The “official” call: the Rio Grande went dry in the Albuquerque reach, just upstream of the city’s wastewater treatment plant (click here for the map), on Sunday evening (July 13, 2025), for only the second time in the 21st century. “Dry” in this case has a formal definition. The thinning ribbons of water you see …
Continue reading ‘The Rio Grande has gone dry in Albuquerque’ »
Jack Schmidt Center for Colorado River Studies, Utah State University 14 July 2025 Water stored in the reservoirs of the Colorado River represents the account balance from which we draw water for use. The amount in the account is especially important during dry times when the demand by water users throughout the Basin exceeds income …
Continue reading ‘Summer Update on the Colorado River Water Supply’ »
The Rio Grande gage at Albuquerque’s Central Avenue Bridge is reading 20.5 cubic feet per second this afternoon (Sunday, July 13). The last time we saw river drying in the Albuquerque reach, back in 2022, 25 cfs at Central wasn’t enough to make it to the wastewater treatment plant outfall, as flows dwindled in the …
Camp art is often decorative art, emphasizing texture, sensuous surface, and style at the expense of content. Susan Sontag, Notes on “Camp” Macho Types Wanted. Must Dance and Have a Moustache. Advertisement in the Village Voice, 1978, as quoted in Midgley, Alex. “‘Macho Types Wanted: The Village People, Homophobia, and Representation in the 1970s,” Australasian …
Continue reading ‘The Village People, Barthes, Sontag, MAGA’ »
Rivers have a heritage but no beginning. Luna Leopold and William Bull, from their classic paper “Base level, aggradation, and grade.” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 123.3 (1979): 168-202. That’s the juicy pull quote, but it’s maybe too cryptic. Here’s more context: Through geologic time even the first incipient channel system appearing on an …
Via GB News, Yorkshire Water has imposed a hosepipe ban following the region’s driest spring in 132 years: Locals have expressed their anger to the People’s Channel as the weather remains hot, and they are unable to complete tasks such as cleaning their cars, watering their gardens, filling domestic pools, and cleaning their windows. They …
Continue reading ‘John Fleck’s thoughts on Yorkshire hosepipe ban’ »
Like a blog post, but with yakking! Rin Tara and I on the coming of Albuquerque’s summer rains.
Most of Greater Downtown (Albuquerque) sits below the level of the Rio Grande, like a sort of high-desert New Orleans. Any rain that falls between the river’s east-bank levee and roughly Broadway will stay in the area until it evaporates, gets absorbed into the ground, or is otherwise dealt with. – Downtown Albuquerque News DAN …
There is a Hebrew word: “zakhor.” It means both memory and action. To remember, in this tradition, is not to recall a fact. It is to fulfill an ethical obligation. To make the past present through attention. – Joan Westenberg See also: obligations to the past
One of my favorite examples of old ditches threading through our community is this spot, where the Armijo Acequia (AKA the Ranchos de Atrisco Ditch) emerges from a culvert that runs beneath the batting cages on Sunset SE near the Rio Grande. The ditch dates to the 1700s. Baseball is more recent, batting cages more …
Continue reading ‘The batting cages and the Armijo Acequia’ »