InNewMexico

Peak Oil

2005-12-04T14:39:00.000-08:00

We didn't attend the second Peak Oil forum looking for information to convince us of the urgency of the problem. Last year's flooding here, Hurricane Katrina and unknown and unnamed future events have tipped the balance in favor of self reliance and away from goverment intervention. The greater motivation is the desire to know what can be done now by us as individuals and how can we share that in ways that lead to connection with others to form an active community regardless of physical location.

Establishing a place in a community is important whether you live in town or further out and I heard some voices at the forum underscore that. The impending oil crisis (no matter when it comes to pass or if there is no magic bullet to kill the wolf should it come to the door) serves as a focal point for empowering people as individuals and bringing us together to form a larger community with shared objectives. It's a process of engaging and interacting with others to find levels of community involvement and interpersonal interaction in which we're comfortable; to find what works best for ourselves. So much of life seems to be a balancing and rebalancing of the need for autonomy and the need to belong either to something greater than ourselves or at least some form of community that fulfills our need to be with our own species in some way that's of mutual benefit.

It was the little useful things I heard that appealed to me because it's too easy to be overwhelmed by something of great magnitude and then go into paralysis and not know what to do about it or where to start. Something as simple as having a workshop on building and using a solar oven would be a great way for people like me to learn something that could be used here and now and meet other people. It seems that one little thing like that can start to empower a person and as a result benefit many. It's a step toward breaking the spell that fear has over us.

One of the hardest things to live with is uncertainty because within it's space fear resides--real fears, nameless fears, and the sense of powerlessness that goes along with things we feel we can't control. I don't know much about community except in the conventional ways presented in our society. I'm a product of my culture and when one starts to question that culture and what's done in it's name a good place to start is with oneselves and our families. In youth, a time when we rebel against these things, it's easy and tempting to go from one form of knee jerk belief system to another in an attempt to shake off familiar bonds and become our own person. Most of us do that in some form of community. We start to question ourselves and what we've chosen more carefully when we're older because we've gained a little history over time. We may begin to see ourselves and where we've come from differently, we have some experience of what works and what doesn't and a little knowledge, if we're lucky, of where to look for different answers. Or we stagnate in denial in it's various guises, stumbling onward to whatever the consequences of inaction are. Sometimes we embrace both numbed inaction and sincere searching within the course of one lifetime. I'm not a religious person, meaning I don't go to church, but I think I understand a little the need people have for being members of a church. There is the need to believe is something greater than ourselves, the comfort of communion with others, the sharing of common values and the certainty of dogma. It's harder to live in a question than it is to live in an answer. Questions are annoying things, flitting about like gnats or droning dangerously like wasps. We sell ourselves short if we settle for answers out of fear, driven by the need for expediency. And yet the discomfort of uncertainty is a powerful driver. There's much talk about finding and sharing vision, the need to replace what we've come to consider a dangerous and worn out one. We may feel imprisoned within the cultural manifestations of that vision. We became it's prisoners by consensus, because elements of that vision sustained us and still do. In an essay written by John Michael Greer, who is a practicing mage, he refers to the Zapatista movement and one of it's tenets of revolution, the need for a world of many visions. There is no one vision, no template for living, or single "right" answer. The world is made up of many hoops. It seems so simple to say that balance and harmony within such diversity comes about through respect and understanding, but it is one of the most difficult things to live by. And there's no one path that gets us there, but there are opportunities that arise in perilous times, when we can come together and share what each of us knows no matter what path we've followed to get there.

A Slice of Heaven

2005-12-03T04:41:00.000-08:00

I get up when Fontaine crows, or at least when I first hear him. He's generous with his voice. Today we're going to Silver City to attend a forum on Peak Oil. We went to the first one that was held during the summer in a small church hall. This time the event will be held at the Besse Global Resource Center at Southwestern University, with childcare provided. The topic has gathered some momentum in this area, becoming a rallying point for people concerned about sustainability. From it some interesting community based projects have started. Even though we're not part of the community in town we're interested in the topic and the chance to see what's going on. We're part of the Virtual community through an email list which helps connect this wide spread region. But nothing works better than Actual to fulfill the need for human contact. There's a lot of talking at these events; it's kind of serious fun. This will be the post Katrina forum and that may explain some of the expected increase in attendance. Many of the people who are active in Silver are of the '60's generation and probably are originally from some state other than New Mexico. I think Silver City is unique in that it's at a point where it could become a communityactually working toward sustainability in the same way that Ukiah in California is, for many of the same reasons. Living out here in Mimbres where it's beautiful has it's downside as far as a feeling of community goes. We've seen enough people come and go and now our good neighbors from Santa Cruz, CA are looking for a place in town because of the price of gas and cost in time commuting to jobs in town. Last February when the second flood wiped out the crossing, downing huge trees, the commute included a sprint across a fallen cottonwood that spanned both banks and allowed crossing over high, hard running water. That was the only way for days to get to the road unless you wanted to hike 4 miles across wet country. Our "little slices of heaven" are adjacent and they don't want to give up their land. They haven't been able to build their house yet and rent a casa on someone else's property "next door". Community on el otro lado seems to be nebulous and ever changing. If you work in town and make friends in Silver there's the dilemma of the drive for a visit in either direction. It's a matter of time and money. I love it out here but you come to appreciate the many compelling reasons for community and the pull that a small place like Silver creates. There's plenty to think about in this time of "dire beauty".

Errant nights

2005-11-25T20:37:00.000-08:00

Through a change of plans, I left for CA 4 days ahead of schedule. Shoving off at noon on Oct. 16 I got to my mother's doorstep at 8am Monday, 10/17. I don't mind driving straight through with the usual pitstops when I'm alone. This time I wanted a more scenic route and decided take 180 getting off at the Mule Creek cutoff and head for Safford in AZ. From there it's on to Globe, through Devil's Canyon and then downhill past the exits for Apache Junction, Mesa, Tempe etc. to pick up I-10 in Phoenix. It was a long, twisty drive on mostly two lane roads with a lot of weekend cars and the sun setting in my eyes. Even so, I'm always glad to see the Superstition Mountains in the descent into the Valley of the Sun. There's a print on a wall in our house of that view a hundred years ago. It depicts a stage coach roaring past those mountains in a desert empty of everything but sagebrush, barrel, prickly pear and huge, old saguaro cacti. Monsoon clouds heaped above and behind the cliffs. The mountains looks pretty much the same and there still are cactus and sagebrush here and there amid the housing boom that seems to go up the slopes toward Thunder Mountain. I first saw these mountains 2 years ago. I'd talked to a helpful person in the BLM about directions to a wild horse and burro auction at the rodeo grouds in Apache Junction. On that drive it was pouring rain but the landscape we passed through and sight of the mysterious Superstition Mountains was worth it. Albeit, amid the onslaught of subdivisions creeping closer to the feet of the mountain spirits. It's preparation for what life will be like when I get to California. And it also means there's a long stretch of driving to do: I-10 to Quartzsite, then to Parker, Lake Havasu City, Needles, the Mojave Desert, Barstow, Bakersfield and finaly cutting over toward Buttonwillow and I-5. From there it's a straight shot and you just count the miles to another version of home. Late one night last January, I was driving back to NM along the two lane truck route from Parker to Quartzsite to hook up with I-10 S. I was keeping a wary eye on the big trucks coming toward me from the Interstate. Truckers show a lot of creativity in how they deck out their rigs in night running lights. There's usually a profusion of brightness to hold the eye. At this late hour, I was the only car for miles in my lane. Only trucks were coming toward me in the opposite direction. I could see the glow of their lights fade in and out amid the low, rolling desert hills. During every trip I muse over the long haul trucks/truckers, sometimes going over the obvious metaphor used to describe them, "knights of the road". That particular thought was flickering about when the most amazingly decked out big rig crested the hill coming toward me. It had a full warbonnet of running lights but the centerpiece was the big, rectangular expanse of that front grill which was lit up as an ornate Christian Cross. For a moment I experienced the shock and awe one might have felt during one of the Crusades when caught in a situation in which an armed knight on a huge war horse thunders over a hill toward you. Of course he's brandishing a shield with such a cross on it. It gave me quite a shiver. The metaphor had morphed into reality while the cd player was cranking out Natalie Merchant's "This House is on Fire". Things like that stay with you longer than numb fingers as you find yourself unwinding along the double yellow line.

Where's the rub?

2005-10-20T05:54:00.000-07:00

It's ten to seven and just starting to get light. Fontaine's letting off another volley of crows. It looks like it's going to be clear. In less than a week I head west for a visit to my homeotwn,Stockton, CA. It's a good time of year to travel there because it's not too hot. Usually I do a marathon driving stint and get there in eighteen hours. I'd like to take it easy this time and do a more scenic route to Arizona before cutting over to California. That's the plan, which will remain fluid until the last possible moment. I'm anxious to get going and look at things not New Mexican. I love the beauty of where we live and feel as though we're finally finding a level of community involvement we can live with for the time being. It's a pretty low level for me since I've more of an introverted nature. By nature more of a watcher than doer within organized groups of people. A lot of what I do that's non-ranch or house work I do alone and isolation works okay for me. Sure, I talk to the chickens and have long conversations with the burro, but I've jabbered with enough people for a living to fill my lifetime. And eccentricity is a hallmark of age. It's starting to feel very comfortable. However, I feel restless in a way that means I need to get away to friends and kinfolk in that California buzz. I'm curious to see with those eyes for a bit. It's so easy out here in this splendid isolation, to believe the world one creates is real across the board. I've filled in gaps with media choices: radio, tv, the internet for how I structure information in my reality. It's a replacement for human contact and interaction but it's not real in the way that ants will rub up against each other to exchange information is real. No matter how you structure it when you do that you still get someone else's reality, so the world you create is a mosaic of all these different sensibilities and pov's that you may or may not agree with, buy into or react to rather then respond to, etc. In any case, if this is all you're rubbing up to, you need to take a break and find some real ants.

Loose Feet

2005-10-10T11:25:00.000-07:00

The Indian summer turned cold and we got battered by a storm system bringing some snow to the northern part of the state. Plenty of thunder and lightning. Enough rain to stay on the ground for a while and make for some morning mist. Took a walk with a neighbor and our dogs and crawled through the locked gate at the end of the lane. I'm weary of fences and gates. We are locking our gate to the access road because of a spate of burglaries on our side of the river. There's rumors of known theives and meth labs. None of which surprises me, since you.probably can't go anywhere in rural American without finding the same thing. Where there's a need...fill it. It's business in depressed rural economies and here it gets the southwestern tang of the nearby Mexican border and the confluence of so many "agencies" and coyotes.

My beef comes on the hoof. Ranchers don't care for people to come wandering along their property uninvited. Which is understandable since trespassers aren't always benign in their wanderings and cattle have been known to disappear. It's something of an irony to live in a place so rich in the possibilities for exploration and have those opportunities denied behind the ubiquitous lines of "bob wahr". Barb wire is fine for cattle, bad for horses. It's probably a necessity, but I can't help but think that the person who came up with the idea wasn't just a little mean spirited. I'll need to get permission to hike up to some caliche outcroppings or else face a shotgun. Or so the stories go. An outing on horseback means hitching up the trailer and heading north for half hour or 45 minutes or riding a few short local roads. I have a hankering to go south, up toward San Lorenzo in the foothills that back up into the Black Range. I've looked at these hills through four seasons over three years. I've photographed and painted them and I've not yet been able to look west to where we live from them. They've become something of a yearning.

More Water

2005-10-06T04:04:00.000-07:00

The following month the new association met to go over and vote on the by-laws we'd received previously. There were a few points that needed clarification on ditch #3, the ditch we're on. The association is an umbrella organization composed of four ditches. Each ditch has it's user/members one of whom is elected major domo, or troubleshooter and interface with the water regulators etc. Pronounced mayor domo, it's usage goes back to the Spanish Colonial period. However, two men with the state water regulators joined us, apparently as off- the- record good will ambassadors. Our meeting jefe wanted to get the by- laws agreed upon so changes could be made and the state could get our paper work and recognize us. Our jefe is a terrier when it comes to keeping things moving, which in this group is a wise thing. The state presence was not altogether amiably received by Contentious, who was in attendance and ready to carry arguments forward from the last meeting. El Jefe had his work cut out squeezing in the by-laws business between the state make nice and the low growl Contentious was starting to emit. But already it was too late because one of Contentious's barbs struck a state nerve on it's right to trespass during the performance of duties. One of the state guys took the bait and an increasingly heated series of challenges were issued. The other state guy jumped in at the mention of the legal use of watch dogs, presesnce of firearms, state police. I was expecting to hear FEMA tossed in the mix. Everyone else stopped talking about by laws and focused on the main event. I'd been following it wondering how far it was going to go? How loose a canon was Contentious? These boys looked like they'd played football, wrestled steers or could easily find work in crowd control. No match for Contentious, who is shaky, at best. Even El Jefe was caught between barks. All eyes were on the showdown. Was it was going to be one of those old west moments straight from of the reptilian brain, before lawyers were plentiful? After a few moments into this, the angriest of the state guys realized he'd been skunked by someone best described as eccentric, in the truly New Mexican sense of the word. As his head cleared you could see him try to figure out the the most graceful way to back down and return to a more diplomatic form of behavior. There was a brief and awkward silence during which people assumed blank stares. In half a beat El Jefe got us back on task. Soon after Contentious lurched off into the night. The meeting aujourned with much show of civility. Water is serious business.

Water

2005-10-04T05:09:00.000-07:00

Sometime in the dead of night I was awakened by the wind howling, the curtains were flapping wildly. One of those squalls that sometimes comes up fast and blows over as quickly. It reminded me of a time when I lived in an apartment on the Oakland/Berkeley line. I had a fine view of San Francisco Bay and a window seat from which I could look west to sunset bridges. One of the things I enjoyed most was watching the weather on the bay. It sometimes got intense with isolated little squalls coming up and the light getting dramatic on the water. Out here the mountains make the weather and you'd better learn to read it or you'll find yourself bucking hay in a thunder storm. Sooner or later, you'll end up having to do that anyway.
Our neighborhood meeting with Game and Fish is in the works. They sound fairly agreeable about working with us to protect this stretch of river and our access road during high water. Last week was the second meeting of the group trying to start an acequia association. Briefly, acequia is a Spanish word referring to water ways such as irrigation ditches feeding off of rivers. New Mexico water rights and the system of governance of them goes back to shortly after the Civil War. It's obscure, arcane, riddled with dirty politics and greed and is an ongoing controversy that will only get worse as water gets scarcer. These old ranchers talk about global climate change. The gummit wants to start metering water and the only way to have any clout with it is through forming an association. We're out of our league here but we would like to use our water rights. At the moment, our ditch isn't running because of the flood damage and we need to get it fixed, which will require a backhoe or diggers, both of which are costly. A water association is the insurance paid to the water authority to get heard. Meters are coming, they're expensive and get wiped out every time there's significant flooding. It's not the ideal system and has enough critics. These meetings have been interesting so far. At the first meeting a small dark guy with a pointy pencil moustache, wearing a black hat--feline nervous--went on about the need to create a larger association to protect us from the downstream muscle. He was pretty agitated and adamant about his message. Then another guy with sort of a contentious nature was filibustering the vote to form and name the association, which was already in motion, seconded and acted upon as he spoke. A slightly slap stick performance. A couple of old timers were there, ranchers whose families settled here long ago. These fellows have a kind of rural dignity and solidity in their clean and pressed Wranglers. Going to the government went against the grain, but there wasn't much choice with the changes coming. As far as the majority were concerned, it was a done deal and would have wrapped up quickly but for the contentious fellow. It looked like that was his MO, so more of the same could probably be expected at future meetings. This is manana land, and the next meeting was set to discuss and vote on the by-laws. The organizer of the meeting was keeping things moving in a rather un-New Mexican like clip.

Fontaine

2005-10-01T11:18:00.000-07:00

The rooster crowed for a few more mornings and then nothing. I mentioned him to J.D. at the feed store and he remarked that sometimes it doesn't pay to advertize. He gave him credit for lasting longer than most and I felt a twinge of regret as I carried the box of 6 teenage hens to the truck. Once a short term living arrangements were made for the girls, we'd need to get on with the coop. The coyotes were out during the night so I was doubly surprised to hear a rooster crowing in the early morning. We were down at the barn in the afternoon and when we finished working I suggested walking with the dogs to look for the rooster. I had to have one last try. We walked down the irragation ditch quite a ways when I looked over and there was the rooster hunkered down in the ground as still as can be. The dogs saw him the same time I did and that red bird barely made his way through a group of sapplings to the nearest branch it could find. I followed him from behind and the dogs went to the front. It was a bit chaotic whipping through the sapplings, but I was able to reach from behind and grab the rooster by the legs, but on the way down the dogs made a fuss and the unhappy creature problably had visions of the end of the hunt. We tromped back up the hill and put that sorry bird back in the now fortified pen where the youngsters were housed in a large feed trough. That seemed to attract his interest, and he was probably worn out from what he'd been through during the last 8 or 9 days. He was missing a number of irridescent green tail feathers too. He perched on the step ladder or on a box where he could watch the youngsters in the holding pen. After a few days he seemed settled in enough and comfortable with me to let him out with the geese in the mornings. His crowing is a nice accompaniment to their honking. The pullets are growing fast and have the run of the enclosure now so he prefers to spend time with them. He's been very good with the youngsters, protective when necessary. I think he'll be great at his job. We call him Fontaine, after a Wm. Gibson character. He's very fine rooster.

Rebel

2005-09-29T04:24:00.000-07:00

Sometime in the afternoon of the day he made his escape, I saw the rooster come down from the hill and head for the tall trees further down by the pasture. I even played hide and seek with him for a while before the sun set. Nightfall would bring out other predators and his short lived freedom would likely come to an end. But the next day I caught a glimpse of him and that was enough to send me wandering around the area throwing out scratch and making embarrassingly inept chicken noises. I did everything but flap my arms and do some sort of chicken dance to lure the bird to me. Nothing worked. I thought I could hear the rooster laughing somewhere nearby in his hideaway. That day passed and the following morning I was amazed to hear crowing from down by the pasture. A reassuring sign. Just after I cleaned the barn, the dogs who'd gone down to the pasture started making a fuss followed by what sounded like alarmed chicken noises. When I went to investigate, the rooster was perched on a low tree branch with the excited dogs looking up at him. I was able to reach up from behind and snatch the bird off the branch, noting he looked slightly the worse for wear. Tucking him under my arm with a hand over his eyes, I carried him to the pen in the backyard, closing the gate behind me. The rooster looked at me, looked around and before I could do anything, that jail busting bird had squeezed himself through a gap in the gate, headed across the back yard, passed the startled geese, hopped a low fence and made tracks in the general direction of the pasture. That bird wanted to be free and a couple of nights out in dangerous territory did nothing to diminish that. What was my responsibility to him now since it seemed clear that my efforts were going against the flow, so to speak? The original plan had put the rooster in charge of the young chickens I was going to get at the feed store, and now the plan would be put in place without him. This rooster would have to make his way without my interference, or so I vowed to myself, thinking about the Prime Directive of Star Trek fame.

Chicken Run

2005-09-22T15:48:00.000-07:00

If you ever saw the film "Rebel without a Cause" you may recall a pivotal scene in the movie where James Dean does a to the death drag race sequence called the chicken run. The point of the race is brinkmanship, the loser is the one who bails out first before the cars go off the cliff. This has nothing to do with that other than the two words "chicken" and "run". One of the more astonishing things I've witnessed since living here is watching a large red rooster run straight up a hill, crest it and then disappear. For the one thing, he looked very out of place on that steep landscape spotted with scrub cedar and yucca, normally the purview of ravens, buzzards and hawks. His glossy russet feathers, vibrant comb and wattle technicolor against the hillside drab. He looked no less than a Renaissance courtier with his long legs extending out from feathery pantaloons. A handsome bird as well as a comical sight which I registered with a sense of guilt because things had not gone according to plan and now this rooster's life was in peril because of my misjudgement. We'd acquired the rooster from a friend and looking at it now it could be seen (from the rooster's point of view) as though taking him was an act of extraordinary rendition. Suddenly removed from the coop and hens he'd known all his life in the middle of the night, blindfolded, transported unknown miles away in a box smelling like cats and dogs then thrown in a cage with three huge ugly loud things with web feet. It was too much and when he saw his chance he took it, going hell bent for feathers, up that hill and as far away from where ever he was and who ever put him there. I think we can all relate to that. All I could do was watch his speedy progress up and away toward what I expected would be a very unpeasant end.

Just how paranoid do you have to be?

2005-09-18T06:11:00.000-07:00

I've been rereading William Gibson's work and am struck how books he wrote over ten years ago seem so within the scope of the present. It's a Jules Verne kind of thing where what was only imagined comes to pass. Although nothing about Gibson's work has any kind of the Victorian quaintness I associate with something like 20,000 Leagues...., both authors deal very much from within the sensibilities of their times and wrote for particular audiences. Libraries categorize Gibson as Sci Fi/Fantasy. I don't remember how I started reading him, maybe it was the look of the books or something I heard on tv or the radio. He wrote an X-Files episode called "Kill Switch", which was interesting.

Now that summer is almost over we're thinking ahead to bad weather, another flood whatever. We need to buy water and stock up on food for ourselves and the animals. Maybe this year I'll get out the oil lamps that are still packed up. Everything is on electricity, kitchen stove, pump, a/c and furnace. We have a wood stove, but it's not enough to heat the whole house. That's when your furry friends come in handy at night. Katrina was a big lesson. Some people from this area are going to Louisiana to help with animal rescue. Living out here, that's a real concern in an emergency as it needs to be for anyone who has animals. Concern for each other. This is the first time I've lived anywhere where there's a strong Quaker presence. Silver City is kind of a focal point for people who are into alternatives to the what's commercially more available. As one woud expect, that means things like organic, building using traditional materials such as adobe, solar power, permaculture, accupuncture, yoga, herbal medicine, pilates, shamanistic psychology, Buddhism, etc. Sustainability is a big issue along with concerns about peak oil. There's a survivalist mentality out here that expresses itself in a variety of forms. Like any place else, it's easy to fall into "us v them" thinking because some of these groups seem to be at odds with each other, at least on the surface. Anyway, out here preparedness is much on the mind for those times when the power is out, the phones don't work and the river's flooding, Y2K redux or the end of civilization as we know it, whichever comes first.

New Orleans

2005-09-15T09:15:00.000-07:00

This was on the mail this morning. It's a moving essay about New Orleans and Katrina by Anne Rice.

Do You Know What It Means to Lose New Orleans?By ANNE RICE La Jolla, Calif. WHAT do people really know about New Orleans?
Do they take away with them an awareness that it has always been not only a great white metropolis but also a great black city, a city where African-Americans have come together again and again to form the strongest African-American culture in the land?The first literary magazine ever published in Louisiana was the work of black men, French-speaking poets and writers who brought together their work in three issues of a little book called L'Album Littéraire. That was in the 1840's, and by that time the city had a prosperous class of free black artisans, sculptors, businessmen, property owners, skilled laborers in all fields. Thousands of slaves lived on their own in the city, too, making a living at various jobs, and sending home a few dollars to their owners in the country at the end of the month.This is not to diminish the horror of the slave market in the middle of the famous St. Louis Hotel, or the injustice of the slave labor on plantations from one end of the state to the other. It is merely to say that it was never all "have or have not" in this strange and beautiful city.Later in the 19th century, as the Irish immigrants poured in by the thousands, filling the holds of ships that had emptied their cargoes of cotton in Liverpool, and as the German and Italian immigrants soon followed, a vital and complex culture emerged. Huge churches went up to serve the great faith of the city's European-born Catholics; convents and schools and orphanages were built for the newly arrived and the struggling; the city expanded in all directions with new neighborhoods of large, graceful houses, or areas of more humble cottages, even the smallest of which, with their floor-length shutters and deep-pitched roofs, possessed an undeniable Caribbean charm.Through this all, black culture never declined in Louisiana. In fact, New Orleans became home to blacks in a way, perhaps, that few other American cities have ever been. Dillard University and Xavier University became two of the most outstanding black colleges in America; and once the battles of desegregation had been won, black New Orleanians entered all levels of life, building a visible middle class that is absent in far too many Western and Northern American cities to this day.The influence of blacks on the music of the city and the nation is too immense and too well known to be described. It was black musicians coming down to New Orleans for work who nicknamed the city "the Big Easy" because it was a place where they could always find a job. But it's not fair to the nature of New Orleans to think of jazz and the blues as the poor man's music, or the music of the oppressed.Something else was going on in New Orleans. The living was good there. The clock ticked more slowly; people laughed more easily; people kissed; people loved; there was joy.Which is why so many New Orleanians, black and white, never went north. They didn't want to leave a place where they felt at home in neighborhoods that dated back centuries; they didn't want to leave families whose rounds of weddings, births and funerals had become the fabric of their lives. They didn't want to leave a city where tolerance had always been able to outweigh prejudice, where patience had always been able to outweigh rage. They didn't want to leave a place that was theirs.And so New Orleans prospered, slowly, unevenly, but surely - home to Protestants and Catholics, including the Irish parading through the old neighborhood on St. Patrick's Day as they hand out cabbages and potatoes and onions to the eager crowds; including the Italians, with their lavish St. Joseph's altars spread out with cakes and cookies in homes and restaurants and churches every March; including the uptown traditionalists who seek to preserve the peace and beauty of the Garden District; including the Germans with their clubs and traditions; including the black population playing an ever increasing role in the city's civic affairs.
Now nature has done what the Civil War couldn't do. Nature has done what the labor riots of the 1920's couldn't do. Nature had done what "modern life" with its relentless pursuit of efficiency couldn't do. It has done what racism couldn't do, and what segregation couldn't do either. Nature has laid the city waste - with a scope that brings to mind the end of Pompeii. .I share this history for a reason - and to answer questions that have arisen these last few days. Almost as soon as the cameras began panning over the rooftops, and the helicopters began chopping free those trapped in their attics, a chorus of voices rose. "Why didn't they leave?" people asked both on and off camera. "Why did they stay there when they knew a storm was coming?" One reporter even asked me, "Why do people live in such a place?"Then as conditions became unbearable, the looters took to the streets. Windows were smashed, jewelry snatched, stores broken open, water and food and televisions carried out by fierce and uninhibited crowds.Now the voices grew even louder. How could these thieves loot and pillage in a time of such crisis? How could people shoot one another? Because the faces of those drowning and the faces of those looting were largely black faces, race came into the picture. What kind of people are these, the people of New Orleans, who stay in a city about to be flooded, and then turn on one another?Well, here's an answer. Thousands didn't leave New Orleans because they couldn't leave. They didn't have the money. They didn't have the vehicles. They didn't have any place to go. They are the poor, black and white, who dwell in any city in great numbers; and they did what they felt they could do - they huddled together in the strongest houses they could find. There was no way to up and leave and check into the nearest Ramada Inn.What's more, thousands more who could have left stayed behind to help others. They went out in the helicopters and pulled the survivors off rooftops; they went through the flooded streets in their boats trying to gather those they could find. Meanwhile, city officials tried desperately to alleviate the worsening conditions in the Superdome, while makeshift shelters and hotels and hospitals struggled.And where was everyone else during all this? Oh, help is coming, New Orleans was told. We are a rich country. Congress is acting. Someone will come to stop the looting and care for the refugees.And it's true: eventually, help did come. But how many times did Gov. Kathleen Blanco have to say that the situation was desperate? How many times did Mayor Ray Nagin have to call for aid? Why did America ask a city cherished by millions and excoriated by some, but ignored by no one, to fight for its own life for so long? That's my question.I know that New Orleans will win its fight in the end. I was born in the city and lived there for many years. It shaped who and what I am. Never have I experienced a place where people knew more about love, about family, about loyalty and about getting along than the people of New Orleans. It is perhaps their very gentleness that gives them their endurance.They will rebuild as they have after storms of the past; and they will stay in New Orleans because it is where they have always lived, where their mothers and their fathers lived, where their churches were built by their ancestors, where their family graves carry names that go back 200 years. They will stay in New Orleans where they can enjoy a sweetness of family life that other communities lost long ago.But to my country I want to say this: During this crisis you failed us. You looked down on us; you dismissed our victims; you dismissed us. You want our Jazz Fest, you want our Mardi Gras, you want our cooking and our music. Then when you saw us in real trouble, when you saw a tiny minority preying on the weak among us, you called us "Sin City," and turned your backs.
Well, we are a lot more than all that. And though we may seem the most exotic, the most atmospheric and, at times, the most downtrodden part of this land, we are still part of it. We are Americans. We are you.
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The Best Time

2005-09-07T05:08:00.000-07:00

We unloaded hay in the rain yesterday. It's rained for the last few days. Sporadically, steadily when it does. The river's up and there's a lot of sediment coming down from the washes fanning out the beach crossing into the river. More roadwork if it keeps up. The road to the house needs filling and gravelling. You lose dirt and rocks fast once erosion starts. A lot of people think we're nuts to live here, but I would go them one farther by applying it to living anywhere in New Mexico. The point is the river floods and it doesn't take much to destabilize what was already damaged in the February flood. September is an earth sign and yet it seems so connected to waterr as destroyer, as cleansing this old earth. How will we look at New Orleans in 2 or 4 or 8 weeks? Life has replaced reality tv. If the levees in New Orleans were that predictably fragile how do our own human and psychic boundaries compare? Powerful and complex emotions come to the surface when our personal worlds are threatened. The news behind the news and follow the money. I think about those phrases these days, when I'm working in the house with some news thing on or on the Internet. My email covers a lot of territory that seems peculiar to a fair number of people in this county: The Roberts Hearings, solar flares, peak oil and various other local/regional and international issues political and otherwise. When you're isolated from city attractions and distractions, a virtual community is a nice thing to have. We're working at building a real one. We've had enough rain that the hills are green with grasses and revived plants are putting out small but beautifully colored flowers. The cedars are full of quail and the hummingbirds buzz and chatter en masse around the feeder. The trees are turning. Most New Mexicans will tell you autumn is the best time to be here.

There's been enough rain for a second spring and the hills are green with grasses and revived plants bringing forth mostly small but beautifully colored flowers. The trees are turning and the quail are everywhere. Finally the temperature hasThis is the best time to be in New Mexico,

Rivers of......

2005-09-05T09:26:00.000-07:00

words, too many and not enough.

Rivers and Fish

2005-09-01T05:36:00.000-07:00

Our meeting with the funding agency representative brought a few surprises. Probably the biggest one was that the woody riparian of the river we residence on this side love so much doesn't represent a healthy aspect of this stretch of flowing water. In his opinion, based on his particular specialty, it indicates degradation from the stability of the marsh and grassland that once characterized the Mimbres. Trees along the banks came later and don't respond to floods in the same ways as grasses and sedges do, which put down root systems extending for miles. Those evolved forms of vegetation (his words) can withstand high water because they're flexible and resilient, bending, even flattening when the river floods its banks. Their widespread root systems, though shallow, act as a net holding down the topsoil. These plants have the capacity to bounce back after a high water event and regrowth is fast compared to trees. We've seen what happens when huge cottonwoods fall during a flood. The thick roots are shallow and extend outward under the soil from the root ball. each tree a separte entity, is easily destabilized. When one of these trees with their massive trunks comes down, great chunks of earth are torn away with it, undermining banks and roads. The trees in the February flood were probably 50 or 60 years old, younger than their vast girths would suggest. In this respect they are radically different from a California Redwood. We were advised that what happened to river in our part of it might not be considered a negative occurrence by the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish, who "own" this portion of the Mimbres. Stabilizing banks to protect easement access and private property isn't their mission. One especially important priority they have is protecting endangered species such as the Chihuahua chub and what happened in February may have done something to benefit that little fish. The fallen trees choking the waterflow and newly undercut banks create the deeper pools preferred by the chub. That conflicts with human concerns when it washes away easement access and private property.

Dog Days and Horse Sense

2005-08-30T06:38:00.000-07:00

Late August is a very uninspiring time, it seems. It's that peculiar transition time that isn't quite in sync with seasonal change. The weather tends to be hot and the heat feels worse because it's gone on for so long. Everything looks tired. The transitions that occur mostly seem institutional like the beginning of the school year or Labor Day. Here in Mimbres we're getting our second spring, usually nicer than the first if it's been a good monsoon cycle. The uplands are green with new grasses, flowering native plants and the remaining cottonwoods along this stretch of river are still in full leaf with a only a little yellowing here and there. It's the peak of the insect season. Yesterday, Bonner, our 3 year old mustang stallion kicked down a door and got out of the barn where he's been confined with an injury. If you know anything about horses you're probably thinking we're idiots for having such an animal. Leastwise, that's what I would think if it weren't me. Bonner is pretty amazing, he's quieter and better behaved than our geldings. He came that way straight from the BLM adoption program. This particular "auction" was held over the Internet. At 9 mo's he was shipped to us from Colorado, although the Herd Management area his sire and dam come from is in Nevada. He was born in a holding facility and must have had positive contact with humans because he was and is the easiest horse I've ever worked with. He's not a stallion for breeding purposes and would have been gelded but for medical reasons. We're lucky he's so mellow. The door he kicked out didn't require much effort to open. He didn't run off or act stupid with the horses on the other side of the fence. I walked up to him, put on his halter and off he went to a different stall while the door was fixed. This morning I walked him down to the pasture and put him in a training pen we set up a while back, where he contentedly ate the new growth, schmoozing with his buddies who were turned out. He didn't fuss when I took him back to the barn. His 23 year old buddy came up the back way to be with him and now both horses are snoozing in adjacent stalls. Bonner's need for an escapade was a lesson of sorts. Sometime's you just have to kick a little for things to change. I could use a little of that right now, tired as I am of summer and the day in, day out routine. That's when I get homesick for California and all it's distractions. We limit the amount of driving we do because of the cost of gas. It's a 50 mile round trip to Silver City for groceries and by the end of the month there's no room in the budget for "joyriding", let alone impulse shopping. Life out here feels so much closer to the bone than any place else I've ever been. Our values have changed drastically with this move . It hasn't been an easy adjustment, especially during these dog days. That's why I'm sure those grim faces in really old photos have little to do with holding still for the camera. Photos: Bonner at nine months at the holding facilityand 2 years last summer in Mimbres.

The Chihuaua Chub

2005-08-27T08:17:00.000-07:00

Google Chihuahua chub and you'll find it's a rare small fish who that lives in one river in the Southwest. The chub is on the Endangered Species list. Looking out my window I see it's home, the Mimbres River. The chub and those of us who live on el otro lado are trying to find a way to live in balance with one another. Our stretch of the river is under the protection of New Mexico Game and Fish which it obtained in some kind of deal with the Nature Conservancy. This was one of the things that appealed to us, living in a protected riparian environment. It truly is beautiful here. Nor could it be more different than life in CA. This is one example of what I mean. I've never seen anything change so fast and so drastically as the flood we had in February this year. Those kinds of floods happen every so often and are calculated in years as part of cycles. What it did was change the course of the river, uprooting large and smaller trees and brush, and severley undercutting the only access road for those of us who live here. It's not a county maintained road , we are the ones dealing with downed trees and dirt road repairs as needed. Sometimes a neighbor up river comes in with a CAT to work on the crossing. That didn't happen in February because the damage done was severe and extended the length of the Mimbres Valley. The flooding along the Gila River 50 miles on the other side of the Gila Wilderness from us was hit worse. Grant County was declared a disaster area and funds were made available for repairs. In June a few of us went to county watershed meeting to ask for funding for repairs in our area of the Mimbres River. We've just entered the second phase of that process yesterday, showing the damage to one of the funding people. Enter the Chihuahua chub and Game and Fish from whom we have easement rights on the road. We want to work cooperatively with them to find a way to have minimum impact on the chub habitat and take care of our concerns. Game and Fish's Wildlife note on the Chihuahua chub sums up the situation along the river neatly. I think we're about to get an education in different ways of looking at things and what happens to a river when it's no longer healthy. This little chub has opened up a whole can of worms. Photo credit, New Mexico Game and Fish, Wildlife Notes.

Shock and Awe

2005-08-27T01:42:00.000-07:00

This isn't a political blog, although I do have plenty opinions of my own. The significance of what happened that day in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania did figure into our move to New Mexico. 9/11 and what's followed has changed all of our lives. An event like that can trigger a lot of things, you can start looking at your own life differently. Talking about something theoretically is different than seeing it happen with your own eyes live on television. There's so much coming at you, overload's fast because of the constant impact. It takes time for things to sink in and settle. I knew fairly soon that I needed to get away from cities for a while. The San Joaquin Valley is another name for development and I'd seen a lot of open space I'd spent time in bull dozed into subsivisions. I'd never been to Arizona and New Mexico until April, 2002. Deserts don't really appeal to me but the landscape out here with its vastness and big skies was comforting. Maybe it was compulsive running, it wasn't the most logical sounding plan. Five months later all worldly possessions were packed into a big yellow truck heading east to Mimbres, NM. I've heard a saying that goes "People come to New Mexico to find themselves" and my response is usually "Yeah, there's not much else to do". The truth is I've never met so many people from somewhere else, even in California. Here we all are, looking, looking, looking. I'll be honest, it hasn't been easy going. Making a radical change doesn't mean the rest of life goes on hold and no matter where you go, you always take yourself with you. Maybe New Mexico is where you find that last bit is true.

September

2005-08-25T05:43:00.000-07:00

On a fine September evening, I sat with some friends .on a deck overlooking a walnut orchard. We'd finished dinner and were relaxing. Recessed lights around the koi pond turned it into living, liquid opal. A fire burned in the stone lined pit. Another bottle of wine opened. The conversation drifted along until it hit the dark current of national and global economics. It probably started with the Enron scandal and how you were double screwed as a California energy user who bought stock in the company. Summers in California's Central Valley can be brutally hot. Everything is air-conditioned and depends on electricity; all of it shuts down, stops functioning, during a power outtage. Everything except the traffic, which gets worse because the signal lights are out. Enron went beyond screwing its customers and screwed it's employees and stockholders. High ranking members of California Governor Gray Davis' were linked to the debacle and this added fuel to the fire of those calling for a special gubernatorial recall election. Eventually the recall election became a reality and Davis was pitted against Arnold Schwartzenegger, The Terminator. California invented charisma and Gray lived up to his name. However, that was still in the future. We were talking about a crisis in corporate ethics, underlying that theme was concern for how the economy could sustain itself and the role corporate globalization would play in that. The three of us looked at it from different perspectives; one person was an accountant, the other a manager in a family owned corporation and myself, without anything that could be called a career. Meaningful avocations, a few talents, nothing producing a steady income. Forever the Devil's Advocate or perhaps, The Fool, I brought up arguments about the negative effects of globalization on our own economy from the standpoint of the worker and that aligned with our foreign policy, it wasn't winning us any friends in various hemispheres. Sooner or later it was going to come back and bite us on our collective butt. Not a popular view, and one without any credentials to back it; I didn't have a career, never ran a business or was smart with numbers. It was my opinions based on "liberal thinking", my agenda. Which was true enough. My friends were doing their best to prove themselves in a tough world. The evening wound down pretty soon after that. I kept replaying the discussion on the drive home but by the next day it was forgotten amid other activities. My birthday was several days later and I'd always joked how easy it was to remember because the first three digits, 911 are the emergency telephone number, this time the year was 2001.

Conjuring Trick

2005-08-23T00:50:00.000-07:00

It's the middle of the night and I can't get back to sleep because I went to bed early and this is likely all I'll need. Don't feel like reading although I just finished William Gibson's Pattern Recognition. I've read his early work and liked it. This book is more recent and falls into the post 9/11 literary genre. I'd enjoy hearing comments from people who know his work. Books I really like stick with me for a while and I find myself unconsciously looking at the world through their lenses. POV and style have a huge effect and I'm getting better at my critical and analytical skills to understand a little of how the mechanics of writing work. Pattern Recognition works for me because style and subject(s) are congruent. The world has now caught up with his earlier work so with his usual techno-finesse, Williams is taking apart and examining contemporary lives shortly after 9/11. I want to go back and read the last part of the because I'm not sure if the slight of hand I think he used there quite works for me, but I think it's fascinating anyway. It's made me think about the expression "connecting the dots". For me that term, like the puzzle, suggests a linear process, whereas life is multidimensionsal, and connecting the dots is a function of what context you're in and how much you know of other "contexts". It's relative in so far as individual knowledge, experience and imagination are unique in each one of us. I don't know if any of this makes sense but I'm getting sleepy and can go back to bed now.

Here and There

2005-08-22T14:04:00.000-07:00

I've lived here for 3 years going on 4 now and I still wonder why here? New Mexico is not someplace I ever fantasized about. I knew one person in California who'd lived here and survived to talk about it. But she was up north, as were the things I gleaned from Tony Hillerman's books. The Santa Fe, Taos area was magazine stuff and beyond my bank account. They were places I associated with some of the cultural icons in modern history of the arts. Not to mention what little I know of the history of Western settelment, the last hundred years of Native American History as well as these places and Sedona, AZ have some vague importance in New Age thinking. Los Alamos and Roswell have their own mythology. My first visit here was in April, 2001 when my partner and I had given up on moving to a rural part of California. What we wanted was twice of what we could afford, that's how the real estate market is out there. We're both "retired", inquotes because out here it can also stand for unemployed. I'm a California native, my family goes back to the Gold Rush and I really love the state. I have a few relatives, an elderly mother, some friends I really care about, but no other ties such as kids or career demands. Both of us decided we were tired of things changing and moving so much faster than we were. We weren't exactly shuffling off to the elephant burial ground, but living in California was no longer a comfortable fit in a number of ways. The Photo is of a section of Main Street in Stockton, CA, where I once lived. The picture itself does not describe the city today and I guess I was trying for a vintage Cartier-Bresson knock off to describe the sensation of then and now I was feeling at the time.

More Monsoons

2005-08-21T16:46:00.000-07:00

No rain today but great clouds, baroque and towering. Cicada's very noisy down in the pasture making that electric wavering drone. The sound equivalent of an itch. You can get pretty itchy out here with the altitude at 6200 ft. The sun is more intense and going bareheaded is not an option. Cowboy hats are the norm followed by baseball caps with a few individualists or progressive types in about anything. Both the cowboy hat and the baseball cap could go with a truck and a horse. Traditional signifiers for ranching. Mining is also a traditional occupation in this part of the state and that means hard hat if working and the 2 major headgear, if one is wanted, for off hours. A hat is necessary and in some situations the more disreputable the better. You have to pick your hat carefully for the elements. Waterproofed canvas with a wide brim and stampede strap is my choice for bad weather. Haven't had to use it too much so far during this monsoon season, partly out of luck. These are hit or miss storms. If you're leaving the house in rain it can be bone dry 5 minutes away and you might dodge in and out of patches where the rain has been and gone. Unless you're totally unprepared, you'll have a hat. The photo is one of those "and it ended with a rainbow" shots.

The Monsoons

2005-08-20T17:33:00.000-07:00

It's the middle of the summer rainy season. There's been enough rain for things to green up. Some days we get rain but every day we get clouds often accompanied by thunder and lightning. Sometimes the rain is forcefull, beating down on the earth like a drum. If you read Tony Hillerman he descibes them as the Male Rains. Full of dark clouds, sturm und drang. Usually they can come and go real quick. Of course, the Female Rains are their opposite. That's rain that wraps itself around you like a cat and then settles in for a while. The kind of rain you want to water the vegetable garden and bring the native plants back to life. The photo is one of the classic thunderheads that turned into a perfect storm.

Life on El Otro Lado...

2005-08-20T10:44:00.000-07:00

Or "the other side" is different because the river is part of the lives of those who choose to live close to it. Sometimes it's in control of us and we have to wait until things calm down before we can go back to thinking we're in charge. That's what the picture is about. It was taken during the first flood we had last winter. That one was an inconvenience compared to what followed in February. The crossing was gone and the only way to get to the mainland was traversing a fallen tree suspended over water rushing like a runaway train or slogging 4 muddy miles overland. The tree won out. The flood changed the entire river, ripping out banks and stands of trees, leaving fences dangling in the air where the ground gave out. Down river one foolhardy person tried to get across in a truck and had to be pulled ashore from the drowning vehicle.

August 20, 2005 Mimbres, NM

2005-08-20T07:10:00.000-07:00

Mimbres, NM is a loosely cohesive rural community in the Mimbres Valley of southwestern New Mexico. The valley stretches along the Mimbres river from north to south. Going south, semi arid pine forests give way to cottonwood stands along the shores. Yucca, cholla and prickly pear compete with cedar and alligator juniper on the plains that slope up to the Mimbres foothills and beyond them the Black Range. It's an intermittant river, sometimes going underground, disappearing from view. Eventually it peters out in it's southward flow, disappearing into the desert. It's said to have been a migratory route for the various people coming north from Mexico during the past, and probably the present as well.