Texas, New Mexico settle Rio Grande water rights suit

Several years after the Supreme Court tossed an earlier settlement deal because the feds hadn't been looped in enough, a new agreement on part of the water rights issues, which includes federal sign-off, has been reached. The full deal was set to be reviewed by the special master judge in the case at the end of the month.

First of all, killing that original deal, on those grounds, was the correct legal action. The Rio Grande is governed by international treaty from El Paso to the Gulf of Mexico; the federal government had to have a say on Texas-New Mexico dealings.

Part 1 of this deal:

Under the settlement, New Mexico could transfer water rights from the Elephant Butte Irrigation District (EBID) in Southern New Mexico in order to meet its obligations to Texas. The state agrees in the settlement that it would compensate EBID.

The case began when Texas alleged that groundwater pumping in Southern New Mexico deprives the state of water it is owed under the Rio Grande Compact. Colorado and the United States are also parties to the case. Local irrigation districts, cities and agricultural interest groups have been involved as friends of the court. The case has evolved from a dispute between Texas and New Mexico to encompass conflicts between groundwater and surface water users in the area.

The backstory:

The Rio Grande Compact, signed in 1938, lays out how much water Colorado, New Mexico and Texas can use from the Rio Grande. The compact only addresses surface water in the river. But hydrologists now understand that aquifers and rivers are connected. Wells drilled into adjoining aquifers can reduce the flow of water into the Rio Grande.

There's a history of hypocrisy on Texas' side. It and New Mexico have different state rules on connecting groundwater to riparian water, namely, that Texas generally considers the two entirely severable. Texas wants New Mexico to follow its law on this, but refuses to adopt anything similar on its side of the state line.

I tie that issue with Texas wingnuts claiming that killing the original deal was kind of like Agenda 21 in this piece.

The deal also notes that the Bureau of Reclamation will make changes to its operations manual for the Rio Grande Project. No details on what that will mean as of this time.

What's next?

Judge Smith, the special master, has called the parties to appear in court in Philadelphia on September 30 to explain the agreements. The details of the other parts of the settlement package have not been made public.

Finally, how much water will New Mexico have to deliver? Not much:

The settlement comes as Elephant Butte reservoir is at less than four percent capacity, nearly a record low, and the Rio Grande south of Albuquerque has run dry for over a month.

And, is this being factored in? Tex-ass' state government, and Trump 2.0, are both filled with climate change minimalists and deniers.

But, versus your lies and denialism, I have the facts that the U.S. Southwest will likely stay in drought for the rest of this century and maybe beyond. That's why a drying Rio Grande won't fix itself.

Purging myself of Tony Hillerman

I grew up in Gallup, New Mexico, self-proclaimed "Indian Capital of the World."

Years and years ago, I read many, though not all, of murder mystery author Tony Hillerman's Chee and Leaphorn novels, about two Navajo Tribal Police officers, (I also read two non-Big Rez murder mysteries of his.)

Hillerman has long come off as sympathetic to Navajos in particular, and American Indians of the Southwest in general, as people. Going beyond oater dime novelist Louis L'Amour, who said more than once if he wrote about a place, "it was there," with Hillerman, not only was the place there, but so were the sociology and culture.

Well, recently, for various reasons, I started reading some of Hillerman again. But, after "Sacred Clowns," I may have hit a wall. An edited version of my Goodreads review will explain why.

Sacred Clowns by Tony Hillerman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

On my "formula" for mid-level fiction reviews?
Characters 4.25-4.5
Plot 4.5
Dialogue 4-4.25

I'll take that to 4.5 or so overall but, round down due to an error.

Nope, it's "dropped" to 3 stars due to other issues listed at bottom. Some are specific to this book; others, the majority, apply to the Hillerman "canon" in general. I'm going to get to that after a condensed version of the first part.

On characters, Jim Chee as acting sergeant shows a first round of character development within the Chee-Leaphorn books, accepting enough of Lt. Joe Leaphorn's experience-developed wisdom to actually follow some rules. He also finds out that he may not be enough of a traditionalist to satisfy old-time hataałii (usually rendered by Hillerman as "shaman" or similar) to become one himself, complexifying his look at Janet Pete as too much of a "city Indian." One book later than Coyote Waits and two earlier than First Eagle, when you look at the series, you can see this "character plot line" developing. In addition to their hot-and-cold at times, the ethical playoff late in this story is good. As with widower Leaphorn's quasi?-romantic relationship with Prof. Bourebonette, this is Hillerman writing a generally internally consistent set of stories.
...

St. Bonaventure in Thoreau? It was there when I was growing up in Gallup eons ago. Not sure if it's the same church building today or not. Back then, it had a wood-plank floor that doubled as a roller skating rink, including being rented out; my church's youth group went out there more than once. I don't know if Gallup didn't have a roller rink then, or it was too big to rent to small groups, or what. (Or so I thought it was there. Teh Google lists skating in Gallup itself and not in Thoreau today, but Google Maps with "roller skating Thoreau NM" pointed to the Thoreau Community Center. Maybe skating moved there, or maybe that was the original church building.)

This all is why Hillerman is not dime-novelist Louis L'Amour, who used to brag that if a place was listed in one of his novels, it's there. With Hillerman, the people and culture are there, too.

But now, the problems start, beginning with smaller ones and working to bigger. 

First, he mentions an Iyanbito and Iyanbito Chapter House south of Gallup [pg 121, hardcover], and the only one I am familiar with is the one to the east. Besides, the Red Rock Chapter House is to Gallup's south. See for yourself. I have driven past Iyanbito many, many times. It has an exit on I-40. This is why I double-taked.

Sorry, Tony, but you don't explain why you "moved" Iyanbito if deliberate. And, a basic error otherwise? On the border on ratings, that gets you bumped down on the Navajo authenticity issue. That said, in this Smithsonian piece he admits to "shuffling around" places to meet his needs, but? There was no need for this. Nor for calling the Zuni Drive-In the Gallup Drive-In. Was it going to sue? It closed in 1982, anyway, so it couldn't. (I saw "Star Wars" there as a kid.)

There's an issue or two in other Hillerman novels that generally hold him at four stars, not five. For instance, he talks about "the Tuba City type of Navajo," a description both sociological, in terms of demeanor, and physiologically, in terms of build, as if genes work that deterministically and there's no outbreeding into that small area. And, of course, none of that is true.

Now, to a bigger issue, expressed in this novel, and I think one or two others.

That is his take on the American Indian Movement . Yes, many people within Navajo leadership didn't like it. That's because it challenged their authority, just as on the Sioux reservations. Calling its leadership, like Dennis Banks and Russell Means, "city Indians," comes off as a bit, or more, condescending. And, it's a lie. Banks was born on a reservation in Minnesota. Means was born on a reservation in South Dakota. Both Bellencourts were born on reservations. Banks was forcefully removed to a BIA boarding school at age 5. Means' parents moved to San Francisco at age 3 to escape poverty; the Bellencourt family moved to Minneapolis when older brother Vernon was 16.

This comes off sounding like my dad. (I remember when AIM came to Gallup.) I've outgrown that, Tony. This review goes down to three stars, and I read you more skeptically on "flavor of the Southwest" in the future.

(At least Hillerman doesn't try to view Navajo religion through an Opus Dei version of the Catholicism in which he had been raised, unlike my conservative Lutheran pastor father with that, even doing a Ph.D. on how particular Navajo and other Indian beliefs of course all reflected a literalist, fundagelical, interpretation of the Christian bible.)

For a truly nuanced and insightful book on AIM, especially in the Siouxan heartland of its operations, read "The Unquiet Grave."

And, I realized I have now been "triggered," or if I accept that something like free will exists (I do, if you emphasize the "something like" and that it is not necessarily totally conscious), I have self-triggered.

First, the quasi-sneer about "city Indian" (also Blizzard, the "city Indian" Cheyenne from Chicago BIA agent in this novel) surely affects Hillerman's authorial stance toward Janet Pete throughout the entire series of his novels. He doesn't totally throw her under the bus when he has the final break-up between her and Chee, but he does entirely write her out of future books. Did his attitude toward "city Indians" in general harden as he grew older?

Related? As I think more skeptically, while Hillerman may not totally paint a romantic Rousselian noble savage view of reservation Navajo life, the toes of one of his two feet, at minimum, are in that swamp. And I use that word deliberately. In reality, not only is the poverty worse than he portrays, but bits of it are to some degree self-inflicted. Navajos overgrazed the land badly enough a century ago that, for this reason as well as price controls, Navajo sheep, like Iowa hogs, were "culled" as part of the Agricultural Adjustment Act in the 1930s. There's some degree of overgrazing again. Beyond that, as disagreements between chapters over Bears Ears have shown, there's not a "unified Navajo stance" on many things. In either case, on the land, as he has Chee drive by the pivot irrigation lands of what is today Navajo Agricultural Products Inc, and contrast them with a bit of ruefulness to the buttes and mesas, he overlooks the sheepherding.

In other words, to mash up Colbert and a cliche? "Truth is truthier than fiction."

Another issue? I think Hillerman has a generally bilagaana take on frybread, which is a flash point among many modern American Indians of many tribes. That's also not specific to this book, but, I never recall Chee, as an "authentic" Navajo, in any of my past Hillerman reading, saying it's not authentic Navajo food.

One other issue. One of Hillerman's novels is entirely on the Zuni reservation. Others have Hopi connections. But? Even though the Ute Mountain Ute reservation is directly north of the New Mexico portion of the Big Rez, I'm unaware of any Ute characters in any of his novels. Also not mentioned, IIRC? The Paiutes who actually live on the Utah strip portion of the Big Rez. (Indeed, some of these Paiutes have Navajo surnames like Begay or Yazzie.)

One OTHER other issue. Why, given Leaphorn's strident antipathy to alcohol, after his wife's death, does Hillerman name his new female interest Bourebonette? Yes, the initial "e" hides it, but really? Something like "bourbon"? Am I the first to notice this?

Update: "The Wailing Wind" is even worse, especially given that Hillerman undermines his own schtick about painting a genuine Sitz im Leben about Navajos, Navajoland and things related.

Anyway, beyond being self-triggered, I realized my nostalgia leading me to re-read Hillerman wasn't as much nostalgia as escapism — not the escapism of reading fiction, but real escapism, the desire to move out of Tex-ass, with the New Mexico of my childhood years a reasonable option financially — should I get a pre-retirement job there — among today's US Southwest and Western states. I will further expound on this elsewhere.

(I don't know where, if at all, daughter Anne stands on these issues. I only read the first book in her continuation of the series, which I found overstuffed with characters and having other problems. One of those problems is not exactly the same as Christopher Tolkien turning piles of notes, or maybe even rambling marginalia, by dad JRR, into books, but it broadly parallels that.)

Update 2: I forgot that I did a full paean obit of Hillerman when he died in 2008. I'll update that.

View all my reviews

Declining Rio Grande reservoirs aren't all Mexico's fault

They're Texas' as well.

Note to Strangeabbott et al? It's called climate change.

As for the degree this might have been New Mexico's fault, before a Texas-New Mexico settlement that a 6-3 SCOTUS majority rightly nixed?

Note to Tiffany Lashmet Dowell, who I thought was better than this? The feds rowing their oar in on the Texas-New Mexico Rio Grande deal is not some new version of Agenda 21 or something.

Given that the Texas-New Mexico water settlement could affect "deliverables," which in turn might affect treaty obligations, even if the Supreme Court ruling in the case didn't explictly mention the US-Mexico treaty of 1944 covering both the Rio Grande and the Colorado, it DID mention the nation of Mexico, and thus, the empirical issues behind that treaty. The majority opinion was the right one.

Blame the special water master for not looping the feds in from the start, as the feds had requested.

To use an analogy? And to take it from conditions on that other river of international treaty?

Assume, hypothetically, that there are still portions of the All-American Canal that are not lined by concrete. Picture the state of California claiming that leakage water flows into Mexico. (It probably flows more into the Salton Sea, if there is any, but play along.) Picture, whether as part of negotiations to extend and update the Colorado River Compact, or just a unilateral California declaration, it telling the other six states in the compact that it thinks that water should count as part of US deliverables to Mexico under treaty and so it will increase its take.

The six other states would, in general, laugh. Well, Aridzona would get irate, not laugh.

The feds would also laugh — and then row their oar into the issue. The analogy is complete because both the Colorado River Compact and the original Texas-New Mexico deal on the Rio Grande were completed before the US-Mexico treaty.

There's also the framing issue. Below El Paso, this isn't "Texas" delivering water to Mexico; it's the US. I didn't really care for Dowell going there; it felt close to Texas exceptionalism. The analogy holds here, too. Below Yuma, it's not Aridzona delivering water to Mexico, it's the US.

And, Lashmet also doesn't tell you, which NPR does (though ignoring why Mexico is holding some bits of water) that it has one full five-year cycle after a current one when it's behind the curve to make up a water deficit. As for that why, otherwise? Mexican president Lopez Obrador has been water-stingy since Strangeabbott started putting the razor wire in the river.

Internalized Hispanic racism in New Mexico

Today, I'm plenty familiar with Juan de Oñate's barbarity, but, growing up in Gallup, New Mexico, probably about the same time that Deborah Jackson Taffa was growing up in Farmington, we were never taught in history classes (I moved away after my sophomore year in high school, but started first grade there, on up) about Oñate's barbarisms.

I had heard about the most recent violence in Española about plans to once again re-install the Oñate statue there, the reinstallation being pushed by a Rio Arriba county commissioner.

I'm Anglo, not Hispanic, but I can identify with Taffa's piece for Searchlight New Mexico about how many Hispanics identifying as "Spanish" is a form of internalized racism at times. In Gallup, the Muñoz family lived in our neighborhood. As in the parents of today's New Mexico state Senator George Muñoz. His one brother was in my grade. The family insisted on identifying  as Spanish.

On the other hand, by blood? Mark Muñoz looked like a Spanish Hapsburg or something, he was so "sangre azul." Skin so pale white it was translucent and he looked like he had dark circles under his eyes in elementary school.

On the third hand? Our police chief at the time, NOT "sangre azul," simply said, "I'm Mexican," or "I'm Mexican-American." He refused "Chicano," though.

More fails by New Mexico magazine

Both of these in the "service" of pseudoscience, in its March issue.

First, in the story "Ancient Enigmas," about pueblitos (of which I'd already read plenty by David Roberts), there's:

“We emerged as one people,” says (Timothy C. Begay, cultural specialist with the Navajo Nation Heritage and Historic Preservation Department) of all the tribes that occupied the Four Corners. “We were one culture until Chaco fell. It was one voice, one people, one belief. We have sacred places that we still visit all over this area. If we came across the Bering Strait, why don’t we have sacred places in Canada and Asia?”

OK, I know any traditionalist Indian is going to say that. No need for the author to abet with this:

The story melds with the tribe’s longer-lived sense of its history in the area, a history centuries older than archaeologists can prove. The scientific research points to Athabaskan people (Diné and N’dé, or Apache) traveling across the Bering Strait and working their way down to the Southwest around the 1400s. The Diné say they were here far earlier, emerging near a lake in southwestern Colorado, and that First Man and First Woman settled at Gobernador Knob, a sacred mountain south of Navajo Lake. Begay says his people have always been here, something that future archaeology may yet confirm.

Oy.

Begay is wrong in two ways. First, the Diné have not always been there, and as far as sacred sites, I'm sure your "cousins" in northern Alberta and northeastern British Columbia have them in plenty. He's also wrong in that, no, the Navajos didn't emerge with other peoples. This, to go woke on the woke, is just another installment in Navajo cultural appropriation of Pueblo traditions and religion. 

Then, in the piece "Abiquiu State of Mind," we have the tagline of author Molly Boyle:

Molly Boyle thinks even the truest atheist can have a spiritual encounter in Abiquiu ...

Tied to the end of the third-to-last paragraph of the body copy:

I’ve had metaphysical experiences during fireside suppers in campgrounds that line the Río Chama along Forest Road 151, and while winding through the wooden Stations of the Cross on an alternate path toward the Monastery of Christ in the Desert.

Kind of like the "To the Atheist" chapter in the AA book, eh?

Ms. Boyle may be an atheist in the narrow sense, like countless millions of Theravada Buddhists. But, as it's usually used in the modern West, to imply rejection of metaphyiscal entities? She isn't, if she's claiming to be one, and if she thinks a "spiritual encounter" should include metaphysics, even for atheists, like the AA chapter, she's patronizing as hell.

That goes along with encouraging neoliberal environmental Karens to illegally walk dogs off-leash in federal wilderness.

I only read because I have a gift subscription.

Texas school history textbooks are teh suck — here's how, part 1

The Monthly has the first in a three-part series about how Texas public school history textbooks are teh suck. The first piece is good. I'll have to admit that, growing up in New Mexico and reading a book that told me exactly where in today's Morocco he was from, I did not know that "Esteban"'s real given alternative modern dubbed name was Mustafa Azemmouri. 

That said, noting the normal Arabic suffix for place-based surnames, I could have figured that out soon enough, if I operated on the assumption that he had a place-based surname. Also, given that Azemmour was the place where he was sold into slavery, and unknown if it was his birthplace or not, this also may not be totally correct.

In fact, if I recall correctly, from the book I read, he was BORN in the interior of Morocco, so, giving him the name of Mustafa Azemmouri could be putting lipstick on a hog, or, to put it into modern language, substituting one privilege for another.. Mustafa itself is a very common Arabic name, and whatever Arab — I presume that rather than fellow Berber, assuming he was that — may have sold him into slavery may have given him that name. Hell, maybe Arabs used it as a name for slaves they sold in general. Also, "Mustafa" sounds similar enough to "Esteban" it would have made an easy way to give him a Christian first name, whether he was baptized on Dec. 26 or not.

That said? If you asked around GOP Austin, Danny Goeb would say they're great, Strangeabbott would issue a Jesuitical hair-splitting statement while talking about his Mezzican wife, Kenny Boy would try to sell you stock in Pearson and Tim Dunn would pay $1 million to get the SBOE to approve a textbook even more wrong.

THAT said, calling Azemmouri "Black" might not be accurate, either. We have no pictures of Esteban, and he WAS, after all, from Morocco, not Congo. 

So, the first piece is good. But, with this, it falls a touch short of great.

A shitstorm US Senate race in New Mexico

I remember, just over 20 years ago, when Greens were so strong in northern New Mexico that they actually did lead to a Republican, Bill Redmond, being a short-term GOP Congresscritter for the First District. Now, they can't even muster a statewide candidate for this year's Senate race, featuring an inside-player neoliberal House member, Ben Ray Lujan (and a grifter off a New Mexico insider family name) as the Dem candidate. The sadness is even greater when you note that the Libertarian in the race is a climate change denialist, Lujan is a neoliberal minimizer, and the Rethug wouldn't even answer questions. Let's add in that the Libertarian, Walsh, is an ex-Dem.

Yes, I know that the pandemic has hindered third-party registration efforts. 

But, at least in the gov's race, Greens haven't run a candidate since 2002. And, they did well, with David Bacon taking 5.5 percent. Since then? Nada? Tom Udall, vacating the Senate seat, had no Green (or Libertarian) opposition in either 2008 or 2014.

It's like the momentum in the Place Different from Nader's 2000 prez run, which had the pre-2000 background in the north, has wasted away.

Grants, New Mexico: A story of a town's promise and peril, uranium booms and busts

For the first time, I think, since I moved away from Gallup, New Mexico decades and decades ago as a teenager, I actually drove through all of Grants on old Route 66, rather than driving by on I-40. I had planned on driving up to the Mount Taylor trail and climbing to the peak, but time just got cramped.

The old former Uranium Cafe.

For those who don't know, Grants once billed itself as the Uranium Capital of the World. The "world" part was hyperbole, but it was, staying ahead of southeast Utah where Canyonlands National Park now is, definitely the Uranium Capital of the U.S.

That picture at left? The Uranium Cafe was the original name, and was when I was a kid in Gallup.

That being the Uranium Capital of the U.S., if not quite the world, ended the same year I moved out of Gallup, and for two reasons.

One is well-known to the general public: Three Mile Island.

The other, far less known, is a rupture of a tailings pond at the Church Rock Mine, near Gallup and west of Grants, that summer. It actually, it is believed, released more radiation than Three Mile Island, and per the link, the laggard response to it may indeed have had racism behind it. The mine employed mainly Navajos, who had already suffered from two decades of bigotry in uranium mine and milling safety. And, the tailings pond, when ruptured, eventually flowed into the Rio Puerco of the West, through "checkerboard" Navajo land and then through Gallup, often known at that time as "Drunk City."

Had Three Mile Island and the tailings pond rupture happen two years later? Not such a big deal. Sure, nuclear power plant building had already slowed down. But, this would have been in 1981, during the regulations-lightening Reagan Administration. And, after the Iranian oil embargo, which would have further pushed places like New England to move from fuel oil to electricity for heat if locales there hadn't yet done that.

But, that's not the way it happened.

Grants: The down side.

So, Grants kind of imploded. Fair chunks of the town still look like the site pictured at right.

And, I do mean fair chunks. I ran out of time to drive very far on the Forest Service roads, but I took NM 547 up to the first mile of FS road on the route to the Mount Taylor trailhead. There's more of Grants that looks like what I have here. Maybe 20 percent?

After I left Gallup, I used to joke that it and Española were the two armpits of the state. Maybe they're not alone.

Looking for tenants in Grants.

The city's still trying to recruit people and businesses to live there. Just a block away from the old Uranium Cafe building you have that fairly new business building I have at left.

Free rent on a relatively new business. Doesn't sound like a bad deal, does it? But, nobody's buying. That's with the city still growing, albeit tenuously, ever since losing one-quarter of its population, almost 3,000 people, in the 1980s. But, the growth is nothing more than natural population increase.

The lack of business interest shows in other ways.

Long before the current implosion in the newspaper industry, the old Grants Beacon, sometime after becoming the Cibola Beacon but long before today, went from five-day daily to semiweekly circulation. It then shut its doors two years ago, but was quickly replaced by the Cibola Journal.

Speaking of Journals, the Albuquerque Journal, at least on newspaper coin racks, appears to have deserted Grants. I grabbed some food at the Mickey D's there and saw two newspapers. One was the Cibola Journal, and the other was NOT the Albuquerque Journal.

It was the Gallup Independent.

Yes, Gallup is 15 miles closer than Albuquerque. But, seriously, if you're doing shopping outside of Grants, you're headed to Duke City, not Drunk City. This is to me another sign of how much the Albuquerque Journal is imploding in recent years. It's become more predictably wingnut on its op-ed pages, even as Albuquerque as a city becomes more liberal, and tightened its horns otherwise.

Part of Grants' River Walk Park area.

Anyway, Grants is trying. Gallup bills itself as The Indian Capital of the World, but Grants is nearer to Laguna, Acoma and the Rio Grande pueblos, and almost as close to the Ramah Navajos as Gallup is to the Big Rez. So, part of the city park, as shown at left, rightly ties in with this.

You can see three "bowls" here, all about the size of a large satellite dish. The block to the west has three more, on the same side of the street. This is all about in the center of town, next to city hall and the mining museum, which is pretty small. (It is closed on Sundays, so I couldn't check out it.

So, people are trying.

And, there's other "hooks."

Lava and life juxtapose at El Malpais National Monument.

Since I moved away, the core of El Malpais is now a national monument — with a nice visitors center on the east end exit off I-40. Bonus: It's a Park Service national monument, not a BLM one, though there is a BLM-run national conservation area flanking it.

It's still the main gateway to El Morro.

Both Acoma and Laguna have casinos, for people into that stuff. Albuquerque has plenty of arts and cultural life, museums, shopping and dining.

But yet, Cibola County's only grown 2,000 in the past 15-plus years, the same as Grants.

So, besides Grants' booms and busts, maybe it's the post-2000 history of New Mexico in a nutshell in some ways.

Get your kicks on Route 66? Well, maybe.

I don't know how well it markets itself not only for tourism, but as a retirement town. Yeah, snow on I-40 to Albuquerque can be bad at times, and those spring crosswinds are a mutha; I know both from experience.

Still, Grants isn't THAT isolated, and with all the nature stuff to do, and the history as well, you'd think it could draw more retirees who want a small town atmosphere while being relatively close to a big city.

On the other hand, the US as a whole was whiter 20 years ago, let alone 50 or 70 years ago, than today. A lot of retirees, even without the "bombed-out" buildings, would be leery of Grants.

And, we'll leave it all right there.

#OTD — #Roswell was attacked by an Air Force spy balloon

That's what happened July 8, 1947. Roswell, New Mexico was "attacked" by a top-secret United States Air Force spy balloon loaded with high-tech sensors crashed. Specifically, as Wiki notes, it was loaded with nuclear sensors.

The Air Force wasn't going to tell the media that. It kept mum at first, while various different rumors spread, most actively and deliberately. (For details on the Project Mogul snooping, go here.)

An interesting sidebar is that, even though the public face of the burgeoning U.S. "national security establishment" said in 1947 that the Russkies were a long way from getting "The Bomb," we were otherwise acting like that wasn't such a long ways away, as the sensors were in that balloon for one reason only.

In fact, that's a lot more interesting than "aliens" claims about Roswell in particular or anything related to Project Mogul in general. In fact in fact, I wonder if anybody's written a book just about the start of Mogul, and how much government worries in private did not square with government jauntiness in public.

But, Roswell Army Air Force base public information officer Walter Haupt, for whatever reason, mentioned a "flying disc" after the government got to the site. Then, rancher William "Mac" Brazel (corrected on first name), possibly "primed" by this, claimed to have seen such a disc.

Eventually, "aliens"!

No, not at all.

For more on a properly skeptical stance toward the incident, see this by CSICOP.

That said, I "admire," in a sense, the city of Roswell for continuing to tout the mythical version of the incident, as peddled by the Roswell UFO museum at that link.

I do NOT admire either the city of Roswell, nor Chaves County, when either gives any money to the museum. No more than I would Ken Ham's Noah's Ark museum. In this case, there's no First Amendment issues. It's just the same level of pseudoscience.

And, folks, I've BEEN to the Roswell museum. And heard a curator, or docent, or whatever (maybe it was one of THEM) just say, "You have to believe!" (I think he was possibly responding to a sotto voce comment by yours truly.)

No, I don't "have to" do anything.

As for claims that two dozen people saw aliens? Paul of Tarsus says 500 people at one time saw a resurrected Jesus. I don't believe that one either.

Besides, as with JFK conspiracy theorists, there's at least half a dozen different competing alien theories. I prefer Occam's Razor as an additional guide to the truth.

Per the "admire" in scare quotes? If not for that museum, New Mexico Military Institute and a branch of Eastern New Mexico University, Roswell would have half its population and twice its boredom factor. Oh, there are places to the west that are scenic indeed, around Ruidoso and Sacramento. But, Roswell itself? It's at the farthest stretch of the High Plains without having the scenery of the desert, let alone mountains.

And, yes, it draws the tourists. I lived about 90 miles away in 1997, the 50th anniversary year, and we had spillover hotel bookings because Roswell was sold out.

Interestingly, though it's the birthplace of John Denver, there's about zero promotion of his life there. I know, he was a military brat and didn't live there long. Still, you could do something.

And, someday, the Pecos is going to be a creek not a river, and the last bits of groundwater's going to go away, and the dairy farming and cheesemaking will follow.

Other than it being a retiree area for NMMI alums and other ex-military, I'm not sure why it continues to grow in population today.

Dallas as the Mexican food capital of the US? The Snooze makes me laugh

Whether for traditional Mexican food or modern frou-frou, Leslie Brenner's call on Dallas to work for and claim this mantle makes me laugh.

First, on the traditional side, and the first modernization wave, Texans don't know real Mexican, outside of places in and near the Valley. Traditional generic Ameri-Mex foods were largely invented outside of Texas, like the burrito in Tucson. What Texans misspell and call "chili" is laughed at in New Mexico, the home of the oldest Mexican-American culture in the US.

Cali-Mex is, if not better than Tex-Mex by a lot, is by at least a bit.

Plus, Los Angeles can easily top Dallas on the frou-frou side. And per capita, Santa Fe, I mean Fanta Se, surely can.

As far as traditional, early modern plus frou-frou together, I'd take Santa Fe, Albuquerque, Tucson and Denver ahead of Dallas. Through out the frou-frou, I'd take Las Cruces.

Hell, I wouldn't even take Dallas first in Texas. For the whole enchilada of all three timespans together, I'd take San Antonio first. Austin might be second.

Through out the frou-frou, and El Paso is ahead of all. Lower Valley cities probably are, too.

Besides, knowing Leslie Brenner's food review history with the Snooze, I know how many jars of salsa to take this idea with. And, given the snootiness that has sometimes involved, maybe she and her Mexican food aspirations for Dallas are being hoist by the same large petard.

The dysfunctional Land of Disenchantment

About a month ago, I blogged about how New Mexico — the state and state goverment alike — were slouching further toward Gomorrah.

I basically said it sucked, and that denial was part of the problem. Residents admit that.

But, per another Albuquerque Journal piece, many of the same residents refuse to admit that
1. The Great Recession is over;
2. NM has been governed by a Republican gov the last six years;
3. The GOP has had partial control of the NM state legislature during part of that time. (The previous session of the House was Republican, and the first session of the Senate in her first term was controlled by a coalition of Republicans and select Democrats, per Wikipedia.)

In other words, Gov. Susana Martinez, in her first six years, had either one side of the Roundhouse or the other in her corner four of six years. And, during her first term, she got at least some Senate Dems in her corner the first two years. (The coalition was a carryover from the last Senate session under her gubernatorial predecessor, Big Bill Richardson.)

When Martinez is being called a RINO, you know the river Denial is running deeper, especially in red-state areas south of Duke City, than is the Rio Grande. And, per the previous paragraph, no, wingnuts, not all Democratic legiscritters were "librulz" determined to oppose her agenda.

But state Democrats, specifically the state legiscritters in the Roundhouse, aren't helping.

They now have the majority in both chambers, yet fiddle while Rome, Santa Fe and Albuquerque burn by debating, or perhaps, "debating," an official state cheeseburger, an official state dance and green chile vanity license plates. That's on top of the Land of Enchantment already overloading with such nuttery to the point of having a state question. (Of course, when it comes to state foods, pandering and related, once again, the blather is bigger in Texas.)

Oh, making a wedding polka the official song of a state with a below-average marriage rate and above-average divorce rate is ironic at a minimum, hypocritical at the most.

It seems clear that New Mexico Democrats don't want the responsibility of the tough decisions, even if Martinez's poll slump means it would be easy to blame her for them, and keep doing so through the 2018 state elections.

Well, if they keep playing that way, it WILL backfire. Now is not the time to be dilatory.

(Welcome here, readers of Joe Monahans' site. In case you're wondering, I grew up in Gallup and have relatives in Grants and Farmington. Take a look at my Flickr albums for a few of my photos of adult returns to the area.)

Why New Mexico sucks — wingnut denialism, in part

First, it does suck, and it's not going in the right direction. Residents admit that.

But, per another Albuquerque Journal piece, many of the same residents refuse to admit that
1. The Great Recession is over;
2. NM has been governed by a Republican gov the last six years;
3. The GOP has had partial control of the NM state legislature during part of that time. (The previous session of the House was Republican, and the first session of the Senate in her first term was controlled by a coalition of Republicans and select Democrats, per Wikipedia.)

In other words, Gov. Susana Martinez, in her first six years, had either one side of the Roundhouse or the other in her corner four of six years. And, during her first term, she got at least some Senate Dems in her corner the first two years. (The coalition was a carryover from the last Senate session under her gubernatorial predecessor, Big Bill Richardson.)

When Martinez is being called a RINO, you know the river Denial is running deeper, especially in red-state areas south of Duke City, than is the Rio Grande. And, per the previous paragraph, no, wingnuts, not all Democratic legiscritters were "librulz" determined to oppose her agenda.

Said RINO-type commenters also refuse to admit:
1. Gary Johnson, for all his controversies, was able to work better with the Lege than Martinez;
2. For whatever reasons, people who elect GOP govs in the Land of dis-Enchantment won't elect GOP legiscritters on a regular basis.
3. Voters appear to have gotten more tired of the GOP again.
4. Martinez is certainly NOT a RINO.

Indeed, if one looks at her record, she's stolen a page or two from the Sam Brownback book. And, on jobs creation, been even worse than him in Kansas.

The problem is that many Dems still have no cojones to stand up to her more, or to take the bit in their mouths on other issues.

You can't totally blame oil and gas. The Permian is cheaper to frack than many other parts of the country, and New Mexico has added four rigs each of the last two weeks, according to Baker Hughes. And, the industry is claiming this will boost "low-tech" jobs and the state should help them out on this.

As for the state being overly reliant on federal dollars, as claimed in the second link? It's true. The state is eighth in percentage of state revenue coming from the feds versus how much it pays out in federal taxes; it's also second in percentage of resident income coming from federal support. It's also a state with a high percentage of federal employees.

Speaking of, from that second link, this is funny, hypocritcal, or a bit of both:

“The fact is our state is way too reliant on federal dollars – has been for over a century,” said Michael Lonergan, the governor’s spokesman. “Because of that, not only did we get hit with the national recession, but we took a second blow with federal budget cuts (commonly referred to as sequestration) and a dysfunctional Washington. That put us behind almost every state. To make problems worse, we just saw one of the steepest crashes in the oil and gas industry – another sector we’ve been reliant on for decades. 

Lonergan said the governor has championed tax cuts and job training, adding, “We can no longer rely on Washington congressional leadership. That’s why it’s more important than ever that we continue to grow our private sector and help small businesses grow.”

So, lemme see; the GOP took over the federal House at the same time Martinez became governor. That takeover included a then-freshman Congresscritter from New Mexico called Steve Pearce, who supported the sequestration the House GOP rammed through and Dear Leader surrendered to.

Second, many of those federal dollars are high-tech and well-paying. Do you really want to write off the Los Alamos and Sandia labs? (Let's not forget that Dear Leader's updating of nukes certainly helped those labs.)

Further note to Lonergan: Utah's also pretty reliant on federal dollars, with all those national parks. New Mexico has probably done a less-than-stellar job of marketing, including working on getting tourists to venture very far outside the Albuquerque-Santa Fe-Taos corridor. This has been a long-standing issue under governors of both parties.

Take the greater Ruidoso area. Yes, Texans hit the slopes at Ski Apache if they don't do Angel Fire. Other than that? Smokey Bear gets minimal promotion.

Or, the Glenwood-Silver City area? (I remember the worries about Silver City being "discovered." I'm betting they wish they had that worry now.)

And "New Mexico True" as a marketing slogan? Maybe it works inside the state, but I find its appeal to non-residents is minimal.

As for crime rate? It's actually been in the bottom 10 consistently since the early 1980s, other than improving modestly when Big Bill was in office. It was not great before then, but it was at least like it was in Richardson's time. Maybe we should blame St. Ronald of Reagan, wingnuts.

That said, high school graduation rates have actually improved since Martinez took office.

That said, one can probably fault both parties for not creating a true rainy-day fund. The state's permanent fund isn't THAT sound.

==

This is not coming from a total outsider.

I grew up in Gallup. The first weekly newspaper where I was an editor was in Hobbs.

My one brother still lives in Farmington. My sister and her family lived once at the west end of the Oklahoma Panhandle, far enough out to shop in Clayton. (Why not Dalhart, I don't know.) They later lived in Albuquerque.

Bernie's too good a Dem for a revolution, Iowa version

In response to another person on Twitter asking what Bernie Sanders was doing about various voting problems, including alleged vote fraud, in some states in the Democratic campaign process, friend Brains Tweeted:

Silent? He's filed lawsuit in AZ, a recanvass in KY. DOJ has taken over his NY complaints, others suing in MA. https://t.co/dGLBzYvDHO

— PDiddie (@PDiddie) May 29, 2016

And, I responded, rhetorically because I knew the answer and the why of the answer, that he's not doing anything in Iowa.

And, why not?

Because he's too good of a Dem, just like, as I've noted before, he's too good of a Dem to mention Hillary's coup in Honduras. (When he did mention past coups, he only mentioned those under Ike, and not JFK or LBJ, too.)

All the states Brains lists are primary states, which means any voting problems are at least in part the problem of elected or appointed state government officials.

Iowa is a caucus state. Questions about the voting process, vote totals and the Iowa Democratic Party's refusal to recount are purely Iowa Democrats (and national Dems) inside baseball.

This is why Bernie hasn't sued over Iowa, and won't sue over Iowa.

(Sadly, in his trip through New Mexico, Bernie the Warhawk touted his efforts in getting a Sandia National Laboratory extension in Vermont. Yes, it does other things besides build nukes, but ... guess Bernie the Warhawk is Bernie the Nuke Lover, too. I was about to write more ... but, it's time to turn that into a separate blog post! And no spoiler alerts!)

It's also why he won't mention Clinton's emails. He's "too good a Dem."

Hey, Bernie ... voters in Democratic primaries have repeatedly said "trust" is a huge factor. This issue was handed to you on a plate, and it was NOT manufactured by Trey Gowdy.

Stay thirsty, my friends. Vote Green.

==

Contra Brains' one Twitter correspondent, per this updated post, no, I do NOT believe the "voting machine fix is in." Let's look back the past few elections. The 2010 midterms for House/Senate were a clusterfuck because Preznit Kumbaya was still singing too much Kumbaya. State legislature and gubernatorial races became a tag-along clusterfuck.

As a result, although Dear Leader, while singing less Kumbaya but never totally stopping, won re-election in 2012, Congressional Dems could gain no ground, due to state gerrymandering of House districts, and a GOP-friendly Senate cycle led them to recapture the upper house. Dear Leader campaigning primarily for himself didn't help.

Anyway, no "fix" is needed in general elections. In primaries, the idea of elected state-level elections officials of one party favoriing one person over another from the other party is ridiculous. I already shot this idea down in Arizona.

Tradition! — New Mexico style

In dusty, high-country towns
Off the more-beaten path of northern New Mexico
Acequias still channel water from trickling streams
As they have for three hundred years.
Majordomos still oversee gates
While users maintain the precious ditches,
Along with log aqueducts
And anything else to redistribute liquid gold
In a dry, ancient land.
In the surrounding forests
Remnants of old Spanish land grants remain
With logging sections still parceled out
To descendents of 1700s settlers
Still holding on to old family rights
And old family tradition!
Tradition!
I could never bind myself to the land like that,
But I don’t have three hundred years
Of tradition to teach me how, and maybe even why.
I would, though, like to find a place
Where I would want to settle down
And establish a tradition, a tradition for one.

10 Commandments & govt NOT just a red-state issue

Decades ago, the Fraternal Order of the Eagles erected, for free, stone monument copies of the Ten Commandments in front of many local, county and state government buildings. Some of these are still standing 40 or more years later, and not just in places like Texas, like the legal-controversy-generating one on the grounds of the state Capitol.

I present the view in front of a Santa Fe, New Mexico fire station:

Interesting new addendum; per skeptical/liberal friend Leo Lincourt, the Eagles' monuments were part of a massive publicity scheme by Cecil B. DeMille to help promote the overwrought movie, "The 10 Commandments."

No healing in Chimayo? Not even for the priest?

On a recent vacation, I happened to stop at and visit, for the first time, the world-famous El Santuario de Chimayo in New Mexico.

For those not familiar, the unincorporated community, and the Catholic sanctuary, are on the back road connection between Santa Fe and Taos, N.M.

For those unfamiliar with why it can be called world-famous, it is the second-most-popular Catholic pilgrimage site in the United States, and unarguably the top Catholic healing pilgrimage site.

In short, El Santuario de Chimayo is the Lourdes of the United States. Except at Chimayo, it's dirt, not water, that's supposed to have the healing properties.

Like Lourdes, it has an anteroom, to the side of the actual sanctuary but under the same roof, lined with dozens or more crutches. (There is a no-photo policy inside the sanctuary, which I respected.)

The parish priest at Chimayo, with cane.

The details of how this rural Spanish-American Catholic parish came to be a healing pilgrimage site are described at the top link.

That said, at such a place, like Lourdes, wouldn't you find it interesting, at least for the parish priest to be walking with a cane? Well, I did and he was. (Apologies for photo quality.)

I did a little journaling after I got to Taos, putting down some thoughts about how I felt about the priest, the church, and more.

1. Part of me was cynical, not just skeptical, after seeing not just the parish priest, but also an apparent parishioner, accompanied by a daughter or granddaughter, also on a cane. Now, the parishioner could perhaps be "excused" as elderly, but the priest was no older than I am. So, why did he still have the cane?

2. Part of me felt a bit sad for him. I looked at a bulletin, and saw that he did multiple Masses there and at nearby rural Truchas, as well as possibly at Espinola. And, he himself — had he ever tried the holy dirt or not? Was he a bit skeptical himself? Had anybody ever asked him about the cane? Even if not, he has to know that there are people like me. What's his attitude toward people like me in his mind — defensive? Apologetic?

A parishioner at Chimayo, also using a cane.

3. And what about his parishioners, even? Do any of them, even regular ones, wonder? How many of them eschew doctors entirely? How many, like among the world of New Agers and others, decry those who "just don't believe enough" as being the cause of their own lack of healing?

4. Part of me was cynical about the Catholic Church — starting with this parish, and not Benedict XVI in Rome or the soon-to-be beatified future patron saint of child molesters, John Paul II. The entire back page of the Santuario's bulletin was covered with ads for local businesses. To be snarky, I was kind of wondering if the Bingo sheet was missing from the inside of the bulletin. In the anteroom, along with crutches, were a variety of votary objects. I assumed they were all for sale, but didn't check on prices.

5. A skeptical part of me says, how can the dirt be so holy if it constantly has to be replaced? What would happen if we dug a second hole and did a double-blinded set of tests? A skeptical part of me also knows from Catholic history in the new world, Christian history in general, etc., that it's likely the Church appropriated a former Tewa shrine, just as did the particular appearance of Jesus in Guatemala with which the Santuario de Chimayo is connected. Meanwhile, a more cynical part of me notes that the Roman Catholic Church, as with Lourdes, takes no position on the actual occurrence of miracles. Perhaps the College of Cardinals doesn't want to be tested on the depth of its faith, either.

Mobile homes in Santa Fe?

Who would have thought? And inside the city limits! And, without a requirement to be abobed over! The City Different is slipping,

Note to AP: Learn some American Indian history

St. Augustine, Fla., is NOT "the oldest permanent city" in the United States. By best reckoning, it's the Sky City pueblo of the Acoma Indians. (The Hopi Indians have their own claim.)

New Mexicans can breathe easier

The Environmental Protection Agency has pulled the plug on the proposed Desert Rock coal-fired electric plant.

The EPS found Desert Rock’s would-be operators had rushed the process and didn’t include integrated gasification combined cycle generation as part of a review of best policies.

Flip side is that the Navajo Nation is upset at Anglos, feeling it didn’t get a square deal. And, rightly so, on one level. But, on the other hand, where was “hozho” and the “We Walk in Beauty” from the tribe from the get-go? (Said as someone who grew up in Gallup.)

Batman to replace Big Bill?

Val Kilmer is mulling a run for New Mexico governor in 2010. Would he run as a Democrat? Term-limited incumbent Bill Richardson has publicly supported the idea, but Kilmer donated campaign dinero to Ralph Nader, not Barack Obama. Dunno if state Dem insiders would be as enthusiastic as Big Bill, in light of that.