Category: New Mexico

I Got To Thinking Today

My dad was an engineer by trade, and had a life long interest in the power of nuclear energy. He worked at Sandia Labs during the Cold War, and was quite familiar with the devastation that could be wrought in the path of nuclear power. He was also well aware of the power that could be harnessed from one small nuclear reaction.

As the Cold War ended and Sandia turned away from creating weapons, much of their immense talent base was put toward finding alternate sources of energy. My dad had a chance to study wind, solar, and yes, nuclear energy.

He used to rant endlessly about how he felt people were missing the boat on the use of nuclear power to create clean energy with, generally speaking, less damaging effects. He was a huge advocate for nuclear energy as a sustainable resource.

As a kid, I often thought my dad was a wackadoodle for these relentless, passionate lectures on this topic (and others).

It’s funny how time really does make fools of us all. Now that I’m pretty close to the age my dad was when we was raising me, I find that what was once wackadoodleism becomes, “hey, he might have actually had a point.”

Earlier today, I was going through the videos, photos and new coverage of the truly horrifying aftermath of the earthquake and Tsunami in Japan. I got to thinking about my old man when I saw this quote from a Japanese spokesman for the government:

“The nuclear plants have been shut down but the cooling process for the reactor is not going as planned.”

I thought to myself, “If they are able to keep that reactor from melting down, that is a huge boost to the argument that my pops made for decades.”

However, if that reactor does melt down, then all the anti-nuclear energy people will have a strong case study on their side.

I’m not sure which side of the nuclear energy debate I come down on. Honestly, I can argue both sides, and it’s a very sticky topic.

One thing I will say is that the existing nuclear plants in the U.S. are of such old technology that it’s truly frightening. The anti-nuclear power lobbies won’t allow these existing facilities to be upgraded. They want them closed, not improved.

So they stay open and get older and more outdated by the year.

And thus, the standoff rages on. That’s where my pops would start snorting, and steam would begin rolling out of his ears.

All of this is some scary news. I think that if Japan can contain and control their nuclear plants in the face of one of the worst natural disasters of recent history, then it highly recommends at least considering the latest available technology for maintaining nuclear facilities.

Maybe we don’t build any more, but we fix what we’ve got?

Oh, and while I was thinking about all of this, even discussing it with my mom via email, I glanced at the calendar.

My dad passed away six years ago last month. Perhaps worrying about the nuclear energy facilities in the midst of tragedy in Japan is an odd way to honor He Who Brought Me Forth. I suspect for him, it would do just fine.




Image is 1954 era Union Carbide ad, found several places on the web.


The Break Is Broken

Back in my college days at NMSU, I was a good student with aspirations of graduating and getting a good job.

Round about my junior year, the business college started talking to the students about considering going on a co-op. This meant taking a semester off from school to take a job in a real office environment.

The goal was to get college students a more substantial experience than just a summer internship along with providing great fodder for our resumes upon graduation.

It seemed like a good idea to me, so I applied.

With my business background, I was picked up by a bank in Albuquerque.

I left Las Cruces and moved into an efficiency apartment in the downtown area. I started my first grown up job in January and worked through July of that year. The pay was terrible but the job was kind of interesting. I was an internal auditor for the then thriving bank (that no longer exists).

I got to travel with my team on the company jet to branches all over New Mexico to look at loans, review the criteria for lending, assess the borrower, check financials, and assign grades to the various loans. Based on the loan grades, the bank would be able to better value their portfolio. I’m sure they were also packaging and selling off loans too.

As a twenty year old, I got to delve into the financials of some of the most well known names in Albuquerque and the state. I learned how to value cattle and farm equipment, oil wells and drilling tools, and the inventory of various well known businesses in the area.

My desk was located near the small loan collections department, so I also learned a whole lot while listening to those verbally nasty collections agents all day long.

That gig at the bank was the first and only time I worked a job where I was required to take breaks during the work day.

I’d come in at 8:00, work until 10:00 then we’d all go upstairs to the break room to drink terrible coffee and cuss and discuss for fifteen minutes.

Back to work around 10:15, I’d work until noon then took one hour for lunch. It was expected we’d leave our desks for that hour, so we’d head back upstairs to the break room or on sunny days we’d all go outside on the plaza.

Back at work at 1:00, we’d take another break from 3:00 to 3:15, then leave the office by 5:00. No one stayed late. We all actually left at 5:00

I’d often thought, in my youthful exuberance, that I could have worked during that half hour of break time I took each day. I thought I could get more work done without that time. I mean heck! I can eat a sandwich at my desk and get even MORE work done!

Yeah. I know….

Today, I miss the lunch break. I miss enforced coffee breaks. When did we all start to think it extra moral or totally essential to work straight through the day and extra hours too and never leave the desk?

This is not good for our collective mental health.

Plus, if you must know, lately my right wrist hurts a lot. It aches all day and keeps me awake at night.

This is not a good sign. I’ve called in the ergo team at work to evaluate my workspace and my doctor is sending me to be fit for a wrist brace.

Also, my coworkers and I rarely get the chance to just sit back for fifteen minutes, sip some bad coffee and cuss and discuss something other than work.

Sort of a tragedy, really.






Just an aside…I really like my job and I dig my boss. I’m just working A LOT of hours.


Photo by Adria Navarro Mestres and used royalty free from stock.xchng.

This week’s Theme Thursday is: break


And Then The World Fell Off Its Axis

Woke up early this morning after a terrible night’s sleep, or rather, lack of sleep. Rising out of the bed, I was keenly aware of a feeling of anxiousness deep in my stomach.

I had an 8:00 video conference with London, and I worried about being able to make the equipment work for this very important meeting.

I got to work early, and as I walked around the nearby lagoon to get to the videoconference building, I saw a single Coot paddling along the smooth as glass surface.

Feeling anything but optimistic and keen to cheer myself up, I started singing “Good Morning, good moooorning, to you!” (a la “Singing in the Rain”) to the confused Coot.

I laughed at myself, and laughing felt good.

Turns out I had nothing to worry about the videoconference. It went off without a hitch and when it was over, my mood had improved greatly.

To add to the day’s improvements, two meetings directly following the videoconference were cancelled. I was given a gift of my morning, and that’s valuable.

Back at my desk, I fired up the streaming radio and dug into work.

Tip tapping away at the keys, I heard my iPhone buzz.

A text message from The Good Man. “Did you see today’s SF Gate?” he asked. The SFGate is the local newspaper for San Francisco.

“Not yet, let me look,” I replied, figuring there was something interesting there to see.

The page opened and I scanned the headlines, but didn’t latch on to what The Good Man wanted me to see.

Then I gasped.

I saw the photo first. Then the headline. My friend and consummate Blues Man Johnny Nitro has died.

Over quite a few years of hard living he’d had a little trouble with his ticker. His heart as big as the world had a mechanical flaw.

I’d last seen Nitro in August at the book signing for Saloonatics, an amazing book of photos by my buddy Scott Palmer that honestly captures the thriving blues scene at The Saloon in San Francisco’s North Beach.

Even though I hadn’t seen Nitro for many years, he still wrapped me in a tight hug that lasted a long time. He was genuinely happy to see me, and I almost cried for joy at seeing him again. I introduced Nitro to The Good Man and as they shook hands, I felt at home.

Back in 1997 when I moved to the Bay Area, I knew how to get to exactly one place in San Francisco: North Beach. With trembling knees and shaking hands I’d force myself to drive to North Beach on the weekends. I’d have dinner and a couple fortifying drinks at Sodini’s, then I’d go to one or both of the blues clubs located on Grant Street.

It didn’t take long before I was considered a North Beach regular. I got to be friends with the people who worked in the restaurants and bars, the musicians, and other regulars.

The people of North Beach look out for each other. We take up for our own. I was welcomed into the family by a group of good, hardworking people.

Nitro was one of those people back in the early days who closed ranks around a little hayseed from New Mexico and let her know she was going to be all right.

And I was. With these seasoned city folks to help me learn, I turned out all right.

Nitro had a deep catalog of blues tunes ingrained in his DNA. Name a song, he could play it. He’d fire up that blue and white Strat and make it sing.

Nitro made me laugh and he made me cry. He played music that spoke to my soul. I owe Nitro a debt of gratitude that now I’m afraid I’ll never be able to repay.

Nitro’s best known quote is, “Keep drinking triples ’til you’re seeing double, feeling single and getting in trouble.”

But he had another quote that seems more fitting.

In the middle of a soaring blues riff that filled The Saloon with sound, Nitro would step up to the mike and holler “Riiiide!”

And for you, my friend, wherever you are: Riiiide!





Photo by Scott Palmer, taken at the 2000 Rumsey Blues festival. Yes, I was there…..


Here’s What Being Smug Will Getcha

Remember when I gloated about the sun? I frolicked, collecting all the Vitamin Dees I could while it snowed in ABQ?

Remember?



Photo originally posted February 1


Well I’ve certainly gotten my comeuppance, haven’t I?




Photo taken yesterday, Feb. 18


What a difference a few weeks make. When we had that early sun, I knew that soon the bill would come due. And it has. In a big way.

The skiers are happy, the snow has dumped on Tahoe. The people who track our water supplies are happy, lots of rain plus expected runoff means we avoid a drought for another year.

Me, I’m not as happy. Grey skies make me blue. So I sit inside, nose pressed against the window, and daydream about Spring.



All photographs by Karen Fayeth and subject to the creative commons license as seen in the far right column of this page.


Walking On The Moon

Last weekend, toward the end of my visit to New Mexico, my best friend and I decided we needed to go somewhere without much in the way of civilization.

A break from the every day is good for the soul.

This year my friend had drawn out a tag to hunt Oryx, and about a month ago, she and her husband went out to the empty land around Upham, New Mexico as Oryx are plentiful there.

While she didn’t manage to get an Oryx this year, while hiking around, she witnessed a vista so amazing that she wanted to share it with me.

So we loaded up and went bouncing down dirt roads, me riding in the passenger seat. My job was to open and close gates so that we could make our way past ranches without much in the way of fences to contain their hungry cattle.

Since the truck we rode in sounds a lot like a feed truck, they’d come a galloping along to greet us. It was kind of hard to let down all of our bovine friends as we only had a fried chicken picnic to eat, and that’s not really cow food.

The land we saw as we bumped along was empty, otherworldly and beautiful.

My New Mexico readers will also know a bit about Upham as that is where the New Mexico Spaceport is being built with taxpayers money.

By taking publicly accessible roads, we were able to get pretty gosh darn close to the construction site.

Here’s what it looks like (click photo for larger size):



The Spaceport website has quite a few construction photos as well. I was struck by the fantastically long tarmac, pure concrete rumored to be almost two miles long and three feet deep. How the heck they got that much water out there to create that much cement is absolutely beyond me.

The actual location of the Spaceport is quite a ways off the highway, almost an hour in the truck, and it’s a good thing my friend was familiar with the area. I would have been quite lost.

After ooh’ing and aah’ing along with cussing and discussing the merits (or lack of) of the spaceport, we headed up a long and somewhat winding trail to get to a certain spot my friend had in mind.

That’s when the ooh’ing and aah’ing really began.

This photo does no justice to the almost 180 degree sweeping view from Anthony to Truth or Consequences. It was absolutely breathtaking.

Other than the guy who lives in the small ranch at the top of the rise, and some Oryx hunters, I don’t imagine a lot of people have gotten the chance to see this amazing view.

It made me proud to be a New Mexican. This is who I am. This is where I come from.



(click for larger size)




All photographs by Karen Fayeth and subject to the creative commons license as seen in the far right column of this page.