Concrete, concrete and concrete

Deb, Robin and I went last Sunday to visit the Cochiti Dam to see that side of the Rio Grande River.When driving toward the dam, you are greeted by a huge concrete wall. Once on site, concrete accompanies you into the water.
Cochiti is also supposedly a recreation place. But I was shocked to find that the space is not attractive. If you decide to go to a pueblo, far from the center of Albuquerque, it is not to see the concrete. The outer parts of the dam is repugnant. Concrete is out of place in that nature.
In addition, we read that people can swim in the water of the dam. But no space is built on the edge for swimmers. I imagine someone having bathed in an afternoon of August lying on the concrete (burning). I am not an architect but I think something better could/should be done in terms of development of the nonetheless impressive site.

Field notes

Fascinating daytrip with Cathy, Linda, and Santana Friday. My greatest impression of the day is that the Valles Caldera Nat'l Preserve, which looks the most remote, untouched, and "wild" is, in fact, the most higly managed, occupied space of the three sites visited. No one lives on the preserve itself but the multiple layers of management, administration, and use make the land the most highly managed of the three locales. The contruction of space, definition of place, at the preserve is definite, explicit (in text and in verbal presentation by tour guide Carmen), and voluminous. History of use and occupation of the property is well-preserved and the current management of and research regarding watershed, geothermal activity, species management, and restoration is extensive.

The spring located along the road between the Caldera and the town of Jemez springs is less consistently and permanently occupied. The space has clearly been used by humans for decades, if not hundreds, of years (maybe longer?) but it is understood to be a public space and seems to be respected as such. The trail on the near side of the river has been developed in the last 17 years, a concrete/wood footbridge has been built, and the trail is more accessible. On the far side of the bridge, however, leading up into the ojo itself (the soaking pools) the trail still looks ancient, with rough-hewn stones, about 8-12" square-ish, built into the side of the hill as stairs. Some of the "stairs" are even living tree roots - it has the feel of climbing to a forest temple, up the stone stairs, to the altar. Very cool. I have the impression that the space has been, and indeed IS currently, constructed by consensus among visitors to the ojo (spring) - there is no management on the far side of the river - the little bit of concrete between some of the rocks at the spring looks to be from different batches, possibly brought up by hand by conscientous visitors caring for the space - the style and workmanship is distinct from the measured and professional workmanship of the government-issue trials and fences and benches on the near side. I wonder who cares for the springs? Is it a concerted or individual effort? Are the efforts ever made explicit in text or conversation? Or is the maintenance performed by understanding, by individuals noticing what needs done and taking care of it competently?

The Bernalillo market is an entirely temporary space - a parking lot. Tho I believe it is a lot designated specifically for the market, I noticed nothing that would prevent its use as a lot for just about anything. Nothing there struck me as being uniquely farmer-y. The people and purpose contruct the space, and definition and exercise of space at the market. And that construction by the participants created the most welcoming atmosphere (to me) of the places we visited. The Bern market also had the richest diversity of sounds - heavy traffic on the road, voices bartering prices and exchanging info, the crinkle of plastic and paper bags being opened and filled for customers, visitors' tires crunching on the gravel.

So, the greatest fascination of the day for me was that the most permanent and seemingly "wild" space, the Caldera, was actually the most intensely defined by human use and intent. The Bern market was the most temporary and ephemeral "space" but had the least permanace of defintion. The springs, tho, seemed a balance of natural space and human construction - the space was physically constructed only as much as it needed to be for humans to access and appreciate its value.

Blog Post #7: The Architecture of a Natural Space

It was Heather who proposed visiting a natural hot spring near Jemez; I hadn’t even known such places existed, much less how to get to them. Or rather, when I thought of “natural hot springs” I actually had in mind the idea of a hot spring with a building around it, entrance fees, and instructions. I’m not sure why I had this idea, but I did.

This hot spring, while nothing like the image I had in mind, was still a negotiation between man and nature. For starters, the spring had a trail leading up to it—people were expected there, so a path had been built for them. (It wasn’t just a trail worn down by use; near the road, the path was broad and level, lined with bricks and fence posts and signs exhorting visitors to stay on the trail because cutting their own switchbacks would undermine the integrity of the soil.)

Near the springs, however, the trail became harder to navigate. There were stone steps to aid in climbing, but they were narrow and wet. Everything was slick with water or fallen leaves. The last few yards to the springs required clambering over boulders. It was like the mountain was reasserting itself, letting water flow where it may and rocks rest where they fall.





The spring too was a collaboration between man and nature. Water poured forth of its own accord, but the rocks around it had been caulked with cement to make the pool, fashioning a spa in which a half-dozen people might wade and relax. Algae coated the rocks in the pool and the water was clear but not “purified”—a sign at the trailhead warned visitors about the naturally-occurring microorganisms in the spring and cautioned against getting any water in or around the nose.





In some places man’s handiwork was lasting; a rock carving from 1949 that hadn’t yet weathered; the cement holding the pools together, still there from at least 17 years ago when Heather last visited. In some places engineering had failed: the entire top part of the trail had been washed out in a recent flood, and the trail itself was blocked off by orange barrels and a tarp (which we climbed over anyway).





Heather noted that the broad trail and sign and general attention paid to the area were new—last time she’d been to the spring, the climb down from the highway had been much steeper. Maybe as the spring became more well-known and frequented, the risks the trip posed no longer seemed acceptable to authorities—too many people hiking to the spring, too many of them inexperienced and prone to injury. So the trail was widened and bolstered, the warning against microorganisms put up, and the entire area cordoned off when conditions were deemed unsafe.

The whole area might thus have become more welcoming to amateurs and casual hikers, to young and old. Maybe a retiree can make it up the new stone steps when they wouldn’t have been able to make it to the spring before. The water can be enjoyed by more people this way, surely. But at what point does it become tamed, more of a manmade attraction than a natural one?

And as the area begins to look more and more “official,” does that change how people interact with it? If something goes wrong on a well-marked trail, does that give the hiker an excuse to sue the government for negligence? If a microorganism makes someone sick, should we start chlorinating the water? If there’d been a fence around the spring and an instruction manual, would any of us still have wanted to go?

Blog Post #6: Preservation vs. Restoration

On October 29, I went on an all-day excursion with Linda, Heather, and Heather’s daughter Santana. We visited three places: Valles Caldera, a volcanic valley grassland interspersed with forested magma uprisings; an unnamed natural hot spring near Jemez; and the Bernalillo farmer’s market. (Not to mention several shorter stops at a visitor’s center, a restaurant, and a couple of trails near the highway that we determined did not, in fact, lead to hot springs). For this first post I’ll focus on Valles Caldera, a national preserve run by the Valles Caldera Trust, an agency under the USDA but separate from the Forest Service.

We took the preserve’s “Magma to Magpies” van tour, in which a guide drove us along a pre-determined trail and narrated the history of the preserve and the agency’s management plans for it. There were several interesting rhetorical aspects of the tour that our group noticed and later discussed. The first was the emphasis on both natural and human history in the area: the tour guide first established the geological construction of the area and then overlaid it with the area’s history of land ownership, grazing, and industry. The second was the political aspect of the tour: the guide affirmed the U.S. Government’s respect for Spanish land grants (the official government line, as Heather pointed out, whether true or not) and emphasized scientific management, which may have been an assurance to taxpayers that the government was managing the land much better than previous single or group owners. The third notable feature of the tour, which I’d like to elaborate, was the preserve management’s focus on restoration rather than preservation.

The Caldera, the tour guide noted as we drove along, is not pristine land. The Abrigo dome is striped with ruler-straight replanting lines hinting that the area had once been clear-cut. Only a 1.5-mile-long tract of old growth forest remains on the entire Caldera. Much of the new-growth forest is sick.

The overly-dense, fire-suppressed new-growth forest, the guide commented, is prone to bud worm attacks and high-intensity fires. The old-growth forest is too spaced-out for bud worms to infest nearly as easily, she said, and old-growth fires are low-intensity, burning mostly grass and generally not affecting trees. Bud worms and fires are natural and native, but in the unnatural habitat of a new-growth forest, they proliferate out of control.

According to the guide, the Caldera’s grasslands were overgrazed from the early 1900s on by as many as 100,000 sheep at one time and countless horses and cattle. The animals eroded the ground around the Caldera’s streams, making them wider and shallower and affecting the water systems the streams fed into. Under owner Federico Otero, sulfur mines were opened; under Frank Bond, logging rights were sold off in 99-year lots; and under Patrick Dunigan, geothermal exploration was undertaken (although logging was greatly reduced during the same era).

Now, the guide said, the area hosts sustainable grazing only, using cages to mark off ungrazed areas to compare to the grazed ones. Under the new regime of “adaptive management,” science is a guide. Hunting permits are issued, but in limited numbers (only 20 turkey permits per year, for instance); grazing rights are given preferentially to neighbors (like Jemez Pueblo) and research projects (such as breeding high-altitude-tolerant steers). Cattle are fed from livestock ponds, not headwaters.

All of these changes were put in place to prevent further degradation. No longer will cattle erode the streams; no longer will loggers clear-cut the forests; no longer will grazing destroy the grasses. But the preserve’s management is going one step further than preventing decline: it’s actually trying to restore the Caldera.

What the management means by restore isn’t really clear, but it seems to involve re-establishing wildlife as it existed pre-1900s. It means looking at the oldest available photographs, noticing that the streams were narrower then, and so undertaking to narrow them again through engineering. It means thinning the forests and, with the help of the Forest Service, undertaking prescribed burns.

Restoration also means that Santana wasn’t permitted to chuck an apple core out of the window because it might be carrying nonnative seeds that could take root in the area (although some nonnative trees that were already in the area seem to have been left alone). Restoration means banning the construction of most new buildings beyond what was already on the land when it was purchased by the government. It means, most of all, that the land is being changed into a new form as decided by the management.

The idea of restoration is important to environmental politics but it isn’t something we’ve talked about much in class. Hot Flat and Crowded discusses the need to build “arcs” out of existing biodiversity hotspots; Silent Spring pleads with readers to stop flooding the planet with pesticides; Sand County Almanac and Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and even Crossing Open Ground seemed to focus on appreciating existing spots of wilderness. All of these books emphasize stopping harm and letting nature recover. As a class we’ve talked about preservation a bit, and sustainable use a lot—allowing humans to coexist with the land without destroying it. But what if the land is already destroyed?

The first video in the Ken Burns National Parks series notes that the first national parks were set aside to prevent them from being developed. They were held in stasis, in a way, on the assumption that the land was worth keeping the way it was found. Valles Caldera is a different beast. There’s a different underlying assumption here: that the current terrain is damaged and needs to be fixed.

The questions that arise are myriad. Who decides what the “ideal” state of the land should be? What sorts of measures should be undertaken to get there? Should nonnative species be uprooted and removed? Should humans be barred from the area or controlled in number? Does restoration ever “end”? And can restoration ever actually be achieved, when the world is in flux and species, whether we want them to or not, are perpetually evolving, dying out, and moving?

Gulf Truths

From an article in Orion magazine (Nov/Dec 2010 issue) by Terry Tempest Williams regarding some "truths" about the Gulf oil spill: http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/5931

(a long article, but well worth the read)

The system is breaking down not from one thing but everything.

Dr. Kemp and I walk along the edge of the wetlands. He is a thoughtful marine scientist who worked at Louisiana State University before joining the environmental group. We are the same age, both of us now white haired, and share similar concerns. Where we step down, oil oozes up.

“This oiling extends across six hundred square miles,” he says. “Nobody knows. Nobody knows what these oil particles will do that are hanging just below the surface. Nobody knows how this will affect the animals living in the mud or the spawning of species in the sea or the planktonic absorption of oil or how the toxicity levels held in coral reefs will impact their health. Nobody knows what this means to the whole ecology of the Gulf Coast and the Delta.

“We need actions going forward, not incremental steps, that will change our whole outlook of how we see the Mississippi River. We have to start implementing this plan to restore the river now and get the Army Corps of Engineers on board—today.”

I look at him and smile. “You know what you are advocating . . . ?”

“What?” he asks quietly.

“You are basically calling for a complete restructuring of Western civilization.”

He doesn’t flinch.

also

Also working on a theory expansion or maybe revision. My flatbed scanner isn't working but I plan to try to document feeder to scan in my diagrams. I cna't draw well enough with the software apps to make that a reasonable method of sharing. Sorry but please look forward to the notes in the next couple of days!

Wild Geese

Wild Geese
--Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscape,
over the prairies and the deep rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

River of Traps

River of Traps: A Village Life by Bill deBuys (text) and Alex Harris (photography) is an examination and narration of their life in the northern NM village of Las Trampas in the 1970’s. It was printed in 1990 by UNM Press, almost 2 decades after the photos were taken and notes penned. Focused on the life story and seasonal activities of the elderly neighbor Jacobo Romero over a period of 10 years, deBuys and Harris relate their deep gratitude and appreciation for Romero’s friendship and sharing. “His memories and values are his legacy, shared here without sentimentality … River of Traps teaches how to irrigate a field and gather hay, how to break floodwaters, how to document a life, a landscape, a culture, how to live with grace and die with dignity.” (jacket) It is a story of transformation for the authors, and of their humility before generations of culture, learning, and way of life, a way of life that demonstrates “how the land … is always dominant” (61).

River of Traps conveys the sensibility of a time past, of familiar and sensible values and perspectives rarely encountered in modern times in US culture. The value of teaching by example – “learning was elective. If Alex wished to make manojos correctly, he would study Jacobo more carefully. If not, he might do as he pleased.” (98). The value of a barter economy, where cash is optional and not often a cause for concern – “it is one thing to understand cash, and quite another to surrender to its imperatives” (103). The old-fashioned measure of completed work as a job being done, for everything to look right, to be the product of “an eye for intactness” (97). That stupidity can be excused, but sloth cannot (158). And the lovely, comforting, teasing, fantastical sense of humor, of beguiling a listener down a path of incredulity, with the release of the humor coming only when the absurdity of the increasing drama became clear (throughout).

Most impressive in River is the respect and genuine regard Bill and Alex had for Jacobo and the culture they entered suddenly and without invitation. As two white men in Trampas, they understood their lack of knowledge and understanding and allowed those to develop organically, in response to offers made. They lived their respect in imitation of the living respectfully of those whose home they were in. They learned from the elders, by example, how to build and protect their home, how to care for their animals, how to be part of the community. They left their own judgments and presumptions in the city and allowed the land and, more importantly, the people who had been stewards of that land for generations, teach them how to enter the flow of village life, how to become truly part of the community. So much so that deBuys was asked to speak at Jacobo’s services – a rare gift and honor.

I was most grateful for deBuys’ and Harris’ respectful approach and entry into a culture very different from their own cultures of origin, for the manner in which they approached learning – by observing and imitating the lives lived around them, without agenda or deadline, and without the accoutrements and motives of capitalism and contracts to fulfill. They learned and deeply understood (and currently understand) the rhythms without imposing their own values and assumptions, as we have seen in another, less judiciously grounded author (who, perversely, is receiving a hero’s welcome by our esteemed, though arguably misguided, department).

I read River during the last week or so of my grandma’s life, and found comfort in the familiar rhythm of speech and conversation which she could no longer engage in – the rhythms of rural northern NM. The quiet comfort of a familiar lifestyle insulated me from some of the shock, I think. I finished the book a few days before she died and had looked forward to sharing it with her, if only the photos and a few passages. It was not meant to be. Santana and I arrived at the Living Center a couple of hours after she passed and sat with her and a very few of our living relatives – her sister Jean, my sister Vicki, brother Johnny and his wife and teen boys – to say goodbye. It was a sad but peaceful time, a pause between agonized breaths for us. Jean asked me to speak at Grandma’s funeral and I recalled the similar honor given to deBuys. Last Thursday was the sevice and we buried Grandma and Robert together, with the first snow of the season on the mountains.

There with family, friends, and people I hardly knew, I was again comforted by the singular, insular culture I am a grateful part of. The services were outdoors, graveside, and the familiar rythms of speech, of the scent of pinon wood smoke in the cold breeze were familiar to my senses and uplifting.

*****
This past weekend (and Nov 5-7) I am taking Mediation Training at UNMLaw. The mediation model and resolution possibilities have reminded me of Jacobo’s admonition on irrigating: “the water will show.” I remember irrigating with Grandma, guiding the water to exercise its will effectively, productively. And I come back to mediation, to encouraging the impetus of people who want to reach resolution, reach level ground again, relieve the tension of conflict. But mediation and irrigation is another post, or essay, for another night ….

Chili Picking in New Mexico

As Christine mentioned in her post, two Wednesdays ago Scott, Christine, Christine’s three children, and I visited Robert Castillo’s organic farm and home in southern Albuquerque. On the way there a couple of things immediately impressed me. I knew I lived less than five minutes from downtown Albuquerque. I didn’t realize that five minutes on Interstate 25 heading south put me in a totally different and rural environment. On the ride to Robert’s we passed open pastures, roadside signs advertising alfalfa for sale, and shops selling both live chickens, venison cutlets, and (strangely enough) Brazilian waxes which have little to do with the rural environment but interested me nonetheless. I was pleased to see a CNM campus out in the south valley as well.

I enjoyed seeing Robert’s two horses, the acequia, and Scott’s excitement over a flock of Sandhill cranes rising out of the Rio Grande river basin. More than anything else, however, I enjoyed harvesting the chilies. After our tour and in the fading October light, we picked a giant bushel of chilies.

At the end of the growing season, when the chilies turn from green to dark red and orange, Robert boils them down with garlic, onions, and other spices and then minces the mixture in a blender. He preserves the sauce and uses it on top of nearly everything--- it’s the New Mexican way he says.

There is something about harvesting fruits and vegetables on my knees in a field that makes me feel like I’m a kid again. Having Christine’s wonderful children along accentuated this feeling. I dig the grunt work of a farm hand at an organic farm outside of Boulder, CO this summer. The other farm hands and I often commented that coming into work felt like going back to our childhoods, which was strange because none of us grew up on a farm or a ranch.

I think this feeling has something to do with the basic fact that when we are children, we’re hardly ever in a rush and we spend a lot of time close to the ground observing the underside of leaves and the underbellies of insects. We observe less the higher we ascend into the troposphere. When I think about it like this growing up saddens me and makes me want to somehow get back to that field with those chilies.

(I put some of the most beautiful and unusual chilies onto the light table in the Printmaking Studio on campus. I tweaked the colors to make it look more "painterly.")

Silent Spring Lingers On

A recent article in New Scientist notes that "Agricultural pesticides are the most common means of suicide worldwide, resulting in more than 250,000 deaths each year," and that "certain pesticides were far more toxic to humans than the WHO ranks them based on animal studies."

Guess this makes it clear that the battle isn't yet won, and this is an issue that still needs work.

The Dam Truth

Cochiti Dam is a mysterious and isolated place on a cool Sunday afternoon in October.

Robin, Marie, and I stopped at the Cochiti Dam Visitor Center to begin our 2^nd field experience thinking that we would be able to learn information about the history, the purpose, and the mechanics of the dam. The Visitor Center (VC) is staffed by the Army Corps of Engineers (ACE), the builders of the dam. The informational signs in the VC told us everything that we were supposed to know, apparently. The man who staffed the VC on Sunday told us that the dam was established for flood control and that once it was built, the local people clamored for it to be open for recreation.

We tried to find out more about the ACE, what it is, and why they built the dam. We also asked if there had been a small lake in that area prior to the dam that was used by Cochiti pueblo, and were told that the reservoir is the lake. The “I give up” question was our inquiry about how the control tower regulated the flow of water into the Rio Grande, and we were eyed suspiciously, asked why we wanted to know this, and told that it was a matter of National Security and he couldn’t tell us. A more congenial ACE employee outside the VC willingly answered our question on water regulation into the Rio Grande, by basically describing a hydraulic system with three gates that is data driven and computer monitored.

As far as access to the lake a.k.a. reservoir a.k.a dam--there isn't much. There is the boat launch site, a concrete "beach," a picnic area and a campground up on the rocks above the lake, and the road that one could take to drive on across the dam has been off-limits to the public since 9/11. There also are a couple of meager and short hiking trails.

Facts about Cochiti from various internet sites:

•The Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District begins at Cochiti Dam and ends at Elephant Butte. Cochiti is the 23^rd largest dam in the world by volume of material. (Information in the VC stated that the dam is 5.3 miles long and is one of the 10 largest dams in the world) •Various websites stated that the dam is one of the ten largest earthen dams in the United States, and is the 11^th largest earthen dam in the world.

Other facts about Cochiti from the Internet:

•Sediment management and recreation were also reasons why the dam was built. According to a copy of a U.S. Public Law enacted on March 26, 1964, an additional use for the project was for fish and wildlife conservation and for recreation. •Construction of Cochiti Dam was opposed by the Cochiti Pueblo because of loss of agricultural land. The pueblo filed a lawsuit in 2001 and won, the outcome was to deem that the ACE apologize to the Pueblo, which they did, and require ACE to protect Cochiti’s natural and cultural assets.

•The dam changed the channel of the Rio Grande above Bernalillo from a braided channel with sand bars to a straight, incised channel.

•There are multiple points between Cochiti and Elephant Butte where the water flow and volume are measured, and this data determines how the outflow is regulated at Cochiti.

This photo and its caption is the Army Corps of Engineers acknowledgement of the Cochiti Pueblo's inhabitation and agricultural use of the land prior to 1964.

We did not see wildlife of any type. At the boat dock, there were several groups launching boats, as well as a rendevous of a few old guys on motorcycles.

The spillway and the "secret" gates that regulate the water flow into the Rio Grande with the earthen dam in the background.

•Who is the ACE? One of the missions of the ACE is to provide vital public engineering services in peace and war. There is a division called the “Institute for Water Resources” that deals with flood control, levees, deepwater ports and harbor maintenance, inland waterways, and regional sediment management. The ACE manages one of the largest federal environmental missions in the U.S., and is charged with ecosystem restoration, constructing sustainable facilities, regulating waterways and managing natural resources, and cleaning up contaminated sites from past military activities. The ACE is a federal agency and is a branch of the U.S. Army; most of its employees are civilians.

The view of the Sandias from the Rio Grande at San Felipe Pueblo. The river was running quite fast--much different from the dried up riverbed that we have in Albuquerque at Central Ave. We would have spent more time here, but there was a guy with a rifle shooting at something, and we felt it best to scurry back to Albuquerque.

on chaco canyon

i got back from chaco canyon late last night. i am still in awe of the beauty of the ruins and of new mexico. i will let these pictures speak for themselves, and maybe follow up later with something intelligent to say. but maybe not; words may ruin it.

2ND STORY OF PUEBLO BONITO

FALL FLOWERING ON TOP OF THE CANYON

LOOKING UPWARDS

THE SKIES TURNED GRAY...BEAUTIFUL.

THE COLORS, THE TIMELESSNESS; IT WAS ALL AMAZING.

a trip to the south valley

our first group excursion was a trip to robert castillo's farm in the south valley. laurel and scott gave me the OK to bring my three kids, which i am very grateful for becuase they, my kids, had a wonderful time. they got to pet his horse, rosabella, throw pebbles into the acequia, and pick chile peppers. for them it was an opportunity to run around and get a little dirty. for me, it was a chance to be around alfalfa, trees, running water, and fresh air. the south valley made me homesick for west texas. but i digress. my favorite part about our trip to robert's farm was him talking about the acequia, water rights, the flooding of his field, and how, on hot summer days, he grabs a tube and floats down the nicely moving waterway.

learning more about new mexico culture and how new mexican ranchers/farmers are so conscious about their land, about water, and about the interdependence of it all is enlightening and inspiring.

here are some pictures:

and here is a video of my baby, eric jr., indiscriminately picking chiles. although we were only supposed to be harvesting the red ones, baby eric picked whatever he could get his 2 year olds hands on!

Pilgrimage

These rites of autumn
carry on, brittle season,
yellow ripple streams.

NYTimes article on leaked WikiLeak archive of Iraqi docs

I had to post this, even if no one has the time to check it out. You've probably heard about the NYTimes' posting of the WikiLeaks archive of 'secret' (whatever that means) military documents from Iraq detailing all kinds of bad, heretofore unreported things.

It's as fascinating from a rhetorical perspective as it is grim and horrible. What really got my attention was that the article on the NYT site has links to the actual documents, so that you end up with the military version of many of the stories told in the article itself. The newspaper and military stories are wildly different in their form, style, slant, appearance, and purpose.

I have so many questions. What are the unstated assumptions of each? What kind of storytelling is each? What kind of story do they tell together? Can you even think of them as separate stories? Can you think of them as the same story that is showing you two sides of something that can't possibly be viewed at the same time, as if we could see both sides of the moon at once - like a cubist story? What the hell am I talking about?

Correction to The World Being Made

Correction: While writing the post "The World Being Made," I had Teddy Roosevelt on my mind from the series "The National Parks." I stated that the Roosevelt family had owned much of the land around Moose, Wyoming. Although T. Roosevelt had made several forays into the West, his family's land holdings were in the eastern part of the U.S. The family that owns land near Moose, and had owned much of the land in that area for private retreat and recreation, was the Rockefeller family. It is my understaning that the Rockefellers have donated much of their Wyoming estate to the National Park Service within the last few years so that those lands could be preserved in common for all the people.

Garbage.

I don't have time to write this because I'm entangled in a conference paper that I have to deliver tomorrow.

But, I watched this special on CNBC earlier (or part of it, anyway, it was what Josh was watching when I got home, and I got hooked on it: http://www.cnbc.com/id/38830389/)

Trash, Inc: The Secret Life of Garbage.

The images I came in on were of the illegal landfills (nearly 400 of them) that dot the suburban landscape surrounding Beijing. I guess that by 2014, Beijing's 10 municipal landfills, taking in millions of tons of garbage every year, will be full to capacity. Closed. And then? The government wasn't exactly portrayed as having plans to deal with the issue, except possibly to build incinerators. People living in between and around the landfills are worried about the hazards to their health--not only from the garbage they smell daily when the wind is right, but also from the proposed solution, the incinerators. Can you imagine that in less than 5 years one of the most populous cities in the world will be facing a solution-less trash problem??? And they're still growing, producing more and more waste. We already ship ours overseas, from state to state, making a business of it (check out Noxious New York by Julie Sze for more on that). Is this progress? All of us having stuff and nowhere to toss the waste?

The show went on to depict how BMW uses LNG (Landfill Natural Gas, or methane) to power some of its factories, saving them over $7 billion a year in energy costs, and turning waste into energy. Other clips showed fabrics being made from plastic bottles. Finally, there were clips of beaches in Hawaii, undeveloped beaches that ought to be "pristine wilderness" (go unpack that phrase) and yet are full of plastic debris. So much, in fact, that when it comes to the finer grains, it's hard even for the specialist on camera to differentiate between plastic and natural. Apparently, it's hard for the wildlife, too, says the specialist, holding up bits of plastic packaging with bites and pecks torn from them.

Hawaii gets its trash from the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch" (yeah, that's its real name), one of five garbage patches that apparently exist to some degree in each of the natural swirling vortexes, or gyres, of our planet's oceans. Apparently, this isn't like, marine debris, either. It's regular old civilized trashy trash that makes it out to the oceans thanks to wind and waterways. 5 million tons of it. Sitting on the ocean floor. Waiting to be washed up on a pristine beach near you.

I won't say I can confirm all this information is accurate. I came in toward the tail end of the program and was distracted by the paper I'm about to go write. But I'm certainly reacting to the idea that we are literally gunking up our oceans, one plastic bottle at a time. And I'm reacting to the piles of trash shown in the middle of Beijing's streets. And to the memories I have of the smell of some of Bamako's alleys, filled with garbage. Garbage with no place to go.

Climate change, Tom Friedman, and my family

For Thanksgiving I'm heading to Louisiana to spend time with my grandma, uncle, aunt, two cousins and their spouses and kids. A wonderful family who I haven't seen in more than a decade. They are also staunch conservatives, very religious - perhaps of the Tea Party persuasion. I'm currently reading Friedman's Hot, Flat and Crowded, which in many places is designed as a response to conservative views on the environment, and I'm imagining how some of my conversations with my family might go, probably with my cousin Paul, who's my age, or my Uncle Bruce. Here's the version I came up with (this is unabashedly liberal, but I make no assumptions about the views of the people in the class - y'all can think what you want):

“So, Dan – you still happy with your President?”

“I am, actually. I don’t agree with everything he’s done, but overall he’s been what I wanted him to be.”

“You mean ‘hope’ and ‘change’ and all that? From where I’m standing he hasn’t really delivered on those things.”

“No. Those are campaign slogans. Ads. Taglines. I never expected him to be anything more than a smart and savvy politician. But one who’s engaged with the world and thinks about things, unlike his predecessor who surrounded himself with like-minded people and shut down dissent. One reason I voted for Obama was because I trusted him to think deeply about the world’s complex problems. I think that’s a huge part of the president’s job, and I think he does that.”

“Takes a lot more than thinking to run the country well, doesn’t it? Your Democrats are so good at thinking that they can’t agree on anything. If the Republicans had your kind of majority they’d’ve gotten a lot more done.”

“You’re right that the Dems aren’t very good at getting things done, and that’s frustrating. Like instead of coming out hard for repealing Bush’s tax cuts they hold back because they’re scared of the Tea Party. Ridiculous. Still though I’d rather be part of the party that disagrees with itself. The repubs are this monolithic mass. They’re not allowed to think for themselves. I don’t want any part of that.

“We can probably each agree that Congress stinks no matter which party you’re with. But why does every Democrat solution involve spending us to death? You know your generation and your kids will be the ones paying that back.”

“We’ll be paying for your wars too. How come that never comes up when you talk about spending? Spending and deficits are problems, sure, but it’s how we’re spending that concerns me. Now I like that the Dems at least have environmental concerns on their radar (unlike your boys, who don’t), but we need to be doing much more.”

“More spending, you mean. The solution to environmental problems is always more government. And I get the feeling some environmentalists care more about trees and owls than they do about people.”

“Caring about the environment is caring about people. I’m not sure when conservatives started treating environmentalism like a socialist plot, but it’s completely wrongheaded and irresponsible. The vast majority of climate scientists agree that the world is getting warmer, that warming could have highly disruptive to catastrophic consequences, and that we can still change that if we handle ourselves right. But your party has already made up its mind.”

“You can’t go spending billions and making major changes that’ll effect the economy without being certain you’re doing the right thing.”

“But ‘certainty’ doesn’t exist in science! Scientists aren’t certain because scientists are trained and paid to doubt. Eachother, themselves . . . The problem with your view of climate change is that you’re applying criteria that won’t work. And by the time we’re certain it’s real it’ll be too late. Look, maybe you know this stuff already, but indulge me. The earth’s heating up because there’s more carbon in the atmosphere than at any time since the atmosphere has been habitable by humans. That’s agreed upon; it’s not controversial. None of the stuff I’m going to say here is controversial; it’s all as settled as anything can be. Climate scientists can look at ice core samples – with little air bubbles trapped from eons ago – and see that for at least 10,000 years there’s been roughly the same about of carbon in the atmosphere. Now, because of the industrial revolution when we’re taking carbon out of the ground and putting it into the air in massive amounts, there’s about 40% more floating around us, and that number’s only going up, and will continue to go up as we rely on fossil fuels. Not controversial. CO₂ is a greenhouse gas, which means it traps the suns heat instead of allowing the earth to reflect it back away from itself. More CO₂ , the earth heats up, which makes all kinds of crazy, unpredictable things happen. Ice melts, oceans rise, weather changes. Bugs don’t die off in winter because it doesn’t get cold enough so they eat up crops. Hurricanes get stronger and more frequent because they get their power from the warmth of the water. Coral reefs die, and they provide habitats for millions of ocean animals, so fishing industries suffer. None of this is controversial. If we start relying on other forms of power, we can help keep this from happening.”

“So we just stop using so much oil and gas and that’ll solve all our problems.”

“Of course not. But it’ll help solve a lot of them. If you don’t want to talk ‘environmentalism,’ then let’s talk politics. Most of the world’s oil is controlled by governments that are backward, tyrannical and generally awful. Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iran – these leaders are bad news. And while we fight against them and/or people like them in Iraq and Afghanistan with one hand, we shell out the big bucks to them with the other. Incredible. But what else can we do? We’re hooked, and they know it.”

“And there’s a ton of it in Alaska and under the Rockies, but you don’t want to dig it out. That doesn’t add up.”

“That’s a temporary, ugly solution. We need a fundamental change, not a stop-gap measure.”

That's about a thousand words, so I'll stop. Incidentally, when I got online to make this post (after writing it in Word) I saw this article in the NYT, titled "Climate Change Doubt is Tea Party Article of Faith"

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/21/us/politics/21climate.html?_r=1&hp

“Silent Spring” in Africa: Rachel Was Wrong

The impact of Silent Spring went beyond America and the West. DDT was banned in the West but is still used in Africa through impregnated mosquito nets against malaria and insecticides used to "protect" the cultures. For many people, the elimination of DDT in Africa is a disaster, even considered a crime against humanity. The website Rachelwaswrong.org says that Rachel Carson's Silent Spring was of poor scientific knowledge. We have read Rachel Carson in our course as an environmentalist whose ultimate objective was the protection of human beings. But others see the opposite. Here's how she is presented by Aaron Swartz: "Sometimes you find mass murderers in the most unlikely places. Take Rachel Carson. She was, by all accounts, a mild-mannered writer for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service—hardly a sociopath’s breeding ground. And yet, according to many in the media, Carson has more blood on her hands than Hitler."(www.fair.com).

Rachel Carson is accused of crimes against humanity. On the website Rachelwaswrong.org, photos of Ugandan children who died from malaria are exhibited, as if to show the damage caused by the abandonment of DDT. The Ugandan Minister of Health has asked for the use of DDT to fight against malaria. However, people tend to ignore the consequences of such toxic substances on the environment and humans. Different types of diseases like cancer can appear and not all of them would be diagnosed as such.

Moreover, many think that stopping the use of DDT in agriculture has caused crop failure and consequently famine in Africa. One wonders if the DDT is manna from heaven. Is this the ultimate single solution? I think they are less dangerous tracks that are exploitable to fight the problems of malaria and famine in Africa. It is a question of political will. It could also appears that the attacks against Rachel Carson’s work fall under the misogyny in science that we were discussing in class.