jfleck at inkstain

A few thoughts from John Fleck, a writer of journalism and other things, living in New Mexico

Moorten’s

My favorite stop on our California desert vacation was the strange and wonderful little Moorten Botanical Garden “in the heart of Palm Springs”. Between the golf courses and the ill-advised decision to try to coax palm trees out of their desert oasis canyons (they take a lot of water – per capita use here is [...]

Desert D’Or

Palm Springs really does have palms, and springs. Tucked in canyons on the east flank of Mt. San Jacinto, they’re lovely oases in the truest sense. Lissa and I sat for a while this afternoon next to a trickle of a stream this afternoon, watching squads of western bluebirds work over the tiny dates hanging from [...]

Art as a verb

I am not a visual person. I’m a word guy. But I’ve lived essentially my entire life with visual artists. My dad’s a painter. My wife, Lissa, has worked in an enormous range of media in the nearly three decades I’ve known her. This has given me a life spent watching art happen. Art as [...]

The year of the budgie

I’d have to call Emma Marris’ The Rambunctious Garden the most influential book I read in 2011, in large part because it fell on fertile ground. I’ve been puzzling for a long time over the question of what counts as “nature”, both in our political discourse and in my own heart of hearts. Why is it, [...]

Finishing out a dry 2011

The final Heineman-Fleck backyard precip tally for 2011 is 6.03 inches (15.3 cm). That’s 61.5 percent of the long term average, where by “long term” I mean back to 2000. It is the driest year in my record, just a smidge under 2002′s 6.21 inches (15.8 cm). Only two months, October and the just-completed (I [...]

Go Cards

Lissa and I flew to St. Louis two weeks ago to visit a dying old man we love very much. Bill’s been very sick. Lissa called in September to say we wanted to come see him, but he put us off. He didn’t want us to see him that way, to remember him that way. [...]

Fabulous Desert Paradise

My sister, Lisa, found this old postcard at Mom’s last week: The caption on the back argues that Palm Springs is America’s favorite winter playground. Who am I to argue?

Fiendfyre and the summer of 2011

A guest post from my child, N. Reed Heineman-Fleck, which grew out of our conversations about my work chronicling the southwest’s fires of 2011: When Dad told me about the Los Conchas fire, and how it was different than normal fires–in some places it turned everything to black dust; it rolled instead of catching, it [...]

New Rain Gauge

I am a weather nerd. So it was with great excitement that I unpacked my new official CoCoRaHS RG202 4″ Rain Gauge this evening. It replaces an identical old one that I put up in the back yard in September 1999 when I joined the local National Weather Service office’s CityNet group of volunteer observers. [...]

Some call it “maize”

On my way home from a bike ride this afternoon, I stopped by the vendor selling sweet Moriarty corn out of her pickup truck on old Route 66 just west of Tijeras Canyon: I could only fit three in my shirt pockets, which will not be enough to get my family through the winter.

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