The Thespians

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The members of Thespian Troupe 1775 of Albuquerque High School gathered Saturday evening for their annual banquet and new member initiation, and it was a long and proud affair. It is as much about the general feeling of shared accomplishment as it is about the particulars of theater. These kids put on show after show all year long and work their tails off and at the end realize they have accomplished something very special. Tears for the departing seniors, laughs, amazing poise and some whacked-out kid in the light booth who couldn’t resist throwing up a lightning bolt zig-zagging across the curtain at one point in the evening’s festivities.

Who was that in the light booth?

Sudan Watch

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Good to know the UN is stepping up to its responsibilities by monitoring the situation in Sudan. They’re gonna have to work real hard, ’cause there’s going to be a lot of dead bodies to monitor. Maybe they could make their job easier by actually doing something to stop the killing – then there would be fewer bodies to count, less of those messy mass graves to dig up later, etc.

Cinco de Mayo

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Years ago, we were visiting my friend David in Oxnard and we headed downtown for Mexican food. Oxnard is one of those Southern California towns where Latin American immigrations has created its own dominant culture, and Mexican food in downtown Oxnard back then was really Mexican food, a string of restaurants in a neighborhood dominated by immigrants.

Before we went, David offered this warning: there will be Mariachi musicians, but they only warm up. They never play.

As we sat down to eat, a Mariachi walked in to the restaurant with his guitar, sliding into a booth by the door. He was resplendent, green with white piping down the side of his pants and that magnificent hat. He plucked a bit at his guitar and chatted with the waitresses. Then another, with a trumpet, blowing quiet and low. It was like this during the whole meal, with the players drifting in and out, picking out a few bars, chatting. When we left, they were standing out by a car on the street.

They only warmed up. They never played.

Tuesday Night Crits

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The first Tuesday Night Crit was this evening. Bill the Bike Man blocks off the streets in a business park up near my work, a half mile circuit with wide turns and good pavement.


Cyclists racing in the Tuesday Night Crit

It’s a fast course, flat with three real turns and one long gentle bend. I raced the C race, which is the only spot they’ve got for beginners, and pretty much got dropped on the first lap. But I still hammered pretty well, and turned in a respectable 22.8 mph for 20 laps, which is a personal best, almost a mile an hour faster than the last crit I rode.

Lissa’s verdict is that I’m getting sucked in. Guess she’s right, but whatever. It sure is fun riding a bike fast.

Sunscreen in the Morning

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All slathered up with sunscreen this morning, I launched a bike ride back through the seasons – from a warm morning that felt like summer but was really just spring, up east through town to the mountains, circling ’round the back to the road that winds up to the ski lifts. From green trees leafed out in the valley, to the first signs of spring in the low parts of the high country, to deciduous trees up high waiting for their turn.

The ski lifts are long shut down, but there still was snow in the shadows on the north facing slopes – gritty, filthy snow, barely deserving the name, but snow nevertheless. I was overdressed when I left – long tights and two shirts – but was glad when I made the turn and began riding back down, hands hard on the brakes and chilled in the wind of the descent.

It’s my birthday this week, and it is becoming my custom to celebrate by riding my age. Forty five miles right now didn’t seem like much of a challenge, so I added a mountain and some extra distance to this year’s effort to make it feel like a deserving birthday ride. It was worthy.

I love the smell of sunscreen in the morning. It smells like … summer.

Stuff I Wrote Elsewhere

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So here’s part of what I’ve been so busy with:

World War II was raging when, shrouded in secrecy, the U.S. government built a pair of chemical plants on a barren plain along a bend in the Columbia River in Washington state.

“B-Plant” and “T-Plant” were identical copies, spaced far enough apart that a Japanese bomber could not destroy both plants on a single bombing run.

Their job – to process the plutonium for America’s first atom bombs.

Sixty years later, the witches’ brew of radioactive waste from those plants is at the center of a bitter dispute between the Department of Energy and the state of New Mexico. The question is whether some of it can be disposed of in New Mexico.

Read the full story and the sidebar.