A trail of bread crumbs leads to the self-proclaimed “National Conservative Weekly” Human Events’ list of the Ten Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th Centuries. Chosen by a hand-picked panel of conservative scholars, it offeres no real surprises (Mein Kampf, The Communist Manifesto, The Feminine Mystique) until you get down to the list of runners up. There we find Charles Darwin’s “Origin of Species.” Youch.
Tingley Beach
I had to work yesterday, but got off early enough that the bicycle and the warm summer evening beckoned, so I rode down to the river to check out the work at Tingley Beach. The riverside bike trail tracks down the “beach’s” west side, but in the midst of a massive reconstruction of this age-old Albuquerque recreation area they’ve diverted the trail onto the new roadway. No cars. Just me and my bike.
By coincidence (or maybe not?) Johnny_Mango has an update on what’s going on over on Duke City Fix:
What is most impressive about all this work is that somebody had the idea that Albuquerque deserved to treat itself like an important city. Tingley Beach and the linking rail line show this. The Rapid Ride shows this. The Belen to Bernalillo commuter line shows this. Our art, our museums, our public parks, our neighborhoods show this. Pretty soon maybe the rest of us will believe it: Albuquerque is important to New Mexico, to the west, and to the USA. And the ammenities we create today will change how people feel about being here.
(Sometime when I have more time I’ll elaborate on why Jon’s blog is my current favorite. In short, the guy’s got these wide eyes and he’s always using them, and he sees stuff and then tells us about it with an enthusiasm that’s infectious.)
The 20th Century Pluvial
Stuff I wrote elsewhere: another attempt to spread my meme – why climate variability on decadal scales is so important to life here in the arid western U.S.:
It snowed like crazy Nov. 23, 1922, as representatives of seven western states hunkered down at Bishop’s Lodge outside Santa Fe to negotiate what amounted to the future of the West.
They were working out the final details of an agreement dividing the waters of the Colorado River, and if the climate gods were sending a message with the snowstorm, it was a misleading one.
It wasn’t just a single storm. For much of the preceding two decades, it had been unusually wet across much of the West, new research suggests.
The people gathered at Bishop’s Lodge did not know they were living in unusual times. They expected the bounty to last forever, and the Colorado River Compact that they signed the next day divvied up the Colorado’s waters accordingly, assigning shares of water to each of the states in the river’s basin.
Their assumption about the Colorado’s flows turned out to be, in the words of climate researcher Ken Kunkel, “very optimistic.”
The result is a future in which there may not be enough water to go around.
The story’s based in significant part on a new paper by Connie Woodhouse, Ken Kunkel and others that offers new details on the nature and extent of the rainy early 20th century. I also relied heavily on the Severe Sustained Drought study, which resulted in a voluminous and incredily useful set of papers published back in 1995 in Water Resources Bulletin.
anagram
jfleck at inkstain = Jink at fecal stink. (To “jink” means to turn sharply.)
Glory to the Gas Mask
In which Pika notices our little secret weapon. The “wit of 10 wild horses” indeed.
A Very Bad Movie It Is
The new Star Wars is, quite simply, the most colossally bad movie I have ever seen. Let me be precise: I have seen worse movies, but nothing so very bad on such a colossal scale.
The Giro
Yesterday’s Giro stage was epic.
The Finestre, the penultimate climb of the day, is insane – something like 11 miles at nearly 10 percent grade, with nearly the last half on rocky dirt road. All the players – race leader Paol Savodelli and the three riders most closely trailing him (Simoni, Rujano and Di Luca) arrived at the bottom of the climb together. This was, for all practical purposes, the last day of serious racing. Sunday’s ride into Milan is just formality. The Giro d’Italia would be decided on its final two climbs.
There were no surprises to be had, no subtle tactics. It’s like a batter facing Mariano Rivera in the bottom of the ninth inning: you know you’re going to see the cut fastball. Simoni is a great climber, and was only 2:09 down on Savodelli. Everyone knew Simoni would attack. The only question was who would be able to go with him.
Simoni went early in the climb. It wasn’t one of those blistering attacks we’ve seen Armstrong or the late Marco Pantani do so many times, where they slip away from near the back of the pack, jump out of the saddle, swing wide and go. Simoni just started pulling away, slowly, steadily. Rujano, the kid from Venezuela with ears sticking out like an elephant’s (“Pantani was a big hero of mine. I wear an earring because I want to be like him.”) went with him, and the remarkable Di Luca – who knew he could climb?
Savodelli could not match the move.
By the top of the climb, Savodelli’s lead of 2:09 over Simoni had been erased. But perhaps this was not like the ninth inning. Perhaps it was more like facing Mariano Rivera in the eighth, because on the back side of the Fiinestre, on the descent toward the base of the final climb into Sestriere, Salvodelli had his one more at bat. He descended like a madman, like a man trying to salvage victory from the grip of defeat. And when the reached the foot of the Sestriere climb, Salvodelli had his pink jersey back.
But Rujano! He and Simoni dropped Di Luca on the descent, and the two appoached the final climb together: Simoni, one of the sport’s great climbers, and Rujano, the kid from Venezuela whose team made the Giro at the last moment on a wild card entry. Together they climbed, until the moment Rujano sensed victory and jumped. There is a beauty in the fluid movement of a truly great climber, pedaling perfect circles, out of the saddle, the fixed gaze, the ease. He did look like Pantani. And then there was Simoni, unable to respond, his body rocking to side to side as, broken, he uncomfortably muscled the bike up the final hill.
Rujano tore up to the finish line with a look of agonized ecstacy (is such a thing possible) on his face. Simoni limped in next, then Di Luca, then a powerful but clearly spent Savodelli amid a group of helpers, close enough to his rivals to ensure victory.
Savodelli, Simoni, Rujano and Di Luca threw it all down on those final two climbs. The result: after three weeks of racing, just 45 seconds of total time separated the three. Sport does not get any better than that.
Guerilla Gardening
Someone has planted cactus in the ratty little median on Indian School just east of University.
It’s pretty clearly not an official city landscaping job. When the city swoops in, as they’ve done farther east along Indian School, they do it up all fancy. No, I’m imagining someone in the dead of night with a trowel and a box of prickly pear paddles.
The bike trail cross Indian School there, and it comes right at the end of my rides, so this morning I squirted the last bit of water in my bottle on the cactus. I am complicit.
Fries you would like with that?
Luke, I am your father…. Would you like to make that a combo meal?
You Own Your Posts
I’m with Mark. I think accountability matters. I would like to know, for example, if Marston is a key campaign adviser to Brad Winter, or Greg Payne in drag. But I actually have a bigger problem with Marston Moore than his/her anonymity.
In his/her entire, well-written, knowledgeable, obviously well-informed piece, there is by my count exactly one word about policy. One of the great failings of the mainstream media in covering elections is the tendency toward horserace journalism – who’s ahead, by how many points, who’s positioning themselves where to capture which block of voters? That’s what matters to political insiders, people who style themselves players in the game, but it isn’t (or shouldn’t be) what matters to citizens trying to understand how their votes might influence the city’s future.
You didn’t ask for my advice, Marston, but I’ll offer it anyway. If you want to capture this reader’s attention, sign your name so I can judge for myself who you are and what your agenda might be. And tell me what effect you think these people will actually have on the city we all love.
(P.S. Mark’s suggestion notwithstanding, I’m pretty sure I’m not Coco. But who knows? If dreams were thunder, lightnin’ were desire, this old house would have burned down a long time ago.)