Cocoposts

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.  

The Seven Burros of Bronson Cutting

About my favorite sculpture at the Roundhouse is the bust of Bronson M. Cutting. His big chubby face greets those approaching the capitol from the east where he faces Atalaya Hill, the direction of his beautiful home, Los Siete Burros, located on Old Santa Fe Trail. (Historic Santa Fe Foundation)

The bronze was commissioned by his friends and admirers and dedicated at a ceremony in 1939 on the anniversary of his death in a plane crash four years earlier.

Bronson Cutting fell in love with New Mexico and its people upon his arrival in 1910 and devoted the rest of his relatively short life to improving their lot.  His "rare combination of moral courage, modesty and marked ability" was directed at fighting injustice and advancing progressive policies.

Although nominally a Republican, he shunned party regularity to champion progressive reform in state and local government. After his service in World War I, Cutting organized the Hispanic veterans through American Legion chapters and forced the Republican and Democratic parties to adopt progressive planks and candidates and to include qualified Hispanics in their administrations. Once elected to the United States Senate in 1928, Cutting criticized the weak efforts of Presidents Herbert Hoover and Franklin D. Roosevelt to end the Great Depression. (Bronson M. Cutting: Progressive Republican, by Richard Lowitt.)

Stephen Fox describes the political scene in Desert Exposure: 

In the north they danced to the tune called by the Maxwell Land Grant Company, coal mines and the Santa Fe Railroad; in the south it was the Phelps-Dodge and Chino mining companies and the El Paso Railroad. The Republicans also made mutually profitable alliances, blatantly exchanging bribes for votes, with the old Spanish land-grant ranchers and stockmen who controlled the Hispanic counties in the north.

The Democrats were clustered in "Little Texas," the southeastern part of New Mexico that was settled in the late 1800s by former slaveholders from the neighboring state. The Democrats were virulently racist, even by the minimal standards of 1912. (...)  

Cutting declared a plague on both their houses: Republicans were too crooked, he decided, and Democrats were too anti-Hispanic. Instead he became a party unto himself. His main allies, it turned out, were Hispanics, who then numbered about 60% of all New Mexicans.

The Gas Valve At Otowi Bridge

John Fleck has an excellent account of the Gas Company's response to the crisis Upfront in the Albuquerque Journal.  The company official presented the timeline to the HENRC committee yesterday and described the chilling choice to shut off the gas value valve at Otowi, Bernalillo and Placitas in an effort to keep the entire system from crashing. 

It was clear from the presentation that the company's decision to close the value to the coldest communities in New Mexico was not made lightly.  But it had to be made very fast. 

One interesting factoid presented was not questioned.  The decision to shut the Otowi value valve was made before the company contacted PNM to request that the Cobisa power plant, south of Rio Bravo, be switched to oil.  They needed to get blocks of 10,000 decatherms shut off quickly. The gas company official said the Otowi value supplies 20,000 decatherms and services the northern communities of Espanola, Taos, Questa, Angel Fire and Red River.  He said the Cobisa demand is 17-20,000 decatherms. The Cobisa plant produces electricity exported to California. 

It was also noted at HENRC that a lot of gas was still flowing out of the San Juan Basin westward while northern New Mexicans shivered.  Contracted consumers out of state come first legal-wise.

Otowi holds a special little place in history.  It is the site of the official gaging station for water on the upper Rio Grande and was once the location of a railroad stop and early post office on the "Chili line."  There is an important pueblo ruin nearby.  Several well-known books have been written about the place and a woman named Edith Warner who served scientists dinner and tea there.  Peggy Pond Church's book begins: 

This is the story of a house, a house that stood for many years beside a bridge between two worlds. It stood, too, in the shadow of Los Alamos, the mushrooming shadow of violent change.

More than the story of a house, it is the story of a woman who made an oasis of serenity and beauty in a world that seemed to grow more threatening.

Round and Round House

There is little to be added to Claus's excellent summary in NMFBIHOP of week two in the Roundhouse.

Incoming New Mexico legislators undoubtedly undergo a rapid wake-up call in these first two weeks.  They may start out like Tiger moms, with how dad wore the same shoes 8 years and so should government.  But most are discovering it's not that simple. 

David Roybal's biography of Fabian Chavez Jr.. Taking On Giants, describes Fabian's fights for civil rights, judicial reform and with the liquor industry. Among his clear insights:

It had become apparent that we had no clear leadership from the top of the party so we had to become progressives in the legislature.  I had served one term In the house and was in my first term in the senate, but I had already realized it was extremely important to know how the legislative process works so you can make it work for you.  If you didn't do it, you were eaten up by the guys who did understand the process.

What feels new is just the old going around and around since before there was a Roundhouse. 

Girl with the Larsson Book

This Charlie Rose interview with Noomi Rapace is a perfect topper to my non-stop-can't-put-it-down-to-blog reading of the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo trilogy.  Laura Miller in Salon calls the novels cliche and misses the point entirely about the popularity of the strong female character, played by Rapace.  And how author Stieg Larsson flouted conventions of the crime novel genre.

My Shitty Novel

The task was to write 50,000 words in the month of November.  (NaNoWriMo) I was counting pages instead of words, believing this to be more practical and figuring that about 6 pages a day would be manageable at 250 words per page.  But I've been typing single space all month.  Snap.  SO I'M DONE with a first draft anyway.

 

 

Watch Jaws

America is the mayor.  The rest of the world is Richard Dreyfuss.

Reader comment* on the Salon interview with Bill McKibben about his new book, Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet.

*by run fast and win.

Cricket Coogler - Still Silent

Annual watching of The Silence of Cricket Coogler, in her memory.  Her body was found Easter morning south of Las Cruces near the Mesquite cemetery.  The cover-up and political intrigue surrounding the murder reverberates today - 61 years later. 

Here's the You Tube short about the movie and my post about Paula Moore's book on Duke City Fix.

Reading Before the Storm

Or in-between storms with the Rick Perlstein book of that title about Barry Goldwater, described well by writer Kevin Murphy. 

In Perlstein's book, what's past is prologue: "It is hard, now, to grasp just how profoundly the tectonic plates of American politics have shifted between 1964 and today...the opening years of the twenty-first century [are] as surely a conservative epoch as the era between the New Deal and the Great Society was a liberal one." (x, xiv) In sum, Perlstein sees the beginnings of the conservative maelstrom that has engulfed our present in the Goldwater eruption of 1964, and given how expertly and entertainingly he puts his historical ducks in order, its hard to disagree with him.

The upper-story bedroom perch at cold mud house affords a commanding view of that past as prologue thing.  From here, bed-ridden with my head-cold, I watch the incoming storms - clouds, radio stories and blogs.  Through the media you can view repeated strategies used to defeat health care reform.  Opponents cast a long dark shadow of filtered misinformation to protect profits.  Our daily paper's editorial board has the need, at this particular time, to stand up for that little guy non-profit Blue Cross and Blue Shield. 

Water Achilles' Heel

A new book about water called Water by Stephen Solomon is out and on my reading list.  Here's a radio interview capturing how the wealth of nations throughout millennia can be measured by their access to water.  He concludes the interview on a positive note about how water wealthy we are as a country and continent.  Our water advantage will make us a mini Saudi Arabia of water in the 21st century giving the country global advantages.  

Ought make us think twice about polluting and wasting what we've got.

Particularly enticing are the history bits about large scale water projects and the extent of China's present water woes  - their achilles' heel, he says.    Here's Solomon's blog.