they shoot wild horses don't they

Let me see if I got this story straight. Some of the wild horses wandered into town, and actually stayed there for about a week. They were eating grass in the schoolyard, and in the park, and if there wasn't trouble with a passing car or maybe a kid walking home from school, there would be soon enough.

But then someone came along and shot them, all four of them. Shot them, and left their dead bodies where they were, for someone else to clean up. I didn't hear much about this; it wasn't on the news, and a lot of people felt that something bad was going to happen anyway.

But then someone went and shot two more, out on a country road. Like it's open season. It's like, if no one is going to get mad about this, might as well shoot them whenever we see them. Now as far as I know they don't do this with the deer or elk, though they could; they could probably pop a few out on a country road and who would know any better? But in this case, again, they left the bodies there for someone else to clean up. That someone, I would imagine, is probably a little annoyed by now.

It could be that the problem was, we weren't mad enough about it, the first time they did it. People just shrugged. Nobody called the newspaper. It seemed like they were going to hurt someone anyway.

I will give you my solutions. I will be the first to admit I am not from around here and am not quite sure what to do. But I can tell you, the horses are beautiful, and they don't deserve to be assassinated.

1. Get out the fire department. Next time they are in town, make a lot of noise in their faces. Make sure they know their life will be miserable if they hang around in town. Anywhere else is ok; we drive carefully anyway. Just don't let them nuzzle up on the schoolchildren.

2. Get the state involved. The state can actually find them a better place to live, if this area has become too crowded for them. The state has the resources to round a few of them up, and take them to a place where there's fewer people. Of course, Sierra Blanca is kind of out of the picture at the moment. But there are plenty of other places.

3. Get the National Forest to create a refuge for them. This they might actually do. Just an agreed-upon acreage, where it is marked perhaps with signs, and where we all know there are a lot of horses in here. All up against the reservation or wherever they are coming from.

4. Tell the world. Now this, I'm sure, is not your favorite. If you had New York City filmmakers out here interviewing the locals, they would make us look bad. To them, wild horses are the coolest thing on earth. To us, we're shrugging our shoulders when a few of them get shot. It's a difference in perception. You don't want those guys coming around, pick from #1-3 fast. This is our problem, so let's solve it. These horses can live in our world; in fact we want them to. They're good for us. They're beautiful. And they're free, as long as we leave them that way. Let's make sure they stay away from the village schoolchildren though, ok?

5. Do some policing. It probably is possible to figure out who's going around murdering horses. It's undoubtedly someone who is more than well-armed, eager to use his gun, and thinking if it's ok with him and his friends, it's ok. NO IT'S NOT. Murder is never ok. Hunting might be ok, if you eat them. Just murdering them is not.

I have given myself away; I love them, and don't want to see them murdered. I like the elk and deer too even though it means I have to drive very carefully every minute. To me it's worth it. It's what makes the mountains special.

Sedition

If we had better media up here on the mountain, our elected officials would have a better idea of what we feel. But inasmuch as this is my media, I'll at least tell you what I feel here.

The election was fair. Wasn't perfect, wasn't flawless, but I'll tell you this: Trump did not win by a landslide. He didn't even win. He didn't win at all. He's making that crap up, and people are grandstanding around trying to make it seem like they support him entirely. How? By putting down our voting clerks?

SO are you going to trash out our system and our democracy, why, to show you're all in for Trump? Are you going to storm the Capitol and shed some blood?

Well now you're talking armed insurrection, and I'd say, that's sedition. You are leading a revolt against the American government as we know it, and I think they should throw the book at you.

I marched once at Nixon's inauguration. I was against it. It was a very cold January, and the DC police had school buses squeezed so tight you couldn't get near anything that mattered. I wondered whether I should get right up front where the camera could see me shouting things like "Down with Nixon!" But at that point he had already broken in to the Democratic headquarters. Sometimes our presidents are crooks, and sometimes they get elected anyway. That's the way it goes.

But right now, I'm grateful that we have a system. That we have police, and use them; that we have courts, and use them; that we count votes, and the winner wins. This is much better than Russia though you may need to be reminded. We look up to Russia, we admire Russia, we like how they deal with dissent and all, but we don't want to be like Russia. It's much better this way.

I'm proud to live in the mountains and to have the neighbors I do. Wouldn't trade it for anything.

casting off one's illusions

OK so I'll admit it, I didn't get very far with my idea of this site being a media hub. It was a good idea, but I never quite got the time and the motivation in one place (two coins to click together) to really make it happen.

But another thing has happened: because of the pandemic, we have been spending more time at home in Sixteen Springs. And because I have come to see them (our canyon, and Cloudcroft) as two different places, I have renamed my original journal for the Springs and am deciding to make this one a place to rant at the village about village issues.

Cloudcroft is a place of 800 people and maybe 20 covid cases. It's like anyplace else in that it has a wide variety of perspectives and political leanings. I tend to be non-political in a situation like this; I still have the mind to be a media-type guy who presents the news and lets people make up their own mind. But now, I have to admit, this didn't go anywhere as a media site. It was because I never developed it that way.

I have fifteen writing projects on the table, so I'm not making this a media site today anyway. So we'll just carry on, as is, and you will see it develop slowly. I am grateful to be in Cloudcroft, and Sixteen Springs. These places have been good to me. It is not my intent to stir up trouble or cause division in our community. Rather, I want to just put forward things that will educated and inform, possibly record a little of what I've learned, for my own benefit. I hope you enjoy it!

Local News/September

Dead Birds
Growing number of dead birds in southern New Mexico raise alarm for wildlife experts, KOB
'Hundreds of thousands, if not millions': New Mexico sees massive migratory bird deaths, LC Sun

Covid
Most New Mexico voters approve of Gov. Lujan Grisham's COVID-19 response, ABQ Journal, LC Sun

Lincoln Nat'l Forest
30,000 visitors leave tons of trash in Lincoln National Forest, Ruidoso News

Media black hole

I get agitated about the media situation up here (see posts below). I huff around and threaten to start my own online media outlet. (that would be here, if it were to happen). I am dragging my feet though. I'll explain why.

First, I have teenagers who find it their biological imperative to get out and be with other teens. One will pressure us every minute she's home just to go uptown and be with her friends. This is very stressful for us as we are older and vulnerable. I have half a mind to just go into town, run a media outlet and keep my eye on them, but instead, I have other projects going and I end up back here building and doing stuff. Rents are expensive in the village. I'm not about to plunk down that kind of cash just to be there, and to make their life less interesting. I figure if they think Cloudcroft is an urban center with great excitement and the kind of people they love, then more power to them.

It's partly because covid hasn't made it here yet. Yes I know, the minute it shows up they'll spread it around, because they really aren't that careful, but for the time being we seem to be safe. They are an isolated bunch with limited exposure to the outside world. And they do most of their relating outside.

No really the reason is that it would be a serious job. I would not do it if I wasn't willing to check the sources every day. And if I even have a few days where I don't check, I'd be blowing it. I don't want to blow it. I want, that if it's here, it looks good. It has sources for people to use. It is a site worth visiting.

To that end I haven't even begun developing it. What is stopping me? Not sure. I'm not sure I want to relate to my neighbors as a media star. Of any kind. I don't hardly know them as it is.

That's enough. The project is on stall, because I just haven't developed it. That's not to say we don't need it. That's to say, I'm not ready to do it myself. Just too busy, is all.

covid comes to town

Another media disaster is that the covid hit Cloudcroft, and nobody knew. Now in this kind of media disaster I think we can call it a disaster, since human lives could be at stake. Everyone knows covid kills, everyone knows how it works, nobody doubted it would get here someday - but when it did, what happened?

Actually the I LOVE CLOUDCROFT facebook site had it and handled it pretty well. It's the third site, after the Community site and the 700 site. On the Community site, which I would say is the main one (most followers), a post about it was simply deleted. Too controversial? It could be that everything even mentioning the coronavirus was drawing blood at this particular site.

But that left us with almost nobody. The fact is, we don't really have a media outlet on the mountain. And I'm not sure I want to start one, though I could possibly save lives.

People need to know this stuff. They don't need to know who brought it, or any of those details - but to be left totally in the dark, that's not right.

Dark Canyon Media Disaster

An article has been on top of my local news feed for about a week, about a fire in Dark Canyon. It identifies Dark Canyon as being 8 miles from Cloudcroft.

KTSM Staff. (2020, Aug. 10). Firefighters battling Dark Canyon fire near Cloudcroft. KTSM.

There are two problems with this article that make it a media disaster. First is that it is the only article there is out there, about the fire, and has been for five days. So this is not KTSM's fault; they at least got a story no one else got.

But the problem that irks me is that it identifies two different Dark Canyons; one is north of Capitan, and the other one is eight miles from Cloudcroft. I could tell by reading the article that the fire could not be in both places, as you can't be eight miles from Cloudcroft and northwest of Capitan at the same time. But I didn't know where the fire was. The headline identified it as near Cloudcroft; the article mentioned both Cloudroft and Capitan as they were the same.

After a few days local people confirmed for me that the fire was near Capitan, not Cloudcroft. Facebook turned out to be a better source of information than local media, the writers of whom did not really know the difference between Cloudcroft and Capitan. We have no media here. Alamogordo didn't even pick up the story.

Maybe the fire was a nothing, and didn't really matter. It is, after all, rainy season, so most of us are taking a breath and enjoying the fact that one cigarette is not going to burn down the entire forest, at least not at the moment. But we're a very fire-wary culture, and a headline that says someone is battling a fire near Cloudcroft, most of us are going to read the article.

Too bad. We could use a media outlet around here.