Once Upon A Time In The ... Heat.
Tipping 100F right now.
ABQ BusinessFirst: Santa Fe’s Vista Clara Ranch and Spa Resort sold to Chi Center.
Finally! It’s a gorgeous property. I look forward to being able to peek in again.
Smoke from the Dog Head Fire blankets our area.
I walked out to check the horizon. Can barely see the Jemez Mountains. Sandia Crest is obscured, as are the Manzanos (where the fire actually is).
I couldn’t believe it though - two people jogging, and a couple of bicyclists? Crazy. I stupidly went out during the last days of Las Conchas on my bike, drew enough into my lungs to be hacking up black stuff for a day and a half.
Experience talking - just DON’T.
KOB: ‘Dog Head Fire’ burns nearly 700 acres in Manzano Mountains; wind stokes flames.
Big gout of smoke to the south, this time. It may settle over us shortly. Here we go ... AGAIN. We end up having to close up the house, right at the hottest time of the year.
Political Wire: It’s Over Bernie.
I understand his fervor. I prefer Bernie’s platform over Clintons, yet realize that it is unrealistic in a President’s four years. It is a blip of sense that has to be cajoled over a longer period of time. If Sanders does not want to end up a Nader-like figure for the future, today’s contests should elicit different rhetoric and behavior from him. Shove the party around, sure. Bolster the candidate now; shore up the weak points, resolve to hold her to high standards and stop tearing her down. Fight for the working class *within* the existing system. It’s a harder, less utopian route. But Sanders would have had to face reality at some point anyway.
There was an irony here, locally. A Sanders volunteer came to our door, tie-dye shirt and Bernie buttons, complaining that the older Democrats and Republicans just wouldn’t cooperate. Tie-dye shirts and ‘hippie’ memorabilia is 50 years gone. A groovy ‘cosplay’. That was no way to win the swings. No way at all. In this particular case, I would advise not adhering to stereotype and arriving well-kempt, well-dressed, and on-point. There was an opportunity to surprise and impress. Lost.
Atlas Obscura: New FAA Flight Plans Making Life Very Loud for Some Americans.
“... now that the GPS network is being implemented, planes can be positioned more closely together, creating new flight path opportunities.” About a year or so ago, a flight path was crafted over our development, which put small commercial jets about 1200 feet over our house. Unpleasant. Something changed, we don’t hear them anymore. But the military in the area continue to play ring-around-the-development as they test the rotorcraft in for repairs at the Santa Fe Airport. Some sound like unmuffled Wankels, they’re so loud.
Last year, window on the High Road.
Felt like doing a scritchy b/w on it.
Mama Nature’s being dramatic [photo].
Given all that drama, you’d expect a gullywasher. We’ve still got dry spots! Not fair to tease, Mother Nature.
SF New Mexican: Regulator warns of long, costly cleanup at Los Alamos lab.
“It could take another decade and more than $4 billion to clean up the hazardous waste remaining at one of the nation’s premier nuclear weapons laboratories.” It is impossible, IMHO, to completely clean up the Lab. The 60+ year old deep injection wells are percolating to the water table (“Impervious rock layers! Geologically impossible! You’re ignorant if you think it can actually happen!”). As I’ve pointed to for over a decade now: See the Los Alamos Study Group page.
Wikipedia: Project Gnome. [More nuclear hijinks in NM]
A friend was lamenting the frequency of cancer in SW NM. Correlation isn’t causation (how many times I say that), but I was educated about a (new to me) nuclear test near Carlsbad. Ironic that it was underground and drilled horizontally - this is prime, prime fracking territory.
OneHeadlightInk: New Mexico Film Trailer - Fender Bender.
Trump comes to NM.
Thought you’d like a local perspective. Money quote: “There were plenty of Hispanic New Mexicans in the audience but it was predominantly Anglo, reflecting Trump’s particular appeal to White conservative males.” His attack on Martinez is ill-considered; she’s generally liked, though less so after some recent incidents.
The crowd was 8,000. Bernie attracted ~7,000 just a few days before, during working hours. Just to give you comparison.
There were reports of shots being fired, but it turns out protestors tried to break through a glass door, and the resulting star-pattern on the glass had people speculating.
Later: On multiple trips into town, I seem to notice an uptick in Green Day’s “American Idiot” being played on the radio ...
PS Mag: We’re Inching Closer to Making Solar Power as Cheap as Regular Electricity.
“... the SunShot Initiative could create 290,000 new jobs by 2030, and 390,000 new jobs by 2050, if all goes to plan.” Bring it on.
Atlas Obscura: Johnnie Meier Classical Gas Museum.
Great place. Been there a coupla times. Looks like he’s added some stuff. I’ll have to haul my larger MP camera up there soon.
SF New Mexican: Albuquerque weighs getting more power from solar sources.
300 plus days a year of sun, probably 120 days of wind a year (at least). You’d think it would be a no-brainer. If we’d invested in solar and wind instead of oil and gas, we’d be financially healthy today. But no ... New Mexico must keep its head firmly wedged in its colon. [Excuse the graphical-ness. I’m in the mood to not suffer fools gladly. This was foolish fifteen years ago. Today it’s simply insane.]
Ruidoso News: Judicial candidate gives bold answer to gun question [local color].
Mashable: Climate pendulum is swinging rapidly from El Niño to La Niña.
... they remark, drily.
OneHeadlightInk: “Wolverine” 3 will film in New Mexico.
No doubt we’ll see Jackman or Stewart at Whole Foods one o’ these days.
Mashable: U.S. upgrades its weather forecasting system, but still lags behind competitors.
Yeah, well ... weather here in the Southwest could use some computer upgrades. Meteorologists do their best, but I still carry multiple jackets in my trunk. Mountains take the complexity up by exponential amounts, or so I theorize.
PS Mag: Land Grab Duplicity.
“These lands are owned by us — the American people — and held in trust by federal agencies like the Bureau of Land Management and the United States Forest Service. Should the transfer movement succeed, however, they’d be ours no longer.” That’s for bloody sure. Fight this tooth and nail, my friends. Our Federal lands are an investment for the future. These scoundrels want to frack and mineral-extract themselves silly, take the companies bankrupt, and then give the land back to taxpayers once it’s ruined and all but unusable.
Gorgeous day at Pecos yesterday ...
Bicycling: Pro Rider Finishes Tour of the Gila on Fan’s Mountain Bike.
“... Allison will probably go down in Gila history as the first pro rider to finish a stage on an old Stumpjumper ...” Oh, this rocks, in just so many ways ...
“Dragonback.”
My own name for these kinds of ridges. Literally covered in petroglyphs. More Anasazi ruins in the Galisteo Basin than around Chaco; the only difference is, these ruins are all on private ranchland now. Better that way, actually. Less tourist foot-traffic and destruction. Much hasn’t been touched in 50 years - imagine what modern techniques could learn, if excavated with modern respect for Native cultural mores.
SF New Mexican: Were neon green orbs hovering above Santa Fe a UFO?
Hmmmm. On an afternoon of high winds - note, right after they’d calmed - I saw a dot grow in size. Blacker than black. Moving west to east, about 2500-5000 feet in the air. Never gained or lost altitude - just kept moving East until out of sight. It revolved slowly (not perfectly round). No odd accelerations, no movements that defied physics. Occam’s razor. I’m telling myself it was a black garbage bag caught in laminar airflow overhead. My story, I’m sticking to it.
Guardian.UK: Man allegedly lured Navajo girl in to van to sexually assault her but left her to die.
Horrible in every possible way.
