Keepin' the Home Fires Burning

     . . . . Could this actually be a week in which decent people can have some joy?  The retreat from Kherson, inflation seeming to have hit peak, our midterms giving us the "Something not turning as out as bad as it could necer felt so good."

Somehow, the three feel related, along with the outcomes of both Colombia's and Brasil's presidential elections. Even so, I'm probably centering, wrongly, the US here?

OTOH, covid infections are increasing like mad here.  Glad I did the late autumn hair stylist visit early.  Also we are going back to NO next week.  Back in time for Thanksgiving with some friends -- who had covid, but are over it  But we won't have the usual second Thanksgiving we usually have with other friends, as they both have covid presently.  Pax is doing its job, but as one is so run down from years of caregiving and job, and the other is still recovering from emergency brain surgery, it's not so easy.

Another amiga has been subjected to round after round of chemo since June/July. She and I have email discussions about the books and television likes we have in common. The latest was around learning we both had liked The Peabody Sisters: Three Women Who Ignited American Romanticism (2005) by Megan Marshall, is another of those biographies that work beautifully for me as well. I've read it, in fact, three times. 

Sophia Hawthorne was one of the sisters. She spent her life in Boston being sick, unable to walk or do housework.  The only treatment that worked for what ailed her was spending the winter in Cuba on a hacienda.  The further her ship got from the Boston, the better she felt, until, by the time she reached Cuba, she was quite, quite well.  She adored spending her mornings a-gallop on spirited horses of her host, across the river valley fields. Then, returning to Boston, the closer her ship got to US shores, and the closer to Boston, the more unwell she became.

 Reading this in the biography back then, sent me looking for Sophia's journals, and I found some material that el  V was able to use in his Cuba And Its Music. Sophia Hawthorne was as racist and non-condemning of slavery as she could be, without coming right out and saying she believed slavery was a positive institution, but she was observant, so there were bits that were of use. Her remarks on the enslaved form part of the unlovely picture of our nation's history of Black hatred. 

I want to blame her husband, since Sophia's sisters were quite concerned with slavery and abolition.  Nat. Hawthorne, though, was quite a piece of work. All his life he was in bromance with Franklin Pierce, and, even, quite possibly, his lover.  Hawthorne wrote Pierce's presidential campaign political bio for excellent pay, received sinecure government posting from Pierce, was with him on his deathbed -- he asked for him, not Sophia -- was totally in the slaveocracy's pockets.  Hawthorne was vocally anti-abolitionist, and decisively told people discussions of slavery were boring and a waste of time, and he didn't care about slavery one way or the other.  Quite out-of-step with fellow Concordians.  Though Sophia's Cuban trips began before she knew Hawthorne, of course, so it was more like-to-like than caused by Hawthorne. My, this book, and the experience of it, like everything before 2016 and covid feels far, far away in time.  

Coincidence: as I finished Sister Novelists, another biography of sisters appears --a new book about the Grimkés: The Grimkes: The Legacy of Slavery In An American Family, by Kerri Greenidge.  It seems to be a study intended to debunk their reputations as anti-slaverites -- the review I read suggests they profited immensely from slavery.

So, this morning, receiving the news the library had The Grimkés available, I dashed off to the library to pick it up, because it wasn't raining much, despite we being in Tropical Storm Nicola predicted wind and rain. I knew it was Veterans Day, but didn't stop to think this is a holiday and the libraries are closed.  Duh.  I'm smart that way.  Though I was wearing the rain-snow-storm boots I got last week, so I'm not so dumb that way!  Had on rain coat and carried umbrella too.  Which was good because the storm hit hard as I was returning home, due to the fog and heavy cloudfs, dark came even earlier than the roll back of EDST makes it. We're currently in fog, as well as dark, since the temps are fairly warm -- in the 60's. Well stocked with what we need, and even what we want, we are happily cozy and comfortable.  How lucky can we get?

The week was quite lively, while we ignored the pre-election and pre-results backbenching with all our hearts.  El V did another Postmambo Zoom last night, this time with live guest and his film,  from Lome, in Togo, Africa.    He also went out to several music gigs, and we taught two classes.  

Hope the internet stays on -- it's gone out twice now in less than 24 hours.  If no problems I plan to watch more Crown, season 5, 2022. This is the season to turn the mythologies of Di and Charlie inside out. The first two eps dull and dreary.  The actor doing Di is lacking in all that made cameras and screens bewitched by her.  We see her being acidly mocking and mean, o so not quite subtly (due to the bile and acid of bulimia?). It got interesting in the 3rd episode which was generally only about the Al-Fayed family and the man who was the Duke of Windsor’s valet until death – Fayed sr. hires Black Barbadian, Sydney Johnson, whom the Duke had taught everything that makes an English gentleman.  According to the show, Johnson was the one who advised Al-Fayed to buy palace estate, Villa Windsor, decaying on the outskirts of Paris – and Harrods Department Store, then finally buy some position in a most prestigious equine something or other so he can sit next to, and, finally, meet and speak with the Queen. Queenie’s not about to allow this unworthy vulgarian colonial his reward. She and her Equerry send Diana instead. The Princess insults him, and they get along famously.  Di and Elizabeth are equally nasty in this sequence. Later, at E’s court, the members eagerly check with each other as which possessions in the Villa belong to Them/the Crown/ -- and they go over the lists with the same avid attention any grocer would go over his delivery lists and invoices.  The Court looks small and grasping, petty and avaricious. And, always, deadly dull.

The other character is Charles (now Kingwingy Charles III). Played as he is by Dominic West – as Charlie then as now lacks all charisma, electricity and interest, whilst West can’t help splattering it everywhere just standing around -- this doesn’t work. Can you imagine The Wire's Jimmy McNulty having a temper tantrum over a ... pen?  No, we cannot, but Charlie did. Immediately on being king, even not yet crowned. 

If Charlie was in the least like West’s presentation, none of the messes would have happened in the first place.

So, history's revisionism continues apace, even revisionism of what we've 'always known' because we were there.  Ha!

Fire In The Hole. Again. A Rant

 

   

I can't hear you because don't do media beyond radio and newspapers and I shut off the radio, and I stopped reading the newspapers too.

 . . . .  Twenty-one years later, here we are again.

All the same blobmediaidiots blathering the same things TheyBlathered after 9/11, Afghanistan, the Middle East, terrorism, immigrants, and with Hurricane Ida and New Orleans, all the same blobmediaidiots blathering the same They Blathered after Katrina and oil in the Gulf and and and and, which brings us the periodic resurrection of recognition there is climate change, by golly, and it is here, it really is here! as with Hurricanes Katrina, Sandy and NYC, Ida and New York. All discovered, like Madonna's virgin, for the very first time.  

Does anyone remember the blobmediaidiots blathering climate change and rising ocean levels after Venice's flooding, o way back in 2019. 

By month's end this all will be down the irrelevant-and-forget hole, until the next occasion for the Same blobmediaidiots to resurrect and rewind. 

The same politiciansidiotblobblather also.  Who in hell thinks bushwa qualified to say anything in 2021 about 9/11, terrorism and Afghanistan?

This time with Ida, somehow the same blobmediaidiots missed their blather about loooooooooooooooooooooooooooters!  Could it be that some of them heard from people who weren't able to escape to their second homes in the country what real looters are like?  O wait they saw it on NYC tv, they didn't need to hear.  Maybe they got their looter fix back last summer.  Funny how that event immediately got shoved down the irrelevant-and-forget hole. Will it return, ya think, around mayoral election time?

Do not confuse the criminal looting that we lived through here with the ongoing BLM protests, at which there was no rioting, no cruelty, etc. etc. etc.  Except from cops.  The same cops who just stood there and did nothing when the actual looters, organized and equipped by professional criminals, did the deeds for at least two nights.

The idiots are never more idiotic than times such as these, except the covidiots who are having Glory Times non-stop.

When we'll learn all over again it's all Biden's fault, every single every bit. Or it's the fault of AOC.  Or Obama. Or Clinton. All of them But somehow never Bushwa's 1 & 2, Brownie's or the orange shoggoth's or Bolton's or Cheney's or Gingrich's or or or or ....

O give it up.  We know all of it whatever it is is the fault of Others, not ourselves. Most certainly never the fault of faux noose and big tech and white supremacists, bigots, haters of all kinds. Who must be respected and catered to by blobmediaidiots at all times because reality and facts hurt their feelings and make them mad at us and then the advertisers go away.

In the meantime one cannot walk on the sidewalks or get through the streets from about 6th Ave and West 4th, down into our neighborhood below Bleecker because all firemen, all very very very drunk, without masks, smoking cigars.

And us, in the meantime?  The 9/11 trauma for us manifested into a phobia, a deep reluctance to be anywhere from whence we couldn't make it home on foot.  Fear of leaving the neighborhood, fear of leaving home. This lasted nearly a year. It returns again with every Something that takes place that affects us, even if we aren't presently there on the ground.  But never to the extent of 9/11.  Until pandemic. We really don't want to leave our familiar haunts, our comfort zone.  So much reluctance. Even though we're all overrun by those who leave their own haunts with greatest enthusiasm.

I Say, You Say, They Say, All Say "Abbott (Who Needs Costello)"

 

Why, yes, as we say, say we all, so says AOC

‘He is not familiar with a female body’

Cortez went on to explain the basic biology surrounding pregnancies, and that many pregnancies are often undetected at six weeks. She said: “In case no one has informed him before in his life, six weeks pregnant means two weeks late on your period. And two weeks late on your period, for any person with a menstrual cycle, can happen if you’re stressed, if your diet changes, or for really no reason at all. So you don’t have six weeks.”

Cortez added: “He speaks from such a place of deep ignorance, and it’s not just ignorance. It’s ignorance that’s hurting people.”

Recall the New York woman who waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay back in the day said, "If men got pregnant abortion would be a sacrament."? That was Gloria Steinem They (the blobmedia) was determined to tell us, but Steinem said it was Floryence Kennedy who said, she had heard it in Boston from an elderly Irish lady taxi cab driver.

And even further back than that in New York there were Susan B. Anthony and Cady Stanton.  The staging of Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thompson's opera re Anthony, The Mother of Us All in February 2020, was the last time I've been there.  Sigh.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

     . . . .  Brain's been in a funk the last several days.  I hope I'm coming out of this state in which I just don't wanna bother because why bother?  A weekend without a hurricane, without a hurricane watch, without a hurricane, all of which were disasters to so very many of our near and dear, after three in row, has helped. El V insisted we Go Out to observe our Carnalversary, which is Labor Day Weekend (why yes, that was a date that lasted the entire long weekend!) helped too.  There's just been so much death, delta, destruction, voter suppression, and all around wickedness in the last few weeks that my processing capacitors seemed to have needed to shut down for a while.  All I want to do is watch old Poirets on Acorn tv and read novels.

Books, we have them.  I brought home two from the library this afternoon.

I'm going to re-read Sharon Kay Penman's second Plantagenet novel Time And Change (2002), now I've finished the re-read of When Christ and His Saints Slept (1995) -- well that one I listened to while working out.  This one I'll read with mine own eyes. Henry II and Eleanor have courted and married, he's become king.  In this second novel Henry and Beckett's alliance-friendship fails in murder; Henry and Eleanor's brilliant erotic, romantic, strategic marriage alliance of equals goes to hell yet with love abiding. Can there be anything more dramatic that that?

The second novel I brought home is The Personal Librarian (2021) by Mare  Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray. This historical fiction is centered upon the mixed race, passing for white, brilliant woman, who was John Pierpont Morgan’s first librarian, in charge of his magnificent collection in the building that is now the Pierpont Morgan Library.  I've been looking forward to reading this novel since late spring / early summer.

Delivery brought three non-fiction books today too.  

Toby Green's A Fistful of Shells: West Africa From the Rise of the Slave Trade to the Age of Revolution (2019) a history of the African slave trades -- not only the Atlantic slave trade.  I wish we'd had this book back when we were writing the bodies as money sections of The American Slave Coast (2015).  

We received Ada Ferrer's latest book, just released, Cuba: An American History.  We will not be suprised if she gets the Pulitzer for it. She's speaking tomorrow night at a NYPL event, but tomorrow night is Postmambo Movie Night, so we cannot participate.

September 9 and 16, 2021

NOLA Reconnect Sessions and Postmambo Movie Night present

 

Cuba and Africa: Ivor Miller and The Rumba Kings [Some serious Congo Guitar Godding going on' here! ]

The bidirectional flow of music between Cuba and Africa, with Abakuá and Congo perspective

And, a book that can't be more New York if it tried, Reign of Terror: How the 9/11 Era Destablized America and Produced Trump (2021) by Spencer Ackerman. OK, so it's not just about New York, but it is stuffed with what we experienced up close and personal.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

      . . . . As for watching, I'm continuing with King of Boys (2021), Season 1, Netflix Original and the re-watch of The Last Kingdom, 4 seasons, the best 'period' television going. 

Brain, heart, soul in funk though, so bad has it been, that I missed working out one day last week, I keep wanting My Life Is Murder, season 2 (2021), in sunny, colorful Sydney, featuring Lucy Lawless as police consultant, Alexa Crowe.  In the latest episode we here learn that even if successful enough for Las Vegas, Sydney? New Zealand? drag queens cannot compare to the stunning, talented, spectacular drag beauties we are used to. Also, by time the drag duet was to go to Las Vegas, Las Vegas was closed, but they evidently didn't know that, even though Alexa's assistant, Madison called Vegas to learn for who rooms were booked. 

Thus -- I'm most confused.  Supposedly they are now somewhere in New Zealand ... for ... reasons? Family?  But it still looks like Sydney.

We  learn Alexa has a brother in prison and her father was something of a crook and con man -- just like Miss Fischer's dad!  The bro is played by the dude who plays Sam on Netflix's northern California soap opera, Virgin River. He isn't convincing as an Aussie, New Zealander, whatever.  

Alexa and Madison

They Say that Renee O'Conner will show up in one of the episodes, so Xena fan service, I guess? Alas, only a single episode released per week, just as with Vera's season 11. So I began re-watching the earlier BBC Suchet Poirots too. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

     . . . . This afternoon I officially began preparing for the long cold winter ahead.  I have discovered REI Co-op, an outdoor activities store.  This means they carry some serious cold temperature kit.  I started with the over the calf heavy duty merino sox, with extra layers on the soles.  I'll pick up more items like caps and more sox, particularly for el V in the next few weeks, as it couldn't be more convenient to do so, located between here and one of the library branches where I pick up ordered materials.

Keep on truckin' all we all!  

Longest Nights, Joyous Nights - Solstice of Winter

     . . . .  The longest night of the year seems to have started yesterday afternoon, when the first rain began.

We've had heavy, heavy rain since late yesterday, though, thankfully, intermittently.  We had very high winds, though they too were intermittent in the City.  Lots of flooding, though not where we are.  But what this means is that I couldn't tell this was the longest night of the year.  It never got light to speak off, due to the winter storm, all day.  And now it is night again. Well, it was honestly night so early I didn't even notice, with rising to putting on electric light, and having it on all day.  However, unseasonably, the temperatures rose to just shy of 60°.  So el V went out and about from around noon on. As it turned out, the NYC subways continued to run and did not flood out.

Anyway, the FedEx package that was to be delivered today, with the visas of so many of us going to Oriente on the 2nd, arrived. The FedEx guy was wet, but triumphant.

I am really hoping the weather cooperates at 4AM January 2nd, unlike this past March, when a blizzard shut down JFK and we weren't able to go anywhere the day we were supposed to fly out.  Today the local airports were shut down . . . .

In the meantime, it's been dark for a very long time.  Ay-up.  The shortest day of the year. And all things are, hopefully, pointing to Christmas and New Year's with friends,  and thenm travel, with old friends and new ones!

Light, light, Solstice light, Christmas lights, New Year lights, 

Caribbean light, are my immediate future. 

AH -- I am hearing planes overhead, for the first time in a day and a half!

Post Midterms Angst, Entertainment, Weather and Cuba

     . . . . I'm ready to be penned in for the rest of the day and night by cold windy rainstorm. More regional flooding, yet again. At least we aren't suffering those terrible wildfires that Northern California is suffering. 

Today the Netflix Original, Outlaw King, went up for streaming.  It's also opening in some theaters in some cities too. This is an action adventure featuring Robert the Bruce, who is played by Chris Pine.

Also I have the latest Saxon Tales volume (#11) from Bernard Cornwell, The War of the Wolf, and, Margaret George's second historical novel of Nero, The Splendor Before the Dark. Fortuitously, they both came in today from my library Holds list.  

Also fortuitously I was able to get there around noon, before the storm kicked in, though it did keep raining off and on during the hours I was out and about doing errands, breaking in the atmosphere for the hard deluge conditions.

     . . . . El V called me this morning, saying that all is going very well -- once everybody got into Cuba.  They came from all over the USA, so there were 11 different flights, which came in at all different times of the day.  As it was, el V was at the airport from 11 AM to 8 PM last night, on his feet mostly. Letting the Travelers book their own flights instead of having everyone meet in Florida, spend the night, and be grouped booked into Jose Martí airport is less expensive for the Travelers but really hard on him and the Postmambo team.

Por ejemplo: At the last minute the elderly woman who gets around in a power chair got bumped from her flight, and put on a later one. At that point there was no way to communicate with Postmambo about it.  It was such a scramble once Postmambo learned about what had happened with J, to get back to the airport and meet her. Also they had to bring a bus just for her since the chair is too large for a taxi. But they made it, and she got comped a 4-star room in a Spanish-built, operated and owned Havana hotel, with a working elevator (bought from Russia, of course, since we know who is blockading US firms from doing business in Cuba). 

They had E's birthday party last night, complete with the most elaborate and delicious and huge bd cake. El V said, "E brought 6 people to the Rumbazo, the Rumbazo gives her a birthday cake." Anyway, they're all gathered, all sorted into their various habitacións, and already deep within what may well be for some the most spectacular experience of their lives. Whew! 

This Rumbazo is ambitious for sure.

Beyond that, the Rumbazo Festival production of Postmambo, is extremely popular in Havana with everyone. For the first time many of these musicians are getting national exposure. They are on the radio in Havana! They are performing in the finest theater venues in Havana! They are on national television for the first time in their lives and the careers of their groups, many established first a hundred years ago. The Cuban bought out the theaters within 3 hours that the tickets went on sale. El V and his Postmambo colleagues on the ground in Havana are very very very happy.  So are all the rumberos!

And there is going to be a film.

Hurricane Irma - Hurricane Jose On Her Heels + Reading Wednesday

     . . . . Hurricane evacuation looks to be in our (near) future.  This morning's models show the trajectory of Category 5  Hurricane Irma has again changed eastward, to head straight up the Atlantic coast.  This could very well include us.  But it's too early to know.

Computer models showing Hurricane Irma's projected path on Wednesday, Sept. 6, 2017. (Photo: tropicaltidbitscom)

This is the strongest Atlantic hurricane in the history of tracking Atlantic hurricanes.

Cuba is in the middle of the Caribbean portion, but they know how to do hurricanes there. (El V is supposed to be in Havana 9/20 through 9/24 for the WOMEX Etc. Cuba Conference.)

Maybe Hispaniola  will be just further enough on the northern side to not get creamed.

But Puerto Rico, dear, battered, broke Puerto Rico . . . . 

As with Florida (and Houston) we have so many friends about whom we are intensely worried. E-mails and phone calls have been flying back and forth, particularly among friends who have children who recently graduated and have begun their first jobs, have just moved, to say, for instance, Miami and Orlando.  Some have moved back to Cuba.  Others have joined other relatives in Puerto Rico.  To one and all, el V says, "Get them out of there, NOW!"

Everybody within the Atlantic coastal regions should be thinking of their own hurricane plans right now, not next week.

I wonder where we will go, if / when we need to leave.  We've been discussing possibilities for several days already -- and that was when Irma was still small, though already strong.  Now she's grown, and is stronger too.  Needed to take into consideration as to whether to go or not, is that NYU's classes began yesterday.  So -- cancel class or stay with the idea that we get only a glancing blow and the university as a whole will remain open?

Tropical storm Katia on the far left, Irma in the center, followed by Jose on the right.

Hurricane Jose is on her heels, likely to follow the same track as Irma.

And Katia is clobbering Veracruz and eastern Mexico, where we are supposed to be in a few weeks.

     . . . . I did read two more novels.

First, Brian Freeman's appropriately titled Season of Fear (2014) (and appropriately read while again experiencing the Season of Fear myself), set primarily in the present of Tampa, on Florida's Gulf Coast -- during a the approach and hit of a hurricane.  It features cops, investigators, thugs, politicians and their dirty tricks, oppo research and old murders. It moves as a fast as an approaching storm for which one is not prepared. It's also a joy to read fiction (and watch television and films) set in such a location in which there are a variety of latinos in prominent roles -- and not all of them Cubans --  with nothing made of these matters of fact. This is the second of Freeman's books to feature detective Cab Bolton: extra-ordinarily tall and attractive, and very well off because his mom, recently retired, was a very successful film star of the old-school sort.

The second novel read happens to have been the second Vera Stanhope in the crime series by Ann Cleeves, Telling Tales (2005). Unlike Cab Bolton, however, as we all know, while Inspeactor Vera Stanhope isn't the child of a glamorous movie star, her series has become a television star., one that I very much enjoy.  In her second vehicle, as in the first, Vera doesn't show up until quite some after the narrative gets going, and again, as in the first, she is introduced to the reader through the eyes of one of the several protagonist - narrators for the first time. Unless the reader is already in the know, the reader knows no more than the novel's characters who Vera is at that time -- but they will learn, up close and personal.  Whereas this is only the 4th Vera Stanhope I've read, I have read all her Shetland murder mysteries featuring Detective Jimmy Perez (also an excellent television series).  In both series Cleeves pulls off what cannot be easy -- several pov-protag-narrators -- including Vera herself.  However, these early Veras faintly show the signs of what becomes Cleeves the writer's besetting sin, which is most visible in the later Veras and too many of the Shetlands: she takes far too long to set-up, and this reader anyway, starts to grumble about how dull looking at peat under grass and wind and sky for 20 pages can be. However, in these first two Veras, things move along briskly from the first paragraph until the last.  And what one will appreciate most in these, as with all of Cleeves's novels, the reader will not guess who did it until Vera does.

     . . . . Non-fiction

I am engrossed by Stark Mad Abolitionists: Lawrence, Kansas, and the Battle Over Slavery in the Civil War Era (2017) by Robert K Sutton, former chief historian of the National Park Service.  This is the first historical study I've read of the Kansas-Nebraska battles, that is dedicated only to the who, what and why in this long trajectory of violent terrorism that opens the War of the Rebellion.  The anti-slavery actors in these years, other than the martyr, John Brown, or the CSA-abetted criminals, Quantrill, Colter and the James brothers, tend to be forgotten.  But figures such as Amos Adams Lawrence and Eli Thayer are more than worthy to be remembered for their own heroic dedication to making anti-slavery the fact of the Territory.  Not only did they sacrifice their health -- they gave up their fortunes to make Kansas a free soil state.  As the pro-slavery actors were who they were, this is also a shoot 'em up, which the bad actors such as Quantrill and Jesse James did not give up even once the War of Southern Aggression was over, so to speak, making this another memo showing us that even the shooting part of that war was not really over when 'peace' was declared.

August 25th - Hurricane Harvey

     . . . . When the year cycles around to August, as the month gets closer to the 25th, my anxiety mounts.  Imagine how it is for those who literally lived through and evacuated from Katrina? 

Radar image of Hurricane Harvey at 9:05 am CDT Friday, August 25, 2017; See Dr. Jeff Masters of The Weather Underground, here, for descriptions of what is likely
to happen.

This is the biggest week of the year for hurricanes.  The season kicks into high gear about the second or third week of August and stays at that level at least through early October.  Recall, the official hurricane season for North America runs from June into November.  There's a reason why the 25th anniversary of Hurricane Andrew is this week -- which all the media seemed to comment on.

Today Harvey is barreling into the North American Gulf coast. Meteorologists are saying they've never heard of or seen such an amount of rain in their entire experience, as it appears Texas and the related Gulf regions are going to be drowned by.  (Presumably they are not including natural, annual, cyclical events such as the monsoons of southeast Asia?)

Texas won't recover for years, They Are saying. This is basically, Katrina, all over again, but over there, mostly, perhaps, as opposed to Louisiana's Gulf, which has been, btw, receiving unprecedented amounts of rain within unprecedented short periods of time already for much of the summer.

The one thing we know for certain, whatever money due to Harvey that can be gotten out of the feds that can be got for anything, somebody in Texas aleady rich is going to get it. As anyone who lives in or knows New Orleans well, and as David Simon's Treme showed with those guys coming to grab it in New Orleans, the Texan developers, etc.  already got the experience, the connections and the greed. 

One wonders too if the media will come with the same stories of African American chaos, crime and looting that they did for New Orleans?  After all, the media MUST HAVE LOOTERS. Dang, if those black people ain't looting they got to be made up looting!  We must have looters!  They make the best tv!

At the same time of course, I personally am deeply distressed by what's about to happen, on behalf of very many friends, people I do not know, and the environment.  The cone of the 'cane hitting the Texas coast includes just about all of its refineries, pipe lines, not to mention all those rigs out there off shore.

This is an environmental and economic disaster slamming right into the US and we know what's running the show these days.  The Evil Orange Demon may not get any legislation passed, but he's running the government and EPA is gutted, and what running of it is being done is about further dismantlement by people who don't want any regulation and any justice, just as with the State Department, the DOJ, the FBI, HUD, etc.

If any time soon we get to go to work to clean up these disasters, just in the Gulf it will take years, if not decades, while in the meantime environment and environment and climate continue to deteriorate and become ever more dangerous for ever more people, globally and locally.

Hurricanes are politics too.

What To Do When Unrelenting Hot & Humid

Last night, after midnight, it was still 88º.  Excessive Heat Warning still in effect.

It's been like this for over a week now, with no end in sight.  Thunderstorms forever predicted but they never appear.  We are hunkering in our a/c-ed and floor fanned cave.  If we don't move around too much we're OK.  But outside it just keeps getting hotter as the mid-90's sun keeps heating up even further the cement and pavement and the the high rises belch hot air from their massive cooling systems into the street and the vehicles pour out even more heat.  the humidity is indescribable.

What to do?  Taxes, is one thing we were able to do. Some home improvements. Meeting friends for dinner.  Going out to the freezer that is Subrosa to hear the best latin jazz, which is about the best music going in this era.

As for history -- something I hadn't previously considered encountered my radar, finally, this past week: the relationships among 16th and 17th century protestants and Islam.  Oddly, despite doing so much religious and political history of European powers the 16th and 17th centuries in the variety of our church's study programs, this never came up.

What made me think of this the other day was another of my many duh moments, the recognition of something staring one in the face all one's life: the first siege of Vienna was 1529 -- and by then Martin Luther had substantially contributed to political and military upheaval in many of the Germanic states that chafed equally at the domination of the Austrian Holy Roman Empire and the Pope in the Vatican.

A bit of digging ensued.

     It turns out that Martin Luther had quite a bit to say to the ruling elites of his time and place and quite a bit to say to them about the ruling elites and Islam. Well, of course he would, since he had so much to say about everything -- frequently in his favorite rhetorical scatology,

But more to the point there were political ramifications to this, from the Balkans across to England, Europe and into Spain.

The Ottoman rulers, such as Suleiman the Magnificent, were in dialog with protestants, as part of various strategies, describing how much more say, protestant Queen Elizabeth had then in common with Islam, than with the Pope and the European rulers who followed Rome.

Suleiman the Magnificent 1494 - 1566

Later, in the century, at the Battle of Lepanto, there were protestants, particularly from England and the Netherlands, fighting allied with the Muslim sea forces, for instance, against Spain.

However, one doesn't see anywhere, probably for what seem obvious reasons, any western European protestant rulers actually making a common cause with the Turk. Further east though, certain groups and their leaders probably didn't have a lot choice in the matter, if they wanted to survive. But Catholic rulers did make the choice, such as the long-standing Franco-Ottoman Alliance of 1535.

Divide and conquer, make allies and stand strong.  The Ottomans were major players in the European power rivalries of the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries, something we so often forget to factor into our thinking of the events of those centuries. It drove so much of Queen Isabella's policies during and after the conclusion of Spain's reconquista, which she herself accomplished.  The Ottomans had indeed penetrated into southern Italy during her reign.  It was the challenges presented by the Ottomans, the New World and Luther's Reformation that every European monarch had to navigate for a successful reign.  These rulers included, of course, whoever was currently seated in the Vatican's Chair of St. Peter's.

Jeremy Irons, as Pope Alexander VI.
The televisions series, The Borgias, included Ottoman politics in the series.

Rodrigo Borgia - Pope Alexander VI

For instance, here is this:

Overall, the military activism of the Ottoman Empire on the southern European front probably was the reason why Lutheranism was able to survive in spite of the opposition of Charles V and reach recognition at the Peace of Augsburg in September 1555:[15] "the consolidation, expansion and legitimization of Lutheranism in Germany by 1555 should be attributed to Ottoman imperialism more than to any other single factor.

   

  Currently, disturbingly, one sees the xtreme xtians, including so many politicians such as Ted Cruz, who are engaged in Spiritual Warfare with those inhabiting Satan's belt of the globe, mining Luther's writings for instruction as to how to defeat Islam, which in many places he did declare to be powered by Satan himself.

It is also disturbing that I hadn't thought of any of this myself until this last week.  I should have been connecting these dots all along.

End of Year Holiday Season Weekends in the Neighborhood 2015

Today, the climate-change way above normal temperature in the 60's has people sitting outside again while drinking their coffee, eating their weekend brunch, and talking with their companions.

I am hearing discussions and explanations up and down the sidewalks as one person in the duet or the group attempts to explain what the Second Amendment is really about, how the NRA has played the history of guns and racism and slavery for decades to achieve such power with extremists of all kinds in this nation, including the police.  These discussions and explanations are couched in the same terms as we explain them in The American Coast: A History of the Slave-Breeding Industry, that puts the history of slavery and violence front and center in the history of the U.S. from the earliest colonial era through 1865.

We were not hearing this, reading this everywhere even after the Sandy Hook massacre that took place three years ago this month, or even last year after, o, say, which mass gun murder should we randomly grab from 2014? how about May 23, 2014 -- a killer left 6 dead, 7 wounded in Isla Vista, California. We heard about this terrorist because he targeted white, middle-class sorority women (though of course there is no relationship between a man's hatred and resentment of women and his sense of entitlement and gun violence against women, o no! so this cannot be terrorism -- ask any NRA philosopher).

Scrolling through the mass murders in the database linked to above, many -- most -- of them, never made the mass media. These mass shootings are so common there has to be some very specific hook for the national media to even report. Yet, by now, with this many going on every day, and some days more than one, we can't see this as terrorism, aided, abetted by the gun industry and other political and financial agendas at work in the U.S.

People are talking about this now, and particularly in terms of racism and #blacklivesmatter.  But how many black lives were taken by random terrorists like George Zimmerman and police across the nation, before the media would even begin to notice this connection?  It took a massacre in Charleston, South Carolina, in the basement of a black church, of all black victims by a self-declared white racist who self-declared he wanted a race war, for the media to even touch on these ideas.

But today, on the sidewalks of my neighborhood as climate change manifests, where so much of it has been despoiled literally by the demagogue who would be POTUS, people are talking about this.

Beyond that, there is this also in my neighborhood today:

Around the St. Anthony's of Padua Church are a group of women singing carols, beautifully acapela.  They are doing this to raise money from passers-by for City-Food.  They have dressed their small, cute dogs in Christmas finery and brought them along.  The dogs are enjoying the outing with each other and greeting all the other dogs passing by.  Their barks fit nicely somehow with their persons' voices soaring into "Glory to God, In the Highest Heaven."  The temperatures say it's spring but the sky and slant of light still inform us it's December.

I dropped a five into their donation bucket. Then I stood there listening, looking up at the winter sky. I have an anti-singing voice, but I know these carols -- they were my first music -- all the verses.  I sang them thousands of times growing up. I sing along -- well, really, more mouthing along in respect for these real singers. Yet I am soaring too, up up ever up into the rapidly darkening sky.  I realize more and more people have stopped.  They are singing too.

So I go on my way, which as usual in this season includes paying my respects several times a day to the creche St. Anthony's puts up  on the Houston Street side every year.

As well, there's a vendors market all along Houston, including vendors set up in front the creche.  Passerby are stopping, many of them buying.  Beautiful wares, including blankets and scarves made by the Peruvians of alpaca wool in jewel-tone colors. I want one so much.  And maybe, if we were having a real winter, I might have broken down and bought one.  I may still do so, since at some point there's going to be a repeat of the last two very cold, endless winters.

Everywhere colored lights twinkle among swags of greenery.  Today's also that hideous commercial spew called Santa Fest, in which college students from everywhere come to NYC to drink cheap in a succession of bars all day and night. But they've created so much havoc in past years that many bars have refused to participate -- almost all the bars in our neighborhood among them.  So it's pleasant to see people in Santa and elf costumes because they aren't drunk and screaming.

So that's how the holidays are behaving in my neighborhood today.

Cli-Fi - Climate Change SF

I'm not entirely convinced the author of "Climate change is so dire we need a new kind of science fiction to make sense of it" has stated the entire picture of what we need to change, slow and stop climate change's inevitable consequences, which will be dire for all of us, or at least anyone not of the 0.01%.

Changing a subset of science fiction classifications to Cli-Fi in which protagonists deal with the near future consequence of die-off due to lack of water and oxygen seems like expecting effective political and social changes happens by "tweets 'n likes". Nor may we have the luxury of thinking about how this will affect our distant descendants generations from now, because the impacts for so many are already here.  Even in places that aren't drought-tortured regions of Africa with booming birth rates nevertheless, how many 100-200-500 year disasters within a year or a decade can a nation handle effectively? (Or, perhaps, the author could have had more to say and propose, but due to space, the editor didn't allow that part?)

We need much more than a new name for fiction in order to explore, create and implement any effective change of route upon this headlong trajectory to self-destruction it seems we're on. Just think of how to rid ourselves of the oil dependency that is embedded and entwined in everything in all our lives, from our shampoos and moisturizers, our transportation, our cosmetics, our agri-biz, our communications -- everything.  It's like slavery -- it took a long and bloody war to burn that down, and in the end, due to federal indifference, the laws were no longer enforced other than there no longer was overt buying and selling, and ownership of babies, and calculating wealth and taxes via the bodies of human beings.* 

What will it take to rid ourselves of unsustainable extraction industries, including the wholesale destruction of the rain forests that provide our oxygen, and many, many ways, our water?  What will it take to stop the wholesale destruction of our oceans and the life they used to support?

Writing and thinking are essential. But don't we need more, including collective action that happens simultaneously with convincing people there is dire need for change?

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*  That aspect of slavery was finished for good -- we hope! but then, there's this sort of thing by rightrightrightwinter talk show Jan Mickleson's frighteningly reminiscent of secessionist fire eater sublime, George Fitzhugh's Cannibals All! Or Slaves Without Masters, in which he proposes that anyone, whatever color, who isn't a wealthy white man, was a candidate for being enslaved. 

As to how easily and quickly what is enacted law, decided law, can be changed, by various means, think of  how impossible it is for women to get abortions even where abortion is legal in federal law as in the U.S. -- and even contraception -- even to save the life of the mother who is carrying a dead fetus.

When de facto abolition of abortion has happened here, why can't de facto slavery?  The Constitution has a built in loophole for slavery, i.e. criminals. Which is why our industrial prison complex is so lucrative.

This is what Mickleson is proposing with his outline that Iowa arrest undocumented people, imprison, put to work.  The precedent is the work gangs on the Jim Crow plantations.  Any time a nabob in the south needed a workforce the local sheriff rounded up any black man he could find, on the flimsiest of excuses, he getting paid a set amount for each "prisoner" he brought to the buyer.

Cuidad Juárez - Sunday, July 13

A dear Albuquerque friend drove in to see Las Vidas Perfectas this evening at the Museo de la Revolutión en la Frontera in Juárez.  He and his girlfriend

stayed overnight in the Camino Real. So I got to drive over the bridge to Mexico with L.  -- and did not have to hang out all day while tech went on.  The LVP people took off for Juárez early in the AM.  My back couldn't have taken that kind of all day hang, even with breaks for the mercados. On the other hand, I'm not able to buy anything because getting it home -- American Airlines! and I am also getting cowboy boots this week and they sure do eat space and poundage -- and that would be frustrating. I do love exploring markets like this, whether or not I buy anything. There is always jewelry ....

Going across the border to Juárez was quick and easy.  Coming back was something else.  You can feel the vibration change in the middle of the bridge approaching the admittance gates to the U.S.  For one thing, at some point a U.S. border cop, on foot, appears, nonchalantly strolling across the lanes, for no particular reason at all. The peddlers attempting to sell mops, kitty art, bottles of water, popcorn etc., the people determined to wash your windshield, have gone poof into thin air. Traffic crawls to a halt.  It can easily take 5 more hours now to cross those -- what? 1500 feet to the gates.  We were lucky.  It took us about 35 minutes, but very stressful minutes.  Imagine the New Jersey Turnpike and the turn offs to the Holland Tunnel, but with armed military everywhere you look.  One strolls over and peers for a long time into the backseat where H and I are sitting.  We don't bother to interrupt our conversation to look back at him.

Yet it is a very distressing, particularly for H, who was born in Hidalgo Mexico, but has been a U.S. citizen for years and years, and lives in Albuquerque. One gets a much deeper sense of how truly awful all this is when traveling with U.S. citizen who is of Mexican descent.*

We have our "documents" at the ready as ordered. The guard who takes our passports asks "What were you doing in Mexico?" The implication is only creeps, criminals and other undesirables bother with Mexico. He  doesn't  attempt even the rudiments of politeness.  L is pumping George Jones on his car speakers. El V and L had been singing along.  As el V's the one at the window on the guard's side, he answers, "Attending the opera.  At the museum." The guard snickers, "Was it any good?" El V smarts back, "It was very good.  I was the star."  L groans.  The guard laughs, takes away our passports to run them through the scanners and databases. He quickly returns them.  Now we're allowed to return to the U.S. It takes three minutes to get back to the hotel and have dinner.  Except for el V, none of us have eaten since breakfast and now it's nearly 10 PM.

I did get to spend time in the Museum of the Revolution on the Border itself. Juárez had a huge role in the Mexican Revolution (the Revolution's armed conflict began in 1910 and lasted roughly through 1920).  Morever, like so many museums everywhere, part of the institution is located in the old Mexican Customs House (see: el paso del norte -- trade route!). As much a role as they play in history, I've come to collect visits to customs houses like I've been doing visits to castles.

Among the many interesting things observed about the audience in Juárez is -- it was entirely "Mexican," with the exception of the couple from Ft Worth - Dallas, who scheduled their vacation in order to attend every performance of Las Vidas (they are coming to the Marfa performances as well). However, the earnest, attentive, pretty and very young Japanese women, ubiquitous at anything like this anywhere I've been, in Europe, the U.S. and the Caribbean, particularly Cuba -- they were conspicuous by their absence today. There were three present at Saturday night's El Paso gig, but none at all at el Museo de la Revolutión.

52 women were killed here back in October, 2013, when a bomb was thrown into their place of work.

An image for Majorie Agosin’s book of poetry, “Secrets in the Sand: The Young Women of Juarez.”

The buildings all around us in Juárez were so interesting, so attractive, despite many of them being so run down.  Street signs are not generally in evidence though.  All this the consequences of so many tens of thousands killed there in the drug gang wars, the exploitation of the maquilidoras and the violence there, particularly against women.

I would liked to have explored more, but L, who has spent quite a bit of time in Juárez due to his activist work, says it's really too dangerous.  If L thinks it's too dangerous, then it is.  L goes everywhere, anywhere.

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*The Mexican born member of the Las Vidas Company had a nasty return as well.  He walked back with several of the other performers because it is so much quicker than driving.  You still have to show your passports and prove you are who you are.  The border patrol guard who took R's passport snickered about his hair -- it's very long, very beautiful and he had braided it into one his lovely signature braid designs.  Yeah, yeah, yeah, you creeps.

El Paso 3 - Saturday

It wasn't predicted at 8 AM when I looked at the forecast.  Nevertheless, I am having a fine view of a spectacular thunderstorm rolling in fast over the mountains now at 3 PM MST.  Thunder cracking, and lightning, lightning whips reflected in the windows of the hotel's wings on either side of our room.

And now it's over. So fast, it's as if the storm never happened.  The pavement didn't even look wet.  As hot as the pavement is, the rain must have turned to evaporation upon impact.  The temperature was 96º, with a 'real feel' of 101º when the front rolled over us.  The southwest!

Among the events hosted by the hotel today is a bachlorette party. Evidently Mexican culture does these parties very differently than we see in the movies? Because there wasn't a cocktail in sight -- but the desserts were so luscious one gained ten pounds simply by looking at them.

The bride must have hundreds of female friends and relatives, as the dining room was entirely given over to the party and every chair was occupied.  The guests celebrating the bride were of all ages, from very elderly women to tiny girls in the cutest clothes and hairstyles, who behaved even more cutely (can one use that usage?

 Those little girls -- there were some who were maybe three years older than the littlest ones, and like -- I assume cousins everywhere, the older girls are adored by the younger ones, who follow them everywhere, and hug them every chance they get.  The older girls are careful and tender with the littler ones. Latin culture does inculcate that sort of attitude of children to each other.

Turned on the tv for the first time, to see what is up in that.  It maybe because this is a hotel, but the screen resolution was poor, particularly as used to high def and so on as I am from watching solely online. Commercial breaks as ubiquitous as ever.  But imagine the shock when thinking I'm settling in on a PBS overview of the Presidents of the U.S., from Washington to Lincoln.  Narrated by Newt Gingrich, co-written with his wife Calista, Rediscovering Religion in America (2007) proved how fundamentally religious each of the presidents was, and how they believed religion was more important than government to government. Religion here means protestant christianity only, and specifically evangelical protestant christianity.  The program was interrupted with endless, lengthy commercial breaks to sell many kinds of insurance from many insurers to senior citizens.  This is not a PBS as I have ever seen it.  This must be PBS in Texas ....

Gotta say: the women of El Paso are poised and stylish, with that extra elegance and bounce that is part of a latina woman's culture, from whichever hispanic background she hails.  A woman seated at my table at the theater tonight, now retired, used to own her own clothing design business.  She told me that fashion was really big business in El Paso, meaning designers as well as fabricators and manufacturers, though in the last ten years it went pfffffftttt, which is why she's now retired.  But the influence of it once being a big part of the city's economy and cultural life is still evident whenever you see a young or youngish woman, or a little girl.

However, there is still El Paso Fashion Week. I've met many women who worked in fashion in NYC, or whose daughters are now working in fashion in NYC, or who are going to NYC this fall, to study fashion or design at Pratt, FIT, NYU, and so on.

Most of the oxygen today was taken up by preparations for tonight's performance. Which paid off.  It was revelatory.  Las Vidas Perfectas continues to evolve, and shall for as long as it is performed.  The amount of talent assembled on that stage was breathtaking.  The amount of work, perseverance, faith and skill -- as well as the creative and artistic talent -- by so many individuals, to make this so successful can't be measured.

Super Moon, El Paso, Saturday, July 12, 2014

The first performance was a spectacular one, though the performers are all complaining about what was poor, what went wrong, how they effed up, etc. Artists are never satisfied with themselves.  It was spectacularly received too, and I know so, because I heard what audience members said.  For example: a young man, dressed in universal young hipster style, after the first section's applause died down, sighed to his companions, "O, I feel I've gone to New York.  It must be like this all the time there!"  (Ha!  It sure as heck is not, at least not anymore. But I remember what it is was like when I lived in Albuquerque, and artists from Europe or the coasts came in.)

In other words, it was an event worthy of an El Paso super moon!

Tomorrow night, Sunday, with the performance in Mexico, in the Museo de la Revolutión, will surely be even more so, as Ciudad Juárez is entirely Spanish-speaking.  As well, in the latino world, the arts and intellectual pursuits are far more respected than in the U.S.  Artists and intellectuals are part of the political discourse -- the entire spectrum is far more lively than anything you find in the U.S.  Print magazines remain important and vital in the nations south of us, whereas here, it's all gone online, whatever is left, and it's all about entertainment. If something takes longer than 164 characters to look at, make fun of it and dismiss it.  Unless it's filled with non-stop mindless violent action.  Then we can stare at it for days at a time, and so we do, getting to ever higher levels of The Game, whatever The Game may be.

However, in so many parts of some of these countries, violence is a way of life and politics that artists, intellectuals and the people themselves are desperate to change, particularly since so many of them are specific targets of the violence.  It's not a Game.

El Paso 2 - Friday

Needing a break from the room, and el V's constant Las Vidas' practice, we went walking in what had been El Paso's city center, back when el V was a tad and his father was teaching biology at what then was Texas Western College, now, folded into the UT system, is the UTEP -- University of Texas at El Paso.  El V, back then, knew and loved this downtown - central business district of El Paso, filled with record stores and movie theaters as it was,

This is the El Paso Main Public Library when el V was a little kid.

The El Paso History Museum is in the foreground; the Main Public Library is in the background.

The museum's ground installations are a fringe benefit for the library.

and the public library.

Like so many cities, El Paso destroyed its downtown by tearing down much of the historic, attractive part, driving away the thriving smaller businesses, in order to build a sterile convention center, sports stadium, etc. The city also employed the Great Terminator upon the very neighborhoods and communites, that give a city a soul, the soul that make cities attractive and liveable:  El Paso drove a damned interstate through the rooted neighborhoods and mercantile centers, killing them dead under concrete, killing the soul.

So, with its downtown  deader 'n a doornail, like so many other cities, El Paso's revitalization wish fullfillment is to upscale the attraction of what remains in the old city downtown center, renting the spaces out to young(ish) entrepreneurs in the, usually vain, expectation these expensive camera cuisine restaurants, and the high fat food plus expensive imported beer sports bars will attract local business and tourism. Throw in the inevitable crafts mall, art galleries, a farmer's market once a week for part of the year, and First Friday Nights special offers, etc. How many small cities and towns have we seen doing this since the 1980's?

The real kicker is how the wealthy corps and politicians count on artists to fix the urban blight that they created themselves, and, then, if by chance the plan actually works -- as in NYC -- grab the real estate back and dump the creatives into the street -- but not these streets. The creatives fixed 'em so they're no longer welcome. Then begins the sterilization process all over again as the prices rise higher and higher and higher, with nothing inhabiting the real estate again except that from which anybody looking for any real fun and surprise will run from at 100 MPH.

There is construction everywhere, just like in every city that anyone wants to live in everywhere in the world, covering ever more open space under asphalt and cement, pretending to be public gardens and recreational territory.

Hotels abound throughout this area, as there are regional headquarters for every national / international bank, mortgage company, real estate moghul, and every kind financial and insurance corporation here -- not to mention those of such light "industry" as textiles and light furnishing finishing, that employ international cheap labor and ship internationally. The busy execs flying in and out, making deals, arming drug dealers, smashing progressive governments and labor movements need places to stay.

But where do they eat?  Probably in the strip clubs, which are further away? they aren't in these restaurants.

Then there is the tourism.  Where do they eat? Well, tourist college kids, think going to Juárez will give them better deals on getting so drunk they must crawl and more exotic and cheaper sex workers.  So there isn't enough enough clientele to make these places profitable 7 nights a week.  Partly, too, it's because they don't really want Spanish speaking clientele.

(It's más pleasant that our hotel's staff is bi-lingual, and so are the guests.  The staff were puzzled by el V and EVF's Spanish though -- they had to tell them it was Cuban.  Then there's E's Spanish-Spanish, pure Castillian -- she's from Madrid.)

What is great here though is the El Paso Historical Museum -- there is a lot of history -- the El Paso Art Museum -- and the El Paso Public Library.  The library is still where it was when el V was a little kid, though the building is not the same. It's open 7 days a week!  You see all kinds of people in it.  It reminds me of Greenville, Mississippi's public library. What else does this library do beyond all the things public libraries are providing these days, including wi-fi connection, computers and a/c?  It is showing the World Cup games for all those who can't watch at home, can't afford to be or don't want to be in a sports bar.  Is that public service or what?

The Kress Building has survived, but everything around it has been torn down, so it sits within a construction site; the streets around it are closed.  This historic post card doesn't show what a glorious jewel of a building it is.

It's nearly impossible to photograph the Kress Building now.

There are some buildings that didn't get torn down during their urban renewal, and I love those. So many Spanish-Moorish styled buildings, that are beautiful.  So we were out photographing madly early this AM while the sun was in the right place to have shadows and not glare.

It's such a pleasure to have all these recognizable bits come together that have not changed about being in the southwest: the clatter of cicadas, big sky, the dry heat, hearing "Mexican" Spanish, local tribes people, the Moorish-Spanish influenced design of buildings, fountains, patios, plazas and courtyards, the food (which though el V can't eat it, isn't stopping me from eating Mexican dishes every chance I get -- the hotel has some of the best red and green chili sauces for breakfast ever) -- and, this is SO TEXAN! Shiner Bock, my beer of choice for this trip.

Or so it felt as the sun rolled down, while the super moon rolled up,  turned yellow, big as a super-large cotton ball, over the mountains, then turned red in the smog for awhile.

El V had hired a car to drive us along the scenic route, as well as look for spots from his childhood days here. The driver was a self-educated tour guide, from India, who has lived in El Paso for 30 years. He was filled with information about everything to do with El Paso and Juárez, and enjoyed sharing.  He seized the opportunity to fact-check various things from the 1960's downtown and campus against el V's memories of the time.

These days though, West Texas is about to go into recycling toilet water, so depleted is the water table from irrigation, and how arid it is, now that the grasslands have been taken out for over a century.  Recycled toilet water won't preserve this profligate water way of life in a region that has always been arid.

Chihuahua grasslands now.

How all the Chihuahua grasslands used to be, only a century plus about twenty years ago.

It's painful to have those instinctive reactions to flying over the Franklin's flatlands, seeing it as ancient, primeval desert monster -- while the facts are that a century ago -- or perhaps a decade or so before that -- those flatlands, mesas and plateaus were grass tall as your knees and the clutching spread of claws on the twisted limbs sand channels were streams and rivers of flowing water. Cattle and cotton and oil .... (In the Sahara it was goats, among other things.)  How quickly we destroy the environment, yet insist we have no responsibility for that or any obligation to it.

This is what is keeping us from ever returning to the southwest -- water. The northeast we are water rich. Doubtless other regions will be going to war with us about this most precious resource of all, in the fairly close future.  Hey -- I've lived to see the return of the wars of religion -- it's not that unlikely I shall see water wars too. If I live, that is.

Dune feels more prescient all the time.