This was a big flow year on New Mexico’s Middle Rio Grande, but weird, in ways that highlight the challenges we face. Flow in the River Total flow into New Mexico’s Middle Rio Grande Valley (measured at Otowi) sits at 1.26 million acre feet with two more days’ flow to go, so round it off …

Continue reading ‘New Mexico’s Middle Rio Grande 2023 Review’ »

One of the first books Bob Berrens suggested I read when we began working together was Voltaire’s Candide. This has come in handy. Candide is a bit of a romp, a picaresque in which our hero has all kinds of horrifying misadventures before settling down to tend his garden. Il faut cultiver notre jardin. Our …

Continue reading ‘Jardins du Nouveau Siècle’ »

Alert reader T texted a question: Why “Ribbons” vs “Ribbon”? I can’t wait to read all about it. Thanks, T! The title of our forthcoming book* Ribbons of Green: The Rio Grande and the Making of a Modern American City comes from a passage in the strange and wonderful book The Desert by John van …

Continue reading ‘Inkstain mailbag: Why “Ribbons” plural?’ »

I have devoted an inordinate amount of time over these last few months thinking about two things: finishing the book, and dreaming about the dreamy freedom of my life after we handed over the manuscript to the University of New Mexico Press. The book work, finishing the manuscript of Ribbons of Green: The Rio Grande …

Continue reading ‘Ribbons of Green: A water book? A city book?’ »

The Rio Grande silvery minnow is kind of a big deal in understanding 21st century management of New Mexico’s Middle Rio Grande. So it was hilarious to me to look back at the initial public announcement of its 1994 Endangered Species Act listing. The community first learned of it on page C6 of the Aug. …

Continue reading ‘How Albuquerque learned about the Endangered Species Act listing of the Rio Grande silvery minnow’ »

Finishing the new book has thrown me into a time warp. We’re about to hand in a manuscript for a book that traces a century and a half of the evolution of Albuquerque’s relationship with the Rio Grande, leading up to now. But the now of the act of writing (November 2023) is different from …

Continue reading ‘New Mexico’s Rio Grande Compact debt is likely to grow; El Vado Dam won’t be fixed for a long while yet; we might see a lot more Middle Rio Grande Valley farmers paid next year to fallow’ »

I emerged this morning from a month (Six weeks? Two months? I’ve lost track of time.) of writing about the crucial period from 1918-ish to 1931-ish in Albuquerque’s relationship with the Rio Grande. The period right now takes up four chapters of Ribbons of Green, the book Bob Berrens and I are writing, which is …

Continue reading ‘A Bureaucratic Palimpsest’ »