scene for an apocalyptic vision 11
scene for an apocalyptic vision 09
scene for an apocalyptic vision 08
strangely enough
No, not strange, but after a concerted effort to post almost daily for the past year-and-a-half, then stopping for the past month, I got not one query as to why. Doom-scrolling and the parallel phenomenon of general digital information saturation would seem to be a potential explanation, although the more obvious one is that there’s little compelling or stand-out content here. Does one really need to create a virus?
Well, fuck-it! I really don’t care, do you? (Recalling the ennui of tepid Melania.)
Life has been thoroughly overtaken by efforts to pack it up for temporary relocation to Arizona after the sale of the house here, a fraught and overly complicated process to say the least: too much stuff. And, just found out yesterday that the entire septic tank/leach field system needs to be replaced: first estimate in the range of $17-20K.
222144
City Market Fuel #404, 122 Gunnison River Drive
11.693 gallons
$3.199/gallon
$37.41
221882
City Market Fuel #404, 122 Gunnison River Drive
12.107 gallons
$3.199/gallon
$38.73
MLS or so
And so it goes … moving on from the longest continuous period by far (~4.5 years) in the same abode in the past half-century.
Min Kamp 6
Knausgård, Karl Ove. My Struggle: Book Six. Translated by Don Bartlett. 1st Archipelago Books. Brooklyn, NY: Archipelago Books, 2018.
After the previous five volumes, 3,000 pages or so(?), Book Six challenges the wrists at 1,100+ pages. Much of it reads completely different than the others in that Knausgård deviates into literary criticism and notably includes several hundred pages of an analysis of Hitler and Mein Kampf. Knausgård’s style is framed with sentences that can easily span one hundred words, which, in a autobiographic narrative are generally fluid and work both descriptively and as a tool to carry the reader along sensibly through these thousands of pages. However, for analytical exploration and intellectual explication, that stylistic choice makes for hard reading. That along with the unholy resonances between Mein Kampf and the current socio-political upheaval make for an unsettling slog at times. However, the final thought is that this magnum opus, the whole six volume sequence works.
on the Rio Colorado
ED: For new subscribers, selecting the red dot in the middle of the map will start the audio sample which can then be controlled using the play-bar and volume/mute (speaker) icon. Also, a complete library of neoscenes contributions to the aporee::maps project is simultaneously uploaded to https://archive.org.
221608
City Market Fuel #440, 16400 South Townsend Avenue
14.434 gallons
$3.089/gallon
$44.59
watching Hells Kitchen
botanical garden ambience
[ED: A side note on those bluebirds. I moved the truck about 50 yards away behind the stables, and the bluebirds seem to be extremely chill and relaxed. Yes, a bit of chasing whilst sitting on the electric lines running to the house, and diving to the ground for bugs, but none of the manic stuff, not even with the studio window. Somehow, the existence of a mirror Other (on the truck) sets them off into a frenzied panic fight-reflex? Dunno.]
Sialia mexicana
ED: For new subscribers, selecting the red dot in the middle of the map will start the audio sample which can then be controlled using the play-bar and volume/mute (speaker) icon. Also, a complete library of neoscenes contributions to the aporee::maps project is simultaneously uploaded to https://archive.org.
A pair of Western Bluebirds (Sialia mexicana) engage in something of a manic mating dance, for days now, that is centered on my truck, their nest in a box on the side of the house, and my studio window sill. Constantly flitting around, the female chases the male endlessly, both chattering on. I will have to wash the truck down at some point when this is over. The passenger and driver’s side windowsill and mirror cowling are absolutely covered in poop.
honey bees in plum tree
ED: For new subscribers, selecting the red dot in the middle of the map will start the audio sample which can then be controlled using the play-bar and volume/mute (speaker) icon. Also, a complete library of neoscenes contributions to the aporee::maps project is simultaneously uploaded to https://archive.org.
221285
City Market Fuel #440, 16400 South Townsend Avenue
12.347 gallons
$3.089/gallon
$38.14
orchard fans in the chill
ED: For new subscribers, selecting the red dot in the middle of the map will start the audio sample which can then be controlled using the play-bar and volume/mute (speaker) icon. Also, a complete library of neoscenes contributions to the aporee::maps project is simultaneously uploaded to https://archive.org.
watching Hells Kitchen
dumbing down
The slacking of the Amurikan mind:
What happens when people lose the ability to reason or render good judgments? Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you [Drumph’s] tariff policy. I’ve covered a lot of policies over the decades, some of which I supported and some of which I opposed. But I have never seen a policy as stupid as this one. It is based on false assumptions. It rests on no coherent argument in its favor. It relies on no empirical evidence. It has almost no experts on its side — from left, right or center. It is jumble-headedness exemplified. [Drumph] himself personifies stupidity’s essential feature — self-satisfaction, an inability to recognize the flaws in your thinking. And of course when the approach led to absolutely predictable mayhem, [Drumph] , lacking any coherent plan, backtracked, flip-flopped, responding impulsively to the pressures of the moment as his team struggled to keep up.
Producing something this stupid is not the work of a day; it is the achievement of a lifetime — relying on decades of incuriosity, decades of not cracking a book, decades of being impervious to evidence.
Back in Homer’s day, people lived within an oral culture, then humans slowly developed a literate culture. Now we seem to be moving to a screen culture. Civilization was fun while it lasted.
[excerpt] Brooks, David. “Producing Something This Stupid Is the Achievement of a Lifetime.” New York Times, April 10, 2025, sec. Opinion.
I certainly have seen the premise of this entire article operational in the last classes I taught in the US, at CU-Boulder back in 2013. It was in the gathering slack that I found I could no longer function as the learning facilitator I had once been. In that time there was still a tiny modicum of critical thinking operational in a minority of the students. The majority, though, were fully submerged in a wide-scaled dumbing-down of intellect, a suspicion of internal curiosity, and a paralyzing fear of unknowns. This among ‘top tier’ undergrads and grads in supposedly creative pursuits—digital media and art. Afraid of texts, afraid of yet-learned tools, afraid of expression. It was at this point I decided never again to teach in the US. (That decision independent of the gutting (adjunctification!) of US Higher Ed, rendering the economics of teaching unsustainable.)
Much to be said on the details of this topic, but the principles underlying it are a pernicious and powerful coddling of mental energies that is explicit in the consumption of mediated versions of reality. It is in this mediated regime that there are no consequences. There are no responsibilities to the Other. There are no obligations to the wider community. Yup, fun while it lasted.
hope revived
Despite several days of pernicious and deadly emanations, these fragile expressions of life seem to have recovered. There is hope. Apricots.
Min Kamp 5
Knausgård, Karl Ove. My Struggle: Book Five. Translated by Don Bartlett. 1st Archipelago Books. Brooklyn, NY: Archipelago Books, 2016.
watching Hells Kitchen
watching Hells Kitchen
decline
BUILDABLE PLANT DECOR – Enjoy a mindful, nature-inspired project with the LEGO Botanicals Lucky Bamboo DIY building kit for adults
AUTHENTIC DETAILS – The artificial plant has realistic features, including a pot with a wood-effect plinth, pebbles and 3 green bamboo stems with leaves for a lifelike appearance
LUCKY PLANT – Representing the season of summer in traditional art, the bamboo plant is believed to bring good fortune to its owners
MAINTENANCE-FREE BAMBOO DECOR – Once complete, this set become an artificial indoor plant that will add a touch of tranquility to any room
LEGO BUILDER APP – This set includes printed and digital versions of the building instructions for an interactive experience
NATURE GIFT IDEA – Give this plant to the gardener in your life – husband, wife, parent, child, boyfriend, girlfriend – or for Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, graduations, or housewarmings
DIMENSIONS – The brick-built bamboo plant has 325 pieces and stands over 11 in. (29 cm) tall
watching Hells Kitchen
April Fool
[ED: Sorry for the posting-re-posting gaffe yesterday, here’s the final.]
Expensive eggs, remember that, expensive eggs.
I wake up in the middle of the night, there is a far-off but very loud drone grinding into the usual night silence. Helicopters? Trucks on the highway? There is no highway nearby. Ah, yes, it’s gotten too cold. Too cold for the delicate fruit blossoms that have exploded in the past 72 hours. They will not survuve. The surrounding orchards have started their huge air-circulation fans, punching through the inversion that threatens those splendid, tiny, profuse indicators of spring.
Forget the trees for a moment, and shift to a completely other topic, equally chilling.
I confess that I have recently—in conversation with friends—made the anxious prognostication that “within the next fours years, or very likely within this year, we will see the implementation of a full-on police state.” Old friends likely know full well, by now, that I am something of a critic of the US as an Imperial power and believe that the Military-Industrial+Oligarch Complex has been and is a direct threat to civil society (as Eisenhower predicted 17 January 1961). I also confess that I’m wrong, I’ve been wrong all along. The police state is already here, it’s been here for years. It just hasn’t come for Us yet, it’s still busy with Them. It is so blatant, though, that it’s hard to see right in front of Us—thinking both that “it can’t happen to me” and “those other people deserve to be taken away for what they’ve done.” There’s plenty of historical precedence for the time when a nation-state sinks into a perverse and dominating malaise of fear of the Other, and any form of ethical, empathetic action—versus ideological purity—is suspect.
It’s the chilling stories that come by word of mouth. ICE is checking documents on the subway. ICE is outside New York public libraries that hold English-as-a-second-language classes. ICE agents handcuffed a U.S. citizen who tried to intervene in a detention in Harlem. ICE vehicles are parked outside Columbia. ICE is coming to your workplace, your street, your building. ICE agents are wearing brown uniforms that resemble those of UPS — don’t open the door for deliveries. Don’t leave the house. The streets in the New York neighborhoods with the highest immigrant populations have emptied out.
…
When the range of factors that can get a person arrested stretches from political speech to a paperwork error, we are in territory described by the Russian saying, “Give us a person and we’ll find the infraction.”
…
…
When the range of factors that can get a person arrested stretches from political speech to a paperwork error, we are in territory described by the Russian saying, “Give us a person and we’ll find the infraction.”
…
Gessen, M. Unmarked Vans. Secret Lists. Public Denunciations. Our Police State Has Arrived. New York Times. 2 April 2025.
Back in 1979 or so, when I was a student at Mines, I was visiting my sister in the Bay area during spring break. On the day I was to fly back to Denver, we were in Oakland, and I realized that I could probably catch a direct flight from there instead of having her drive me all the way down to the San Francisco airport. Easier for everyone. It was so, paper tickets changed for no charge, and in an hour I was on a flight back home.
more “April Fool”
watching Hells Kitchen
Golden Rocks: The Geology and Mining History of Golden, Colorado
Have you ever wondered how the landscape around the City of Golden came to be? Why are North and South Table Mountains so flat? What’s up with all those rock fins on the back-nine at Fossil Trace Golf Course? What are those white stripes along the sharp ridge west of State Hwy-93 to Boulder? Were there ever any dinosaurs in Golden? Where did those round rocks in the Armory Building come from? Did anyone ever find any gold in Golden? Did you know that Golden was a mining town from 1870 through the 1950s? And, that most of the public open space in and around Golden has its roots in mining?
This book answers these questions and more by unraveling the tapestry of the Golden landscape. You will discover the origins of what you are walking or cycling by, driving across, golfing over, or simply just seeing every day when you walk out of your home. You will learn the story behind Golden’s good drinking water. You will learn how Golden’s early settlers used their local rock materials to build Golden and Denver, a legacy that still provokes controversy.
Anderson, Donna S., and Paul B. Haseman. Golden Rocks: The Geology and Mining History of Golden, Colorado. Golden, CO: Anderson-Haseman, 2021.
Here’s a marvelous publication from the talented and insightful Donna Anderson and Paul Haseman. Their passion for geology and for communicating the fascinating and often surprising facts about Golden and its geologic history show through every page of this informative book.
Anderson-Haseman-2021-Golden-RocksDownload your free PDF copy. Enjoy! It’s a great read, especially if you are one of the lucky folks who live in Golden where you can simply look around and experience the geology firsthand. Or, if you are a visitor, it will add immeasurably to your appreciation of our town as you also visit the other attractions in the area (including the Museum of Earth Science on the Colorado School of Mines campus).
Thanks again to the authors for both their generosity in making this publication freely available and their dedication to public science education!
portrait, Paul
screwing the deck
ED: For new subscribers, selecting the red dot in the middle of the map will start the audio sample which can then be controlled using the play-bar and volume/mute (speaker) icon. Also, a complete library of neoscenes contributions to the aporee::maps project is simultaneously uploaded to https://archive.org.
detritus
Over time, I gathered more than four tons of ferrous and non-ferrous metal scrap on the property and took it to recycling. There was an archaeological aspect to the process that was fascinating, and I ended up keeping (temporarily) some of the more interesting bits of detritus. A few found a home on top of the wood stove that warms the house each winter. I saved many more but wish I had photographed the endless variety. It was dominated by the banal: glass shards, nails, nuts& bolts, and bottle caps, but everything from friendship bracelets and toys to music cassettes to many random tools to 100-year-old broadsheets and canning jars showed up. I did reuse/repurpose anything that was reusable! The thirty-plus horseshoes found randomly around the entire property went, one to each visitor, a few to JR, and I kept two for posterity (again, temporary, I’m definitely not taking those to Iceland!).
I often mused what a metal-detector would show up, although the sheer quantity of objects and their wide distribution it would probably end up as an annoyance. And, in the end, who’s got time for this noise? Clearing out evidences of human occupation is truly an endless occupation. And one that, in this time, is use-less.
The Call
[ED: This is a remixed version of a text I wrote in 2009 for Isabelle to accompany a show of her webcam composites at the Cabrillo Gallery in Aptos, California.]
The Call emerges out of the long-term inter-net-work practice of artist Isabelle Jenniches who has in the past worked in a wide variety of creative net-based activities. “The Call” is one of a number of process-oriented pieces she created based on the availability of generic user-controlled Internet web-cams: remote-controlled tele-vision, as it were. The works are constructed over long periods of time spent observing the selected scenario, remotely. Life-time spent observing the world through a periscope while submerged in the endless flux of data that now flows around us and through us. Thousands of images are made during a methodological process of deep and distant looking through this mediated network eye. The extended seeing and repetitive digital stitching operations on the thousands of gathered images acts to frame a meditative and ultimately grounded daily routine. The cumulative practice approaches the classical Zen expression—there is no web-cam, there is no PhotoShop, there is only the Void—while the creative expression itself arises through the post-Cartesian possibilities of a commonly accessible network interface. This makes for a work that is deeply connected to the extended tele-body of this present era. The eye that sees beyond the horizon, from the silence of her studio under the redwoods. The eye that sees all. It turns this all-seeing eye of the surveillance society into a creative tool to explore an elemental and vivifying aspect of be-ing—as framed by the passage of time. The more things change, the more complexity surfaces through each individual’s model of reality. Formally recalling David Hockney’s early Polaroid SX-70 time-space collage transits, Jenniches’ work presents an intimate and intense personal vision of a scope rarely manifest in the click-through eye-candy world of the net. It demands attention and draws the eye ever closer with the seduction inherent in all high-resolution photographic imagery. And at the precise moment when the viewer is engaged in microscopic interpolation, the work becomes the macroscopic big picture.
John Hopkins, Sydney, August 2009; Colorado 2025 (https://neoscenes.net/blog)
to be scattered
When the time comes. (or, alternatively “along the edge or at the center.”) These are the places to be scattered to the winds, the sky, the earth, the cosmos: stardust to stardust: heaven, I’m in heaven, when were out together dancing cheek to cheek, etc.
Warm Springs Cliff, Dinosaur National Monument, Colorado:
40°31’39.92″N, 108°55’48.08″W
North end of Hrísey, Eyjafjarðarsýsla, Iceland:
66° 1’34.85″N, 18°24’35.91″W
Center of the Universe, San Luis Valley, Colorado:
37°39’48.16″N, 105°49’45.22″W
Min Kamp 4
Knausgård, Karl Ove. My Struggle: Book Four. Translated by Don Bartlett. 1st Archipelago Books. Brooklyn, NY: Archipelago Books, 2015.
watching Hells Kitchen
now reading
Knausgård, Karl Ove. My Struggle: Book Three: Boyhood. Translated by Don Bartlett. 1st Archipelago Books. Brooklyn, NY: Archipelago Books, 2012.
Actually just finished that one, and already into:
Knausgård, Karl Ove. My Struggle: Book Four. Translated by Don Bartlett. 1st Archipelago Books. Brooklyn, NY: Archipelago Books, 2015.
It’s not easy to pinpoint why this several-thousand-page series is such a compelling read. I always shuddered at the “couldn’t put it down” genre, but there are several elements that I’m aware of as I read. The primary is a resonance with my own past, along with the formal aspects of remembrance in resurrecting the past in detail: memory. Another is the progression of what is a single stream of a life: the detailed descriptions come and go, all the while building up a self-image of the writer, warts and all. Not clear what finishing the series will feel like, but the ride is not simply a pleasant mediated diversion from the ongoing shambolic and horrible devolution of Amurikan society, it is a reflection of the Self, a call to introspection. A further resonance is felt because I spent significant time teaching in Norway, in many of the places where Knausgård’s story takes place—so there are many revelations and realizations about Norwegian society and its people.
Thanks Zander for bringing Karl Ove to my attention, this is quite the reading treat!
the capture of the administrative state
While there are plenty of paeans on what Amurika *is*—the City upon a Hill, The Great Experiment, a Melting Pot, the Global Police Officer, and so on—a nation cannot function without its administrative state. At the moment when that administrative state is fully encircled and infiltrated by oligarchic actors that threaten to usurp the powers inherent in the state, the nation itself is at great risk.
The relationship between the administrative state and a nation’s survival exists in precarious balance. While administrative institutions provide essential continuity and capacity-to-act that strengthens state resilience against complex challenges, this relationship becomes severely compromised when oligarchic interests capture these same institutions. The administrative apparatus ideally serves as both operational backbone and democratic counterweight to concentrated power, but cannot fulfill either function when redirected toward private gain rather than public purpose. This slide towards a fully parasitic oligarchy has been underway in some form for the duration of the nation, but following the demise of any guardrails on money in elections, the process, as it nears completion, threatens the fundamental viability of the nation.
first encounter
Mid-May 1981, we are camped off of County Road 114 along Saguache Creek, the boondocks. To spare our meager student incomes, George, Rick, and I went in on buying a huge canvas tent from one of the geology profs. We got permission from a rancher to pitch it on his land, not too far from Saguache, Colorado, where our Mines Geophysics Department Field Camp was headquartered, in the “Saguache Hilton“. As a money-saving move, the tent worked out pretty well until we realized that we had pitched it next to a large and very aggressive red ant colony, and there wasn’t a way to completely seal the large doors. I have a vague memory of cooking fuel being used at one point in a vain attempt to win the fight. We eventually bailed out after Rick broke his foot during a weekend rock-climbing expedition-gone-bad. We then ended up at the Hilton, though he was more spry on crutches—as a NCAA Div II champion athlete—than most folks are on two feet.
oblique
Turns out that this stasis/travelog, textually, is largely an oblique view of life. That is, it rarely explores the full-frontal texture of immediate living, and is skewed hard from the momentary intensity of be-ing. To rectify or not? Pre-existing thought patterns are pre-set to provide habitual observations rather than express the internal landscape of the moment in any detail. Projects have become projects through static repetition of vision: along the road’s verge; portraits; watching the sky. The patterns exist in accordance to Hebbs Rule and the struggle between excitatory and inhibitory synapses. But I will resist neuro-predestination derailing a search for the explicit, the direct, the idiosyncratic in my own temporary existence, as it is slowly consumed by hyper-rational societal stresses.
There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open.
in De Mille, Agnes. Martha: The Life and Work of Martha Graham. 1st ed. New York: Random House, 1991.
As life-time shifts into a higher potential for change, the level of chaos increases, feeding back into that potential. This was the subject of thought on the return leg—down-hill coasting—of one of my regular winter cycling perambulations yesterday. It started with the somewhat banal idea that chaotic flows are an efficient way to dissipate (excess) energy in a system. The simple availability of excess energy may well be a (the?) primary source for the need to dissipate it. [This idea may be connected to the rise of complexity in a social system where the system finally collapses under the sheer impossibility of management.]
221032
City Market Fuel #404, 122 Gunnison River Drive
12.165 gallons
$3.169/gallon
$38.55
field work
Much as I dislike putting stuff into a landfill, can’t avoid it sometimes. Better to recycle, re-use, down-cycle, etc. But when faced with liquidating the house and property, there are some things that end up extraneous to any possible usage. Thus a trip to the somewhat apocalyptic scenario that is the local landfill. It’s set in “The Adobes”, dramatic Mancos Shale (Prairie Canyon Member, Upper Cretaceous) badlands on the southern flank of Grand Mesa.
It is quite depressing to see what isn’t being recycled … all kinds of metal, glass, wood. A picker could make a fortune with a truck, just taking scrap metal to Recla (“We put the “S” in (s)crap!” down in Montrose). I snagged a few small aluminum bits that I will add to my next—and hopefully last—recycling run from the property. But the heavy machinery rigs are running around crushing, compacting, and smoothing the detritus, so, it’s not particularly safe trying to retrieve anything.
glitchworks
Min Kamp 3
Knausgård, Karl Ove. My Struggle: Book Three: Boyhood. Translated by Don Bartlett. 1st Archipelago Books. Brooklyn, NY: Archipelago Books, 2012.
Case Study: Denver – 9 August 1967
Major magnitude 5.3 earthquake shock in Denver
On 9 August 1967, Denver experienced an earthquake that caught the city’s residents by surprise. The tremor, which registered 5.3 on the Richter scale, was particularly notable as it occurred in a region not typically associated with significant seismic activity. What made this earthquake even more remarkable was its eventual connection to human activity—specifically, the disposal of wastewater at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal, a chemical weapons manufacturing facility northeast of the city. This event would later become a classic case study in induced seismicity, where human actions trigger earthquakes, and it helped establish important precedents for understanding the relationship between fluid injection into the ground and subsequent seismic events.
One of the strongest and most economically damaging earthquakes to affect the Denver area in the 1960s occurred on August 9, 1967 around 6:30 AM, awakening and frightening thousands of people. This magnitude 5.3 earthquake, centered near Commerce City, caused more than eight million dollars (2022 dollars) in damage in Denver and the northern suburbs.
Felt reports and intensity ratings were described by von Hake and Cloud (1984). Intensity VII damage was reported in Northglenn, where plate glass windows broke, many walls, ceilings, foundations, and concrete floors cracked, and several businesses sustained damage due to fallen merchandise. One liquor store had estimated damage at USD $90,000 to $175,000 (2022 dollars).
Intensity VI damage was reported in 28 locations, many of which suffered considerable cracked plaster and mortar, broken windows, damaged foundations and chimneys, and damage to household goods. The earthquake was felt as far as Sterling to the northeast and Pueblo, Colorado to the south, as well as north to Laramie, Wyoming.
Based on the isoseismal map, the estimated felt area was about 20,000 mi2 (50,000 km2). Von Hake and Cloud (1984) proposed a size of 15,000 mi2 (39,000 km2), while Hadsell (1968) indicated it was felt over 45,000 mi2 (117,000 km2). Docekal (1970) reported a felt area of 20,000 mi2 (52,000 km2). A magnitude of Mb 5.3 was reported for this earthquake by von Hake and Cloud (1969). Nuttli and others (1979) calculated an Mb of 4.9 and ms of 4.4. Herrmann and others (1981) suggested a focal depth of 1.9 mi (3 km) for this event. The overall felt area is prominently elongated in directions parallel and perpendicular to the (north-south oriented Front Range) mountain front. The intensity V and VI contours are also oriented in an elongate pattern perpendicular to the mountain front.
This substantial earthquake, the largest of a long series, is believed to have been triggered by the deep injection of chemically-charged wastewater into a borehole drilled to a depth of 12,045 ft (3671 m) at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal in 1961. It was followed by an earthquake of magnitude 5.2 on November 27, 1967. In total, between 1962 and 1967 the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) recorded over 1,500 earthquakes in the area. The Arsenal was a large chemical weapons-manufacturing facility run by the U.S. Army in Commerce City. Wastewater injection at the site stopped in 1966 and the entire facility closed in 1992. Much of the area is now a national wildlife refuge.
Citations NOTE: The ON-002 Earthquake Reference Collection which includes most of the following references, and 700 more—is available to researchers—see instructions on that page to access the collection.
Bardwell, George E. “Some Statistical Features of the Relationship between Rocky Mountain Arsenal Waste Disposal and Frequency of Earthquakes.” The Mountain Geologist 3, no. 1 (1966): 37–42.
more “Case Study: Denver – 9 August 1967”house for sale
Open season! If you are looking for a retreat from the busy world, one with fertile soil, water rights, and high agricultural potential, next to some of the best Nordic skiing in the US; silent nights with dark starry skies; bright days with a sky definitely worth watching, read on. There’s plenty of wildlife: every sort of raptor, ravens, Colorado bluebirds, jays, magpies, flickers, marmots, foxes, deer, and ground squirrels, along with occasional coyotes, mountain lions, elk, and bears (haven’t personally seen these latter two on my property per se, but they are around!). The property is at 6500 ft (2000 m) on the southern flank of Grand Mesa with spacious views of the Uncompaghre Uplift, the Mesa, and the San Juan Mountains to the south. I’ve got decent neighbors as well.
I’ve put in a lot of sweat equity improving both the entire property and the house: removing tons (literally) of detritus from prior residents, caring for the trees and other vegetation, re-doing the bathroom, bedroom, and kitchen (with its ever-changing view from the sink!); upgrading parts of the roofing; re-doing the deck; and the whole house is scheduled to be painted next week. Also, because the property is largely open, it is insurable (unlike many rural properties in the state)! This is becoming a serious issue because of climate change and risk of natural disasters! The property is essentially not at risk of flooding, landslide, rockfall, earthquake, or fire.
Much of the process has followed the principle of sustainable DWAM (doing with available materials), and with the idea of sustainably re-wilding the property.
– 13.4 acres (5.4 hectares) 18145 Surface Creek Road, Cedaredge.
– 2 bedroom, 1 bath; 1362 sq ft; 300 sq ft finished root cellar w/ water and electricity; 600 sq ft workshop/outbuilding; 2 additional outbuilding/stable areas; metal roofing throughout; some fencing supplies available;
– several producing fruit trees: apricot, apple, cherry plum.
– Electricity (DMEA) to house and garage (220v) with a 30 amp RV hook-up.
– Upper Surface Creek Water Users Association (USCDWUA) provides domestic water from their treatment plant about five miles upstream
– Agricultural water shares in Leon Lake and Marcot Park Ditch and Reservoir Companies.
– Fiber-optic internet to the house (up to 8gb available) via Elevate.
– Eligible as an Agricultural Property.
– Cedaredge is a small town about two miles away. It’s got a decent grocery store, laundromat, library, dispensary, thrift stores, doctor/dentist offices, a handful of restaurants, excellent acupuncture/CTM center, the Grand Mesa Arts Center, elementary-through-high schools, and a friendly Ace hardware store. There are abundant fruit, vegetable, wine and other organic sources locally, and if you are a carnivore, there’s plenty of game.
– Delta (17 mi); Paonia (32 mi); Montrose (40 mi); Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park (40 mi); Grand Junction (50 mi); Telluride (100 mi); Moab UT (150 mi); Denver (250 mi).
– if escape from this pleasant reverie is necessary, both Montrose and Grand Junction have airports with daily direct flights to DFW, Salt Lake, Denver, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Las Vegas, and other points.
— if you know anyone who would be interested, let me know. The house will be listed in a few weeks at $479,000, I will not be signing with a RE agent until then.
the next day?
She should have died hereafter;
There would have been a time for such a word.
— To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing.
There would have been a time for such a word.
— To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing.
— Macbeth (Act 5, Scene 5, lines 17–28)
The speed of time’s arrow—against the wind-down of entropy—increases towards stage left. Can it find its mark? Meh. It’s not a good metaphor to encapsulate the flow of the temporal within the imagination of mind. Maybe tomorrow I’ll come up with a better one.
field work
220771
City Market Fuel #440, 16400 South Townsend Avenue
11.825 gallons
$3.099/gallon
$36.65
going to the mat
It’s difficult to write these days. Internal monologues are focused on figuring out how to pack up life asap. It’s a bit strange to say that the past four-plus years is the longest I’ve lived in one place continuously since leaving my parents home at 17 y.o. And further, it’s one of the few periods of time that I have had *all* my belongings in one place and (mostly) out of boxes. The majority of my adult life, my stuff has been in a storage unit somewhere—New Jersey, Prescott, Golden, Boulder—or in someone’s garage or so. Uff. Packing the entire archive back up seems absurd as it was hardly accessed in the time it was out of boxes. A useless pile of detritus. Why, why, why subject myself to the ignominy and energy-waste of maintaining something that I’m the only one who has an interest in it?
Now Reading: Absorbing the epic six-volume autobiography, Min Kamp, from Norwegian, Karl Ove Knausgård. At Zander’s recommendation, and then, once I started and realized that I actually was in the same locations at the same times—Bergen, Trondheim, Stavanger, Kristiansand, Oslo—as Karl Ove back when I was spending a fair amount of time in Norway in the late 1990s and early 2000s. A compelling read.
Knausgård, Karl Ove. My Struggle: Book Two: A Man in Love. Translated by Don Bartlett. 1st Archipelago books edition. Vol. 2. 6 vols. Brooklyn, NY: Archipelago Books, 573.
I recently checked in with Julia, my former CGS intern. She’s a Mines (hydrogeology) graduate, who has, wonderfully, found a shared pathway to follow her bliss. She and her boyfriend, Torin, also a Mines alumni, have taken their connection with yoga to a higher level, gaining the necessary credentials for teaching and are planning to go international with that sooner than later. They have also started a YouTube channel—Wellbeing Cafe—already with a huge number of yoga routines and a variety of other material. Very cool to see this transition.
DMNS Meteorite Collection
Colleagues at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, led by Dr. James Hagadorn, the Curator of Geology at the museum, released a fine 36-page publication The Meteorite Collection of the Denver Museum of Nature & Science. It contains a fascinating history of the collection with back stories on some of the many specimens, along with a reference list and a full catalog of the collection. It’s available as a free pdf download, but the paper copy is well worth the $3.16 price-point (how do they manage to sell it for so little??). It’s the next best thing to a visit to the DMNS … when in Denver!
RT-0046503-dmns-sr-17-meteorites
Hagadorn, James W., Emerald J. Spindler, Ada K. Bowles, and Nicole M. Neu-Yagle. Denver Museum of Nature and Science Report 17: The Meteorite Collection. Vol. December 11, 2019. Denver Museum of Nature and Science Report SR-17. Denver, CO: The Denver Museum of Nature and Science, 2019.
Following is a selection of meteorite specimens in the Denver Museum of Nature and Science collection:
more “DMNS Meteorite Collection”
field work
