Cocoposts

Butchery of Equines in History

What started the 1540 Tiguex War in what is now the Albuquerque area was what ended the Battle of Glorieta during the Civil War - butchery of innocent equines.

At Glorieta Union soldiers snuck to Confederate supply wagons and killed all the mules.  In the fields along the Rio Grande the Tiguex killed the Spaniards' mules and horses.

They were the first the Tiguex had ever seen. The superiority afforded the Spanish mounted on the new beasts played into the massacre no doubt, as did the horses' offense of being allowed by their Spanish masters to graze and trample Tiguex fields that terrible winter. The horses were priceless to the Spanish and no doubt highly trained, carefully bred and valued above nearly all else.

It was a turn-key event. Sad to imagine but no less part of the history that "started badly and stayed that way a long time."

It's still not so great for Spanish horses. 

Puaray LA 717

The  pueblo called Puaray was large at the time of Coronado's 1540 entrada. It was in the northern portion of a collection of at least a dozen villages in and along the Rio Grande in the Albuquerque area. With the notable and treasured exception of Kuaua at Coronado Monument, almost all of the Tiguex ruins are lost.

Puaray and another pueblo ruin called Maigua were both close to Alameda, site of yet another large Tiwa pueblo located where the elementary school is today. Like elsewhere in the valley, remnants of Alameda pueblo were used as road base in the 1930’s and largely forgotten or disregarded thereafter.

 

Gravel mining destroyed any archaeological or paleontological sites ever located along the eastern edge of the Rio Grande.  A quick comparison of aerials shows the massive extent of earth removal and rearrangement. As the area where “Renaissance Center” Costco is located at Montano Road was mined in the 1970s, fossil hunters prowled the area. I also remember a man who discovered tiny ancient hand-made beads on his gravel roof and was forever thereafter obsessed with the search for more.

 

Site grading for new buildings, trenching for pipelines and utilities and excavation for drainage ponds ::coughBernalilloCountycough:: has completely altered physical history of the once great Tiguex Provencia as well.

 

Puaray, like so many other pueblo ruins in the vicinity of today's Albuquerque, is gone, gone, gone.

Water Planning: Rinse and Repeat

'A water right is a hunting license not a warranty deed.

Overheard at the 19th Annual New Mexico Water Dialogue Thursday, January 10, 2013

The official title was 'Reviving Water Planning: Successes, Challenges and Opportunities' but I prefer mine. One overwhelming point that stuck with me from the day: hard choices are going to need to be made about water. And those choices can be made more equitably through water planning - a collaborative effort involving varied interests.

There were a couple of elephants in the already well-populated room at the Pueblo Cultural Center. One was called-out by an attendee - the  City, more accurately but irritatingly, the Albuquerque/Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority, to whom we are to be eternally grateful for not having included 'wastewater' in their name. The 'they' there is actually nobody but well-paid staff and a fluid mix of representatives from the member governments. It's a structure, I believe, designed to distance it's member board from accountability and its actions from public transparency. The elephantine status comes from being the biggest water user in the State.

Chewing and Staring - Goats at Weed Ranch

Happy Fall! It was The Summer of Goats.  Sun Star Herb farm’s Horned Locust Division was in residence at the Weed Ranch and I fell in love with an entire species, not just a few cute representatives.  I never knew any goats before and presumed they were like sheep ( not that I've known any sheep - that way.) But no. They’re intelligent and individualistic and perhaps underestimated. Big Dog dog said that sounded like the Libertarians and he wasn't into no Libertarian goats. Even 100 of them. He  focused on the herd dogs who drove him mad with desire from the other side of the fence. Teasing him about being a city dog.

At some point during their two-week residency he learned a fun trick of rushing the fence to spook the goats. (This is apparently Lesson One of Herding for Dummies.) He did this one day as they were headed into the corral and little goats scattered everywhere out of what had been a leisurely and orderly procession toward the gate. This procession was led by a large old male goat.

When I had asked Amanita (Division Head) about the alpha goats I assumed the leaders would be the males - that patriarchy's ugly grasp extended as far into goat kingdom as elsewhere. She said the males will lead in unfamiliar situations where more bravado is required. Female leaders know where the good grass is.  Sounds about right.

This male leader was multi colored; brown, black and tan with some white bits - a calico goat. He had pendulous testicles that looked disproportionately huge and burdensome. He looked like he carried the weight of all the combined planetary maleness - like responsibility the next presidency, global warming and how many coyotes might be out there all rested on, and might almost fit in those nuts. And it looked damned uncomfortable.

Weed Ranch Cotton

It is all about the cottonwood cotton and fallen cottonwoods and cottonwood limbs. And weeds. The old female tree I decided not to build under - thereby moving the i-house's bright orange flex unit into a neighbor's view of the Sandias, a source of no small amount of ill-will - is busting with cotton this year and sending huge cotton chunks airborne in what will be an ultimately unfruitful attempt to multiply after sprouting in horse water buckets and mudholes.

Before the green pellet-like balls burst open, the weight makes the soft wood prone to cracking even on not so windy days. I lost an entire tree in a recent wind gust and two other trees shed huge branches recently - making magnificent crashing sounds like T-Rex in the bosque.

Hard Town for a Dog That Hates Balloons

And Big does so hate balloons of the large hot air variety. He is also not fond of large birds and low flying planes. But bright large, round and silent-until-they're-not things are much much worse. Especially that unexpected noise, the horrible "PHHHAAAHHHPT!" 

Big dog otherwise qualifies as a very mellow dog. But in any photo where he appears to be calmly surveying the Weed Ranch pasture he is actually scanning the eastern horizon in the direction of the Balloon Fiesta Park for any sign of horrible floaty colored things that roar (or "Balloons" in Dog speak.) Evidence is met with fresh emotional distress - a new discovery of hot air ballooning every sighting. And multiple balloons cause amplified spasms of anxiety -  tail-tucking and whining and pacing. It is like some dogs get on thunder. Except thunder doesn't bother him at all. Thunder is nature. He can tell when thunder is coming. Horrible floaty colored things sneak up on you and go: "PHHHAAAHHHPT!" And that is so so much worse. Apparently.

I mock him for this, his only weakness. I make the burner roaring noise with my arms up and glide across the floor. He looks at me with a very sad face and sighs and I immediately feel guilty.

Weed Ranch Portrait

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.

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.

 

Step Into The Light

Bernalillo County Commissioner Wayne Johnson opines in the Albuquerque Journal about the county's  new openness and transparency moves, which appear to rely somewhat heavily on website access to previously obscure information.

Particularly unsettling is how good Commissioner Johnson says he thinks the most important provision of the new ethics resolution is the part where everyone will get to know how much money everyone else makes. 

In every job that I've ever had, my boss knew exactly what I earned and how much it actually cost to pay for my services. That boss was charged with determining whether or not my productivity warranted the cost to the company and my continued service. Governments are no different. 
     

In his view apparently we're direct supervisors.  Thanks, but no thanks.  I'm retired.  I don't want to be the judge of whether every single person in the bureaucracy is worth a paycheck.  That's a supervisor's job in a professionally managed government.  Although I would be interested in disclosure of commissioners' investments, not just their income.  That information would be relevant to my vote, and to their votes.  Otherwise, who gets hired and fired is not my job. 

Stepping into the light, reminds me of Poltergeist and little Carol Anne who was told, do NOT go into the light. Don't even look at it, then told something completely different, run to the light, baby. Mommy is in the light. This was a lie, of course, intended to trick ghosts.  But what got them into this dilemma of light or no light was that the developer moved the cemetery but left the bodies.  It was enough, they thought, to put up the headstones for people to see.  Everything else was left below the surface.  Yeah, the county is a little like that. 

Just shoving information toward the light without context or responsibility isn't ethics.