I was sitting on the front porch early this afternoon with my eyes on the street when the postman come up the front walk holding a book-shaped package. I walked up to him, reached out, and held it in my hands. The kind folks at Bookworks and the Leopold Writing Program, with some help from …
RATON, NEW MEXICO The decorative streetlights, the hanging planters, the Chamber of Commercial-style tourist banners, the antique stores, the nascent brew pub scene. The old motels, with their seen-better-days charm. The newer motels (but still old), out by the interstate, with U-Hauls in the parking lot and their seen-better-days lack of charm. The abandoned buildings, …
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For inscriptions to take place, witnesses are needed. Brighenti, A. M. (2010). At the wall: Graffiti writers, urban territoriality, and the public domain. _Space and Culture_, 13(3), 315-332. doi: 10.1177/1206331210365283 On the northbound morning Rail Runner out of Albuquerque’s downtown station, it’s best to sit on the left side of the train to see the …
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Unincorporated margins, interior islands void of activity, oversights, these areas are simply un-inhabited, un-safe, un-productive. In short, they are foreign to the urban system, mentally exterior in the physical interior of the city, its negative image, as much a critique as a possible alternative. -Ignasi de Solà-Morales Rubió, “Terrain Vague” In his essay “Terrain Vague,” …
I don’t write about homelessness much here because I don’t know enough to feel like I have much useful to add to the words and work of those who do. But I do think about it a lot. I also think a lot about the challenges of collective choice and collective action. Which is at the …
Coming back from a morning hike in the Sandia Mountains above Albuquerque, I rounded a bend to see the scene above. Note the trash cans lining the street. It is mundane, yet remarkable precisely because of how unremarkable it is. A large community of people has somehow come together, to act collectively, to get rid …