A reader had trouble finding the Barnett climate paper I mentioned earlier in the week. It is here.
Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere
Marston Watch
Marston’s back, this time with a vastly entertaining romp through the E. Shirley Baca saga. The whole Baca-King cat fight is fun and all, but as I mentioned before, Marston’s not taking this the next step and explaining how the outcome of all this entertainment will actually influence what the PRC does. C’mon, show me how this is more relevant to my life than the outcome of the Yankees-KC series.
MRGCD Election
(Warning – tedious Albuquerque government stuff ahead.)
Isabel Sanchez has a good overview in this morning’s paper of what’s at stake in next week’s Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District election. MRGCD has sometimes been called a “stealth agency” because it’s (pardon the cliche) not up on very many people’s radar. But it is pretty important.
As Isabel explains, it’s a subdivision of government not unlike a city or county, with the power to collect taxes. Essentially every property owner who lives in the valley pays (check the map to see where you fit). The beneficiaries are, generally speaking, the agricultural irrigators:
The district, created by the Legislature in the 1920s, maintains ditches, canals and levees from Cochiti to Bosque del Apache and releases water to farmers and irrigators in Bernalillo, Sandoval, Valencia and Socorro counties.
Residential property owners within district boundaries pay 4.98 mills, or $166 a year on a $100,000 home. The district lowered that amount to 4.62 mills effective July 1 and plans to pay for it with $2.5 million from the reserve fund.
The district can raise or lower taxes without voter approval. It’s a political subdivision of the state, like a city or county, and can act as independent provided it doesn’t violate state law. It holds its own elections, and can issue tax-backed bonds without asking voters’ permission.
So what’s at stake here, in policy terms, is the extent to which MRGCD’s policies and practices in collecting taxes and distributing water benefit the various interest groups that live down there and other interests – irrigators, recreationalists, the environment. It involves how much in taxes property owners pay, how much irrigators pay for their water, and how much water and MRGCD land is dedicated to other uses.
Check out the map. If it looks like you live in the district, read Isabel’s stuff and go vote.
Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere
In which I move into phase two of my secret plan to become the Journal’s cycling writer:
Todd Bauer is one crafty bike racer, and all Ben Delaney could do was smile and admit he’d been outfoxed. It was a hot Tuesday evening in Albuquerque and Delaney, Bauer and 20 or so of their friends were tearing around a Northeast Heights business park at a sometimes alarming rate of speed.
Heading into the race’s final two corners, Delaney thought he was in perfect position until Bauer somehow pulled a rabbit out of his bike helmet.
The Tuesday Night Crits is bike racing’s version of “shirts and skins” hoops pickup for the town’s best riders.
If you’re in Albuquerque, these races are great fun to watch.
Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere
This is not my normal schtick, but the Journal sent me out to the New Mexico Veterans Memorial Monday for Memorial Day Ceremony, and I was privileged to see something special:
There was a 21-gun salute, an F-16 flyover and a haunting bugler’s taps Monday morning at the New Mexico Veterans Memorial.
But the most poignant symbol at the 2005 Memorial Day Ceremony was something no one planned.
Early in the solemn event, shortly after the color guard had posted the colors, the American flag almost fell over.
An unnamed veteran, near the front taking pictures, grabbed it to keep it from touching the ground. After fiddling with the base of the flagpole for a moment, he simply stood and held it.
For the rest of the ceremony, veterans materialized from the crowd, one after another, saluting sharply and taking over the sacred duty of holding the flag.
They wore full dress uniforms, street clothes, tattered demim and bikers’ leather vests. One used a walker. But their aging bodies all stood, for those moments holding the flag, ramrod straight.
“You can’t let it touch the ground,” explained 55-year-old former Marine Jay “Doc” Schmitt, a veteran of Vietnam.
Candy Bar Outrage
I already blogged this at work, but Mark Justice Hinton’s candy bar tale bears repeating:
The old bars were 6 ounces; these bars are only 5 ounces. Funny, they don’t say “now much smaller!” on the package. This is, in effect, a hidden 20 percent price increase.
The Lunatic Fringe
Funny bit of business in Arthur Demarest’s(1) description of the mid-19th century burst of fascination with Mayan archaeology. The early Spanish who first saw the spectacular Mayan ruins seem to have understood them to have been the product of an indigenous society, but by the time of the great “travel writers” of the 19th century, such roots were gone:
Le Plongeon, James Churchward, and many others attributed the origins and achievements of the Maya and other New World civilizations to lost tribes from the Old World or from sunken continents. Unfortunately, such fantastic speculations are very effective in capturing public interest. Just as this epoch of popular antiquarian writings had launched modern scientific archaeology, it also seeded the development of the lunatic fringe of Maya archaeology (who even today besiege archaeologists with letters and emails on extraterrestrial influences, Atlantis, and the lost Semitic tribes!).
1. Demarest, A. (2004) Ancient Maya: The Rise and Fall of a Rainforest Civilization (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK).
The Biscuit Fairy
I awoke this morning to a plate of seven plump, lovely, freshly baked biscuits on the kitchen counter – a visit from the Biscuit Fairy? I almost plopped a couple in my lunch, but then thought better of it. What if the Biscuit Fairy was planning on having friends over for lunch? Or, worse, what if the Biscuit Fairy was a Vengeful God, and left the plate out on the counter to test me, like Lot or Job or one of them guys in the Bible?
Eyes Wide Open
A guy rides up on a loaded bicycle, and Johnny Mango gets the story. It’s a perfect example of why I love his blog. Life is more the sum of small moments than it is the grand themes, and Johnny – Jon Knudsen, a retired teacher who lives in Albuquerque’s Nob Hill neighborhood – has this fresh exuberance for the small moments that is incredibly endearing. My favorite journalism (to read, and to make) happens when a writer has an excitement for something fascinating seen or learned. “I just saw the coolest thing….” Johnny Mango has that. (You can see his stuff on Duke City Fix, too.)