Cocoposts

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.

Waiting for Wildfire

A woman wearing camo yoga pants and dark sunglasses picked up the cold pint of IPA and a stiff wind blew the napkin away.  It fell at the feet of a large woman in loud clothes. She looked at it briefly and pushed it away with a sequined tennis shoe, continuing on about how miserable she was in the heat and how this might as well be Dallas and couldn't they get a table inside. The man with her whispered something and she burst into laughter sending the rhinestones on her huge t-shirt into shimmering cascades. The woman in the sunglasses by the window mumbled something to the big dog at her feet and stared at the distant smoke plume.

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.