Mike Campana seems to be channeling Coco in this post about Las Vegas: It may be time to tie land use planning directly to water planning. The subject is Las Vegas, which is running out of water. Or, more accurately, is running into more people. There’s plenty of water for fewer people. The subject is …
walkscore Originally uploaded by heinemanfleck. Via the Google Maps Mania blog, the entertaining (and potentially useful) Walkscore web site. Input your address and they score your neighborhood’s walkability and tell you about bookstores and libraries nearby that you’d never heard of, and bistros that are closed.
John_Sadie Originally uploaded by heinemanfleck. Lissa and I took Sadie for a walk this morning to the ponds out in the bosque beyond Tingley Beach. They were finished in 2005, and are really starting to grow up. Baby cottonwoods line the edge, with cattails growing like bonkers at the southern end. We saw what we …
Lisa’s-tomatoes Originally uploaded by heinemanfleck. A product of my sister, Lisa’s garden. They tasted as good as they look.
Back in the summer of ’78, my friend John Colton visited me in L.A. It was his first visit, and while we were there, he made sure we drove around Beverly Hills, looking for jockeys on rick people’s lawns. Dweezil and the gang played Uncle Reemus at last night’s Zappa Plays Zappa Plays Zappa gig …
Continue reading ‘I’m Jimmy Carl Black, the Indian of the Group’ »
The New York Times has a story today about Eli’s summer vacation project: The rabbit-proof fence — or bunny fence — in Western Australia was completed in 1907 and stretches about 2,000 miles. It acts as a boundary separating native vegetation from farmland. Within the fence area, scientists have observed a strange phenomenon: above the …
Jim Belshaw sends along a Felicity Barranger story on the dwindling of the Great Lakes. Per usual, climate change is blamed, though other hypotheses are also on the table: Although the drop in levels in all three lakes is variously ascribed to climate change or new rainfall patterns, evidence is growing that people caused some …
Autumn’s Advance Guard Originally uploaded by heinemanfleck. I haven’t been taking notes, so I can’t be sure, but Aug. 12 seems awfully early for roasting chiles. It’s the smell of fall here in Albuquerque, as they put the big gas-fired roasters out in market parking lots. You buy a bag and they roast ’em for …
Everyone’s talking about desalination lately as a source of “new” water here in the southwest. The picture at right is El Paso’s new desalination plant, which opened last week. It’s the largest inland desalination plant in the United States, capable of delivering a substantial fraction of El Paso’s water. In this morning’s Journal, I join …
Continue reading ‘Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere: Desalination Edition’ »
As deserts go, the place I live now is modest. Albuquerque is in the 10 inch (25 cm) per year range. The deserts of my youth, where I developed my fondness for arid landscapes, were the real deal – creosote and year-round sun. I can remember once as a teenager sitting with a friend on …