Cocoposts

American Pharaoh

Just finished reading American Pharaoh, Mayor Richard J. Daley:  His Battle for Chicago and the Nation, by Adam Cohen and Elizabeth Taylor.   

This is not just a biography.  Because of his position as boss and builder of Chicago for so long, Daley's story is a geopolitical history of that city and an examination of machine politics  -  not to mention a dramatic account of the 1968 Democratic National Convention.  There are also all sorts of juicy stories about Daley's use and misuse of planning powers and federal War on Poverty and Model Cities program funds.

Daley had a knack for avoiding issues and events that didn't help him politically.  In the heat of a segregation battle in which Martin Luther King had engaged, Daley effectively positioned the real estate brokers as the bad guys for not selling and leasing to blacks - side stepping the elephant in the room - his public housing policies and the policies of the school board he controlled.

In the final pages of the book the authors come to this somewhat remarkable conclusion - he did it all for power, not for money.

Daley may have presided over a system that was inherently corrupt.  Jobs were given out on the basis of political work, not ability to perform, and workers were fired if they did not fulfill their political obligations.  Work for the Democratic machine was routinely done on city time, and patronage employees were expected to kick back part of their salaries to their ward organizations.  Votes were stolen, and decisions of government bodies on matters like zoning were for sale.  But there is no evidence Daley ever gained financially from it.  

Old Stockyard Driveway

At lunch I pretend to listen to foodie stories about the restaurant business then, trapped in my car after lunch, my friend pretends to listen to my placey stories about this or that subdivision, what was there before and what old-timers said about it.

After lunch downtown we drive down the valley, exploring  the city's south valley sacrifice area - home to the first and subsequent wastewater treatment plants, superfund sites, scrap yards and "tank farms" that replaced alfalfa fields and stockyards.  

The Sunport Railrunner train stop and parking lot is down that way at Rio Bravo.  The lonely site surrounded my vacant industrial zoned land is envisioned by MRCOG planners to one day be a mixed use transit oriented development - a walkable village-like place with housing and shops.  You don't have to be high to picture this, but it helps.  

In the early aerial photos from the 1930's you can see a wide stock driveway leading down from the mesa where the UNM golf course is now to a rail yard and packing plant just south of Woodward Road.  There is still a little segment of road there called Stock Drive.  Remains of a small plant and an old house are visible at the end of a sad row of cottonwoods on an old ditch.  With a little imagination you can still hear and smell hundreds of cattle. 

Now you can reach up and touch the belly of a Southwest jet.

Silence of the River

Whitelodge water releases from Vallecito lake are shown on this Bureau of Reclamation website.  Releases were 500 cfs in August then, inexplicably,  47 cfs October 20th.  The silence woke me from a sound sleep.  

The Pine River has many thirsty users and the irrigation district was recently denied approval for construction of another reservoir at the site of beautiful Emerald Lake in the Weminuche Wilderness, north of Vallecito.  Emerald Lake was built and stocked with cut throat in the 19th century and remains a fishing destination, as remote as it is desireable.   

Sprawl Fueled Sprawl

The Mayor of Rio Rancho is happy about anticipated construction of a big-ass new shiny hospital - not so much because of anyone's health but because growth is good.  And construction means growth - which is good.   Construction is a beast that lays gross receipts taxes like golden turds.  Git yer shovel-ready.

But growth is a fickle animal.  Before you know it, you've fed it everything you've got and it will slouch off to Los Lunas or Moriarity or Taipai.  The beast can die leaving empty hulks of buildings and thinly stretched public utilities.  

Hospital to Feed Growth is the title in the Albuquerque Journal.   Feeding growth is the reasoning behind placement of all of Rio Rancho's public buildings - at the farthest flung end of the undeveloped area.  Rio Rancho's so-called downtown is an extreme example of using public dollars to stimulate sprawl.  It was an anti-city's answer to city planning. 

And how's that working out?

Abbey's Apartments

Author Edward Abbey lived in dozens of places in and around Albuquerque according to James M. Cahalan's biography - Edward Abbey, A Life.  He would claim that he lived in twenty places in thirty-one months in Albuquerque during 1948-51.

I like searching for Abbey abodes.  In 1959 he and his second wife Rita moved to the North Valley - an apartment on Mission Avenue NE.  They were living there when his second son was born.  

He also lived on Grand (now MLK), Edith, Lead, and High Streets, in Carnuel, Cedar Crest, Peralta, and Tijeras Canyon where he said he spent the last six weeks of one UNM semester living on a small hilltop where he dragged a sleeping bag every night. 

Sister Archeology

My sister who died in 1999 would have been 59 now.  I drank  a bottle of champagne in her honor last weekend and thought about her a lot.

She was an archeologist, among other things, and worked on many "digs" and surveys.  One job included the Cochiti Lake work to document the many sites that were flooded when the dam was completed and water inundated the valley in 1973. *  She was unhappy with the speed with which they had to work - measuring and cataloging features as the shoreline advanced daily.

Her descriptions of treasures like kiva murals grew more elaborate as she embellished details at the dinner table each night for several weeks.  She was profoundly saddened but honored to be among the last to see these places, but she also recognized and expressed that flooding them would preserve the features from more commonplace destruction. 

And destruction of archeological sites is very commonplace.  

From the  WPA Guide to 1930's New Mexico comes one reason.   Much valuable information has been lost by misinterpreted interest on the part of enthusiastic amateurs.  Perhaps another is that, in a well-meaning effort to preserve sites by secreting way the information from amateurs, they are simply forgotten.

PAJARITO (Sp., small bird), 4,900 alt., 435 pop. is surrounded by ranchitos on both sides of the river and on the tablelands between the Manzano Mountains and the Rio Grande.  The highway leaves the river bottom south of Pajarito and traverses a higher country along the Mesa de Los Padillas (R) where are the Ruins of Puretuay Pueblo, a 60-room settlement of the Tiguez Province. 

*Staci Matlock had a recent story about Cochiti Pueblo and the dam in the Santa Fe New Mexican (UPDATE:  No longer online)

Mannywood

Valle de Atrisco is to be the name of the new town in the South Valley, says the Albuquerque Journal.

 Other little details will be worked out later.  Important stuff.  Like who'll get to be El Alcalde  - Miguel?

Burque Babble solicits and presents alternatives, of which Mannywood and Burque del Sur are my favorites.

Recognition of culture, history and context is critical to good government.  Municipal incorporation is a poor tool for that purpose.  It's like jumping from a big boat into a small boat in a storm.  It only makes sense if the big boat is sinking.  I guess an argument can be made there.  But I prefer to think the big boat just has a broken moral compass - named Marty or Alan. 

This is a desperate attempt to escape one government by creating another.  It will backfire as the new government will be forced to negotiate with the old one for services on terms that will reflect the new one's status as a runaway child.  In a row boat.  Oars, no outboard. 

Time Wastes Too Fast

From Maira Kalman's sublime notebook in her NYT's blog.  This one is about Thomas Jefferson.

 If you want to understand this

country and its people and what it

means to be optimistic and complex and tragic

and wrong and courageous,

you need to go to his home in Virginia.

Monticello.

Whitelodge Wedding

Went off without a hitch and they got hitched!  Cabin in the tall pines theme.  

Everything but Parakeets

Coco's Variety in Los Angeles at 2427 Riverside Drive is having their first ever bike sale.  No relation, but  this goes on the post-retirement tour list - west coast version - though I'm sure the sale will be over by then. They have plenty of other cool stuff, like water.    From their website:

Coco's Variety sells flyswatters, glass 5 gallon water bottles, headache remedies, oil cloth by the yard, used bicycles, California souvenir tablecloths, Kit-Cat Klocks, gumballs, Mexican Cokes in glass bottles, squirt guns, tote bags adorned with hula girls, Lodge cast iron frying pans, old American-made tools, baskets for your bicycle, wood matches, reverse osmosis purified drinking water by the gallon and fancy Jadeite cake plates for fancy cakes on fancy occasions.

We sell everything but parakeets.

(Thanks Inky!)