My Utton Center posse is throwing a book launch party Friday (Sept. 25, 2026, 12:30 p.m.) at the Guild in Nob Hill.

When we were conjuring up a title over the summer, we came up with “A conversation about the past, present, and future of Albuquerque’s Rio Grande,” which seemed to offer me lots of space to riff.

I have come to understand, having done this a couple of times previously, that “book release season” involves weirdly shifting temporal sands. Bob Berrens and I worked on the book pretty intensely from the summer-fall of 2020 through a binge of writing in 2023. The next couple of years had new bursts of rewriting in response to some great peer review and editing feedback, a lot of polishing. But the ideas are very much in our rear view mirror. They loom large in the rear view mirror, but they’re behind us. We’re already thinking hard about the next one.

So that “and future” in the book talk title will be doing the heavy lifting Friday. Can an understanding of how we got here help us figure out where we go from here? We. Where we go from here.

I have thoughts. I hope you will bring yours too.