Poems for a Rainy Day, or Verses in Educational Philosophy

[Written -- actually typed on a typewriter! -- decades ago]

 

HEURISTICS

Heuristics lend a helping hand

For things hard to understand.

I wonder who invents these cues

That I so often have to use?

Would I be too strict a purist

If I called him (or her) a heurist?

  

EPISTEMOLOGY

Epistemology – ways of knowing,

How we can tell the grass is growing.

Observation, intuition,

Then there’s always

Superstition.

 

Some folks like things they can measure,

Others insight really treasure;

Me, I always opt for leisure.

 

QUALITATIVE METHODS

Naturalistic inquiry

Looks at how folks think and see

In the context of their place and time.

Hermeneutics doesn’t have rhyme.

But I still would be a little leery

Of distinguishing it from grounded theory.

Why do so many people find fun in loud, aggressive, intrusive behavior?

An easy (and, I guess, common) thing to do on a blog is to rant about the things that the author does not like in the world or about people. There is usually a long, sometimes seemingly endless, list. I have such as list, and I will be carrying on about many of the things on it, so it is a good time to bail if you wish. The thing that I would like to emphasize, though, is that I will really be complaining about one thing, in its many manifestations. This is behavior, mostly but not exclusively by males, that is seen as characteristically, stereotypically, and likely accurately, male.

This often is violent or overtly aggressive toward other people (see: January 6, 2021 + much violent crime) but also is often sublimated into going fast, often in cars but also in / on other vehicles, for no apparent reason. If asked to explain why they do it, it is usually described as fun or exciting. This is very common and in fact admired; note the popularity of both NASCAR and the “Fast and Furious” movie franchise. I guess it is actually fine as long as it doesn’t hurt, or have significant potential to hurt, other people. One example I always think of are the fisherman on the lake on which I had a house in Kansas. It was a small lake, and it didn’t take more than a minute or two for fishermen to get from the public dock at one end to the shallow inlets where they fished down by our end. Especially with the 200HP motors on them. Really fast, but really short trips. Other boats on our lake, and on other bigger lakes also do this all the time, towing water-skiers or running jet skis around and around in circles. What struck me about the fishermen in particular was that, when they got to the end of the lake in just a couple of minutes, they cut their gasoline engines, started their electric trolling motors, and quietly moved around in the shallows fishing for the next couple of hours. But they must have saved at least two minutes compared to going more slowly, two minutes more time for quiet fishing.  And, of course, they added on another two minutes on the other end. But harmless, I suppose, although loud, and creating huge wakes making the lake difficult to swim or canoe or kayak on.

I suppose jet skis are the same; their only function is enjoyment for the riders, but they really mess up the water. At least power boats towing water skiers are helping someone do something that actually requires skill and physical effort; I admit to a prejudice in favor of activities that actually require or help build some muscle and fitness and effort (canoeing, kayak, biking, hiking). The activities that are “just fun” for the people doing them regardless of how they affect others are often done on purpose to harass others – think of jet skiers “buzzing the beach”. Or, for that matter, folks who play their car radios really loud with the windows open (the rest of us mostly just hear the booming bass line) or have their motorcycle mufflers adjusted to make really loud noise. Sometimes this is all a reflection of immaturity, and this immaturity is to a degree “natural”; human brains are not fully developed into the mid-20s, and the last part to develop completely is the fontal lobe, controlling “executive function” and what we might generally call judgement. This is different from being smart, or even knowing a lot – it is being able to integrate the information you have and make a wise decision based on it.

Why did you drive into that busy intersection where you then had a crash? What were you thinking?

Thinking?

So that can be dangerous, despite the fact that it can also be normal for young people (mostly male) because of their incomplete brain development. But the problem is that for many, such behavior persists, long past the mid-20s, into middle and even old age. How do we explain this? Arrested development? The counter influence of a culture that glorifies violence and war (mostly, it must be said, for the profit)? The counter influence of substances, particularly alcohol? Does it matter?

It matters little if kids are just acting out and testing limits and don’t really cause difficulty for others, just sometimes irritation. It matters a little if people acting out do intrude on the life and activities of others, and a lot if it creates danger to them. And worse if it actually harms others.

I first thought that the question was why we accept such behavior as ok. Now I realize that this question doesn’t mean anything. I just wish the norm for acceptable behavior (at least for males) was  not aggressive, violent, mean, and stupid.

A Brooklyn boy moves to the Upper West Side: Now long ago

In 1966, shortly after I started college, my family moved from Brooklyn to the Upper West Side of Manhattan, to a then-new building. It was built under the states’s Mitchell-Lama urban renewal law that encouraged clearing of tenements and replacement with new buildings. These were not classically “rent-controlled” (like the controls instituted in older buildings post-WWII) but has restrictions on the rent, limiting the profit of the landlords and requiring justification of any rent increase.

I have very good nostalgic memories of my growing up in Brooklyn, in an era far very different from its current status as the hip center of the universe, mostly post-Dodgers and very much pre-Nets (at least in their Brooklyn incarnation). But I never regretted my family’s move to “The City”. As a college student and young adult when I came home for vacations or visits Manhattan, and especially the Upper West Side, was diverse and cultured and exciting in ways that were so different from where I had lived in Brooklyn. I loved coming there, loved walking the streets, day or night (a lot of night as a young man), reveling in the variety of small stores on Broadway, and the fact that the subway was only two short blocks away. And that coming from the subway you could stop for food for dinner from the butcher, baker, fish store, fruit and vegetable store; there were also family-run stores of everything from shoes to jewelry to laundries to delicatessens. And, within a few years of living there, my mother, a kindergarten teacher in the local school, knew most of the families whose children had passed through her class. That was not different from back in Brooklyn, where the same was true for my mother and her “kids” and their families, though there was probably more economic and ethnic diversity in Manhattan. There were (mostly) the same sorts of stores on the shopping streets of Brooklyn, but Broadway had a different feel; it was so intense!

One of the first, and most amazing things, we noted was how many movie theaters were within a few blocks of our house. There were also no multiplexes then, but the Riviera and the Riverside were on the same block of Broadway between 96^th and 97^th streets. The Symphony (now the Symphony Space, but then a movie theater) was on Broadway at 95^th, and in its basement, with an entrance on 95^th, was the Thalia. The Midtown was on Broadway between 99^th and 100^th and the Olympia up at 106^th. The New Yorker was at Broadway and 88^th, and the Loew’s 84^th St was at – 84^th St! There were even more theaters further south on Broadway. So I went to the movies a lot. This was a big change from the Avenue U, 25 cents + 5 cents candy Saturday double features in Brooklyn!

One night in the first summer we were there and I was home from college, 1967, my father and I were walking on Broadway, alive and vibrant at night as Avenue U or even Kings Highway never was. There was a lot of action and people as we approached a Stark’s Coffee Shop, on the corner of 92^nd (or maybe it was 91^st) St. We realized that they were filming a scene from a movie in the coffee shop, and we stopped for a while. I later saw that scene, many times, in the film The Odd Couple, with Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau. Indeed, most often at the Thalia, which had an enormous collection of films and played a different double feature every day! You needed to have the printed schedule (no computers!) to keep track of what was coming so you could catch what you wanted to see. Most often, the Odd Couple (1968) was paired with another great film set on the Upper West Side, A Thousand Clowns (1965) with Jason Robards and Martin Balsam. I am sure I saw that double feature multiple times. I recently saw a posting of the Greatest 100 Films of All Time, and neither was on it. I don’t suggest that I am an expert or fit to judge this, but I have my opinions, and if I were compiling the list of the 100 Greatest Films I Have Ever Seen (which, in full disclosure, would not include the majority of the films on that other list), those two would certainly be on it!

The two most-grounded-in-the-neighborhood members of my family were my mother, based both on her role as an early-childhood teacher in one of the local schools and her incredibly warm and engaging personality that made, really, everyone love her, and my youngest sister, who attended public schools through high school on the UWS. Actually, she went to the school right next to our building, while my mother taught at the one 3 blocks away, which was itself closer than my own elementary school in Brooklyn had been to where we lived, demonstrating the density of Manhattan. I mentioned diversity; in terms of race and ethnicity, and even income, it was. I am sure that Sesame Street, beginning about that time, was based on the Upper West Side of the late 1960s. Not only were many ethnic groups represented in the neighborhood and in our building, but unlike in Brooklyn there were many mixed families – not only Italian AND Jewish (the big ethnicities of my old neighborhood) but Irish and Puerto Rican, Black and Polish, and on and on.

Things change in 50+ years. My father, who lived in that building from 1966, died a couple of years ago; it was a rental, not a condo, so we couldn’t buy and keep it. This means lots of people – family (not just immediate but very extended), friends, friends of family and family of friends, no longer have his apartment to stay in while visiting New York. Just as Brooklyn has changed so much I cannot recognize it, so has the Upper West Side. The family-owned stores are mostly gone, and walking on Broadway it seems like most of the stores are the same chains you would see in a suburban shopping mall. But not completely; there are still places to get NY pizza (the BEST!!! No question or comparison!!), if not for 20 cents a slice, and a few delis to get knishes, and a lot of fruit-and-flower stands. But a lot fewer movie theaters. The Thalia (now the Leonard Nimoy Thalia) no longer shows movies; its day as a repository for thousands of films was doomed by DVDs and streaming services. It, and the old Symphony are now Symphony Space, still a cultural center. The Loew’s 84^th St is a multiplex fit for any suburban shopping mall. But there are still a few theaters that regularly play both old and new “art” films (an old term generally equated with “foreign”).

My mother has been gone for decades; even the “new” playground at the school she taught in that had a plaque in dedication to her has been replaced by a newer playground, with no plaque. The Upper West Side is both mallified and gentrified, and also become a destination for young Orthodox Jews, especially Lubavitcher. And, yet, despite the fact that no one with a regular job can afford an apartment, there are still lots of poor people living there, so it remains a diverse community.

So I still have warm memories of both Brooklyn and the Upper West Side  from different parts of my youth. Being a child in Brooklyn was good, and being a young adult in Manhattan was great. It was a much cooler place to bring people I was dating to see; long walks actually took you places – Central Park and Riverside Park and the river and the Boat Basin at 79^th St., and Columbia and Grant’s Tomb and Riverside Church. All those things are still there even if Broadway is full of chain stores.

For my father’s 90^th birthday, we hired a car and driver and went to Brooklyn, starting in Coney Island and heading up to the Bedford-Stuyvesant and Williamsburg where he grew up. We saw my old neighborhood farther south, my high school and Brooklyn College, and the Ebbetts Field apartments. It was nostalgic, but it was good to get back to Manhattan.

But I actually have no plans to go back to either in the near future; I’ll work off of my memories and don’t need them replaced.

Physician specialists: What's in a name?

 Most of my medical posts are in Medicine and Social Justice (https://medicinesocialjustice.blogspot.com), but this one, although about medicine, is not about social justice and seemed more a musing appropriate to this blog...

 

I had a recent conversation with someone who said that they were looking for a gerontologist for their parents. Since they were talking about a physician, I noted that the correct term is “geriatrician”, one who practices geriatrics; a gerontologist is someone who studies aging but is not a physician. Geriatrician is parallel to pediatrics/pediatrician or obstetrics/obstetrician.

But it is not at all obvious. Indeed, most medical specialties and their physician practitioners follow the “ology/ologist” model: anesthesiology, radiology, neurology, cardiology, and so on. Therefore, it made sense to think a physician caring for older adults might be a gerontologist. But it isn’t.

There are other terms for physicians in other specialties, and I guess you have to know each one. Sort of parallel to geriatrics/gerontology might be psychiatry/psychology, but the physicians who practices psychiatry is a psychiatrist, and psychologists can also be clinical practitioners, if not physicians. Following this psychiatry/psychiatrist model, the specialty that used to be called physical medicine is now called physiatry, and physicians practicing it are physiatrists. The parallel to psychology might be physiology, but physiologists, though they can have MD degrees, are researchers in physical function, not clinicians.

And the physicians who practice orthopedics, which seems similar to geriatrics/pediatrics and obstetrics are called orthopedists, not orthopedicians. The same ending is used for genetics and ethics, geneticist and ethicist, and these can be either physicians or other professionals! The general physician for adults is called an internist, but practices internal medicine, not internics. Internal medicine subspecialists are almost all “ologists” (cardiologists, gastroenterologists, nephrologists, rheumatologists, etc.). And now some internists have become “hospitalists”, based on taking care of only hospitalized patients, and we are also hearing not only the opposite, “ambulists”, but subtypes of hospitalists based on when they work – “nocturnists” and even “weekendists”!

The specialty of family medicine is practiced by family physicians or family doctors; the old terms family practice and family practitioner are no longer used. Of course, there are family nurse practitioners, generalists in the field, compared with pediatric, psychiatric, and adult (not internal medicine) nurse practitioners. Those who do solely women’s reproductive health may be called women’s health or OB-Gyn nurse practitioners, but the nurses trained to deliver babies are nurse-midwives. 

A lot of these names are from Greek and Latin, and sometimes both are used in ways that can be confusing: pediatrics comes from the Greek for child, while podiatrist (a foot doctor, a DPM, not an MD) comes from the same root as pedal, the Latin for foot. Indeed, in anatomy, while the larger bone in the lower leg, the tibia, has a tibial artery, tibial vein, and tibial nerve, the smaller, the fibula (from Latin) has a peroneal artery, vein, and nerve, from the Greek for the same bone! 

I have observed that, while to a health professional, the difference between orthopedics (bones) and orthodontics (straightening teeth) is clear, it is also obvious why these names might be confusing to a regular person. Knowing this stuff as a health professional makes you part of the in-group; knowing it as anyone else means you spend too much time at the doctor's!

You really can’t tell the players without a scorecard!

Traffic, views, noise and crowding: it's all about what you're used to

We all get used to what we get used to, and while a change can make things get better – or worse – for a while, we then get used to the “new normal”. No, I am not particularly talking about the COVID pandemic here, despite what we have become used to the phrase “the new normal” referring to (although anyone is always free to read into what I write whatever grabs them). I have long thought about this in regard to traffic; “too long” is relative to what you expect, not to some abstract standard. I have lived in a number of places, including New York City and Chicago and San Antonio and Kansas City and Tucson. It is a given that the traffic is much worse and slower in those first two, and thus commutes to work could be considered longer. Although, in fairness, I lived much closer to work in the other cities, and, in addition, rarely drove to work or anywhere else in NYC where there is extensive public transit. Plus NYC, having developed (at least until the 1980s) as the US city most like European social democracies had 8-hour days that included a lunch hour, thus the idea of “9 to 5”, where everywhere else I lived (more reactionary, anti-worker, even Chicago) it was 8-5 – 8 hours with an unpaid lunch. This meant I could, when I was young, awaken at 8:15, dress, take the subway, pick up a bagel and coffee downstairs, and be at work by 9. It helped when I was young, and my bedtime was, um, later.

Nonetheless, it was a 45-60 minute drive to work in Chicago from a near-in suburb, as opposed to 15-20 for what was likely the same distance in San Antonio. And yet, to get to my point, it was still possible to be frustrated with traffic. If you think a trip will take you up to an hour and you do it in 50 minutes, that is great, but if you expect it will take 15 minutes and it takes 20 you get frustrated. I always wondered, though, how come Kansas City could not do economically better relative to, say, Chicago, when the people who worked there had about an extra hour and a half less time spent in traffic. One reason, of course, is that people moved farther out (bigger houses for less money), and the other is that they left for work later.

But, as usual, I digress. The point is that you get used to what you get used to, and that includes noise. I spent a good part of my youth on the Upper West Side of NYC where my father lived for over 50 years. It’s noisy there. It’s New York, which is dense and noisy. It is Manhattan, which is denser and noisier. And it was on Amsterdam Avenue, the major northbound truck route in upper Manhattan (since trucks can’t go on the highways on the east or west side). Plus fire engines. You get used to it. You sleep right through it. Even the car alarms which, when they go off, go off for a long time since it is not like the car is in the person’s driveway; their apartment could be blocks away. And the people (often inebriated) screaming in the street. Although it did get better when they replaced the glass with double panes; amazing what a difference it made.

So New York is noisy, and Amsterdam Avenue is noisier, and compared to them Chicago was quieter and so were San Antonio and Kansas City and Tucson. In SA and KC one could hear, and even listen for, the horns of the freight trains coming through at night. But even quieter is the land we have a small cabin on outside Santa Fe. The lots are 15-25 acres of mostly scrub pinyon pine and juniper and overgrazed former ranch land, the views, especially of sunrises and sunsets are spectacular, and for a long time none of the nearby lots (and there aren’t that many) were built on.  The recession of 2008-09 had two big impacts. The first was that people didn’t build for a long time, and we got used to roaming the whole area, wherever we wanted, with our dogs. The second was that the rules for houses got relaxed as the non-profit that originally developed it was desperate to get anyone to buy and build, so the houses are WAY bigger than would have been permitted under the original rules. Someone is building on the lot next door and we thought it was not all that much bigger than our house – until we discovered that was the garage! The house is going up and one can see the cranes and walls from our house.  The lot in the other direction has had a house with a tower for a few years. It is a characteristic that people build on top of rises to get the best views, but of course that makes their houses visible from far away, and they can begin to spoil the landscape. Even if they are architecturally attractive, which most are not. Our house is not in a depression, but just at road height and one story. There are still amazing views of mountains in the distance in almost every direction. And views of the trees, and plants, and birds right here.

But the building makes noise. There are a LOT of pieces of heavy equipment that are needed to build a house, and they come down this unimproved road destroying it, and making a lot of noise. And, of course, the people who are the owners are not here to have their quiet ruined, we are. It is still silent (except for owls and the occasionally coyote) at night, and pretty darn quiet most of the day, when construction isn’t happening. But, you know, you get used to it. To the quiet. So the uncommon car or truck going by kicking up dust makes noise, and the construction equipment even more, and you start to resent it.

And don’t get me started on the small planes making noise overhead…

It is really a pretty quiet, good, and restful life.

Let me add a sunset and sunrise pic:

 

 

Molly and Rosa: Two fine dogs

 Our two dogs, Molly and Rosa, have many similarities. They are both female, and both tan, and about the same size, both came from the Humane Society, and they came to us within a few months of each other, Molly in November 2019 and Rosa in March 2020. For almost a year, we were a one-dog family, but our great dog Maggie was getting old, about 13, and we thought it was time to get a new housemate for her to train in how to be a great dog.

 Molly, who looks a lot like Maggie, joined us on a Thursday. Sunday we were at a concert (pre-COVID!) and a relative who was staying with them texted us to come home because Maggie couldn’t close her mouth. We did, fearing a rawhide chew or something was jammed in there, but we couldn’t see it, so off to the emergency vet (Sunday, of course). They said they’d sedate and examine her and call us back. They did, and told us she had a huge tumor under her tongue, and proceeded to discuss treatment options (e.g., cut out her tongue and feed her intravenously while administering radiation…) We said “no”, and came to visit her, one last time; she was sleepy still from the sedative but with her mouth hanging open we could see the tumor. We said goodbye, tears flooding our eyes. It was not the first dog we have had “put down” and won’t be the last, but it was humane and we were certainly not going to torture her with hopeless treatment.

 Two things stand out to me from Maggie’s last day, two realizations. One was that dogs don’t complain. I had taken her on our usual 1.5 mile walk in the desert that morning, and later Pat had taken her on another comparable walk. She seemed fine. Dogs seem fine unless they can no longer act it. The only thing that had been different for a while was that she was drinking a lot of water. People, I, could try to learn from this.

 The other thing is that we treat, are allowed to treat, dogs humanely. Maggie had a huge unresectable tumor, a cancer that was not going to go away no matter what was done, and was going to kill her. Our options were doing what we did or putting her through extended suffering made worse not only by surgery and radiation but by requiring intravenous feeding. That would have been no life for her, and would have been cruel and painful, for her and us. People, of course, are not dogs, but while presumably motivated by that in a positive way, and loving them if they are our family members in a way we can only love people, we all too often put them, and indeed put ourselves, in the same situation we wouldn’t put Maggie in. We don’t want to die, don’t want our loved ones to die, but extending life when it is no life, and is simply pain, is not humane. I don’t want it for me.

 So.

 For a few months, Molly was our only dog. Primarily lab, she was a warm and friendly and well behaved. This is in no small part because of how we choose our dogs. We have preferences, not for breed, but we don’t want puppies that have to be trained, don’t want little dogs, don’t want loud yippy or barking dogs. When we acquired our first dog, also from a shelter, going in and looking at all these caged dog broke our hearts. We chose him after asking the staff which was the “best dog”, and the choice was pretty unanimous. It has proven to be a pretty good yardstick. Molly was another we chose this way, although we had a little problem. After she was with us for a couple of months, we began to notice blood spots on the floor. And twerking. Really. She was only about 5 years old, and had been spayed, so it was worrisome – she was a survivor of nipple cancer. Could this be another in the uterus? So, to our vet.

 Who examined her and said: “She’s in heat.” We said, wait, we have a paper from the Humane Society that says she was spayed. He said I know, they sent me a copy of the paper. But no scar, and she’s in heat. OK. Brought her back to the Humane Society who did a blood test, verified she was in heat, apologized that they took the word of the other shelter from which she had come, and (later, after her estrus was over) spayed her.

 Then, now into the COVID pandemic, we looked at dogs on line, and met a couple in the outside yard at the Humane Society. We liked Rosa (well, then she had a different name), and she and Molly seemed to get along, so we brought her home. A 2-year old small German Shepherd mix (or maybe Jindo? Not that important to us), she is the one with the black muzzle while Molly’s is white. It took about a day to name her, and Rosa has stuck. She and Molly get along well, walking together, playing together, running together when they can get off-leash in a dog park or on a hike. Molly barks at Rosa to get her to play, and to run. Maybe it is because they are both female (we meet a lot of folks with dogs in the park where we walk and get lots of “expert’ opinions), or maybe just because they are both good dogs.

 But they are different. Molly heels while walking, Rosa needs to be in front and sometimes pulls. Our local park is a desert park, and there are lots of things to distract and entice them. In addition to the smells of other dogs, there are lots of ground squirrels, and rabbits, and Gambel’s quail scurrying around. And, while there is an occasional bobcat, and sometimes javelin packs, there are also the resident coyotes. At least one pack, maybe two. One big one, who I call Eddie (presuming, perhaps wrongly, that I can identify him), and lately up to five. One coyote is not going to attack two good-sized dogs, but a pack of four or five will, especially if they can get one by herself. Molly and Rosa are good dogs, but off leash they can run off chasing things, and have not yet reliably mastered “come”. And they tend to head toward, rather than away from, coyotes. This morning, right by our house two blocks from the park entrance, we heard a long series of howls. Both pulled assertively in the direction of the park. By the time we got there, it was done and we didn’t run into the coyotes, although we did run into a couple who had (and picked up and carried their little dachshund!)

 Molly started coughing and was off her food. She was x-rayed and blood tested and diagnosed with Valley Fever, medically coccidiodomycosis, a fungal infection acquired from spores living in the desert soil here in southern Arizona (and in the San Joaquin Valley of California, hence its eponym.) People in Tucson get infected often, and most are asymptomatic or have a flu-like illness, but it can be very bad. Same for dogs, although outside dogs like ours are almost certain to get it. So, a month or so later, did Rosa. Both are on antifungal medication, and will have to be for a year or more, but are doing great, not coughing, not short of breath, eating and running well.

 18 years ago today my older son, Matt, died by his own hand, and we miss him every day. Our other children and grandchildren are far away, and we miss seeing them. Dogs are good. Good dogs are better. Dogs you love are the best. They are no substitute for children and grandchildren, no substitute for children lost, but they are there for you, and that is great.

Valles Caldera and the National Park System

Valles Caldera National Preserve, abutting Bandelier National Monument to the north, was formed by the collapse of the “caldera” of an ancient volcano about 1.25 million years ago. Today it appears, magically out of nowhere as one drives up winding roads in the Jemez Mountains from Los Alamos, NM, winding through forests of Ponderosa pine at over 8000 feet, and then, on your right, an immense grassland without trees but with wooded hills dotted across it, lava domes created somewhat later. This is Valle Grande, the southern and most accessible part of the Preserve, which is much larger. One can access some of it on dirt roads, and requires a back-country permit. A mile from the entrance, reached by a road where ones car is improbably surrounded by bluebirds, making it seem as if you are driving through the introduction of a Disney cartoon movie, is the visitor’s center, today staffed by mask wearing Americorps volunteers as well as a ranger who were happy to provide information from a safe distance.

 
Our first stop was the restroom facilities, an outhouse that would not be worth mentioning if it were not for the fact that between the two doors, under the peak of the roof, was a bluebird nest with little fledglings looking out, waiting for their mother to return with lunch!

 

There are a few relatively short trails near the “front” that one can take dogs on. The closest, which we did, is called the La Jara trail, appropriate as it circles the Cerro La Jara, just west of the visitor center. It starts off through a large prairie dog village to the north of the cerro, and is dotted with wild (elk and coyote) and more domestic (cow and horse) scat. It is supposed to be 1.4 miles, but can be longer if one loses it (it is a trail marked through grassland by the traffic of hikers only, and it seems they have been fewer recently) and heads off instead on the track that goes north toward the Cabin District (old ranching cabins). At some point you decide that you have gone too far past the Cerro and need to make your way back and find the trail. This is easy to do as it is flat grassland. Well, it is easy to see where you need to go. In fact, the grass hides not only uneven ground but occasional marshes…

 The hike is not at all difficult, flat and short, but it is entirely open without shade and even at 8500 feet it is sunny. Especially when you take your mask off for the hike and it not only no longer protects your nose, but it has apparently rubbed off the sunscreen you so meticulously applied, something you notice on looking in a mirror on your return. And, of course, while we are pretty acclimatized to the altitude having spent a month already at nearly 7000 feet outside Santa Fe, that haze in the air is smoke from the Medio fire northeast of Santa Fe (and a new smaller one in the Jemez to the south, plus smoke blowing down from fires in Colorado) and does make breathing a bit tougher and riskier, so we’re glad we haven’t gone on one of the longer hikes.

I have realized that taking photos outside with one’s phone is a crapshoot, since any appreciable amount of sunlight makes it impossible to see what is on the screen. So my panoramic video of the Valle Grande is mostly sky. However, here are two pictures that capture a little of what the valle and cerros look like.

 I think it is also worth noting that, while having Americorps volunteers and young folks (meagerly) paid by a conservation foundation assisting the rangers is good, it is not as good as having enough rangers and enough resources to make the most of the magical lands that are the US National Park System. Our federal budget for the National Parks should be enormously increased. They should not have to depend upon increasing user fees (although these fees are suspended during the pandemic). They belong to all of us and their maintenance should be paid for by our taxes so that they can shine as the gems they are. Expecting them to be “self-supporting” or not “money losers” is not only absurd, it is an insane inversion of what our federal dollars should be paying for. Indeed, it is just as absurd as saying the US Postal Service is “losing money”! This is another area that, 180 degrees opposite from what the administration is doing, should have vastly enhanced support. And, of course, a third, less popular, federal agency that needs its budget hugely enhanced is the Internal Revenue Service, so it can ensure that billionaires and corporations do not continue to evade paying their taxes as they do now. I absolutely support laws increasing the taxes they should pay, but right now I would be satisfied with their paying the taxes legally due from them!

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/15/tax-change-coronavirus-stimulus-act-millionaires-billionaires

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/corporations-paid-91-billion-less-in-taxes-in-2018-under-trumps-tax-law-160745447.html