Cocoposts

Happy Mardi Gras!

(Photos courtesy Inky Ink Inc.)

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.

 

Four Decades on the Horse

Will Sands in The Durango Telegraph has the history of the Iron Horse, the bike race from Durango to Silverton this weekend, and the brothers who started it all. (Telegraph Photo of rider on Coal Bank Pass last week.)

Four decades later, Tom and Jim Mayer are also going to make a second run at it. In honor of the 40th anniversary, the brothers will again race from Durango to Silverton this Saturday, Jim inside the locomotive and Tom atop the same Schwinn Paramount that he rode and won the original challenge on back in 1971. “It’s no longer a 10-speed; my knees can’t do that any more,” Mayer said. “But I thought it would only be appropriate to ride the original frame in tribute.”

(Telegraph photo of an early Iron Horse race)

Chupacabra Sighting

 West Seattle - Alki Beach.  I've been compelled to investigate. 

Nuclear Oh

 Yokoso News livefeed is informative. 

The twitter feeds aren't.  Defenders of nuclear technology are out in force giving stern warnings for ninnys not to overreact and cause panic.  Real men aren't afraid of isotopes and earthquakes! At the other end of the spectrum are theendoftheworld hashtaggers. 

I've always loved the Amory Lovins quote about nuclear energy.  He said it was like cutting butter with a chainsaw.  Or it's like driving a super-charged V-12 four-wheel drive on a bike path. You only need it for the mountains but you're determined to get your money's worth and everything smaller will have to get out of the way.  Sustainables?  Pffft.

Overkill is messy.  The wisdom of nuke use rests on overkill - the big assumption about big base power demand. We must meet big demand and demand is always growing bigger.  This is the fundamental assumption of proponents - including energy companies who produce electricity. 

Meet demand or grandma will die of heat exhaustion in her desert trailer! This is the same mentality that suggests huge water pipelines to the desert will be necessary to keep grandma hydrated. 

At some point it makes more sense to move the trailer.

Capitol Candlelight Vigil

Say No to politics of hate tonight, March 7, 2011 6pm at the Capitol. 

Picked up this flyer at lunch yesterday at a great Mexican restaurant on Cerillos Road.  The vigil is against the hate represented by the driver's license bill headed to the Senate - that would further undocument undocumented workers.  This is improbably believed by some to be safer for the public.  Now they'll all ride  horses, which is cool.

In truth, the problems of immigrants and with immigration policy are being exploited. The pretension that the bill solves something relies on a narrow estimation of these problems.  One loud bill effort, cheered along by the teaparty and lauded in the conservative press, is far easier than addressing fraud, unjust laws or the fed's ham-fisted war on drugs.

Sobering story in The Los Angeles Times for contrast with the sheer triviality of this bill.

More than 11,000 migrants, primarily from Central America, went missing last year crossing Mexico on their way to the United States, according to the Mexican National Human Rights Commission. Most were captured by drug gangs demanding payoffs. Many remain missing. In the single largest massacre in Mexico's four-year conflict, 73 immigrants who refused to work for their captors were slain last summer.

 We do not know what monster we are fighting.

But we can wave our silly little bill at him.

Happy Epiphany

The cold, dark days of winter are the perfect backdrop for a deep, longing look inward.  Stoke the devotional fire of the heart to keep warm and inspired as we move toward the warmer lighter days of spring. 

That's what my yoga teacher suggests.  I think "stoke the devotional fire" means get mad about something.

The good advice continues:  Take the ecstatic mid-winter train ride into the heart and untangle from the holidays.  Settle back into the truth of who we are, why we're here and how can we can be of greater service.

When I heard that part something dawned on me.  No, not the truth or the service parts.  But Why we're Here.  Here - twisted in a yoga pose in a cold gym straining to hear new age advice over the sound of clanging weights and basketballs thumping.  Suddenly,  all Epiphany-like, I thought,  I could be in a sauna right now.  Or very hot mineral water.  Outdoors.  With a view. 

Hope your Epiphany is as warming.

 

Inaugural Booms and Hats

Three National Guard helicopters circled the Santa Fe plaza low and loud.  Multiple twenty-one gun salutes with rifle and canon set off alarms and scared the dogs and children.  Ah, the sound of war at an inaugural! It would have felt a bit martial-law like except for the smiling, cheering and saluting. 

It was cold.  The Governor was wearing tiny earmuffs and no hat in 3 degrees with a stiff wind.  I tried to stand next to fat people for warmth.  The Indian dancers weren't wearing nearly enough in the way of buffalo adornment for far too long.  By the time the new Governor began her speech I couldn't feel my feet, the mimosa had worn off and all the fat people were suspicious.

The military hardware was a hard act to follow.  Here's the text of her speech via Monahan.  It reads with more passion than she gave it. 

I cannot promise we will always agree on methods, but we will share the same goal of a just, prospering and limitless New Mexico;  a place where every mother's child has the encouragement and a fair opportunity to succeed as my other's child has' a place where dreams are made real.

Dreamy limitlessness?  I'm all for it.

We won't take more of your money from you or grow the deficit because we are not willing to make the same tough decisions you have had to make. 

It needed a red pen. I started taking pictures of hats and dogs.

 

Why Not Cruise?

Chapter next in that book:  Stuck on 950' feet with 4500 other people and no flush toilets.  Having to eat Spam.  Both prospects nauseating alone but together?  Unspeakable.  Which is good because there's no internet or phone either.  I would have to be heavily medicated.     

Carnival Splendor cruiseship had a fire and lost power which happens. (New York Times)  They're getting towed back to San Diego after officials reconsidered logistics of getting thousands of Americans home from Ensenada.  Mexican buses suck.  This and more from Cruise Bruise who claim to have uncovered an earlier unreported fire on another Carnival ship.

NaNoWriMo and Darkness

I'm trying to write 50,000 word draft this month for this National Novel Writing Month challenge thingy.  

I'm finding all sorts of things to distract me.  The 2008 Sparkman Syrah from Yakima Valley and a neato wine aerator beckon.  I dragged them back in my suitcase as gifts from my generous and loving friends. who owed me big time for putting up with their kids. The wine is called Darkness.  It was 10:00am.  

Distractions like dog walking and taking flowers to graves are perfectly justified because the weather is so darn nice.  But I'm also strangely compelled to find out everything about the dancer Lola Montez.* 

Everything is more interesting than sitting down and punching out a story.  In spite of myself I've written thirty pages. Now excuse me while I go learn how to use twitter.

 

 

*The woman at the old hotel in Nevada City, California, home to this portrait of Lola Montez, thought she looks like Mickael Jackson in this rendering.