Cocoposts

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.

Pelican Bear

Picturing a pelican, I saw the bear.  Wide awake early last week at White lodge while Big Dog slept soundly.

The small portable radio had been on.  Full of static, I had just turned it off in disgust.  News was of the oil spill and a sorry story about one dead pelican collected as evidence against BP.  One dead pelican as evidence?  Only as metaphor, surely.  There was more to the story but a painful realization dawned on me that we're not being told the truth, to the extent anyone knows the truth.

Santa Fe Ring

Just read a great little borrowed out-of-print tract written by Norman Cleaveland  in 1977 entitled, Colfax County's Chronic Murder Mystery.  It's about the Colfax and Lincoln County land wars, the Santa Fe Ring and the murder of a minister-journalist in 1875.  It seems like an earlier chapter in a long story and reminds me of the Cricket Coogler case - a powerful political cover-up with lasting power.

The subtle mystery of the Colfax County incident, according to the author, is not who killed the Rev. Tolby.  The murder was "solved."  It is how facts persistently get buried, forgotten or altered in the retelling.  The Angel Reports, a collection from a 1878 investigation of the land wars conducted by Frank Warner Angel, fingered Samuel B. Axtell, the territorial governor,  as a corrupt tool of the powerful, far-reaching and enduring Santa Fe Ring. 

Tolby was killed for his criticism of political corruption as a journalist for a New York newspaper.   His murder sparked retaliatory acts,  land war violence and an epic cover-up. 

Charges were filed against Axtell and he was fired but nothing stuck.  Four years later he returned to New Mexico politics as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. The Angel Reports were buried for 80 years and portions were destroyed.  Opponents of the Santa Fe Ring got mousy.  Reviewers and writers rewrote.  The Santa Fe Ring?   What Ring?

The author calls the story an alleged mystery which continues to flourish in spite of being repeatedly solved.
 
Photo and another account of Catron County land wars found at Legends of America site.    

Bicentennial Wagon Train Pilgrimage

The Bicentennial Wagon Train Pilgrimage to Pennsylvania was a big life event for those who participated.  The recent fierce winds reminded me of the few unpleasant days that year between February 9th and March 22nd when we rode across New Mexico from Rodeo to Trinidad, Colorado. 

 I continue to get comments and inquiries from those who remember the 1976 event and found my previous post.

Mauldin Stamp Dedication

I was a born troublemaker and might as well earn a living at it. 

A good crowd of Mauldin family, friends, hangers-on and politicos joined a passel of stamp collectors at the Bill Mauldin stamp dedication ceremony in Santa Fe on the first day of issue.  The Santa Fe New Mexican has this story.  Below, Mauldin's Grandaughter Erin, and sons Sam and Nat.  Sam is wearing the Willie and Joe t-shirt being sold to benefit a non-profit  - The Soldiers Project.    

Left to right: Frances Levine, Director New Mexico History Museum (host location); General Fox; Nat Mauldin, Mickey D. Barnett, Board of Governors, USPS; David Coss, Mayor of Santa Fe; John Garcia, Secretary,Department of Veterans Services; Master of Ceremony - Marie Therese Dominguez, USPS.