A few thoughts from John Fleck, a writer of journalism and other things, living in New Mexico
My Rio Grande thinking is almost entirely about the bits in New Mexico, but this, happening now at Big Bend, on the US-Mexico border, is worthy of note: Bulldozers have begun plowing up ground at the mouth of Big Bend national park’s famed Santa Elena Canyon as part of the Trump administration’s multibillion-dollar “smart wall” ... Continue reading Bulldozers at Big Bend
Albuquerque s bosque has been suffering a rapid dieback, as shallow aquifers drop away from the roots of the community s beloved cottonwood gallery forest. This is uncharted territory for our modern bosque, which grew into its present state after Bureau of Reclamation channeling in the 1950s created the modern river corridor, and flood control and water ... Continue reading Rapid dieback in…
By Jack Schmidt and John Fleck John C. Page, Commissioner of Reclamation, reported to Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes, in announcing the growth of Lake Mead, that the indications are enough water will be caught and stored by Boulder Dam this spring to put the operations of the Boulder Dam plant on a ... Continue reading Another Mead-Powell milestone
In the AI era, knowledge best expands when the best thinkers in every field understand what the frontier is in their field, what AI does not yet know, what humans do not yet know. Hollis Robbins
The latest European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts got some ink/bits for their strong forecast for a wet winter in California (h/t Daniel Swain), but what do they say for us? Sorry for the blocky look, but when you drill down, the map gets pretty coarse these are big pixels. But the headline is ... Continue reading Super El Niño meh in the Rio Grande and Colorado River headwaters?
Near-extinct oryx are returning. Farms are prospering as irrigation water reaches fields for the first time in decades. Farmers are even nurturing new trees on their land. Once a byword for drought and famine, the African Sahel region on the southern flank of the Sahara Desert now has more water than it has for decades. ... Continue reading Green returning to the Sahel
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby George Cukor’s solid 1938 screwball comedy Holiday follows a classically satisfying three-act structure. In Act I , Cukor reveals the problem facing our protagonist, Johnny Case (Cary Grant). Case is going to visit the home of his newly met newfound true love, only to find that…
Communities continue to face different groundwater realities, different economies and different views about water management. But as groundwater challenges become harder to ignore, many are reaching the same conclusion: Waiting for someone else to solve the problem isn t a strategy. Faith Kearns on new Arizona research on rural community response to groundwater challenges
Two literary frames of recent usefulness: Both are literary creations aimed at the widest possible audience Holmes a fictional character created by Arthur Conan Doyle, Wilder a fictional character created by Billy Wilder. Holmes’ value is epistemic, Wilder’s (like my old standby “What would John McPhee do?”) involves narrative structure, arc. Wilder made a ... Continue reading How would Lubitsch…
My office mate, pal, and podcast co-host Rin Tara and I switched things up for this week s episode of our Water Matters! podcast, with Rin interviewing me about the Berrens-Fleck project Ribbons of Green. Among other things, Rin zeroed in on gardens, a theme that sits at the heart of the book. From the introduction: ... Continue reading Tending our gardens, writ large