Acres: 341,735| Containment: 93% | Total personnel: 725| Start Date: Hermits Peak: April 6, 2022; Calf Canyon: April 19, 2022 | Cause: Hermits Peak: Spot fires from prescribed burn; Calf Canyon: Holdover fire from prescribed pile burn | Location: Located near Gallinas Canyon | Fuels: Heavy mixed conifer, ponderosa pine, brush, and grass Highlights A […]
Hermits Peak and Calf Canyon Fires July 4, 2022, Daily Update — NM Fire Info
May 21, 2022, Daily Update, 08:00AM Acres: 308,971| Containment: 40% | Total personnel: 2,707 Start Date: Hermits Peak: April 6, 2022; Calf Canyon: April 19, 2022 | Cause: Hermits Peak: Spot fires from prescribed burn; Calf Canyon: Under investigation | Location: Located near Gallinas Canyon Fuels: Heavy mixed conifer, ponderosa pine, brush, and grass Highlights: […]
Hermits Peak and Calf Canyon Fires, May 21, 2022
This year’s spring season started rough for New Mexico. Two wildfires (one of which partially started from a controlled burn conducted by the U.S. Forestry Service) have since merged into what is not the largest wildfire in the continental United States. More than two thousand firefighters and personnel are working to contain the fire which is currently being reported at 40% containment. Hundreds of people have evacuated their homes throughout San Miguel County and Mora County with no timeline as of yet for when they will be able to return.
When this fire is adequately contained I would like to see my fellow citizens in New Mexico push our state government to hold the U.S. Department of Agriculture at least partially accountable for this wildfire. Perhaps some investigations from the NM Attorney General into why the Forestry Service for the Santa Fe National Forest was conducting a controlled burn during the dryest and windiest time of year. Perhaps some investigations into the the Forestry Services criteria for conducting controlled burns.
By Dylan R.N. Crabb
The liberal is out and the conservative is in! This tiny village in the southern Rocky Mountains that has been desperate to re-invent itself after Corporate America bent it over and fucked it just elected a new mayor bent on keeping out the one industry that might be able to shock the village awake. The village has been on life support for four years and the conservative, anti-drug Mayor-elect is bent on creating his own Stepford village of an America that barely even existed.
The cannabis industry in America can be analogized to a steam locomotive in the late 19th century barreling through the wild west of superstition and tradition leaving a civilized order in its wake. And the churches and anti-drug coalitions are the native Americans.
John Ortega‘s naïve attitude towards recreational drug use blinds him from the economic opportunities that the growing cannabis industry can offer the Village of Questa. Questa, like much of small-town America, remains in the grip of a religious influence that thrives off stoking fears of alternative methods and mindsets, changing demographics, and shifts in human migration in which anti-drug sentiments are rooted. Hopefully Mayor-elect Ortega will prioritize Questa’s economic needs over any personal apprehensions toward the cannabis plant. The Mayor-elect and the incoming Village Councilor will be sworn into their respective offices come April.
In a time of high-priced commodities, real estate, and just about everything else municipalities need any source of revenue onto which the they can get their greedy, capitalist claws if they are to fulfill a semblance of their duty to the public they serve. Regardless of whichever archaic, supposedly all-powerful entity you pray for, we all speak the language of financial exchanges. The fact is that cannabis can bring in money for many communities throughout small-town America struggling to survive in a global marketplace.
Take the right turn in Duke City and you can find anything.
The feeling of “living just enough for the city” as Stevie Wonder so elegantly phrased it is becoming more common in American cities. Housing prices are soaring above wages and the gap between the working lower classes and the upper affluent classes is stark but opportunities remain. There are always opportunities for the less fortunate, it just requires a little creativity.
I commute to my job on public transit and every day I see people who look as though they are going hard times – not well dressed, poor hygiene, a little spaced out (possibly on a foreign substance) – but they all seem to be able to scrape together enough money for a bus ticket. What’s even more amazing is that most of these people have a smartphone in-hand with ear-buds or headphones on their heads. Regardless of how my lower-class peers are able to afford these small luxuries, I don’t think they realize the kind of opportunities they can access with these devices alone.
A mobile phone can provide one with organizational tools for planning a day and recording other phone numbers for future reference (the start of any entrepreneurial endeavor) as well as grant you access to an internet connection via any public library or city-owned building. Are most people even aware of the existence of public libraries these days?
I’m not the most entrepreneurial or business-minded person but I can still hold a job and keep hold of some money; it doesn’t take a lot of thought or effort. What is holding so many people back? Drugs, mental health, an inability to utilize money effectively, obsessive personalities combined with addictive (or even criminal) behaviors? I genuinely want to know.
Creamy, smooth, muted hints of coffee, and superb drinkability – this stout is Tractor Brewing‘s coup de grace (if you like stouts).
Milk Mustachio Stout, Tractor Brewing Company, 2019.
A smooth coffee-flavored, alcoholic beverage seems perfect for a Friday night as a lone guitarist provides some euphoric background tunes. I may have been a little harsh in my last review of Tractor, one cannot judge a brewery by on beer. It’s a good place to relax after a busy day at work serving fried food to fat Americans, a place where nostalgic millennials can go to lament about their lost hopes and forgotten dreams.
Happy holidays, you degenerate pig fuckers. Be safe out there.
By Dylan R.N. Crabb
PHOTO: Zinc Wine Bar & Bistro, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 11/21/2019.
Musician/Songwriter Claudio Tolousse jazzed up the Zinc Wine Bar & Bistro Thursday night. No band, no back-up singers, just Claudio. It was a chill performance.
PHOTO: Claudio Tolousse Zinc Wine Bar & Bistro, 11/21/2019.
Albuquerque gets a negative reputation from news media pessimistic attitudes and too few people overlook the city’s gems. From my own experience, the best neighborhood in the city is Nob Hill (surrounding the University of New Mexico) with a stretch of Central Avenue that caters to nightlife entertainment and chill brew hipsters. The Zinc Bar is just one of the many hangouts where you can order a beer, listen to some guitar strumming, and forget about life’s troubles for a while.
Claudio Tolousse also hosts a podcast called Art Talk Music in which he talks about “all thing music” with a variety of musical talents.
By Dylan R.N. Crabb
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The Tractor Brewing Company is a mid-size taproom in the heart of Nob Hill, Albuquerque, down the street from the Nob Hill Business Center. The establishment contains a wide, U-shaped bar for plenty of hoppers to get in and immediately go for a drink. There is also a plethora of tables scattered around the periphery of the building that makes for cozy spaces to sit down with friends for an interesting night. I sat at the bar as I do.
Tractor Brewing Company’s Double Plow Milk Stout
One look inside the beer menu and my eyes are drawn to the Double Plow Milk Stout which I order with some enthusiasm. The bartender (or “beertender” as Tractor Brewing calls them) brings me a pint of the delicious dark brown elixir but, after the first sip, I feel underwhelmed. The taste is okay for a stout but slightly bitter for my own taste. It also is a dichotomy of flavors – through my nose, I detect a hint of chocolate flavor but, on my tongue, I only taste coffee. This particular beer may not be for me.
A look at the specialty beers on the wall menu reveals another milk stout called Milk Mustachio Stout. I may try that one next weekend.
I am willing to try Tractor Brewing again in the future but, at this current point in time, my favorite stout remains the Driftwood Oatmeal Stout from Bosque Brewing Company.
Albuquerque residents, what is your favorite local brewery?
Bosque Brewing Company, Nob Hill Public House
As I walk through my city streets, I see a strange juxtaposition of modern progress. I see rising infrastructure along the skyline with empty windows and “for rent” signs. I see people in suits with high-tech phones stepping over the tattered and dirty homeless. I see cold and desperate people sleeping outside of night clubs filled with affluent and arrogant college students. I see middle-class workers with their heads in their phones hustling between multiple jobs while lower-class street-walkers beg for some charity. I see all these examples of the dichotomy in America’s current success story and I don’t know what to do about it. I don’t have any answers for the poor and the down-trodden besides all the cliches that have already been preached publicly hundreds of times over.
What happened to our sense of community across America?
I went to a polling place today to vote in a local election and I was confused when I realized that my new address was not updated in the City of Albuquerque’s list of registered voters. Earlier this year, I relocated from Albuquerque’s District 1 (West ABQ) to District 6 (Nob Hill) and immediately re-registered to vote (as I usually do). Perhaps municipalities should update their voter registration records more frequently, but what do I know?
I still voted this morning, I just had to vote for my former neighborhood rather than my current neighborhood; not a big deal in the macro.
(If I’m missing something, let me know in the comments section below. Don’t forget to tell me how big of an idiot I am.)
By Dylan R.N. Crabb
Albuquerque isn’t a bad place to be (for New Mexico). It’s an urban oasis for city slickers trapped among the eastward migrations from the over-priced west coast, but the city is still a couple decades removed from the millennial generation. I’ve been living in Albuquerque for more than a year now and I still feel like Paul Kemp on his first day in San Juan, Puerto Rico, trying to make sense of a city plagued with vice and optimism while being flooded with hopeless venture capitalists. Two soul-sucking jobs in food service are paying my way through my latter 20’s while I try and force the words in my head into a coherent collection on paper with an intent for monetization. All the while, temptations of the mind are all around me, luring me through their doors with carefully crafted messages promising to take away from the daily despair to a heavenly euphoria. Tension seems to be the only thing driving me to get up in the morning, “the tension between a restless idealism and a sense of impending doom (Hunter S. Thompson, the Rum Diary, 1998).”
As long as I put aside the cash for next month’s rent, I’ll survive this city just long enough to get the hell out.
Crabb-Talk 