great talent.

As a certifiable sucker for the circus, I couldn't miss their fundraiser last night at the Albuquerque High School Lofts - The Swingin' Circus Sideshow Lounge. 

The company performed favorites, like Catgut Strung Violin, and new bits from recent and upcoming shows - like Quality: The Shoe Play opening April 8th. 

Food, drink and sideshow stuff before the performance and during intermission included fortune telling, snake charming and arm wrestling with a strong man. 

OK, I'm making up the part about snakes.  But there was a monkey.  And belly dancers, clowns, swingin' trapeze artists and Miss Albuquerque, who sang It Had To Be You.  She was not on the trapeze - though that would have been interesting.

:Sociable!:

Economic Development Stinks

Taxpayer dollars for real estate profiteering under the guise of economic development - it just never gets old!  The Santa Fe New Mexican story about their County Commissioners and Santa Fe Studios smells like a week-old dead giraffe cow in the plaza at high noon.  It smells like sprawl subsidy for land development to benefit investors regardless of whether jobs actually materialize.

Apparently the stench is easy to ignore.  Hell, we would barely know there was a cow if other developers weren't jealous and hadn't dragged him out in a lawsuit.

According to the suit, neither Santa Fe Film and Media Studios, Inc. nor its La Luz Holdings company meet the criteria for receiving assistance under the Local Economic Development Act because the project is essentially a private real-estate venture.

You mean to say the holy scepter of real estate speculation isn't the same thing as economic development?  But that's a cornerstone of economic development "policy" - building public-funded water lines and roads to new industrial subdivisions - while others sit vacant.  Just ask Bernalillo County.

Officials involved aren't talking. 

Santa Fe Studios president Jason Hool — whose father and partner in the venture, Lance Hool, is a childhood friend of Gov. Bill Richardson — did not return calls from The New Mexican seeking comment. The Hools' attorney, Jim Rubin, said via an employee in his office that he also had no comment. 

State Democratic Chairman Javier Gonzales, who is a partner in the project and has said in past interviews that no political maneuvering was employed in support of the studios project, could not be reached for comment.

County attorney Stephen Ross and County Manager Roman Abeyta also did not respond to multiple messages seeking reaction to the lawsuit.

Kicking a dead cow for comment just makes it stink more.

The Slow Drive

If you can't say anything nice - don't say anything at all.  This is oh so not my motto.

Everyone has heard about Republican Bernalillo County Commissioner Michael Weiner (a name he shares with Michael Savage)  forwarding an offensive joke from his Commission office.  Dumb.  Ass.   I can say that because some of my best friends are Commissioners. 

Heavy news about the bike rider getting hit and killed on the Paseo del Norte bike trail by a young woman driver who managed to lose control of her car and careen across three lanes of traffic, through a fence, over a berm and onto the bike trail - killing a man in front of his family.  She wasn't cited.  She wasn't drunk.  

I can't find the link because the news moves as fast as the cars and is now is full of other crashes and fatalities in which speed no doubt played a part. 

It's enough to make you want to ride a bike.  Or maybe not.  

Newt is a Moron

Reasoned, measured reaction to passage of the Health Care bill in the New York Times editorial. 

Then in the Washington Post via Mother Jones bit aptly titled Newt Gingrich is a Moron.

But former Republican House speaker Newt Gingrich said Obama and the Democrats will regret their decision to push for comprehensive reform. Calling the bill "the most radical social experiment . . . in modern times," Gingrich said: "They will have destroyed their party much as Lyndon Johnson shattered the Democratic Party for 40 years" with the enactment of civil rights legislation in the 1960s.

A couple of Krugman commenters put it perfectly - dog whistle racism.

Pulling the bloody headless rabbit out of his hat, Newt Gingrich exposes a truth, that at the heart of GOP politics for the past 42 years lies only bigotry.

UPDATE: Read the Washington Post's account of the despicable displays. 

Stewart Udall

Stewart Udall died in Santa Fe on the first day of spring.  He was 90.  Julia Goldberg has a personal remembrance in The Santa Fe Reporter along with a sweet quote from Voice of the American West, “A Troubled Optimist.”

I have the old-fashioned view that it’s important to have ties with the land. I feed my wife’s birds every morning. I’m losing a lot of my piñon trees, but I’m trying to water and save what I can. I think there’s hope. Maybe this big burst of growth will subside and people in the West will again see how rich they are in terms of the environment that surrounds them and how important it is to preserve it.

The Mabinogion

Readying myself for a summer week in Wales, I found this guy on You Tube giving Welsh lessons.  I'm very appreciative though I still can't get the hang of "ch" or "ll."  Those are simply not sounds humans can normally make in the desert.  Maybe its just my cottonmouth, but all those noises that rely on vibrating wet passages seem like a waste of spit.  You need a humidifier to pronounce Welsh properly in this climate.  I'm trying and the cat* stares at me pityingly - like I have a hairball.

In addition to this, and a rigorous routine of exploring the Welsh countryside in google maps, I'm learning about the Mabinogion - or how to pronounce it at least.  It is a collection of Welsh mythology.  And a video game, as it turns out.  The Evangeline Walton version of these stories is very readable and tells of Rhiannon (picture Stevie Nicks) getting  chased on horseback by a prince (Lindsey Buckingham, I'm figuring) around a hill outside Narberth, Pembrokeshire.  

I've spent the morning bed-surfing the location.  I'm seeking the fabulous and varied monsters of the Welsh underworld as a nice distraction from reality.  And looking for Bed and Breakfasts. 

* She-Who-Sheds also claims to know the Brythonic languages. 

Groundbreaking My I

A corner of coco ranchito  is readied for the houseboat i-house.