New Mexico weather

From Farr Feed in Taos, posted late this morning:

Right now there are the most unspeakably WHITE puffy clouds over the Sangres, covering the tops of the peaks. Sounds ordinary, but the clouds are simply gigantic. Leviathan. Humongous. Four times as tall as the mountains themselves, at least, and they’re moving to the south. In between cloud-trains is the deepest blue on earth, and right now the sun is blasting down. This is what constitutes a “winter storm warning” in these parts. If you were IN one of those clouds, sitting on a mountain above 8,000 feet, you’d be covered with snow.

Forecast for Albuquerque for the rest of the week: Chance of rain during the day. Chance of snow at night. Right now (just after 6PM) one can see the front, dark and ominous in the west backlit by the twilight.

Best line of the day, so far

“But at bottom lurked a basic conflict about the future of the Ohio Country: Washington believed it was open to settlement; the British government believed it was closed; and the Indians believed it was theirs.”

Joseph J. Ellis in His Excellency: George Washington discussing the land between the Appalachians and the Mississippi River after 1763.

America’s Senior Moment

Paul Krugman has an informative and important article in The New York Review of Books concerning Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the aging population and fiscal responsibility. NewMexiKen recommends you find time to read the entire article, but here are some notable points:

[A]nd many economists now think that the original optimism was right after all: if the economy grows as fast over the next fifty years as it did over the past fifty years, Social Security will be sound for the foreseeable future. And if the economy doesn’t grow that fast, by the way, the high rate of return on stocks needed to make privatization work can’t possibly materialize, either.

*****

In that sense, the trust fund is as real an obligation of the US government as bonds held by Japanese pension funds. The other way would be if the United States found itself in a general fiscal crisis, unable to honor any of its debt. Given the size of the current deficit and the prospect that the deficit will get much bigger over time, that could happen. But it won’t happen because of Social Security, which is a much smaller factor in projected deficits than either tax cuts or rising Medicare spending.

*****

As you may have noticed, right now everyone is talking about Social Security, and nobody is talking about the stunning shift from budget surplus to budget deficit since Bush took office.

Best line of the day, so far

“For reasons best explained by Shakespeare and Freud, all children have considerable difficulty approaching their fathers with an open mind.”

Joseph J. Ellis in the Preface to His Excellency: George Washington

All wet

“We have had thirty-two inches of rain. Thirty-two inches! Oh, my God. Has anybody seen Gary Coleman?”

“A lot of people don’t know how to react here. Like today Jessica Simpson was seen running to lower ground.”

Jay Leno

Lost in translation

The Albuquerque Tribune columnist Stacy Sacco is lost in translation:

Starting from the south, we might enter the state through the Passage city in Texas (El Paso) that parallels the Big River (Rio Grande) and travel north to the City of Crosses (Las Cruces). Other towns to visit in New Mexico might include Cold Water (Agua Fria), Soul (Alma), Birth Place (Belen), Horse (Caballo), Hill (Cerro), Sweet (Dulce), Poplar Forest (Los Alamos), The Moons (Los Lunas), Large Rock (Peñasco), Little Towns (Placitas), Porches (Portales), River Ranch (Rio Rancho), Noisy Place (Ruidoso, so named for the loud river that runs through it), Holy Faith (Santa Fe), Saint Rose (Santa Rosa), Dry Ditch (Arroyo Seco), Cry For Help (Socorro) or Solitude (Soledad).

One of our most unusual city names is Rat City (Raton) named for the large number of mice and rats found in the nearby mountains feasting on piñon nuts (as noted in Donald A. Gill’s book “Stories Behind the Street Names of Albuquerque, Santa Fe & Taos”).

If our Spanish-speaking visitors wanted to do something recreational, they might try sailing at Shell Lake (Conchas), hiking along The Light Trail (La Luz) or fishing in the Dirty River (Rio Puerco). They may also want to do some afternoon shopping at Crowned Center (Coronado), followed by dinner at The Twins Restaurant (Los Cuates) before taking in a performance at the Mud Brick Theater (Adobe).

As they drive around the Albuquerque area, our Spanish-speaking friends might discover some of our unusually named schools. Examples include Bear Ditch Elementary (Arroyo Del Oso), Little Bird Elementary (Pajarito), Mountain View Elementary (Monte Vista), Placed by the Sun Elementary (Puesta Del Sol), Mountain Shadow Elementary (Sombra Del Monte), Valley View Elementary (Valle Vista), The Cave High School (La Cueva), North High School (Del Norte) or West Table High School (West Mesa).

When I first visited Atlanta, I wondered if Georgians were “peach-crazy” since they used the word “peach” to name so many streets and landmarks such as Peach Street Plaza. Our Spanish-speaking visitors might wonder if we are “watermelon-crazy” since more than 100 companies in the area include the word “sandia,” which translates to “watermelon.”

For example, there’s Watermelon National Laboratories, the Watermelon Peak Tram and Ski Area, Lovelace Watermelon Health Systems, Watermelon Casino, Watermelon Science & Technology Park, Watermelon Hearing Aids, and one of my favorites, the city Watermelon Pool just north of Watermelon High School. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think watermelons float.

NewMexiKen admires the nearby Watermelon Presbyterian Church and Watermelon Memory Gardens.

Favorite “hidden” national parks

Via The Albuquerque Tribune, the Coalition of National Park Service Retirees has named its top 10 “hidden” parks:

• Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve, Alaska
• Chaco Culture National Historical Park, New Mexico
• Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming
• Fort Bowie National Historic Site, Arizona
• Crater Lake National Park, Oregon
• Theodore Roosevelt National Park, North Dakota
• Dry Tortugas National Park, Florida
• Yosemite National Park, California
• Lincoln Memorial, Washington D.C.
• Zion National Park, Utah

So who “hid” the Lincoln Memorial? It was always there when I drove by it twice a day for more than 14 years during my commute.

Here’s a link to the The Coalition of National Park Service Retirees “secret spots.”

I feel the earth move under my feet, but this is ridiculous

From The Albuquerque Tribune:

You have to travel either 20 or 16 miles of rutted dirt road to complete the final leg of a trip to Chaco Canyon.

That’s tough enough.

But a recent listing of favorite national parks indicated the way to Chaco was even longer - apparently landing you in . . . Arizona.

The Coalition of National Park Service Retirees this week released a list of its members’ 10 favorite parks in the country. Chaco, an archaeological site about 50 miles west of Cuba and south of Farmington, made it onto the list, but was placed in Arizona.

Like A Rock

Bob Seger’s Like A Rock came up on the shuffle just now. (NewMexiKen has 550 discs (nearly 9,000 tracks) in two Sony CD jukeboxes.)

Criminies. I’d forgotten it was a “song.” I thought it was just a Chevy truck ad.

One step forward, two steps back

From The New Mexican:

Cougars could be shot on sight under a proposal headed to the House for a vote.

The bill, backed by livestock growers, was endorsed Tuesday by the House Government and Urban Affairs Committee.

It would take the cats — also called mountain lions or pumas — off the list of biggame animals whose hunting is regulated by the state Game and Fish Department.

Some think cows should be shot on sight.

Killing bills

From The New Mexican:

The movement to have New Mexico join 48 other states in outlawing cockfighting suffered a serious setback Tuesday when a Senate committee voted effectively to kill two bills that would have prohibited the centuries-old spectacle in which roosters battle to the death.

The article tells that during the debate cockfighting was compared to other evils like gambling and tobacco, that it leads to domestic violence, harms children, and was silly to outlaw when we’re killing people in Iraq. It also was, or wasn’t, part of the Hispanic tradition:

Others argued that not all “traditions” are good. Yvonne Boudreaux said at the same time New Mexico was being settled by the Spanish, “You could sell children. You could stone adulterers. You could burn witches. Do you want to go back to that?”

New Mexico and Louisiana are the only states that allow cockfighting.

Red or Green?

Joe Monahan makes a big New Mexico no-no.

“A major cultural transgression,” is how longtime politico and newsy Janet Blair characterized the misspelling of “chile” on the blog this week. One of our readers complained about Wal-Mart selling roasted “chili” and claiming it was from the “chili” capital of Hatch, NM, when it wasn’t. They also claimed Wal-Mart was undercutting local “chili” growers. Janet was joined in sounding the three chile alarm bell by ex-New Mexicans Linda Doran and many other readers. They are all right. The correct spelling is c-h-i-l-e. And as punishment for this transgression I will spend a weekend in Amarillo.

Bad as the crime is, the self-imposed punishment is much too severe.

How about some reform?

From The Denver Post:

Investigations of alleged kickbacks and overcharging in the title industry are proceeding on several fronts.

In California, state Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi said Tuesday that he was investigating kickbacks paid by title insurers to developers, lenders and real estate agents who referred homebuyers to the insurance companies.

The action came a day after the state of Colorado announced a consent agreement with First American Title Insurance Co., based in Santa Ana, Calif., to refund consumers nationwide $24 million as a result of its probe.

If a piece of property has been sold a few times, what exactly is being insured by title insurance? That the title insurers did their job right the previous times? What are the actual risks? I know I might have an auto accident, so I have auto insurance. I know that my house could be hit by lightning (my previous house was), so I have homeowners insurance. Has anyone ever had their title questioned?

Lexus math triumph

Dan Neil thinks Toyota must be selling hybrids at a loss, but:

What matters is that the RX 400h works beautifully, just like the regular RX 330, only quicker (a half-second sooner to 60 mph than the RX 330) and with 33% better overall fuel economy (28 miles per gallon) and a whopping 67% better mileage in the city (30 mpg, according to the EPA).

Neil also tells this about GM:

However, General Motors Vice Chairman Robert Lutz has a subtler view of things. Last month he said he thought GM had “missed the boat” on hybrids: “We should have said, ‘We’ll lose $100 million a year on hybrids, but we’ll take our advertising budget of $3 billion, make it $2.9 billion and treat it as an advertising expense,’ ” according to the trade journal Automotive News.

Once one gets past the galling revelation that GM spends $3 billion on advertising and Lutz’s cynical dismissal of hybrid technology as mere marketing, his comments seem sensible.