Faced with the challenge of teaching some or all of our coursework this fall on line, my University of New Mexico Water Resources Program colleagues and I have been having a think about what we’re trying to accomplish. A lot of the thinking revolves around translating our educational goals from face-to-face classroom discussion to the …
Continue reading ‘Tradeoffs: Colorado River water, flowing down the Rio Grande’ »
In the Time of Pandemic, the ability to refill my water bottles has become an unexpected bike riding constraint. Worst case, if I couldn’t find a drinking fountain, I used to pop into a Kwik-E-Mart and buy a bottle. So, yeah, pandemic, amiright? I hate those water pack things, and the discomfort of throwing extra …
Continue reading ‘Google Maps said there’s a uranium mine out here. Also, a Wendy’s.’ »
It’s been increasingly difficult to maintain a “social distance” at our neighborhood park, so the afternoon walks have begun to range. I guess, adapting my friend Maria Lane’s hashtag, we could call it #geographybyfoot. Headed north across the freeway last week, I found this in the flood control channel: It appears to be either an …
In the time of pandemic, I’ve been thinking a lot about small rural community water systems. This is in part because of work one of our University of New Mexico graduate students was doing in the Time Before, which seems super relevant now. Tucker Colvin just defended his thesis in UNM’s Geography and Environmental Studies …
My current favorite word is “hooligan”. It’s origins are murky, but the authors of the Oxford English Dictionary say it first appeared in newspaper stories in 1898, to whit: 1898 Daily News 8 Aug. 9/3 The constable said the prisoner belonged to a gang of young roughs, calling themselves ‘Hooligans’. The story behind its emergence …
I was talking last week with one of my collaborators about the challenge of working. All the things that so fully occupied my time and brain seem so inconsequential right now. I envy friends filling the quiet with productive work. Me? I ride my bike. In the Time Before (was it just two months ago?) …
My friend and former student Kevin Carns is a truly gifted Bud Light can photographer. Cabezon Peak, the bike, the can – a compositional masterpiece. Some years ago when we were out riding, my friend Scot pointed out that the empties we saw a long the roadside were almost invariably Bud Lights. So we began …
Continue reading ‘Bud Light empties in the time of pandemic’ »
Somewhere around Mile 22 of a long Sunday bike ride, my friend Scot motioned to a dirt road off to the left, crossing the railroad tracks. “We’re turning there,” he said. The ride down New Mexico state highway 314, through Albuquerque’s South Valley, across Isleta Pueblo and into Valencia County, is a lovely one, urban …
A dry January in the Rio Grande headwaters means a shrinking runoff forecast. Otowi (the Compact measurement point on which New Mexico’s Texas delivery obligation is based): 78 percent, which is down from 90 percent on January 1. Still big error bars, because the most important variable is how much snow we get in February …
Old John Fleck would have happily explained to you why this from Bruce Babbitt is a terrible idea: Damming the Gila River is a vampire proposal that would suck the life out of Southern New Mexico’s most treasured wild and scenic river. Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham wants to kill the project. Both of New Mexico’s …
Continue reading ‘Taking New Mexico’s Gila water from the San Juan?’ »