Dry Again

 Just enough water left in the river for Roxie to get her feet wet.

"...This is the third time in four years the river has run dry. It was unheard of for decades before 2022. But this year seems to be the earliest we’ve seen it happen in recent memory. For anyone who drives, or walks by, it’s a grim sign of climate change for New Mexico. 

Data from the EPA shows the snowpack that feeds the Rio Grande has been steadily dropping since the 1950s... "  - KOB Ch.4

The Epstein Files

 Democrats and the media are way too enthusiastic about the possibility that the Epstein files will have some important negative effect on Trump's popularity with the bulk of his MAGA followers.

What is being overlooked is the 2016 video resulting from the Access Hollywood interview in which Trump candidly revealed the depth of his depravity.  

Recall that what followed the publishing of that interview was the election of Trump to the Presidency.

People like Bondi, Patel and Vance will be momentarily embarrassed by their previous advocacy for release of the Epstein grand jury hearing details, but Trump's teflon coating will remain intact.

1948

 When we went to watch the flamenco performance on Saturday in Old Town I felt compelled to stop momentarily to photograph this Chevrolet.  Several other people stopped to admire the car also, impressed by the faultless restoration.

I thought my little Canon digital nicely captured the character of the car. The camera is not as compact as my Panasonic Lumix, but it has the virtue of an eye-level viewfinder which makes sunny day photos feasible.

Through My Window

 The street past our house is being repaved.  The work starts at 6AM.

The early start to the workday is understandable with temperatures reaching 100 degrees.

  The work is half done at three weeks.

Saturday Night

 I posted on my photography blog about Albuquerque's Flamenco tradition.  Later that same day I got an email announcing a performance the following day in the Old Town gazebo by the Spanish Broom group.  So, that set the agenda for Saturday.  We started the evening with a fine Mexican dinner at the Church Street Cafe.  There were some dark clouds over the city when we walked to the Plaza, but then the setting sun peeked under them to light up the dancers.

The dancers, the guitarist, the tabla player and the cantaoras were all excellent.

flamenco futures

What Is Coming

 Little seems to get said in the press about the ongoing attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank; they are smaller in scale than the devastating bombardments to the south in Gaza, but even more vicious in some ways.  A good source of reporting on events is David Schulman who periodically writes in The New York Review of Books.  His latest brief report, "Netanyahu's War", looks at the courageous efforts of Israeli human rights activists to ameliorate the unrelenting attacks on Palestinian families by the invading Israeli settlers with the aid of soldiers and police. Schulman also succinctly profiles the perpetrators:

In this country, ICE is clearly making use of neighborhood informants, but violent hate groups have so far only been able to operate intermittently.  Those groups, however, are bound to be encouraged  and enabled as Trump and his Republican lackeys pour vast resources into their anti-immigrant programs.While that escalation seems inevitable, an awareness of it makes effective resistance feasible.  A good example of that was provided recently by the invasion of MacArthur Park in Los Angeles by heavily armed Federal forces.  What is most interesting about that event is that there were no arrests of undocumented people; that was the result of a well-organized resistance effort to provide documentation and timely warnings as described in an article in The Intercept, What To Do When You See ICE in Your Neighborhood.

UPDATE

Featured on the evening news was ICEBLOCK, an Iphone app which records and reports sightings of ICE agents within a 5-mile radius.  (I don't have an Iphone.  I would be interested in assessments of the app in the Albuquerque area.)

Panasonic Lumix DMC-FS5

 I like my little Lumix digital camera.  Its 10 megapixels is fine for online photo sharing, and at just 7/8 inch thick it slips easily into a pocket.  The lack of an eye-level finder limits its sunny day usefulness, but I've posted a lot of pictures from it.

Recently, a couple spots started showing up in the images from the camera and I was pretty sure it was some dust on the sensor.  I decided to try cleaning the sensor following the instructions provided in this Graham Houghton YouTube video.

The camera in the video was not exactly the same model as mine, but it was close enough so I encountered little difficulty in following the instructions.  It would have been helpful to have some magnifying glasses to see the small parts in tight spaces. 

As the video warned, the little IR filter was stuck to the inside back of case when I opened it.  What I was not prepared for was that the tiny piece of plastic filter material and the small rubber frame would flutter separately down to the desktop.  I had to guess the proper orientation of the component on reassembly, but it seems to be ok.

Other than the issue with the filter, there was little difficulty in the process, and just brushing off the filter and the sensor has resulted in dust-free images from the camera.

Margaret at Level 5 at the Chaco Hotel