Cocoposts

Spaceport Bar

Heath Haussaman notes how draft agreements for future "spaceport" tenants are being waved around to stir up excitement in advance of a tax vote in Sierra County.

The Rocket Racing League’s announcement, made today, is one of several in recent days designed to fill the news with positive headlines in advance of next week’s vote in Sierra  County.  State officials did the same just before the Doña Ana County tax vote last year.

From the Rocket Racing League's website:

The NASCAR-style racing league features rocket-powered aircraft that will be flown by top pilots through a 'three-dimensional track way' at venues throughout the world. With millions of fans who enjoy racing and air shows, and an even wider audience enthralled with humanity's next step into space, rocket racing is destined to become the future of racing!

There will be a swank spaceport bar with drinks named after space heros.  But it may be crowded with  those millions of fans and even wider audiences.  It seems pretty darn hard to reconcile rocket racing with peak oil.  But we can talk about it over a Buckaroo Bonzai - Wild Turkey over 1/2 oz. plum wine. 

Rust, Sun, New Urbanists

Title of James Howard Kunstler's excellent post this week contrasting Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania with Austin, Texas: Rust and Sun. 

In Austin -where he attended the conference of the Congress for the New Urbanism:

The convention center itself was a thing built to such a pharoanic scale that Rameses the Great might have commissioned it for his villa in Easthampton. It was a quarter-mile walk from the front of the ballroom to the coffee set-up in the rear -- and this was one of the smaller ballrooms. The larger ones were occupied by some kind of intramural sports association convention full of people wearing sideways hats and weird, calf-length athletic shorts. The Sunbelt is all about sports, where the social aggression seething below the surface has been channeled.

All this was hardly the fault of the New Urbanists, who came there mostly to look and learn, and continue the process of refining their agenda for the years ahead. More and more they are coming to recognize the discontinuities we face in the form of peak oil and climate change. On these points, the leadership may be even more radically active than the membership. The ideas from meetings they held in Austin about how to meet these problems will continue to radiate through the country. 

They are probably the only group of professionals in America that I know of -- including the professional environmentalists -- who have a coherent vision of how America might physically arrange daily life in the terrible aftermath of the fossil fuel fiasco. Their ideas have the power to galvanize our otherwise lame political debates of the season. Nobody else in America is really thinking about what we'll do when the cardboard signs appear on the convenience store pump racks saying "out of gas...."

Beach

More and More Border Violence

Albuquerque Journal has the benign headline about the "troubled border" - N.M. Welcomes Mexico Troop Boost.  Ticker-tape parade!   

The Mexican government's decision Thursday to flood its troubled northern border with soldiers and police was welcome news to New Mexico officials concerned that Mexican drug-gang violence will spill over onto New Mexico soil. ...

Flooding something to solve a spilling problem?   

The Mexican government is creating a Chihuahua Joint Operation along its border with New Mexico and Texas. It's sending sending more than 2,000 of its army soldiers, equipped with 180 vehicles and three aircraft, along with 425 federal police agents and 30 prosecutors.

I have an idea for a cute logo with a little dog.   

Luna County Sheriff Raymond Cobos said he welcomes the help, but only if it is an extended effort with police willing to stand up to powerful narco-terrorist gangs. "You can't just send in people with machine guns for a few days and say it's better," Cobos said. "This is a despicable cancer that's infected the border and it has to be a long-term, legitimate effort."

In other words, it could get noisier down there for a few days years. 

Googling SunCal

From the OC Register March 4, 2008:

In the past 4 ½ months, eight lawsuits have been filed in Orange County accusing SunCal of failing to pay its debts or complete promised work on projects. Four properties planned for future developments either were foreclosed on or soon will be. ...

Q: What is happening with the cash flow at SunCal?

A: (David Soyka, SunCal senior vice president of public affairs)  SunCal Companies is made up of many companies. It's discreetly financed, which is common for a real estate development firm. It's how non-public companies are financed. No two are identical.

The real estate business is cyclical. We've experienced downturns like this before.  Like every other homebuilding and land development company, we are facing market challenges.  The entire industry is affected, and we're working with our lenders and Wall Street financial partners, both public and privately held companies, to decide how to adjust our business plans.

Commenter Stan is frustrated that no one in Albuquerque caught on earlier to SunCal problems and suggests no one has ever Googled SunCal.  But these stories would be unlikely to make any difference to development proponents here who put a positive twist on the meaning of the adage:  Every calculation based on experience elsewhere fails in New Mexico.

El Paso Corruption Secrets

The dozens of sealed and secret pleadings in the FBI's public corruption investigation will remain sealed, and the federal judge overseeing the case will probably keep sealing them until he is challenged legally, a national freedom of information expert said.

Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press in Arlington, Va., said she found it odd that 10 months after the first guilty plea in the public corruption case was entered, federal officials continued to work in semi-secrecy.

Edited because I need an editor.  Thanks Killer.

From the El Paso Times is a whole lot of news about a whole lot of corruption.  A Secret Docket thing explains why we aren't hearing much about it I suppose, though it is lapping at the suburbs of Albuquerque with involvement of the Socorro school board.     Nope. Different Socorro.

Save the Cow Palace

Cow Palace. Yet another publicly-owned old stock show venue proposed for demolition - just like the Denver Stock Yards and probably our Tingley someday. 

Media awareness and appreciation of the physical manifestations of agricultural history are thin.  There is not one mention of rodeo or livestock or next month's Grand National Rodeo, Horse and Stock Show in this San Francisco Chronicle story - even though the original name was the California State Livestock Pavilion. 

State Sen. Leland Yee has introduced a bill to let Daly City purchase the Cow Palace property, which is owned by the state. He said he wants to fix up the neighborhoods near the Cow Palace and put more money in state coffers.  ...

"The Cow Palace has outlived its usefulness," said City Manager Patricia Martel. Events there "contribute nothing to our community. Why would we keep it?" ...

Some more talking points for her:

• This thing is a pain in the ass to maintain
• History, Schmistory 
• I hate circus clowns
• Cows scare me
• I don't like metal bands

O)pponents have gathered forces in a bid to preserve what they say is a Bay Area treasure. If anything, they argue, the Cow Palace - built in 1941 with funding from the Works Progress Administration - should receive special status as an officially designated landmark.

"I'm mad as hell," said Kevin Patterson, a San Francisco native whose Great Dickens Christmas Fair is held every year at the Cow Palace. Patterson, with other outraged residents, started the Web site www.savethecowpalace.com.

"It should not be sold to Daly City, and certainly should not be bulldozed. This is a real estate venture disguising itself as an attempt to improve the local community."

Wiki says the Cow Palace name probably came from a newspaper editorial that asked, "Why, when people are starving, should money be spent on a "palace for cows?"

Durango Fire Seasons

Some favorite places in Durango are toast today.  Raw video from Sky 7 shows the destruction pretty clearly.  This from KOAT:

"The city of Durango set up a relief fund called the 700 Main Disaster Relief Fund through the First National Bank of Durango.  All the proceeds will go to the shop owners and employees of those businesses that were destroyed by the fire.  If you would like to contribute, you can call 970-247-3020.

The fire department said the blaze started at the Seasons restaurant on Main Avenue around 1:30 p.m. Officials said the fire apparently started in the kitchen of the restaurant then spread to adjacent businesses in three more buildings, including the Le Rendezvous Cafe and the 1/2 Price Tees T-shirt shop.  When the fire hit the fourth building, that building exploded."

Season's website photos and text about their theatrical grill is now a little sad and creepy.

The life of a restaurant centers on its kitchen. With Seasons’ open kitchen, diners are invited into the high-energy world of a restaurant kitchen in action. The centerpiece is a wood-burning grill and rotisserie. Chef’s Table seating provides a theatrical view of the culinary drama and the atmosphere created radiates a contagious energy throughout the restaurant. The dining room itself is bathed in warm tones of terracotta and ocher with natural wood finishes and hand wrought light fixtures.

And that beautiful wine cellar - toast too.   

San Ildefonso Women

From the Santa Fe New Mexican comes the story of a leadership dispute at this Pueblo and a little detail about women and tribal elections:   

A leadership controversy at San Ildefonso Pueblo is resulting in new ties between members of pueblo groups that have been at odds for the past century and could result in San Ildefonso women gaining the right to vote in pueblo elections, tribal council members said Thursday. (...)

[Councilman Terrance] Garcia said San Ildefonso is governed by a general council, which includes all male tribal members over the age of 18. That council elects tribal officers and a 13-member tribal council. Long-standing differences between traditional groups on opposite sides of the pueblo have complicated the process in recent years, Garcia said.  (...)

"Most men do consult with their ladies and their women to get a clear grasp of what the pueblo needs. Hopefully, in the next few years, this pueblo will go the route of letting women vote," Garcia said.

Presumably they let women and ladies vote in National elections, right?   

 

Time Takes Back

Johnny Mango post describing his photograph.    

“It proved to be something of a disappointment.  Or maybe not so much disappointing as requiring a different aesthetic on the part of the viewer...one that appreciates both the fleeting moment when everything works just like it should, and the more common moments when only about half of everything is perfect. The rest of it is something that Time takes back as payment for having lived long enough to remember how it used to be.”

Exploring the Valley last week, searching for buildings and places now gone or changed,  I remembered this and was comforted a little.