13th St.

Water and Power

I made this picture of Elephant Butte about twenty years ago from the beach of the Caballo Reservoir.  The prominent light band at the base of the butte signals what was then considered a low water year.

The Albuquerque Journal recently featured two images comparing reservoir water levels over a slightly longer time span. At present, Caballo is at less than 1.5% of its capacity.

 A hundred miles to the south near the Texas border a huge data center called Project Jupiter is under construction.  It will require massive amounts of water and electrical. power.  

Given the trajectory of climate change it seems extraordinary that a go-ahead should be given for this development.  Yet, that is what happened when Doña Ana County gave a rubber-stamp approval to begin construction of the facility.

New Mexicans are bombarded with slick daily TV ads from Project Jupiter minimizing the environmental impacts and touting the jobs potential.  It is an all-or-nothing proposition with the implication that there is no other way to put together such an undertaking.  Of course,  that is not true.

Given the time an effort, the smart fellows behind the Artificial Intelligence boom could quite likely devise ways to produce needed hardware and processes without fatally compromising the State's essential natural resources.   It is not technical limitations that stand in the way of such a strategy.  It is basically just the unwillingness of the technofeudalists to postpone maximum profits.

Protests and regulatory initiatives are gaining some ground against Project Jupiter, but the outcome of those efforts is far from certain.  What is clear is that an overhaul of State regulations  regarding such projects is urgently needed.

Every year the State surrenders millions in tax exemptions  to industrial developers.  One. useful step away from that path might be to make those kind of contributions in support of innovative strategies to  develop industrial projects which actually help avoid catastrophic environmental degradation.

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UPDATE:

 The Friday edition of the PBS Newshour touched on the issue of data centers.  David Brooks said he thought it unfair to single out the ill effects of new data center. construction when there are so many other possible targets such as golf courses that use a lot of water.  That seemed misguided to me.  Should we just add one more big problem since there are so many already?  Is the only option to substitute one bad actor for another?

The other problem I had with the comments by. Brooks was that they ignore the specifics that each locality faces in assessing the possible damages of installing a new water and power guzzling megafactory.  In New Mexico, for instance, the problem is not just a real crisis of water depletion.  It turns out that the data center currently under construction in the southern part of the State will generate more air pollution than the State's three largest cities combined.

AND:

Western Environmental Law Center 

Join us to explore the environmental and legal challenges these projects present, and why thoughtful planning, strong environmental safeguards, and meaningful public participation are essential to ensuring that technological progress doesn’t come at the expense of the places we all call home.



When: Monday, August 31

11:00am-12:00pm Pacific Time (12:00pm-1:00pm Mountain Time) 

Where: Zoom

 

A Colorful Neighbor

This shop is just a block from us.  Should you be in need of knickknacks, trinkets or tchotchkes this is the place to go.  I seldom find anything I really need there, but it is fun to browse because of the endless variety of decorative items.

Saturday

 Back to our new local favorite for dinner.

 We each had a Carnitas Taco.  I added a Mexican Lager

 Over to the Harwood Gallery at 7th and Mountain for the current exhibition.

 One of the first things I looked at was this fine little linocut print by Li Ming Chu.

I liked all of the prints, but the Yerba Mansa sings to me from the Bosque.

San Felipe St.

Dem Bones

 In a morning visit. to. the. New Mexico Museum of Natural History much of our time was taken with a viewing of the spectacular Animal Armor exhibit.

 

A portion is devoted to showing how humans have adopted Nature's design strategy.

The animated Bisti Beast in the main hall is the prime attraction for young visitors.

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Catching Up

 I have finally gotten around to  reading The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson.  The book was published in 2010  I don't know what preoccupation preempted my attention back then to produce such an oversight.  What finally woke me up was stumbling on an interview of Wilkerson on the New Mexico PBS program,  Report from Santa Fe, first aired in 2013.

Lorene Mills interviews Isabel Wilkerson

 Wilkerson, before producing the book, had a long and much acclaimed. career in journalism which included a Pulitzer -- the first given to an African-American woman.  She conducted a thousand interviews in the fifteen years of researching and writing The Warmth of Other Sons.  In it she recounts the decades-long story of the migration of African Americans from the Jim Crow Southern states to the North and West of the U.S.

 I found Wilkerson's speaking ability in the PBS program to be totally captivating.  I don't recall listening to anyone before who was so articulate.  Her eloquence in speaking about her experience in producing the book made me immediately resolve to find a copy.  A quick search turned up a copy on AbeBooks for just $7.50, shipping included.

The story of the great migration, covering decades is a complicated one which the author makes into an enjoyable read partly by focusing on the lives of three individuals who found very different paths out of the South.  

For me, the book has got me to remembering my own developing awareness of Black History.  In fact, I recall when I was in school being skeptical about the idea that there was a need for such a categorization of History, even though I had seen a lot of evidence supporting such a need during the course of the civil rights struggles of the 1950s and '60s.

Travel and life experiences eventually showed me the way to a more critical view of how History is constructed and told (and often distorted), but even these many years later Wilkerson's book is filling in a lot of important facts and ideas for me about this country's record of dealing with civil rights and human rights.

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Nina Simone: Mississippi Goddam 

Morning Coffee

 Coffee at Santa Cecilia on Romero Street.  I nearly always find an open table in the tiny indoor space, but there is also a spacious back patio.

On The Road Again

 We visited the Albuquerque Museum on Wednesday and saw there was a new Visiting Artist installation in the Main Lobby by Eric J. García entitled Since 1776 .

 

An Albuquerque native, García is an Assistant Professor of Painting & Drawing at the University of New Mexico.  He is well known for his massive murals of political cartoons.  This one features U.S. Democracy in peril, with Liberty's right hand chained to the foundation myths and the torch-holding left encircled by razor wire. 

 We enjoyed a brief chat with the Curator of Digital Collections, Jill Hartke, who had set up a table with samples from the photo collection featuring celebrities who have visited the city over the years.  A handout gave a good description of the Collection's holdings which encompasses 200,000 items, along with an account of the sophisticated gear and procedures used to preserve the photos and slides at optimal low temperatures.  The handout also included a link for the Albuquerque Emuseum which I had not seen before.

We did a quick walk-through of the big Route 66 Centennial exhibition.  I'm feeling more charitable toward it than on my first visit.  A lot of effort was made to collect and display the historic items. 

For Margaret the show again called up a torrent of fond memories of a cross-country trip with her parents and two older brothers from Boston to the West Coast.  She turned five on the road. and was ecstatic when she found that her parents had secreted her birthday presents in the car.

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THIRD THURSDAY

August 20, 5:00-8:30 p.m.

Free night at the Museum: 

 

Mural Celebration

6:30pm

Lobby

Celebrate the completion of the Museum's newest lobby installation titled, Since 1776... by Eric J. García. Join the artist for a brief talk about the inspiration behind the work, his creative process, and the symbolism woven throughout the mural. 

 

 

Shrooms

 Several of Albuquerque's Branch Libraries have art walls on which local artists are able to display their work. The New Mexico Film Photographers group members have exhibited in a couple. The Los Griegos Branch has particularly nice light.

I happened to be in the Griegos library on the morning when this unique 12-foot-wide fabric tapestry was installed. The subject and the medium seemed particularly well matched.

 I would need a much bigger house to accommodate that 12-foot piece, but off to the right of the tapestry was a charming little assemblage with a dried mushroom in a shadow box frame which I do have a space for.

Free Reads

 I look forward at the beginning of. each month to the new issue of The New York Review of Books.  I access the publication online through our local library's Overdrive collection of books and magazines.  A fortuitous benefit of that accessibility is that I can make use of my old color-screen Kindle Fire tablet which Amazon has crippled to prohibit direct downloads.  The library poses no such restriction, and I can even use it to borrow books with an easy work-around.

To borrow books using the old Kindle I first access the library site on my computer which allows me to borrow a book without restriction.  With the Safari browser on my Kindle Fire I then go to my library account page, select "Loans" and choose the available option to read the book online. 

I read The New Yorker the same way each week, but these days seldom find articles of interest to me.  The Review, however, always has at least a couple book reviews that are  beautifully written.  

The first article this month by Michael Greenberg, Whose Party, succinctly explores the dilemma of the Democratic Party establishment in coming to grips with the explosive growth of its progressive wing, populated mostly by adherents of the Democratic Socialists of America.  The take-down of long-time insider James Carville's scowling complaint about progressives is beautiful.

Further on in the same issue Alma Guillermoprieto brilliantly reviews several books about the life and career of everyone's favorite Mexican artist, Frida Kahlo, in Fridas for Everyone.

Frida - Self Portrait

Mañana De Nuevo

Yesterday for lunch.  Today for dinner.  This new place is too convenient at just two blocks from the house.

 Today was two Carnitas Tacos (slow cooked pork shoulder, guacamole, pineapple, cilantro),  plus a can of Modelo Negra.