No vacation!

I don't know how my mother does it.

My father's daughter from a previous marriage was in town with her boyfreind on a roadtrip from Arcosanti in Arizona back to their home in Mississippi and the conversation with them was *superb*. Wide-ranging fasinating stuff. From the Hopi language to surviving Katrina and shrimp the size of your hand and guitar fingerboards to the timber companies in Nicaragua to utopian communities and expression of authoritarian tendencies in Soleri's architecture. We went for hours in ever-broadening circles without touching the same subject twice, until it was time for them to go.

Then i go out to feed the dog and show them the garden and there's the dog, quite dead, inside the toolshed. I go through the motions regardless, just explaining she has not been well but will be fine. They then come back inside, I put the dead dog out of my head, and the conversation continues without a break for six straight hours.

My father who's been doing well all day while I did more to hold up the conversation for hours kinda goes a little stoopid once they leave. I've provided the surf on which his wit was free to ride, so that his daughter saw mostly the best of him she had remembered from years earlier. Without them there to keep the conversation going, he stops making sense. He goes from remembering folk songs he hasn't heard in fifty years to pulling total nonsequiters out of the blue and pulling the tube from his oxygen machine so far through the house it almost broke.

I have to bury the dog but he's so emotional about the dog that I *can't* tell him 'cause if I do he'll sob at my mother over the phone during what ought to be *her* moment in the sun since it's *her* book tour and *her* awards ceremony.

I go out and find the perfect spot and dig a hole.

He asks me what I'm doing in the garden.

I say I'm spreading compost so the flowers'll grow.

Yeesh.

How's *that* for stretching the truth?

He knows something's wrong but i just do my best to deflect him and explain I'm doing a dozen things at once, without being overly specific.

This weekend ain't no vacation, I tell you! I'm working harder these two days or so than I do even with KUNM, my job, and a super-tight election just a little bit over a week away.

So anyway once I get the ground wet he decides he's ready to go out to eat. Oy vey. We've got a house *full* of fresh, wonderful food. But he wants to go out. I tell him I've got, uh, garden stuff I *need* to do ("what garden stuff?"/"fertilizing the bulbs") before it gets dark. Then there's the little issue of moving the snow-white canine cadaver from the spot where she died all the war to the spot where she's gonna get buried. Right past the windows where he might see everything. I do it. Fast. Was not the most dignified funeral procession but sure beat putting her in a trash bag to rot.

So the corpse is in place. I want to bury it. But he wants to eat. Now. He never wants to leave the house. He's showing more awareness than he usually does. And he almost never wants to leave the house. So we get him his portable oxygen tank set up and get him out to the car. Then I take the walker and put it in the back. Then we get to the restaurant.

It's a big production to get in our of the car, then another to get into the door of the restaurant and finally another to get him to the table. Then he doesn't remember where he is and so I order for him what I know he's liked before -- a Gyro platter. We're at Sinbad, the priceless little Lebanese restaurant here in El Paso. Then it's take one piece of lamb, chrew for five minutes, talk, take one piece of lettuce, chew for five minutes, take a sip of the drink, take one piece of lamb, chrew for filve minutes. And so on for forty-five minutes, with intermissions of dropping food on the floor and having to wipe his nose because the oxygen makes his nose salivate. (I know noses don't salivate but don't know what the word is for what they actually do.)

I'm *trying* not to be impatient but I *have to* get back and finish burying the dog before it's dark. Then finally we pay the bill and it's the multiple productions of getting to the door, then to the car, then into the car, then home, then out of the car, then up to the door, then in the door, and then back to his room in a series of stages that might be likened to the stations of the cross.

But he's eating! And he's in good spirits. His body's just falling apart.

I bury the dog.

Make a marker.

Light incense.

Now he's wanting to talk but I need to write and tell *SOMEONE* the dog died for my own sanity since I can't tell anyone a thing about it 'til my mother comes home tomorrow afternoon.

I'm going to share some more Amy Goodman DVDs with him, after we get him into the den, where the TV with the DVD player is.

Then he should be ready to be given his pills and put to bed by ten.

Now it's time to go spend some time with him. I think I can handle this, now. I'll be back later on tonight. I hope.

Hectic.

Worked Thursday. This job's officially more fun than Foxes. Office intrigues run a close second, sometimes, to James Bond novels. There's as much drama there as in a bar, you just have to stick around for it to ripen and develop. The payoff is the visciousness is far more finely-crafted than just random drunk stupidity. There is some art to it. But it's not what's capturing my imagination right now, though I continue to learn at it.

I emailed the Operations Director at KUNM on Tuesday about volunteering, she suggests meeting this week.

I write back on Wednesday the only time that works before I run down for the weekend is Thursday between 4 and 5.

She writes back she's available between 4 and 5. I get this email at 2:30.

I run home change into something with fewer cat hairs on it and run in to the station in time to miss Democracy Now. (The only good reason to miss it, I figure.)

Great interview. Lots of in depth stuff about interests and abilities and the needs of the stations' various departments. Met Jim Williams in the News Department, right as he was putting together the evening's news. He's the guy who worked the board while I had perhaps the most intensely *positive* identity crisis of my life in front of tens of thousands of live listeners.

I might not start working in News right away, depending on the News Department's needs and my availability. I'd be perfectly happy learning quality production with radio theatre. I'd be happy enough just being a docent at the front, or hell, even entering data from the pledge drive, or what have you. It's all the same radio station though and the more I can learn about it the better. Hell, I'd be happy to climb the transmitter and tighten cables in the wind. :)

Focus. The News is definitely where I want to be.

I had such great energy from the meeting I drove down to El Paso the same night. Practiced at least two dozen variations of "This is KUNM, 89.9 FM, Albuquerque, New Mexico" about half the way down in my very best voice.

Ate a green chile cheeseburger at the Hilton bar (a registered cultural property) in the Owl Bar. That's the little restaurant and bar in San Antonio where "the Manhattan Project" was really just one short if pivotal moment in its long and fabled history. The Owl Bar's basically the outpost of civilization closest to the Trinity Site. They've also got the best green chile cheeseburgers anywhere. And dollars pinned to all the walls. And patches from police and fire departments all around the world. And owls, hundreds of owls. And fascinating if inscrutable traces of military culture in the area. The guys at White Sands Missile Range clearly love the Owl Bar as much as I do.

Wished while eating I'd had a recorder with me. The Owl Bar in San Antonio is an amazing place anytime, doubly so at dinnertime right before this very election. Sense I got from eavesdropping is that everyone's voting straight republican for all the local and state races -- but for congress, they're not 100% committed, they are definitely mad enough to vote for change, and it's *not* about personal bullshit or Mark Foley or negative ads, it's about "my kid got back from Iraq and..." or "when I was in Afghanistan, I...".

*Those* voices *need* to be on public radio! They might be the farthest thing in the world from self-congratulatorily "progressive" voices (like my own) but they have their own truth and sanity, and it's *bound* to find common ground with city-slicker faggots who drive through from time to time. And the sense of the people hodling their noses to consider voting for Ms. Madrid seemed utterly resolved on one thing -- if the Democrats did their sons wrong, they would "vote the bums out just as fast we voted 'em in".

Then in Truth or Consequences I stop for *another* burger at Tex's Big A Burger, which doesn't market itself, at all, but is as good as the Owl Bar, foodwise, for *totally* different reasons. Like fresh-ground, local, grass-fed bison or brangus burgers cooked and served steaming fresh on toasted buns for four dollars apiece. It's a *rancher's* establishment. So was the Owl Bar, probably, when it opened, before the Military came in. Both amazing little burger stands.

Then down here where I've been running nonstop. Played Amy Goodman's interview with Pete Seeger for my 81-year-old father who was moved to tears. Had a very enjoyable dinner with his daughter. Longish day ahead tomorrow probably. Will sign off now and get some real sleep.

The backstory.

Here's my voting history, for all the world to review.

Apologies to everyone who's known me longer than I've been blogging, as this is all old news to you, besides being very long and very boring. But you are few, and my readers are, if not many, then at least more, somewhat, in number than are you. So in the interests of "the greatest good for greatest number", you get to suffer through all of this again. ;)

In 1996, the same year Amy Goodman's "Democracy Now!" first went on the air, I voted in my first presidential election.

I had just returned from Seattle where I had seen the tragic toll taken on the lives of my freinds and coworkers by the so-called "war on drugs" waged by both major political parties. I therefore registered, and voted, in the State of Texas, as a Libertarian.

I'd only personally known one other registered Libertarian in my life -- a convert, late in his life, to Judaism whose views on the "two-party system" struck me as so incisevely *sane* that I *knew* I could never register as a voter of *either* major party. I understood, even then, at some level, that a so-called "two party system" was essentially the same thing as a "one party system" with two "wings" in the same ruling party. You know -- the whole "11 million dead" in Germany's Holocaust thing. (Or does anyone deny that it happened? If you do, I'd be glad to debate.)

Electorally speaking, I was *born* independent, based on conversations over the dinner table with this man, a deeply respected former colleague of my father's, who had long since moved to Amish country.

This, if you can't tell, is the "short form" of my backstory.

My thinking, back in 1996, was that decriminalization of some or all Schedule 1 controlled substances would at least serve to bring black market goods under rational regulation in the public interest, while serving to channel chronic abusers into programs that might help them to recover from their various addictions. This all, of course, before the decimation of what ever existed of public healthcare in this country.

Even then, I had major problems with other aspects of the Libertarian Party. I've always hated guns. But the Libertarians were "strong" on what might be considered a "strict constructionist approach" towards reading the second amendment. I didn't like it at all. Their redeeming quality seemed to me that they were equally committed in principle to every other amendment in the Bill of Rights.

The place that Libertarian ideology inevitably broke down, in my eyes, was on abortion, where the party itself became split. But abortion was not "my issue". So I held my nose and voted for Harry Browne, who that strange year, was *not* a third, but *fourth* party Candidate, even in Texas.

Remember, Perot ran against George I and Clinton that same year. But Perot was a nutcase who ran on his own money, and anyone who grew up in a family of teachers in Texas knew what all he was really about. So he was out of the question. I had to vote my conscience. I did. (The car-safety nut was not on the ballot in Texas that year, as I recall.)

And it was not a single issue vote, either. I loved the fact that here was the only political party willing to just leave me well enough alone in my perversions, which at that point, were no more than ill-formed, isolated fantasies, if that. And if you don't know what I mean by that, you've clearly never grown up queer in Texas.

Truth be told, my ideas on taxation have changed somewhat since then.

But I admired, and still admire, any party that dared to stand on principle, even if that principle broke down and ultimately split the party fatally.

Fast forward (through some minor elections in which I voted unpredictably for candidates from *all* parties on *any* given ticket, but *never* for winning candidates in *any* given race) to California.

Los Angeles. August, 2000. The Democratic National Convention met inside the Staples Center. The Democratic Leadership Committee met the night before the Convention opened in a private fundraising party on Santa Monica Pier. Senator Lieberman was in attendance. The Los Angeles Police Department had effectively shut down all of downtown LA to daily life and traffic for the sake of this party that my family has supported solidly for many generations back as "the people's party" against the Republican "party of short-term self-interest". These broad ideals were drilled into me from long before I knew *anything* about what democracy actually looked like or stood for.

That same night the principle "one person = one vote" became "one dollar = one vote", before my very eyes.

Suddenly the trusted Democratic Party needed protection from the very "people" they dared purport to represent. This was not ideology, it was *directly* and *immediately* sensed. They would not talk with us. Neither would their donors. Their arrogance was utterly astounding. True, LAPD (besides being notoriously corrupt within its ranks -- remember Ramparts, anyone?) was ultimately under the direct command of Republican Mayor Richard Riordan; but at a single word from Gore, or Lieberman, or the DNC, or the DLC, the dogs could have been, and would have been called off.

They were not.

In my brief lived experience, direct voter suppression in the world's so-called "greatest democracy" began on 13 August, 2000.

What we experienced that week was just a foretaste of total disenfranchisement, as we saw people we had marched beside proudly silently "disappeared" off the streets, held indefinitely without charge, and sometimes beaten senselessly before our eyes. Even those of us who had wanted to support the Democratic Party found we could not, with a clear conscience. We were rendered incapable of voting for the lesser of two evils, and we spread that message far and wide, as far as word-of-mouth would let us do so.

We knew and understood that Senator Gore's ties to Occidental Petroleum would render him completely impotent to paint his opponent in oil. Or else, we could not support him on the basis of the million-plus Iraqi children starved to death under UN sanctions -- a price, in Clinton's Secretary of State Madeline Albright's words, "worth it" to cripple Hussein's Ba'athist regime the Bushes put into power, only to turn against, when it proved convenient to do so. And even those who didn't see "the broader issues" saw their freinds dragged off or beaten in the streets. All in the name of the National Democratic Party.

We may all, indeed, have been liberals once, but we were all effectively *radicalized* by the witness of our own eyes at the sheer coercive force of Republican hands under the orders of the Democratic National Convention in 2000. We went, perhaps naïvely, to excercise our first amendment rights to protest peaceably and make sure that the "second" party represented "opposition", and found ourselves betrayed at every turn.

The only opposition that showed up was from Republicrats to drive us off our own damn streets. Corporate interests ran the government at every level. We saw that. We understood that. The Pantry itself, for once, closed its doors (LA readers may understand the significance of this). We communicated all of that to the people who trusted us most.

We understood, experientially, the ultimate impotence of power-and-control games and vowed to oppose it always at all turns. We need to talk. Civilly. If you refuse there are no guarantees of what may happen. That was our stance. The Demmocratic National Convention refused to talk. The havoc's still being wrought.

*There* is your precious two percent, when you run two-and-a-half points ahead in polls with four-percent margins of error. You want it back? You'll have to *earn* it. "Least worst" doesn't win elections. Not anymore. You have *got* to prove yourselves *better* than your opponents. If you're incapable or unwilling, well, fine. Prepare to lose, and lose, and lose, and lose, and lose. Just like we all lose interest in elections when every ad, every catchphrase in each debate comes down to "Heather's a bitch" and "Patsy's a slut".

How *dare* you insult our intelligence, as voters. Why? Just because your opponents do? Play dirty all you want. Prepare to lose. So what if I've worked for (unnamed nonprofit) walking precincts and phonebanking. I want people to vote. But I still have not endorsed you, nor will I, probably, ever. I may not even vote for you myself. Your loss. I for one could not possibly care less who wins this race. We're *still* second-class citizens, at best. You've proven it. I can't even believe you're an attorney at the bar, you debate with such complete ineptitude. Multiply me times however many more-or-less unknown volunteers in whatever "swing" precincts your election depends on, and know that you've got a *lot* more to do to *win* an election than make your opponent look just a little worse than you do -- which you did, precisely *twice* this last debate. And yes, debates are more about style than substance, but at least people can vote for her lapels. You just break down in tears at a slightly tough question.

Some of us still remember when you blocked marriage rights off from us up in Sandoval County.

Make that right. We dare you. Then you will absolutely win.

At least we're better off than the civilians in Iraq whose blood is *still* on your party's hands, if not on your hands so directly. Your party has inevitably failed to capture our imaginations. You failed to even pretend to hear us. We don't exist to you, but as a vaguely perceived "threat". Your party had its opposition's party release its dogs on us, in its name, long before your party's members voted (with what, one exception in Congress?) to authorise the brutal, genocidal war against the people of Iraq. I am glad you oppose it and on that basis I may vote for you. But we got a taste of political repression at your party's hands and refused to stand for it. What more can you do to us? Suspend the ancient Writ of Habeas Corpus? Go on. Try it. Oh wait, your party's members at the federal level already did. There is another thing you'll have to manage to undo.

We will remember how you vote. Prove us wrong. Please. Then, and only then, can we campaign for you wholeheartedly. In the meantime, just prove us right, and watch us all drop off the voter rolls. One at a time. We're not stewpid.

We can stand to be ignored, if only to a point. But betrayal is not lightly forgotten. Show us a candidate who makes amends for the repeated betrayals of 2000-2006 and we will gladly vote for him -- or her -- as the case may be. Wherever we may happen to live now.

Anyone urging Senators Gore or Lieberman to take positions in clear distinction to his Republican Party opponent in 2000 was held in a designated protest zone surrounded by 15-foot-high cyclone fences which, once the tear gas and pepper spray were deployed, once the five thousand cops on horseback charged into the assembly, became a battle zone, with nothing but random bits of footage from legal observers and a few artifacts (rubber bullets and the like, mostly) to prove that it had ever happened.

No one remembered it had happened who had not been there. The moment simply passed into national forgetfulness. Except that your party lost one election after another, after another.

From 13-17 August that year, being freshly out of work, and armed only with a hideous green hat (identifying me as an NLG legal observer), a clipboard, and a minitape recorder, I volunteered 16 hours each day for the National Lawyers' Guild. I'm proud that transcripts from one or two of those tapes has had some small role bringing LAPD into line (for now). But I have audiotapes of all that time spent on the ground, from my bored and embarassing confusion between "Israeli" and "Iraqi" children on a "quiet" afternoon, to second-by-second documentation of being "swept" from Pershing Square the first night of the protests in LA. I was there on the Santa Monica Pier the night the DLC met there, and called in cops on horseback onto the boardwalk to block us from speaking with our elected representatives and their fat-cat corporate donors. I was there when the single largest arrest in the history of the City of Los Angeles took place, after LAPD *forced* a "Critical Mass" bicycle rally to go the wrong way down a one-way street.

Any wonder I worry when I hear Democratic Mayor Chavez of Albuquerque copy, word for word, the vapid rationalizations of Republican Mayor Riordan of LA whenever fifty or a hundred people here dare gather to protest an illegal Republican war?

(I put the "NADER 2000!" bumper sticker on my car the first night of those protests in LA: 13 August, 2000. On the day I can no longer drive that car with that sticker, though the bumper holding the sticker was splintered so badly it's now held on by a plastic handcuff I found in my backseat after a Firestone tyre blew out on a backroad in Texas, I shall simply stop driving.)

Come day-after-election-day 2000, 8 November, 2000, I had no fewer than five people try and run me off the roads, both going to and returning from work. Never mind that California was a "safe" state that went to Gore regardless of my worthless vote where both the electoral college and my candidate's party's qualification for federal matching campaign funds was concerned. But until that election was finally decided -- illegally, in the Supreme Court, by *one* vote, in Bush II's favour, I was subjected to similar behaviour each day for weeks on end. Fun stuff, indeed, when you work the LaMarzocco Linea 4AV at a busy Starbucks.

I'll leave the story of October 22nd for another time.

Fast forward: Albuquerque, 2004. I'm working graveyard shift at Frontier Restaurant, turning out half a million tortillas in nine months. The papers announce that Ralph Nader is visiting tomorrow. My tyres -- all of them -- get slashed as I work. Gary (the inscrutable Frontier veteran everyone respects even if no one pretends to understand him) is kind enough to follow me home as I drive home that morning at about five miles an hour. But to meet Mr. Nader, I have to take the bus out to the aeroport and then walk for miles. And then get back to work at 10 PM. Somehow.

Mr. Nader inscribes my copy of his latest book in just a certain way that *means* something to me.

He looks at me, and listens to me, even as I'm in complete despair. I don't know whether to thank him for running or ask him what the hell he is thinking by daring to run. But he's against the war in Iraq. Neither major party candidate is. I know who's earned my vote.

He's the only presidential candidate who meets with me, though both major party candidates also had multiple engagements in Albuquerque in a so-called "swing state" before the election.

I vote for him again.

Not that doing so was easy. See, I'd requested an absentee ballot from the Bernalillo County Clerk the day they said was the last day to ask for 'em and get 'em before election. I wouldn't have requested it that late, except I questioned whether it was wiser to show up election day or have a paper trail of how I'd voted.

Day before election, my absentee ballot still had not come in the mail. (I got it a full MONTH after the election, making me wonder why the County Clerk had wasted the postage.)

I wouldn't have known all these deadlines if KUNM's local news department hadn't covered *every* important deadline as it came up.

So the day before the election I run down to the County Clerk's office. I don't know how I'm going to vote. I don't want to do a provisional ballot if I can avoid it. They send me down to the Voting Machine Warehouse on South Broadway.

There's a huge room with electronic voting machines.

There's another huge room with big buckets of outgoing but unmailed mail.

My absentee ballot is somewhere in the unsorted stack.

It is not even ready to mail, even though it's got less than 24 hours at this point to go through the mail and reach me and get sent back and received.

I stand around for hours until I figure out for sure who is in charge and go right up to her and ask (politely of course) where is my ballot and how can I vote.

She says 'just show up at the poll tomorrow".

I ask, "so I'll need to fill out a provisional ballot?"

She says, "nah, just vote regular. You'll be fine."

The next day, I do just exactly that.

On an electronic voting machine.

I think it was a Sequoia.

Maybe it was a Diebold.

I forget.

It was extremely confusing.

I changed my vote "downticket" on a couple of things I knew would win or lose regardless how I voted just to see how the thing worked.

I chose my upticket candidates. Double-checked. Triple-checked. Quadruple-checked. And left.

I have no confidence whatever that my votes actually counted.

The day after election day, Kerry *conceded* the race to Governor Bush before the votes in New Mexico were *even* counted, confirming my worst fears.

And to this day I'd dearly love to know how many people voted for Nader 2004 in Bernalillo County's Precinct 166.

Voting is socially acceptable masturbation.

Prove me wrong. Puhlease.

And I didn't even mention that I got a caging letter.

Perhaps you've heard of the Republican Party's "caging lists", the existence of which was exposed by a stray email. You know -- the idea was to get voters knocked off the rolls in the event of a state-wide challenge for precinct-by-precinct recounts.

Long story short:

The Republican Party of Texas sent out a bunch of vaguely threatening form letters in the mail, urging registered voters to vote Republican in the weeks preceeding the 2004 election. The idea was to target people who had changed their addresses within a set period of time, and then whatever letters came back undelivered would be challenged in prospective recounts as fraudulent votes.

Heaven help anyone who lives at so ungainly a street address as 1795 1/2 Central Ave. NW No. 4. (Not my real address, but not far from it, either.)

My response? Before I even knew what it was?

Got the letter.

Photocopied it.

Mailed the photocopy in a card (with Felix the Cat on a hot pink background) to Governor Bush in Washington DC saying "not that I'm not flattered, but I don't swing that way" -- even though I suspect no one at the White House would get the flippant triple-entendre combined with the reference to "Duckman".

And a copy to one reader here who shall go unnamed.

And a copy somewhere else, who shall likewise go unnamed.

One funny letter? Fine, I can reply with funny letters in triplicate.

Voting *is* masturbation.

Do it early.

And often.

Enjoy it every time.

While you can.

Phonebanking.

Two hours at EQNM headquarters today on hired cellphones to call thirteen-thousand prospective voters. I made it through maybe sixty or eighty. They should be doing this eight hours a day.

One old man, 79, clearly in excruciating pain, and home bound told me he "gave up" on voting last election when the absentee ballot he requested never arrived. Tragic. Told him briefly my similar story from last election. I got my vote eventually because I ould run around like a madman for two days. Gave him the corrupt county clerk's number and begged and pleaded with him to please please if it's possible at all call, you've still got time, I've got a pollworker right here who knows the law and deadlines. He seemed a little happier at the end of the phone call. Don't know if he'll vote but I think it came through loud and clear that someone gave a rat's ass that he not be disenfranchised.

The rest were easy.

Then to Martini Grille to watch the second Wilson/Madrid debate (first Congressional District) at an event put on by League of Conservation Voters. It was, to put it mildly, a train wreck with broadly-overacted soap opera theatrics playing out on both trains as they slammed together.

Precinct walking.

Today I walked two precincts in Bernalillo County. Home of one of those hotly contested (ho-hum) so called "swing" seats, where the incumbent US House of Representatives Republican (Heather Wilson) is scrambling to give back to various charities all the (five-grand plus) money she gladly accepted without question from admitted internet pædophile, child molestor, and chair-of-the-Missing-and-Exploited-Children's-Caucus Mark Foley (R) in Congress.

The first precinct -- precinct 150, I believe -- is out in a drop-dead GORGEOUS recent "close-in" suburban development (over Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo land grant land right beside the river I believe) in the North Valley where apparently the residents were unaccustomed to being visited by canvassers at all, no doubt because the streets are so damn loopy -- literally -- that it's hard to walk 'em halfway sensibly. ("Time to head back", we agree, as we spend half an hour walking back to the car which at the point where we say it, is actually one half block away.) Just told most of 'em that "early voting started yesterday" and got thanked profusely with zero reservations and no exceptions by people who were glad from the depths of their hearts that we cared enough to even let 'em know.

*Everyone* we visited there seemed genuinely delighted and grateful that we bothered to show up st all and make sure that they knew where to go for early voting, and many had already voted. Lots of goofy loops and cul-de-sacs, but no problem. We covered the majority of that particular precinct, with a respectable (if not watertight) margin of error, and moved on.

But we *need* to go back to 150 and finish it up. It might mean the difference between winning or losing.

You want to know what campaign strategizing comes down to? Walk a precinct sometime with a partner. "Did we get enough, can we safely move on?"/"If we move on, will we be neglecting this precinct?"/"But isn't the next one completely saturated, might not our time be better spent here, 'mopping up'?" Questions like this back and forth sitting in our cars after walking around a crazy neighbourhood, deciding whether to move on or not. I have no doubt that some of the decisions that win or lose races are made all around the country in just such little meetings as this between two people not working for either candidate. Ultimately that's what it's all about.

I hate to think the race is *so* tight that it might be decided by the big barking dog running around protecting "his corner" who my walking partner managed with matchless grace to let us pass. She's one of those smallish women that big men like me tend to dismiss, yet who have powers we can not hope ever to display. In this case, she literally negotiated the territory with this dog that finally allowed us to go on, while I stood by completely motionless and impotent.

The other precinct, number 352, was in the heart of Nob Hill where we had to walk respectfully with very quiet steps, because the vast majority of people who live there, right by the University, have been so relentlessly innundateded by canvassers of all stripes over the last few weeks that for the most part they knew we were coming long before we ever came, and when we rang the bell, knew just to pretend they weren't home -- even if we saw them lounging around through their windows, in which case we respectfully put the flyer with the (*cough*corrupt*ahhem*)Bernalillo County Clerk's Office number (to find out early voting locations) between their screen doors and the frames of the screens, or on tables on their patios. Walking that neighbourhood with a clipboard in hand wasn't dangerous, by any means, but it wasn't exactly easy, either, however many houses we "hit". They just knew to avoid us. Lots of people got marked "not home" when in fact we knew they were just plain ignoring us to avoid wasting our time, just as well as theirs.

Too bad there wasn't an option on the lists we were looking at for "conspicuously ignoring". In 352 we got ignored sympathetically so often it hurts me to think EQNM will waste more money still on covering the area. Yet again. It's *already* been covered. A dozen times over.

EQNM has my kudos for coming up with a workable list of probable supportive voters, though in the spirit of constructive criticism, the next right thing to do might be to put more effort into precincts less intensely saturated than 352, than splitting things by pure statistics and time allotted to the task between precincts with *very* different demographics. We spent more time in 150 hitting fewer houses, but I have no doubt whatever that it did more good than covering *all* of 352, save perhaps one or two houses, by sheer luck.

Pecinct 150 was clearly more "parents of queers" with a handful of "retired queers" sprinkled in for good measure than "current active and already engaged queers". Being a step removed from the issues at hand, they were downright *grateful*, without exception, that we bothered showing up at all.

One super-elderly lady at the dead-end of a cul-de-sac had a Heather Wilson sign in her yard, and even a button on her dress when she answered the door, but still appreciated our coming by to talk about queer issues in the most general (and discrete) possible sort of way -- "vote for fairness" and all of that. I can only suspect she's from a family that's voted Republican since Lincoln, which just happened to have a much-beloved son turn out queer and therefore got onto EQNM's list somehow or other. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if she touted Heather publicly while quietly voting for Patsy Madrid. Such is the understated power of gay mens' mothers. Maybe we didn't change her mind. I have no illusions about that. But she *definitely* appreciated our bothering to visit her and make sure she knew where to vote.

In 352, on the other hand, we were walking the same day as someone from the Sierra Club, and found lots of Democratic Party literature already shoved into doors, and so I have no doubt we were the *third* bunch of mostly sympathetic canvassers visiting that very day. They already know how they're voting and will definitely vote, so let's leave 'em alone and concentrate our limited resources on outlying areas, like 150, where outcomes are not quite so certain and our presence is actively welcomed by *everyone*, given the sheer quality of the lists we're working with. Making one elderly Wilson voter see that we're not all sex-crazed monsters and really truly don't want to waste her time may be worth more, in the long run, than pestering all the faggots who vote anyway in all their tastefully-painted and eccentrically-landscaped bungalows in town.

"Yes, we give a rat's ass, thank you so much for voting", versus "yes, we're just yet another group trying to get you out to do something we know you're going to do already and please don't hate us enough for bothering you yet again that you don't bother voting at all".

I'd rather know damn well that the persons at 3502 Whatever Blvd. would vote for equal rights for queers even if they quietly lounge in the living room and can't be bothered in front of me pretending I'm not there than just hit random neighbourhoods. But trust me, I've been on the receiving end, and after a point, you're just wasting your time talking to people with signs in their yard for the candidates that you prefer from the top to the bottom of the ticket.

But good god, I almost felt downright Republican, we got so many positive responses, and so *very* few bad ones. And what few "bad" responses we got (all in 352) were so sympathetic to the underlying cause itself that their responses to us personally hardly mattered. They all sat on the board of EQNM or had already voted. But still, let's face it, we have got some kinks to iron out in terms of strategizing. We do not have the power of megachurches. We can't afford to waste our time.

In precinct 150, I have *no* doubt we made one valuable connection after another.

In precinct 352 I honestly believe we mostly wasted time covering already well-covered territory.

Worst case scenario? "Leave it there, we'll read it." Typically on a bench, and only in Precinct 352, where all the literature sitting there was for Democratic candidates, anyway.

There's only one third-party candidate on the ticket this election. David Bacon, for Public Regulation Commissioner.

That means "insurance stuff". I work in mental health billing. Lucky for me. I can, for once, still be all about third parties without undermining the least-worst candidates upticket. I can literally "vote my pocketbook" and "vote my conscience" at the same time, without flinching. David Bacon has my complete and total support.

For upticket races it's all two party bullshit. Wish it weren't so, but for the moment it makes my job a little easier (and a *lot* less distasteful -- if we had a *real* queer rights third-party candidates running upticket, I would *never* do this).

So the incumbent Heather Wilson (R) is apparently some sort of thinly closeted overgrown tomboy turned lipstick lesbian (forgive my crudeness, but I am nowhere near as well versed in the taxonomy of dykes as I seem to be with the infinite zoology of faggotry, doubtless in large part 'cause I never want to sleep with women). If this sounds evil on my part, again, I apologize. But more importantly, she *doesn't* respond to constituents' letters, emails, or calls, as a rule. She votes with Governor Bush something like 99% of the time, and has a *zero* rating on queer issues.

Meanwhile challenger Patsy Madrid (D) is the same fine human being who acting as Attorney General for the State of New Mexico blocked the same-sex marriages that started to happen in Santa Fe following what happened in San Francisco. She's been scrambling these past few months to put herself forth, ironically enough, as some sort of erstwhile champion of gay rights.

I wonder how many white candidates won widespread support from black voters in the south in the 'sixties who'd previously blocked their equal access to the polls under "Jim Crow" before running for higher office. I know it's not a perfect analogy but put the notion out there for consideration, imperfect as it is.

But Madrid is the lesser of two evils, and let's face it: it's *all* evil versus evil this election season, upticket.

Attorney General Madrid also failed to show up to an event this weekend at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center (where I buy cigarettes) and thus flat-out lost the endorsement of the All-Pueblo Indian Council. Her loss.

It's not an easy choice, by any means. I'm *very* tempted to vote a blank ballot in the first congressional district, this year. But ultimately it's more about Iraq than anything else. Representative Wilson supports Governor Bush wholeheartedly in whatever he does. Attorney General Madrid seems at least to have some vaguely inept inkling that things in Iraq aren't going completely and totally right. And I'd rather have someone in congress with a mixed record (at best) on issues I care about, who might respond to constituents' letters, than someone who's downright infamous for being inaccessible.

Since there's no third party candidate in the race this season, it seems I have little choice but to literally hold my nose.

I am a human radio station.

And I am too.

We met the unprecedented fundraising goal of $150,000 *and* beat it by something like 600 dollars. Enough to make up for clerical errors in hundreds of volunteers' taking and tallying pledges for the total to hold up.

I'm going back within the week if only to loiter around the hallways or study inscriptions on vinyl in their open library.

I am a *lousy* writer, though I *can* write passable copy under pressure.

I am a radio person.

Through and through.

Personal salvation through public radio.

An hour and a half ago, I spoke for several minutes to more people than any other single person speaking in the State. For that minute or so, more people heard my voice in their cubicles and workplaces and cars and homes than heard any other voice, even if all the stadia and arenæ of sport had been filled to overflowing at that very moment with persons listening to all the various announcers, pentecostal preachers, and bickering politicians all at once. It happened at the very tail end of NPR's "All Things Considered", consistently one of the highest-rated shows on one of the state's highest-rated and -ranked radio stations: KUNM, 89.9 FM.

There wasn't time to win them over with my charming personality, or make impassioned pleas, impress them with the textbook brilliance of Roman rhetoric, amuse them with contrived enunciations, much less drag bar bitchiness, or even just plain build a lockstep following of willing loyalists to do my bidding on a whim by badgering them for years on end.

So here it is, tonight, right now: a lifelong dream/nightmare come true: me and a live-wired microphone. It's *not* as simple as "tell off so-and-so while you've got the chance", not by a long shot! Neither am I there to neutrally say "hello, world" in software programmers' now longstanding tradition.

The NPR feed ends and we cut away to live broadcast. I've listened long enough to know I will be introduced by name and then asked a question, to which I'll be given more than a fair chance to respond. ("Are you now or have you ever been a . . . ?" I quietly hope not.)

I sit there very quietly in a state of mind somewhere between "Bluebear" and "Stimpy". It will not last that long -- the seasoned veterans are at the board and in the next host spot over, and I have got to answer and then let them do *their* thing for final drivetime push, because at stake is the very existence of the station I have come to love, and to the best of my ability, I know I *must* ultimately defer to their more experienced judgment. Oh sure, I have "ideas" of course, but only from listening and responding (and far more often, listening and *not* responding) to various pledge drives on many very different public radio stations in four different states -- but *not* from *any* time actually spent ON AIR. LIVE air. There is, indeed, a difference.

I want to close my eyes and simply hear the old familiar voices from that general time of day, telling me what I know is the right thing to do ("call in and pledge"), but I just absolutely *can't*. And to further complicate matters, the Rasta people are coming in, in five minutes, no, make that four minutes and 59 seconds, and so on, to do *their* weekly music show, because the afternoon news block is just about to end.

So speak, and say your piece, and mean it; 'cause it might not ever come to this again. Everything that follows happens in about three minutes, and most of it counts as "internal dialogue", which just don't work on live air.

I stumbled through my words trying to say just what I meant. I blurted out the one line I had meant to say more than any others first, in case I dare look AT the gloriously well-engineered microphone in front of me and just freeze up completely in bemused wonderment at something *far* too amazing *ever* to find at Goodwill for $5.99.

No.

Focus. This isn't Goodwill and the amazing microphone in front of you is not among the goodies that they give to volunteers, however much they love you, besides which, you wouldn't know what to do with it at home if you *did* have one.

FOCUS. Just bring your mouth as close to it as you dare without hitting it but *look* at the people in the room and respond to their questions.

Wait -- now you're focusing on ignoring the microphone, and the sound will be lousy. Just keep your head about "here" and speak "normal", whatever that means. You're having a *conversation*. The only difference is -- well, really, none. La de da, so there's something hanging in front of your face from what looks like an animation table light with -- are those springs really *gold*? I wonder what they'd sound like and whether it would go on air if I ran my fingernail across one of the springs, and whether if it didn't go on air it would have anything to do with the unearthly supsension contraption in which the microphones hang.

FOCUS. Conversation. You've been having the best conversations you've had in your life in the pledge room these last few days with the same people despite there being two microphones in there. Now you're down the hall and you're wanting to run your fingernail over the springs just like a little kid.

FOCUS. So just ignore the microphone unless you're signalled to move closer or farther away. I can only assume that a part of the purpose of the off-air conversation we had before we went ON AIR was to try and determine how I might be expected to respond to human interaction once we're live. No one asked me to say "testing one two three" or anything, and so I hope I sound OK.

FOCUS. Let go. Just be yourself and put yourself in the hands of the people who know what they're doing. They're not all going to have heart attacks at once and leave you alone not knowing what any of those buttons and sliders and things do. Relax. If anything *does* go wrong it's not going to be your voice that apologizes for technical difficulties a few seconds later. There are plenty of people around and they all know what's going on better than I do.

FOCUS. Don't *ignore* the microphone. Just *forget* it. But *don't* forget that it's there. Forget it, but don't forget you're forgetting it. Because otherwise you might as well be back in the phone room. Or something. Oh gawd, I hope someone's on phone #4. It's just so bloody close to the dessert table. And the food's so amazingly exquisite. You're not there and can't get there before phones start ringing that far anyway, so focus. Besides which. The phones don't ring at all 'til something happens in here. Relax. They'll be fine. Let it go.

All that for a bloody microphone. Just one small step in transforming sound vibrations in the air in this sondproofed room into an electical signal to be beamed to a transmitter and sent out -- BROADCAST -- to listeners around the world who will not sit there thinking about signal to noise ratios (if all works right) but will just hear one thing, when I speak into it: my voice. Bluebear speaks. Stimpy speaks. Felix speaks. OK. Bad analogy. Stop being fictional characters. Be yourself.

My being there is *not* about the microphone, nor ultimately any of the other wondrous technologies that make radio possible. It *is* about the power of my voice and whatever connection it might stand to make in the minds of the people with ears who will hear my voice mysteriously emanating from their speakers in tens of thousands of various places and states of mind I can't possibly begin to imagine.

Besides all of which, at root, this is *precious* airtime, so I *need* to say whatever I have got to say, and fast. There is no time to dawdle over the technology, much less to give my whole backstory as to what KUNM means to me, and how, and why. On the other hand, I can't "talk fast", because I'm not selling used cars.

But finally, I also can't just freeze up completely and say *nothing* and push it *all* off on the others in the room with microphones. Jim (at the board) and Linda (who has graciously taken microphone 3 in order to let me take #2: wonder if Ms. Goodman ever uttered words into this thing -- betcha betcha) seem possessed with a spirit that's positively awe inspiring -- but instead of making me fall to the floor speaking in tongues, it serves to bring me up one tiny step closer to *their* level as downright powerful communiators, given the tight, tight, super-tight constraints of time at hand. (And apologies to both of you for not giving your lasy names on here, but I *only* know how to pronounce them, *not* how to spell them, unlike Mr. Krzytsczywinowicz who pledged five bucks whose last name rhymes with "Bangladesh".)

I'm trapped. Nowhere to run *or* hide. I *am* KUNM 89.9 FM. The phone volunteer guidelines say as much. But there's a difference between "being KUNM" to one person calling in to pledge and "being KUNM" to *everyone* on earth at that moment, who for all you know, may just happen to be twiddling their dial as they make that wrong turn in Albuquerque and will either stop to listen or move on.

But what, really, is the difference? It's quantitative, not qualitative. You still want people to know their voices count. So on a telephone receiver you've got an audience of one. And on a microphone you have an audience of -- well, ultimately, one. Times however many, maybe, but ultimately you just have to convince that one person not to hang up, or change the station. Same difference. You don't know whether whoever you're talking to is Mr. Famous Himself who'll pledge a zillion dollars if only you'll completely change your format or Mr. Dishwasher who wants to pledge five bucks and loves programs X, Y, and Z, but can't pledge then because he's working.

There is tremendous power in that room! And when you're there you feel it course through every vein of your being. It's neither a thing to take lightly, or to squander. It's *more* than a responsibility to sit in that chair. It is an *obligation*.

The words came *very* hard to me, at first, until within a few short awkward sentences I found I had, somehow, *become* my voice: my harsh, imperfect, rasping, cigarette-stained voice, coming clear through my headphones in the Control Room -- but no escaping it, this *isn't* a *recording* of my voice that I can just shut off, it's being beamed all over, live! No time to tell the sound man "twiddle that a bit".

I have no choice but to come to terms with my voice. NOW. I don't even go through the long list of radio people with voices far "better" than mine. I simply don't have time. I *must* accept it, as it is, because everyone, everywhere, hears it, right now, and that is that, and if I just "shut up" I drop the ball. In the process of "getting over my imperfect radio voice", I quite simply forget what I had *meant* to say at all and find myself saying something totally different -- to my surprise, something very sincere!

In a few awkward short seconds, I went abruptly from my normal state of mind (i.e., reading "mental script" and being ready to either "change scripts" midsentence or at worst just shut up and "go invisible" -- it's radio, I'm already "invisible" -- at just one slightly unkind glance from *anyone*), to speaking for myself in front of EVERYONE ON EARTH with *no* apologies 'cause there was just no time for that with seconds, priceless seconds ticking down to final pitch.

The evil glances never came. And believe me, I looked. And so I just went on, finished saying what I had to say, and shut up to let the veterans take over. They did magnificently well.

For one brief moment I was wholly and entirely MYSELF. Not someone else. Not wearing masks or playing roles or doing dances, much less serving useful purposes, but just absolutely, freely, openly, and totally MYSELF. No secrets to the one person I *really* spoke to: THE LISTENER, wherever he or she might be, who might just possibly be moved, however slightly, for whatever reasons -- times anywhere up to some tens of thousands, all at once, around the State.

This will *not* be the last time that this happens! I seem to have found a place filled with people who value me for who I am enough to allow me free reign for a precious few minutes to harness the awesome power of the public airwaves on the most powerful radio transmitter in-state. I don't care if the next time it's "only" to read the weather report at 5 AM, which I assure you, is an art in itself! But this one minute or two or however long it was will *not* be the last time I'm on live radio, if I can possibly help it.

But my voice, for a specific interval of time unknown to me, was carried through the live air and transmitted into the depths of endless space at speed of light around the globe on the frequency of 89.9 MHz, and all I could bring myself to do, in that time, was try and express my gratitude in as general a way as I could to *all* the listeners who made it possible for me by calling in their five and ten and twenty and five-hundred dollar pledges and explain as best I could what their doing so translated into for me.

And what it all meant to me in the end was just *not* about that precious minute or however long. It *was* about *all* the connections that the countless voices ON AIR for the rest of the year made possible for me over these otherwise very hard years, which in the end, is why I call Albuquerque my home. The Albuquerque Peace and Justice Center. Veterans for Peace. The Los Alamos Study Group. Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety. Kali Itzkalpuli (sp?). Southwest Acupuncture College. Whiting Coffee. The Downtown Farmer's Market. Don Schrader. The New Mexico Voice. Pride. The Albuquerque Folk Festival. I could go on, and on, and on, and on, and on. On air, sadly, the only thing that came to mind right then was the Santa Fe Opera director whose pledge I took, who seemed delighted enough that I recognized him in the news block pledge drive from his interview with Spencer Beckwith weeks before to raise his pledge. I hated to drop even one "big name" at random so crassly on air, but figured it would beat rattling off a big old list.

The point is that precisely where I fell back on my script to fill mere tenths of seconds of dead air, I failed -- but precisely where I spoke sincerely from my heart for seconds and possibly even tens of seconds at a time, I succeeded.

I found myself thinking faster than I've ever thought before. But for once, I kept up with those thoughts, and even stayed ahead of 'em a fair bit of the time. And when it came down to the wire, the best advice I had seemed to be what I've learned by listening to Amy Goodman for years, now: (a) listen while letting others speak *their* piece, and (b) *don't* waste time apologizing for things that aren't your fault. (The greatest words she has *ever* uttered, in my ears? "Ten seconds".)

For once, I found myself under a sacred obligation. No one said it, or signalled it, or apparently ever came close, but it *was* in my head the whole time that I spoke.

"Ten Seconds". I might well never have this chance again, and so I thanked THE LISTENER -- no mythical beast any longer, just someone very much like me -- from the bottom of my heart as best I could, exactly at the moment all my clever and well-crafted words and turns of phrase and lists of people and their groups and causes and positions just flat-out evaded me.

"Ten seconds." Ten thousand things I had wanted to say. It was a sort of classic "breathing meditation", intensified to the nth power by a hundred outward concerns, bringing me always back to the breath of my voice as my thoughts strayed hither, thither, and yon -- not for a minute or even a second, but for mere tenths of seconds as I found myself wasting priceless airtime and suspected for a split second that I was just boring THE LISTENER who might otherwise be moved to pledge *something*.

"Ten Seconds." The one lonely person getting out of his own little intractable but ultimately meaningless personal or professional problems and just barely surviving the day by hearing the voice of *any* kindred spirit on the air wants to know he's not the only one out there who's into this, that, or whatever, and has found connection with it through KUNM, before circumstances beyond his control compel him to focus his attentions, for the time being, elsewhere besides the radio. Maybe he'll pledge tomorrow. But he'll listen tomorrow anyway. And maybe if he doesn't pledge tomorrow he will pledge the day after the next.

"Ten seconds." Far more precious than gold.

In the end, to whatever degree I had a "theme" in my little monologue, it was "KUNM is a lifeline", how always and only through public radio was I ever capable of *connecting* with communities of persons broader than "myself" and the five or six or so people with whom I might deal exclusively for weeks on end as I go about my mere daily routines.

In terms of "opening to the world as it is" and "finding your voice" there is NOTHING -- I mean -- NOTHING like public radio. That one minute, alone, means more to me than *any* job I have *ever* had, or ever will. It's the best reason that I've ever had to live. They'd be nuts to put me on the air again without a bunch of training but just knowing that the pledge drive is still going on tomorrow is enough reason for me to get out of bed. Period.

And I closed it with a beautiful idea I had shared with Jean, though she was the first to articulate it well enough for me to steal quite shamelessly, since we spoke of it after she came off the air herself, and since in *her* time on air, she never got 'round to it, even though she's a *way* better communicator than I am. Jean is the phone room captain who trained me three days ago, because in the intense flurry of taking and tallying pledges that we've all been through these last few days we had something I can only explain in Trekkie terms as a Vulcan mind-meld. With common objectives above all else, we've come to think rather alike about certain things that really do matter. The idea was one I had been wanting to hear during pledge drives for years but never did, at least not on KUNM, specifically: that I *didn't* like everything I heard on KUNM, but didn't have to like everything in order to support it, because I value what I *do* love about it enough to gladly support the station that supports me, and then share the public airwaves with anyone else who supports the station that suppports me in order that they might share whatever it is that they love with the world.

Of course I didn't say it near that well. Or maybe I just didn't say it quite that convolutedly. I don't know. It's just different in text, in retrospect. I *do* know I used an "I" when I should definitely have used a "we", on air. But there you have it. So I got microphone jitters and had some pronoun trouble. But I said it. And more people heard that idea floated, however inarticulately, in the State of New Mexico at that moment than heard anything else.

And I'll be damned if the Rastafarians who took over the Control Room after the phone-room shift I was on ended weren't talking about "sharing" in their own ways long after I left. It wasn't "my idea", and it's not that they "took it from me", it's WAY bigger than that, it's that this great idea was just floating powerfully around the station and attaching itself to different people from time to time. I know, because I listened to Reggae on the radio all the way home. And I *enjoyed* it. It was *my* music, too, just like the death-metal was, the night before, when I finally left. (Neither are among my top-ten famourite genres.) I did my part to earn *their* being on the radio for three hours a week just like their volunteers do *their* part to earn *my* deeply beloved Democracy Now! its' five-hours weekly airtime.

Public Radio *is* the commons. Any place with physical rooms in which Rastafarians and undeniably homosexual persons can not only share the same space without the slightest hint of violene but communicate sufficiently well to hand over a tremendously complex set of operations smoothly from one shift to the next without a single second of "dead air" can not be anything *but* the commons. We don't just tolerate eachother, which in the outside world is, let's face it, a best case scenario.

In public radio, we literally *depend* on eachother. We're *both* voices that don't get heard. And if we don't support eachother, we both fail. Period.

If I have ever said anything even slightly untowards against Reggae or Rastafarians in general in here, I now apologise for my prior gross generalizations. I have had certain fairly serious problems with certain Rastafarians in the outside world. But truth be told, I've had no fewer problems with gay white males. I should know that gross generalization solves nothing.

On checking my voicemail tonight when I get home, I find a prerecorded election season voicemail spam from Governor Richardson himself, among the dozens of others that pile up each day in this former "swing" state. Poor fellow couldn't bring himself to speak LIVE to people ON AIR, and when he managed to eke out some scripted lines he did it, just one pathetic voicemail message at a time, through unsolicited voicemails. "Hi, I'm Governor Bill..." DELETE.

Take that, sad ugly little man likely unworthy ever of my vote.

I'm ON THE AIR.

Change is in the air.

And everywhere else.

Changed my blogger account to the beta version which messed me up for a couple of hours but that's over and so far I think I like it. I'll explore it some more later.

That bothersome streetlight got replaced today, a few weeks after I contacted PNM. I *think* it's an improvement. It doesn't buzz at all, and is a thoroughly modern fixture with a shade to prevent light pollution and put the light where it *should* be -- on the parking lot behind the Dairy Queen. But the old light was greenish or blue, this one's definitely yellow. and it's at a slightly different angle on the pole, which changes all the lines (not to mention their colour) cast by it through the shades of my window. I do like being able to see better, outside, from inside, after dark. I'll get used to it but it's got me a *little* off balance right now, even though I know it is a net improvement.

Just canned batch four of Chipotles correctly -- in a proper canner, rather than a jerry-rigged big pot. Got the recipe right this time and all the jars "popped" so I figure I'm going down the right path. I'll have to open up one of those jars though just to test one thing out -- I think the carrots and onions may have cooked some more in the canner, and want to make sure they don't get all soggy. I've now got fifteen jars of chipotles all ready to go for Christmas presents and the like, with still more on the way.

New post at "Supplement".

Cameraphone pictures with related random musings thereupon from my visit prior to last down to El Paso. That would be the visit that disturbed me so deeply, not the subsequent one that thrilled and plain old wore me out with live mariachis and sixty guests in my mother's garden.

Been meaning to post 'em since I took 'em but it's hard to deal with, honestly.

They're at -- where else? The Bastard Son of Random Musings, Cont'd.

I guess now that my apartment's coming close to flooding again it's on my mind.

Another (mostly) good weekend.

If you'd told me a month ago that I'd be spending most of my weekends doing canning I would have said you were insane. Surely I'd have been playing music or building stupas; putting up chiles in jars for the winter would be about the furthest thing from my mind. But that is what I find myself doing, these last two weekends.

As it happens, my mother's best freind's aunt from Puebla just happens to be visiting when I go home and so, long story short, I get the at-least-four-generations-old, oral transmission recipe from her for chiles chipotles right at the same time fresh Jalapenos are positively overrunning the farmers' market a few blocks from here to the point that I can get 'em by the bushel, if I want to, and for next to nothing, and with a clear conscience besides, since *all* the money I spend goes to the farmers directly *and* I can *source* my food right down to which branch of which family grew what with which water in which soil in which part of town.

The only problem being that the recipe calls for chipotles -- which are fresh jalapenos dried by smoking.

So last you heard, in here, assuming I wrote it, which I'm not sure I did, I was smoking them over a hibachi. Two attempts doing it that way convinced me it might be well worthwhile to invest in an honest-to-god smoker, since doing it the hibachi way was *both* worthwhile *and* insanely labour intensive -- five minutes inattention turning pounds of pefectly good peppers into charcoal useless for anything other than "sweetening" soil, and wasting inordinate quantities of wood, besides. And for forty bucks, now that the first batch out of my (formerly) shiny new smoker is *done* and done *right* and *consistently* in a way they *never* were in my jerry-rigged hibachi setup, I have to say it probably was a good solid investment, even if I *did* buy it new, which I almost never do.

In the last two days I've smoked ten pounds, and I have to tell you -- the first time or two there's a certain regional "charm" with smoking chiles out front every day, but when you're doing lots of it repeatedly it's just goddamned annoying. Sure the hickory smells great, but only 'til it fills your abode with so much smoke that you can't breathe. And maybe more importantly, all the same naturally-ocurring chemicals in the seeds and placentas of the jalapenos that make your fingertips burn for two days after making pico del gallo wind up being transformed into tiny bits of airborne particulate nastiness. Walking by you might think "ah! how wonderfully, typically New Mexico", but if it's right outside your window, hour after hour, after less than a day you start thinking more along the lines of "damn, why do my eyes hurt all the time?" and "what ever went so terribly wrong with my sinuses and lungs? Am I really *that* frail?".

Suffice to say the smoker's now set well away from all the buildings! Charm is one thing. Acute respiratory crisis is another.

Then yesterday -- a very good day -- I did a *very* stupid thing. ZzigZzag was in town and I invited him over to pick up a jar of batch #1 -- that's not the stupid thing I did -- I welcomed having someone visit me at home more than you can possibly imagine. The stupid thing I did was that after he left, I brought in the smoker after dark because it "seemed" cooler than it had been for most of the day, which I took to mean "safe".

So I can't sleep for most of last night and don't know why, but recognize the signs of acute carbon monoxide poisoning come next morning. My stomach is upset, I'm constantly nauseated, the diarrhea's just plain nasty, and I feel downright hungover all day long. Good thing I had the windows open (if I hadn't I might have died), but still! The warnings that came with the smoker, to the effect that it might take 24-48 hours for the coals to completely extinguish was *not* just some waiver of liability thing. It really takes that long! So the coals smouldered indoors all night and made me sick, sick, sick in the meantime.

Never again! I've got part 2 of batch 2 smoking out there now but I'm not bringing it in. If anyone's damn fool enough to steal a still-hot smoker filled with jalapeno peppers, so be it, and may they expire horribly in all the fumes for their nefarious deed!

Having said all of that: setting out a grill of any kind seems to have a magical effect on one's neighbours. Suddenly they all say "hi" and want to know what's cooking and are *very* nice to you! They're all probably thinking right now that I'm a total jerk for not sharing whatever I have with 'em right off the grill, which I'm sure they all suspect is meat, but mark my words, come the holidays, they're all getting half-pint jars of precious homemade chipotles.

Yesterday, Faye, my next door neighbour, invites me into her apartment. This is as rare as my inviting anyone who lives next door into mine. (We're friendly but we do lead separate lives.) She points out three cottonwood carved figures on top of her gas heater and says I can have 'em for ten bucks a piece or all three for $25. She tells me her brother carved 'em.

They are amazing, museum-quality katsina dolls. (Maybe I'm using the word "katsina" all wrong here; and if I am, I'm sorry, but I'm an ignorant white boy from Texas, remember!) The tallest is a male figure holding a drum called "Yellow Corn" with a pueblo built into his side which looks just a little too much like the apartments where I live, complete with sunset in the background, for me to ever want to move him from this very room. The second tallest is a female called "White Corn" whose wears a turquoise and coral necklace and whose body she partly reveals to be made of corn. The shortest figure, in classic gender-bending native fashion, is the son, but his name -- get this -- is "Spider Woman", and he/she carries a basket of corn. Guess which figure I most identify with. :)

I can't pretend to know what the significance of these pieces is. I'd gladly photograph them to show here but honestly believe there's something or other behind that "NO CAMERAS ALLOWED" sign you see on the edge of whatever reservation. On the most basic level, the State Fair just ended and quite possibly these pieces simply didn't sell. On another level I know they all *belong* together, somehow, and didn't dare break up the set. It's like a nativity scene -- you don't mix and match pre-Raphaelite Maries and with Renaissance Josephs. They work together, compositionally speaking, and they are *definitely* "father/mother/son". I even pointed out politely to Faye that she might get more selling them up the street at the Palms, but she made it clear she wanted me to have them. Why, I honestly don't know. They're done in a contemporary style with all the ancient motifs everywhere. They are amazing. Absolutely timeless but imbued with such a sense of place that they *belong* here and no other place on earth. I do not know what to make of them, but know that they are sacred objects. A very far cry from tourist ware. The detail in each is quite incredible. I think the colours are all natural dyes -- they're very dark and muted, while being distinct, at any rate.

Stupid cat, as I was writing this, knocked "Spider Woman" off the clock on top of the piano. By some miracle or other the uncarved base cracked but the piece itself remains intact. They're all behind glass in the Los Alamos bookcase now, even though there's not sufficient headspace to have them all standing up. I'm going to repair the base with hide glue when I have the wherewithal to do so, but they don't belong out where the cats can get at them. Stupid cats.

This is the new cat -- no surprise. Maybe I didn't write about that here, but last week a cat came up to me while I was smoking chiles and I swear he looked just like the cat from Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood and *said* to me "it's getting cold outside and I don't want to live like I am living any more, have seen how your cats live indoors, and want to live like that if you will be so kind as to have me, even if it means no more climbing trees". So after about half a week of territorial hissing everyone's finding their place. And he's about the freindliest cat I have (when he's not knocking priceless sacred objects off the piano, because he doesn't know how I live, like the other cats *do*, because they've lived here for most of their lives). I gave him a *very* stern warning after he knocked Spider Woman off the piano, naturally, but I am sure the resentment will heal.

The way I live is utterly ridiculous. I can't pretend that it is otherwise.

I bought more stuff today, but it's all legitimately justifiable stuff. Went to Chase Hardware on North Fourth and got some labels for my jars of chiles and a book called the "Ball Blue Book of Preserving", which is apparently the latest edition of a book that's been around since 1909. Yes, Ball, as in the manufacturers of mason jars. It's very helpful, in a very straightforward "here's what you need to do in order to prevent botulism" sort of way.

So -- Mr. ZzigZzag: don't hesitate to eat your chiles! I'm sure they're fine but also know I didn't follow the instructions to the letter regarding keeping track of temperatures and stuff, so please, don't let your chiles sit forever. However good they are (or not) there'll be another far more carefully made batch coming up soon, I assure you. The whole process is pretty intuitive, really, but not 100% completely. I don't think I let the mixture sit in the jars in the steam long enough, since I came from downriver, where we've got a higher boiling point, and all that happy shit.

So please, do eat them NOW. And tell me honestly what you think. You won't get sick. But if you hang onto 'em for a few months you just might. DUH. It's all part of the great experiment. Part one is SLAM, Part two is CLAM, the first letter being not "shop" but "cook". And goodness knows what nasty bugs you can get eating uncooked CLAMs.

And if you don't know what I'm talking about, count yourself lucky! Your grandparents won't be deported, and you won't taste my fantastic chiles 'til I'm 100% sure they're all nice and safe for all eternity.

Enough!

Be well!