Taos Lit, Gardening, & Economics

(Updated News, June 28, 2011) No evacuations are planned for Taos County, due to fires but fireworks use is forbidden–despite legal sales. (Flavio says “Get your water balloons and use them on the unethical offenders.”) The Mayor has cancelled the July 4th fireworks display and, allegedly, Manager Daniel Miera’s ticket to the good times at town hall. Miera’s looking for a ride out of town, reportedly.

Over at the KCEC, the regime re-organized on Tuesday and Romero-family retainer, Bobby Ortega, continues as President of the organization. Parking Lot Medina is VP. Art Rodarte has garnered what appears to be a “lifetime” appointment to the Tri-State board, worth an estimated 50 Gs a year. According to Flavio, the Rabbit said he had the votes to get the Town Council, three in favor, to take part in the Command Center. But Friction sources say the council has yet to see the figures or vote. The rabbit has his ontological categories mixed up but who ever said the KCEC  trustees knew where the left hand or the right hand was as long as one hand was in the cookie jar.

Cultural Opportunities

Today, I want to remind readers of an historic opportunity to get in touch with the true story of John Nichols’ mythic depiction of El Norte, Milagro, Chamisaville, et al. The setting of the New Mexico Trilogy includes the so-called Midnight Mountains, the Rio Grande Gorge, and a conglomeration of real and imagined but always memorable characters. The time period precedes and includes the 70s and benefits from a background of both super and magic realism. How else can you interpret a place where doublethink is a way of life?

Long before some of you were born or others had learned to read, or before you decided to move to Taos, Nichols was taking notes like some obsessive member of UNM’s cultural anthropology department. And nobody has done a more in-depth study of the local ethnology than John.

What John didn’t know about the local community was not worth knowing. Even the innocent feds invited the inveterate note taker into meetings while they choreographed plans for creating provocateurs to jump start the hippie-Chicano wars. The naturalist in Nichols’ background gives him the ability to describe in great detail not only the flora and fauna of the mesa or the mountains but also the mating habits of hippies. Penthouse move over: we’ve got sex, drugs, rock ‘n roll and monkey gods galore. Think of the possibilities.

We will meet to discuss the three books, courtesy of UNM-Taos Bachelor and Graduate program on historic Ledoux St. at Emil Bisttram’s old art school each day at 1 pm, weekdays, during July, beginning the 5th for two hours. To register, phone 758-2828. We’ll invite John to drop by and discuss his literary and thematic decisions.

This is a unique opportunity to see and understand the process of novel making. If you finish the course, you will be one of the few and the proud to have read all three books. Not only will it help you achieve academic prestige but you will be the center of cocktail conversation at social events.

Gardening

The battle by local gardeners against the dreaded gopher reminds me of golfdom’s favorite movie, starring Bill Murray: “Caddyshack.” Remember the moral. The gopher wins. Although the Constant Gardener says, “I’ll never give up,” see the story as an allegory for local politics.

The Gopher pulls the strings below while the golfers (the Mayor and CEO?) dance above. The underground man dances to his own tune, doing the herky-jerk while pulling down the tomato plants and chile stalks (the big bucks). Meanwhile the boys in El Prado (disappointed caddies) outraged by the slight to their man, are planning on elevating a new homeboy (Pres. of TMS board?) to take back the power.

We’re waiting for the “Gopher Man” to save our Babe Ruth candy bar.

Jobs v. Subsidies

Here’s a note we intercepted, significant of the way the game’s played by the Traveling Trustees.

“Valued Kit Carson Telecom customer,

“As a valued Kit Carson Telecom customer, we would like to keep you informed issues that go on with this business.

“You all have heard about the protestors fighting the Kit Carson Electric Cooperative proposed rate increase. At this point, these protestors are now fighting to have Kit Carson Propane and Kit Carson Telecom shutdown. If this were to happen, we would have no choice but to shut the doors, and stop providing internet services and propane to all our customers. We, here at Kit Carson, are fighting this to the best of our ability, but now need your help.

“The following phone numbers and email addresses are of some very important people that can help us continue to serve you.

“1.Commissioner – Jerome Block 505-827-4533 JeromeD.Block@state.nm.us
“2.Cydney Beadles – Staff Counsel 505-827-6905 Cydney.Beadles@state.nm.us

“We all need to write (email) and/or call to let them know how being without internet will affect you.

“Thank you for your time
“Kit Carson Telecom Employees”

Reader Response to Employee Plea:

“That would be a shame to shut down the two losing subsidiaries. Just think, propane customers will save $.30 a gallon by switching to Pendleton and Internet customers can get their DSL for $25 with Qwest (after the one-year introductory price of $14.95/month instead of paying $53 to KCI). In six years with Qwest, I have never had even one outage. When I briefly had KCI, I once was out for an entire weekend and I believe it was out for five days last spring.”

On Jun 29, 2011, at 8:12 AM, Gary or Coleen Ferguson wrote:

To be slightly more “fair” in your last Paragraph… the Qwest DSL cost is for service “Up to 7 Mbps” which means about 2.5Mbps if you are lucky.  We pay Qwest about $80/mo for DSL and a phone after all the fees, taxes, service charges, system charges and taxes.  The fiber optic system that KC, Inc is planning to provide advertises 100 Mbps for $50, which if true, is some 40 X’s faster than Qwest… if there’s no “bottleneck” somewhere else.  This is the same as the Google system which made such a big splash a few years ago.

To make the discussion even more real, Comcast Cable currently provides my stepson, 40Mbps, albeit in ABQ for $40/mo plus basic cable TV service for a total of about $65/mo.  Of course, if you live in South Korea, 100Mbps costs about $20/mo and their economy is solvent and doing just fine.

Then add on a Verizon smart phone and satellite TV and you can quickly find a way to push this “communications bill” past $400/mo.  POTS used to cost $7/mo before ATT was busted up by the FCC as a way to bolster competition.

Q: How much is the class?  Is there a break for being old?

Thx. G.