Podcasting the monsoon
Like a blog post, but with yakking! Rin Tara and I on the coming of Albuquerque’s summer rains.
Archive of entries posted by jfleck
Building a city in the bed of a river
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 …
Quoting Joan Westenberg
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
The batting cages and the Armijo Acequia
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 …
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Quoting Hollis Robbins
Much of human history is the story of catastrophic agricultural losses. The invention of the silo in the nineteenth century reduced grain losses from 50% to just 2%. Silos transformed farming from a seasonal survival struggle into a year-round productive enterprise.… Before silos, life was measured in losses. After silos, farmers stored grain during harvest-time …
On Hobbies
I wonder what my life would be like if I’d stuck with model trains rather than taking up blogging. Probably less stressful.
The Colorado River “psst psst” scheme emerges into public view: the “Supply Driven” concept
See note of correction/clarification below: Arizona yesterday finally moved the super-secret idea at the heart of current Colorado River negotiations out of the shadows. The idea is deceptively simple: base Lake Powell releases on a percentage of the three-year rolling average of the Colorado River’s estimated “natural flow” at Lee Ferry. Allocate water …
Agave season
It’s that time of year when the family collects agave sightings around our Albuquerque neighborhood, detouring our drives and walks and bike rides to follow their progress, sharing locations and pictures whenever we’re out and about. This one greeted me this morning as I was returning from my first tentative bike ride in a week …
Quoting Simon Willison
I really do feel like blogging is onto its second wind. The amount of influence you can have on the world by consistently blogging about a subject is just as high today as it was back in the 2000s when blogging first started. The best time to start a blog may have been twenty years …
Brad Udall on climate change and the Colorado River
Via Allen Best, Brad Udall’s critically important comments at last week’s Getches-Wilkinson Colorado River conference: Within this basin, we can and have worked together to deal with a really sticky, difficult issue like climate change, to inform decision-making given the right partners, including the federal government at the table. Point two is our current climate …
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