Christmas Comes Early for a Curmudgeon

Eating Crow and offering Candy Canes

“Sometimes” things work out…the Taos adventure continues

You, my five readers or so, have heard from me before on the subject of public entities and their foibles: the Mayor and his supporters obsessed with creating clutter on the Plaza and in the Park; KCEC’s gangland death-grip on the members’ purses while deleting restrictive by-laws with their privileges of “white-out”; the horror show at HCH, where docs and administers play musical chairs and unsavory administrative personnel steal from Paul to pay Peter.

Despite my passion for pointing out the pretensions of powerful poseurs, sometimes I must eat the Crow served up and call it a Candy Cane.

Part of passing seventy means decay and worn-out body parts become subject to M&Rs at the body shop, similarly to the way my used pick-ups visits my Milagro mechanic for tinkering, so they can maintain their living grip on the asphalt. In this spiritual cycle of daily spiritual death and rebirth, one observes the profound and the pedestrian: from acid reflux to prostate cancer (surgery at Anschutz endowed UC Colorado Medical Center in Aurora, Colo.) to prescribed face peeling and the short-lived experience of looking like a leper, in order to prevent further skin cancer, due to long hours baking under the western sun at the beach, on the slopes, while boiling out the toxins. Life comes back to haunt one. But the cure worked thanks to Schreiber and Edmunds and Balsamo at the clinic.

Imagine the critic’s sudden “come to Holy Mary moment,” a loose hernia thing burst or became impacted in Sept. I left my Eng. 110 students half-way through class and drove to HCH emergency room from Klauer, where I twisted and squirmed for three hours in the waiting room, spent three more hours in the back, waiting for directions from staff and general surgeon. Whereupon they kept me overnight, a nurse and aid attended to my humor and questions. And, sure enough, the doc, a recently arrived general surgeon, operated and cured the crisis early the next morning. I am thankful for the hospitality as well as the art and craft of the medical practitioners. So, eat that Crow, Whaley.

Now comes Sunday afternoon, a well is down, tenants call from my trailer park. “Ah, the electric meter’s blank” so I ring the KCEC emergency dispatch. Two crew arrive, point to tree limbs scorched by wires tangled up by the wild wind the night before. They trim the trees, trace the short back to the transmitter, temporarily fix it for the night. Dispatch calls to check if everything’s okay. Note: The staff at KCEC follows up and returns messages and calls unlike the CEO and Traveling Trustees. Bravo.

Like all things Taos, you must know of somebody in every entity who can and will do the work…like the unsung employees who make the hospital or coop operate despite the administration’s preventive measures and propaganda claims in The Taos News.

Similarly, I was shocked last night after watching the public works employees labor for days in the Plaza among the towering trees and noticed the absence of ugly green electrical boxes but the presence of wrap-a-round wires up the trunks and limbs. Then last night the light burst out and lit up in bright yellow glow the trees as if somebody had actually “designed” the show (in the style of artist Kyle Morgan’s trees). The Mayor’s lights might complement but not quash the farolitos and luminarias meant for the Christmas crowd. Still my remarks are tentative lest the Town get carried away and fuck up again, as they have the Kit Carson park or Youth and Family Center, historically, which are treated like the poor stepchild.

BTW: at my granddaughter’s soccer game, I spoke with a County Employee, the member of a family I’ve known some fifty years, who told me how pleased he was with his job. He had worked several years for both the Coop and the Town but said, “They let us do our job at the County.” If you can negotiate round the massive egos of elected officials and appointed administrators, you find the people who do the work and make Taos a better place. The higher ups take the credit but they are merely Trumpeans.

When things work out, like the Godfather of Soul says, “I feel good.”