Of Weather and Foolishness

I give up.  Can't make sense of any of it.

First, politics.  This picture (from The Atlantic Wire) says all that needs saying about how Republicans in Congress feel about helping the middle class:

Speaker Boehner looks about ready to cry after having to give in and extend the tax cut for the 99%.  I agree that a two month extension is a farce but given the dysfunctionality of the Congress, what else was expected??  Maybe we could pay for the tax cut for the middle and poor classes, as well as infrastructure improvements and extended unemployment benefits, by making Congress part-time; say, eight months every two calendar years (that's biennial sessions) and letting them get the same benefits as the middle-class in terms of social security and health insurance (Medicare).  Oh, and pay them by the hour---wonder how much they'd get done if they had to punch a time-clock.......or should their pay be based on piece-work--pay only for accomplishments done on schedule..........

Now, about the weather---------In February 2011, we had snow and all-time record lows in Las Cruces.  So this winter should revert to a normal pattern, right??  WRONG.  In New England the temps are higher than here in the high desert.  Our birds don't like this:

Flamingoes in the Snow

Roadrunners up to their Necks

This is southern New Mexico.  We are at only 4000 feet.  Snow happens in Albuquerque or in 7000 foot Santa Fe, not here!!!

Can you imagine a sadder sight than these poor plants:

Prickly Pear under the Snow

Cholla with Snow

Another Snow-Bound Prickly Pear

The Pecan Orchard as Winter Wonderland

It just ain't right.  These pictures look more like scenes from our house in New Hampshire than from the Mud Shack in the desert Southwest.  Fortunately, when we moved, we kept a few winter survival accoutrements:

Bean Boots by the Back Door

Never thought I'd ever use a picture of L L Bean boots in a blog post from New Mexico.  Of course they have gore-tex..........

Merry Christmas, Happy Hannukah, Happy Kwanza. Peaceful Solstice to all, and to all a good night!! 

Halloween Snow

So I guess the eastern US is supposed to get its first major snowstorm this dia de los muertos weekend.  For those non-Native Americans not residing in the Southwest, it's also Halloween.  To alleviate some of the angst such weather events occasion, I thought it appropriate to post some pictures of the first hot air balloon to fly over the mud shack this season:

The balloon over the orchard

It's a little closer.  Love that blue sky.

The chicken coop, garage, pecan trees, and balloon.  Yes, the hens freaked!!!

Favorite season II

Fall in New Hampshire, our former residence, was punctuated by the brilliant foliage of the deciduous forests covering the state.  The following pictures were taken during a mountain bike ride in the fall:

Lake Shore in Auburn NH

Little Massabesic Lake Auburn NH

Now we live in the Chihuahuan Desert in Southern New Mexico.  Desert----desolate, deserted, devoid of foliage and trees and rain------Wrong!!!


The following are pictures of beautiful crimson vegetation not far from the Mud Shack:

Red as far as you can see in this field

Another view of the same field

Ahhh, yes, New Mexico's State Vegetable

Chile peppers still on the plant, drying and turning red.  Edible foliage, unlike those red maple leaves back east.  And as the autumn brings lower temperatures, the heat of the chiles warms the body and soul.

Favorite Season

It's definitely feeling like autumn here in the Mesilla Valley.  Saturday morning we actually had to keep the windows closed as we headed to Nellie's Cafe for a filling breakfast of huevos rancheros with red and green chile meat.  Probably my favorite, and most filling, meal of the week:

Now usually the red chile is sort of smoky flavored and pretty mild.  But yesterday, it was hot and the green was hotter!!!!!!  Perfect for a fall morning, like the equivalent of pumpkin pancakes with fresh syrup and ham hash from Parker's Maple Barn in New Hampshire.

And it's cold,too---25 this morning at 10:00AM. (Uh, that's 25 Celsius, which is like 77 Fahrenheit.  But when you're used to 90's........)

Now Sunday was a dream day------unless you were a wife needing chores done.  FOUR football games on cable, a couple great last-minute come-from-behind epics, two bottles of Moose Drool (Bottlecaps:"Discard in nearest truckbed"; "Black Forest, Green Wallet").  For the uninitiated,

you can check the website at http://www.bigskybrew.com/

And the last great thing about today (or maybe not so great if you are sensitive about your age), our first grand-daughter turned Sweet 16!!!!!!!  Happy Birthday, Bella!!!!!!!!

Decade Later

NINE ELEVEN.......The first was 2001, now it's 2011, a decade later.  America will never forget.  Every media outlet pounces on the date and shakes it in our faces like a cat celebrating with its latest kill.  How can we forget?

The media concentrates on stories of brave survivors or remembrances of the lost.  Occasionally there is mention of the feeling of unity in the homeland.  After the disputed presidential election of 2000, the terrorist attack that brought down the iconic towers that symbolized America's power united the country as no other event since the assassination of John F Kennedy.  Just about every citizen was wrapped in Old Glory and supportive of the federal government.

Viewing the events of the past decade, the argument can be made that our patriotism and faith were betrayed by those in power.  A senseless war; a devastated economy; the abominations suffered by air travelers in the name of security; the erosion of constitutional rights to privacy and due process; a country so divided and partisan that it no longer appears capable of governing itself--- these are the fruits of 9/11.  One could argue that in fact the terrorists accomplished their objective---the US is very changed as a result of their attack and the change is not positive.

On this decadal anniversary, given the problems facing this nation, a return to the attitudes of cooperation and caring which followed the collapse of the towers would serve the country far better than the replaying of the tragic videos and the inane commentary of cable news anchors.  The American people and their leaders need to demonstrate that our values are superior to those of the perpetrators of the horrors of nine-eleven-two-thousand-one.

 



  

say what??????

Okay.  I kept to myself all summer and didn't speak out about the total idiocy in Washington over the debt ceiling debate.  I didn't comment on the total irrationality of the stock market as I wondered if anyone not already retired would reach that nirvana as equities tumbled and 401-k's went deeper underwater than a home in Las Vegas or Florida.  But this weekend ended it for me.

The accepted wisdom is that the "right" or "conservative" movement is against big government and for individual freedom.  The 10th Amendment, States' Rights, should reign supreme over the insidious creep of  the federal government with its regulations and money squandering.  If you believe this, I have a bridge connecting Brooklyn and Manhattan to sell you.

Case in point: censorship.  Take a look at this link:  http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2011/08/the-neverending-campaign-to-ban-slaughterhouse-five/243525/#slide1

The list of books being banned at the bottom of the article is illuminating.  Even a pathetic (my opinion---apologies to Bella's many fans) work like Twilight gets attention from those who would dictate our tastes.

Even more absurd is a school board banning Sherlock Holmes!!!  Can you believe this:
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2011/08/sherlock-holmes-banned-reading-lists-being-anti-mormon/41243/   What small government???

But the most glaring hypocrisy of the right is their stand on marriage.  Newly-minted presidential candidate Rick Perry has been represented as the ultimate states' rights conservative.  Once he even suggested secession as a solution to the over-reach of the federal government.  Gotta wonder about that---it sure didn't work out in 1861.  Now Perry, Michele Bachmann, and others of their ilk have trumpeted their support of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), ramrodded through by the homophobic Congress under Newt Gingrich and signed into law by Bubba Clinton.  The current administration, much to their credit, has suspended the legal defense of this act as federal over-reach.  Isn't it curious that the same argument is being used by the right to over-turn the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), claiming it violates the 10th Amendment??  And DOMA doesn't??  What's the definition of "hypocrisy"?

Random Muttering

The headline this morning is about the head of the IMF allegedly sexually assaulting a chambermaid in his NY hotel suite.  Since Dominic Strauss-Kahn is also a front-runner in the upcoming French presidential elections, does anyone else wonder how much Nicolas Sarkozy or Marine LePen might have paid the maid??  I'm just sort of indulging my talk show host persona.......

"Big Oil" execs appeared before Congress asking to keep the deductions they didn't need in 2005 when oil was half the price it is now and profits were lower.  Obama has signaled the okay for more drilling.  And anything this country does to increase production, given our 3% of petroleum reserves contrasted to our 25% of total global petroleum usage, would have no real effect on pump prices for about three years.  Talk about your basic political feel-good worthless actions...Gas prices are ever-rising, naturally right as we plan a trip to CA to see kids & grandkids.

There's a Bayer aspirin commercial airing featuring a stupid American passenger and a smart and pretty Korean flight attendant informing him that aspirin is for pain....is this really what Bayer's market research shows??  Americans think aspirin is just for heart attacks??  No wonder we can't get anything done in this country----we really have lost it!!  Tried to embed the video but it appears to be unavailable due to copyright infringement issues on YouTube.  But the impression is that the German pharma giant has a pretty low estimation of the intelligence of the U S traveler and a higher one of the Korean employee--bet they've been looking at the trends in world-wide educational achievement........

Aside from the total lack of credible candidates for president coming from the GOP so far, the political event of the week will be the interplay between Chris Matthews of MSNBC's Hardball and HBO's Bill Maher scheduled to air Tuesday.  I mean, this is the left's version of Hannity and Beck!!  The blow-hards of the Left!!!  All I can say is that if you watch, have a John Deere tractor with a max front-loader scoop because I imagine the bull-shit emanating from this encounter will far surpass any one's ability to shovel it out....

Finally, Monday we should hit the debt ceiling.  And your intrepid Congressman is where??  Not in D.C.  The House is in recess.........Given the marvelous job our representatives have done in removing the scourge of recession and deficits since the 2010 elections, maybe they should STAY IN PERMANENT RECESS...............

Enjoy your week,  hope you don't need to visit the gas pump, and, if you watch TV Tuesday, god bless........

Of Pictures and Peace

"Rejoice, rejoice, we have no choice..." CSN&Y, CarryOn.  And did we ever Sunday night and on into Monday.  Osama is dead, gunned down by Navy Seals in a million-dollar compound right under the nose of the Pakistani military.  For some thoughtful coverage of this event, check out The Atlantic website here.

Now President Obama has decided NOT to release the death photo.  I guess we'll be in for another round of screeching just like over his birth certificate.  Jon Stewart, with whom I frequently agree,  is among the "releasers."  This time he is wrong.  The decision not to release the picture(s) isn't about their gruesomeness or that they might be offensive or give children nightmares.  It's about the security of Americans around the world.  Think about that idiot who calls himself a man of god, pastor Terry Jones in Florida.  All his little stunt, burning a Quran, did was cause churches around the world to be burned; at least 19 American troops in Afghanistan to be killed;  and numerous other threats of reprisal that General Petraeus felt would be harmful to our war effort.  Imagine the wackos' and zealots' reactions if we publish a picture of the leader of Al-Qaeda with a bullet hole in his forehead.  Might as well invite the suicide bombers onto every subway and bus they can reach..........

And what's with people calling for blasting Pakistan?  Are you insane?  This is a barely functional state with a civilian government that doesn't control the military and an intelligence outfit that supports terrorism on one hand and fights it on the other.  And none of the three has a clue or control over either of the others!!  Let's not forget they have nuclear weapons as well.  We can guarantee not only more numerous terrorist attacks but probably even deadlier ones if we pull the rug out from under the Pakistani government or condemn them too harshly.

Lost in all the Osama coverage is the little news item that the two Palestinian factions, Hamas and Fatah, have signed an agreement to co-operate and try to unite the Palestinian peoples.  Binyamin Netanyahu the Wahoo Israeli prime minister calls this a "great advance" for terrorism.  I wonder how he can negotiate a meaningful peace treaty with only one of the two governments of the Palestinian people.  Maybe Israel under this guy doesn't really want peace??

"All we are saying is give peace a chance." John Lennon

A Poem

May 1 1945 Hitler dead
Hiroshima
Nagasaki
My Lai Lieutenant Calley
Pol Pot
Oklahoma City
Twin Towers
Kandahar
May 1 2011 Osama dead
Jesus and John singing Imagine
World Peace??
I guess.......

Anger

Been a tough week-----all those tornadoes and the death toll in the South.  The idiocy and racial bigotry of "the donald".  But the worst is the stupidity of our armed forces.

As I sit at my computer and look out on the beautiful vista posed by the pecan trees blooming and the Organ Mountains, the normal feeling of gratitude is replaced by a bitter gall rising in my stomach.  For there is smoke rising from the Soledad Canyon area in the Organs.  A totally preventable fire reputed to have been caused by a "live fire" exercise at Fort Bliss.  While technically in El Paso, this fort's boundaries extend north and join with the perimeter of the White Sands Missile Range.  The blaze has been christened "the Abrams fire" after the tank of the same name.

Best I can figure, the army not being the most forth-coming of institutions, a "live fire" exercise was scheduled and, regardless of environmental conditions, carried out in the northern areas of Fort Bliss.  It is believed some spark from either the tank itself or a piece of its ordnance set off a brush fire.  Given the dry conditions here, the blaze quickly became an inferno, coming within two miles of the WSMR headquarters and climbing the east side of the Organs.  About Tuesday this past week it crested the mountain range and became very visible from Las Cruces.  Such an eerie orange light glowing from the canyon near the pipe-organ-like peaks that give the range its name.

So accidents happen, oh well.........but not so fast!!!!  We are experiencing one of the worst droughts in history at present.  The Las Cruces area has experienced .04 inches of precipitation in calendar 2011.  That's no typo--I mean 4/100 of an inch of moisture from the sky.  Farmers are screaming they will lose crops because the irrigation board has cut allotments from the system of "ditches" that are used to distribute the water from the Rio Grande to the local farms and orchards.  The lack of precipitation headlines many of the weather forecasts.  This is a serious and well-publicized problem here in the high desert.  I can only assume that the officer who sanctioned this exercise either just transferred from Pluto or that he is a total fool.  I tend toward the latter description.  Such uncaring and unconscionable disregard for the damage that was caused to the environment deserves nothing less than a dishonorable discharge for whomever the officer is.

Now forest fires are nature's way of re-invigorating certain environments.  Remember the Yellowstone fires a few years ago.  But the "Abrams fire" is a disaster caused by the foolishness of the people average Americans count on for protection!!!!  With the kind of decision-making that enabled this conflagration, a re-assessment of the military's processes would be in order.  As for those who might think there's no great loss to a few thousand acres of desert and mountain burning---go read your biology and animal science texts.  The high desert is home to roadrunners, quail, rabbits, rodents, lizards;  the Organs home to bobcats and mountain lions.  A wonderful diversity of flora and fauna!!

So after cheering yourself up with the reruns of Kate and William's nuptials, please think about Randy and Romilda Rattler and where they can seek shelter from the inferno destroying their families and homes.  And I'll keep watch out my window for the day, hopefully very soon, when those Organs are again a vista seemingly untouched by the human despoilers.

Economix

Being retired does make one aware of the budget-----We were used to at least bi-monthly salaries with a monthly commission/bonus check as well.  Since neither of us ever was employed by Goldman-Sachs, these weren't seven-figure amounts but we did all right.

Now the money comes mostly around the first of the month.  So there is a definite adjustment to be made to spending patterns.  And how one buys----which brings me to Sam's Club.  All I heard from friends here was "Ya gotta join Sam's Club."  Not being a Wal-mart aficionado, that was about the last thing I wanted to do.  We'd been members of those bulk buy organizations in the past.  There's only two of us people and a plethora of dogs and cats but we sure don't need bulk groceries.  Fifty pounds of rice at a time--spare me!!!!!

Then our government and the Arabs got going and gas prices went to hell (bet you never knew hell was in the up direction?).  Sam's Club is consistently anywhere from five-cents to a dime cheaper per gallon than any other station in the area!  Given how we like to drive around our state, we figured the savings in gas alone would pay for the membership.  So we joined last October.


About the third fill-up we ventured inside the store.  We had entered to join, obviously, but a quick tour pretty much confirmed my impression of gigantic package quantities, albeit very low unit prices.  But if you waste half of it, or it spoils , what have you gained??  On this particular trip, dairy product prices had just gone up so we figured we'd do a little price comparison----the prices at Sam's were similar to good sale prices at the other supermarkets.  But, que milagro, our favorite "jug" wine was about three dollars less than anyplace else.  So we started venturing into the store more and more---now we are hooked.


While we eschew purchase of fourteen pound beef brisket and some of the other bulk grocery items, we do buy ground beef---only place we've seen around town where 90/10 extra lean is less than $5.00 a pound; actually, only place we've seen 10% or less fat ground beef!!!!  And stocking up on non-perishables we use almost daily isn't wasting money---especially when it's so much less expensive.  Brand name tomato sauce is cheaper than the generic brand from the local supermarket (about .80/can vs. .97/can).  Eggs are consistently cheaper and so is milk.  Combined with the harvest boxes we get locally, our food costs are greatly reduced and we eat much more healthy food!!!  Plus, given the packaging sizes, we make less trips, saving on those "impulse buys" and one large trip a month keeps us more than supplied with staples like dog and cat food.


Sorry for those of you who don't have a club nearby.  Others of you might want to check it out.  I was always a cynic about these places but I'm converted............Must have been the wine!?!?!?! 

Desperately Seeking Water

Road Trip--------that's the answer to everything in New Mexico.  Since our area has had .04" of precipitation so far in 2011 (not a typo--I mean  4/100ths of an inch of moisture falling from the sky) and that was all from the February snowfall:

we decided to go in search of big water.  Last Saturday we walked along the Rio Grande but that didn't quench our thirst.  So Thursday we filled the car with gasoline (OUCH!!!!)  and headed North on I-25.

The first stop was Percha Dam State Park.  The brochure looked so nice but the reality was not the pictures----good marketing job by the state.  It's a nice oasis after 50 miles of the desert scenery of the Jornada del Muerto .  But it wasn't the water view we craved.  We left Percha and headed north to Caballo Lake.  Now this was more like it:

boat ramp

looking east to the Caballo Mountains

view to the South

We walked around the picnic area by the lake----our thirst had been slaked.  It was approaching the noon hour and since we were already more than halfway there we proceeded north for a feast:

the sign says it all

The waitress was attentive and the cook brought out the order promptly.  The burger overflowed from the bun, the chile was hot, the onion fresh, the lettuce and tomato a perfect balance to the green chile:

ahhhhhhhhhhh  a masterpiece

Lest the reader think we are craven carnivores, we also had veggies---the chile, lettuce, onions, tomatoes on the burger.  And the side order:

green chile cheese fries

Other than the cheese, a vegetarian plate---potatoes, green chile peppers.  Admittedly not the same as what we get from Emily and Charley in the Friday afternoon harvest boxes:

contents of a harvest box

local lettuce

But, whatever.................And at which purveyor of gastronomical delights did we partake of this feast??

 

I'll leave that to the reader to puzzle out from the picture above.  (Hint: what kind of bird?)

Perhaps of Interest..........

One thing about retiring is all the time you find yourself burdened with----and the old Puritanical guilt of feeling the need to do something "constructive" with this bonanza.  Problem is I doubt my orthopedic surgeon would approve my training for a marathon on my replacement knee.......

So I've been reading about a book a week on average.  And this past week I read two that I consider well worth any reader's time-------Animal Spirits by George Akerlof and Robert Shiller and All the Devils Are Here by Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera.


Animal Spirits is a discussion of human psychology's effects on markets and economic modeling.  Even if you aren't interested in economics, the book will still fascinate.  The authors, one an economist at UC Berkeley and the other at Yale (Shiller as in Case-Shiller housing index), define the "animal spirits" and then discuss their effect on economic problems.  Written at the height of the latest financial melt-down, it leaves a few issues unresolved.  But the discussions are so timely, e.g.,

"There is then a fundamental reason why we differ from those who think the economy should just be a free-for-all, that the least government is the best government, and that the government play only the most minimal role in setting the rules....Indeed if we thought that people were truly rational, and that they acted almost entirely out of economic motives, we too would believe that government should play little role in the regulation of financial markets, and perhaps even in determining the level of aggregate demand."(pg.173)


Remind you of any recent political debates?????????


The other book is a fascinating history of the latest financial crisis.  Nocera is a business columnist for the N Y Times. McLean is the co-author of The Smartest Guys in the Room, a best-seller about the Enron implosion.  The authors establish the characters and personalities of the business leaders whose companies' foibles precipitated the financial melt-down at the close of the first decade of the 21st century.  They also explain the CDOs and CDOsquared and the other alphabet soup of financial "products" that bamboozled so many of the "Masters of the Universe", from the CEO of Countrywide to the decision makers at AIG to the Secretary of the Treasury who tried to contain the explosion.  A very readable book that does not require an MBA in Finance to understand:


"Financial innovation? Collateralized debt obligations? Synthetic securities? What had been the point of that?...As Paul Volcker [former Fed chair] said...'I have found very little evidence that vast amounts of innovation in financial markets in recent years have had a visible effect on the productivity of the economy.'"(pg 362-3)


 When you finish it, you'll understand the phrase "I'm short your house."

Signs of the Times????

Just a few images to get a flavor for the lifestyles and peoples of Southern New Mexico:

My cousins called their Grandfather "Bebop".  Wonder what he'd have made of a Smart car??  I remember him as a pick-up truck kinda guy myself.

This is the pick-up owned by the proprietor of my favorite restaurant.  That one phrase captures the "flavor" of the establishment.

There is a cart serving food at the farmer's market on Saturday mornings. I'm a little disappointed there's no espanol for "hot dog" but there is for "hamburger."  Or is it just a blatant case of spanglish??

I definitely would not want to married to a woman with the condition expressed on this license plate!!

And of course her hair was frosted............

Chile is the state's dish so of course it would be added to the state's favorite beverage!!!

This picture has been circulated on the 'Net but I had to include it here.  Our petro prices aren't as bad as, say, California but I am researching cars and my next one will be a hybrid or electric.

Now who else would inhabit this kind of terrain?????  This is a picture from the old Las Cruces landfill, now a site for recycling and for the disposal of yard waste.  The picture below is a close up of the actual sign:

Why, there's so many they had to make two words out of "rattlesnakes"............

But be happy this is New Mexico----after all, you could be living in Arizona............ 

Budge-it???????

So Congress has done it's constitutional duty and proposed a budget.  And, as politicians will do, they've totally slammed the people that brought them to the dance.

Remember the Tea Party rallies before the 2010 mid-term elections????  Signs like these were very much in evidence:

So what's one of the biggest cost controls in the new Republican budget-----you guessed it:  Medicare vouchers and limits. But don't take my word for this---read the proposal yourself at http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/04/06/us/politics/06budget-doc.html  Even the Economist, hardly a pawn of the left-wing media, believes the games over the budget and shutdown should stop: http://www.economist.com/node/18485975?story_id=18485975.

Now, people like Rand Paul may have a point when they say government should shrink.  But if Mr. Paul has toilet issues, it shouldn't surprise anyone because he spews enough b.s. to jam the New York City sewage treatment plant.  Time for some real cost cutting-----if Congress forces a shut-down, then all of its members should get their pink slips on the way out of town.  No work, no pay---just like in real life.  And what if we cut 10% from the military budget----wouldn't hurt our troops but would save a lot more in this fiscal year than the cuts enacted so far as well as cutting the size of government.............Just throwing out the ideas.  They make no less sense than what our elected representatives have come up with........... 

5 Months

Five months into retirement.  One might think there'd be a hundred blog posts by now.  Not like there aren't all kinds of political peccadilloes and human tragedies for inspiration.

But this is only post three!!!!  Such a lazy writer...........but not really.  The calendar actually gets very crowded without one's realizing it.  Take the wife to knitting (and pick her up therefrom) two days a week--an essential chore if I want the car; drive her to her position at the Institute one day a week;  pick up the harvest box from the local CSA outfit Friday afternoon....Hardly leaves time for butchering a bucket of golf balls at the driving range or riding about on the ditches.  And now baseball season has started------GO RED SOX!!!!!!!  Hope I can still fit in lectures at the Academy for Learning in Retirement..........and those Sunday get-togethers with friends sharing the time constraint dilemmas.......How did we ever get anything done when we were gainfully employed?????????

The author in his man-cave
Moose Drool on the left

Apologia and Some Numbers

Followers of Pirate Dogs and Pilgrims might wonder "Why the new blog?"  New readers might wonder about this "Mud Shack" thing.  So........

The Pirate Dogs have grown a bit insular and apathetic to the turmoil of the world.  During their last extended sojourn in the Nargle they decided to take control of their blog and only allow posts of interest to them.  Since my interests, being human rather than canine, might be more varied than theirs, it was decided that there should be a separate blog for my mental meanderings.

The Mud Shack is our house.  We purchased it in the North Valley near Las Cruces NM in 2009 with the intent of making it our retirement abode.  The main part of the house is an approximately 50 year-old adobe structure---an adobe abode.  Now adobe is basically mud, hence the moniker "Mud Shack."  And the scenery visible from the patios is wonderful---the lot is surrounded by a pecan orchard.  To the East and Southeast are the lights of the city and the majestic Organ mountains.  To the West is Picacho Peak framed by pecan trees.  The Dona Ana mountains are visible through the pecan trees to the Northeast.  Truly a "view"..........

Now the culture in the West is often perceived as guns and independence.  I have and continue to consider the purchase of a gun.  But I've come across some interesting numbers in my reading and web-surfing.  For instance,

More Americans Killed by Guns than War in the 20th Century

"More Americans were killed with guns in the 18-year period between 1979 and 1997 (651,697), than were killed in battle in all wars since 1775 (650,858). And while a sharp drop in gun homicides has contributed to a decline in overall gun deaths since 1993, the 90's will likely exceed the death toll of the 1980s (327,173) and end up being the deadliest decade of the century. By the end of the 1990s, an estimated 350,000 Americans will have been killed in non-military-related firearm incidents during the decade. (Handgun Control 12/30/99 (Press release from CDC data)"


Now, I've always been fascinated by the weapons of the "Old West" like Wyatt Earp's buntline special and the repeating rifles and carbines used by the cavalry and the buffalo hunters.  The rifle I'm contemplating purchasing is a Henry .22 caliber, lever action rifle.  It holds 15-21 rounds depending on the shell size.  Good enough to fulfill my desire for a rifle like Chuck Connors had in The Rifleman.  I still don't believe that the sale of automatic weapons should be legal and that one of the most egregious wrongs ever perpetrated on the American citizenry was the Congress allowing the lapse of the Brady bill outlawing such weapons.  Proof that the NRA's money outweighs the common good.


If you were asked which of the following is the bloodiest date in US military history, which would you choose:
September 17, 1862  Battle of Antietam
June 6, 1944              D-Day, the invasion of Normandy
February 19,1945      the landing on Iwo Jima
???????????????????????????????????????????????????????
According to the military historian John Keegan, it was Antietam, a battle in Maryland during the US Civil War----22,700 casualties (The American Civil War, pg.167-168).
These numbers might help explain one of my favorite sayings from Abbie Hoffman:

Peace, Live Long and Prosper...........

  

The Dichotomy of Retirement

Four months into retirement.  Stay busy so you don't succumb to boredom leading to depression.  Never has the freedom from the obligations of the working world tasted so sweet.  So why, this morning, did I resent having to get dressed to go to a lecture that we had been anticipating since discovering the Academy for Learning in Retirement a few months ago???  I've also noticed the lack of enthusiasm for attending the basketball games for which we have season tickets.  Because these are obligations???????  Because some element of choice has been surrendered??????  Freedom.............could it be that as absolute power corrupts absolutely that unfettered daily choices eventually enslaves one??????

Speaking of freedom, if you chance upon a book by the same name authored by Jonathan Franzen, passing it up would be a good choice.  This novel has mixed reviews, some critics singing its praises, others finding it a waste----I agree with the latter.  One review I read, I think on the Atlantic's website, mentioned that if you didn't care about the characters after about 40 pages don't bother.  I tried to care for around 117 pages then quit.

About the academy mentioned above---the class is Mathematics.  There are four lectures; today's was on symmetry using drawings by M C Escher for illustrative purposes.  The remaining three will be on numbers highlighting Fermat's last theorem and the work of Sophie Germain;  encryption and security; and, lastly, topology.  Might need to break out James Gleick's Chaos and find some calculus review, I guess....