"Today's Democratic dilemma with health care reform transcends partisanship: we really need to constrain health care spending lest we bankrupt the country. Expanding coverage without curbing costs and changing the incentive structure of our inflationary, fee-for-service model is a recipe for fiscal irresponsibility that we cannot afford. The Massachusetts senatorial election makes it evident that the electorate has come to this conclusion. The Democrats need a way out of this mess; so does the country."
Charles Kolb (a Republican), President, Committee for Economic DevelopmentPosted: February 4th on Huffingtin Post.
I recently spoke with a Doctor of Oriental Medicine, whose practice includes alternative medicines like acupuncture. She made it clear that our health care system was skewed toward fattening the coffers of the insurance companies. I brought up my idea of drastically changing the paradigm of health care delivery--mobile units replacing fixed, expensive buildings and resultant overhead costs--and she said there were already such services, but extremely limited in distribution obviously. She further mentioned the 1914 outlawing of homeopathic medicine, even though, ironically, homeopathic medicine saved more lives during the contemporary flu pandemic than any other form of remedy. She convinced me, too, (aided by commonsense assessments based on my own medical circumstances and following the news) that we need single payer, universal health care insurance in America, where doctors are paid a salary.
I therefore conclude that we need a truly bi-partisan way to get universal health care that includes homeopathic medicine as the major driver of preventive care.
OVERVIEW
I don't like confrontation...like that between the two aisles of the US Congress. So I propose that the health care debate, which epitomizes this problem, be tackled sideways.
Democrats are perceived as pushing a large government program which a) unacceptably increases the size of government, and b) costs too much.
* There's a need to clarify whether objection is to perceived government inability to run a large program without stultifying bureaucracy and incompetence, or to something else. Would objection be levied against such government programs as Medicare, Social Security, public schools, or the Postal Service? What if, like the Postal Service, the government delegates the running of health care to a private entity?
* The other problem, and one that I wish to focus on, is the matter of cost. I am convinced that, if we think outside the box, health care can be provided to all at a surprisingly low cost. Here are some outside-the-box thoughts on the subject:
SUGGESTIONS
1) Discard Aesthetics: (I oversimplify for emphasis.) I mean that health care should be administered with only the patients' health in mind, not expensive buildings and infrastructure that don't, by themselves, serve the need of health care.
2) Mobile Health Care: Provide a network of mobile health care units that serve the entire nation. In the construction of the units, discard any expense that has no direct bearing on the dispensing of care. For instance, consider converting old vehicles, like discarded school buses for this purpose. Try to maximize the number of patents that can be treated simultaneously.
3) Focus on Preventive Care: Traditional Western medicine, as practiced today, provides two major services: a) diagnostics, and b) catastrophic-trauma care. It does NOT provide preventive health care. Diagnostics that never address care is a waste of money.
4) Health Care is relevant to International Relations: The US needs an influx of high-level-skill workers. Some of these can bring expertise in alternative medicine. China, for example (which has the potential to be either more of a competitor or more of a collaborator with the US) could be a source of modestly paid but very competent practitioners and educators in Oriental Medicine.
5) Keep Costs Radically Low: Keep universal health care costs within the limits of what some Republicans are willing to spend on it. If costs can be kept sufficiently low, the Republican objections around cost will be ameliorated.
6) Computerization: Digitize patients' records, so that information can be streamlined and appropriately and efficiently shared among health practitioners.
7) Enable Appropriate Programs: Fund groups that are already working in a manner consistent with the above. Help these existing groups take on a major bulk of the new program.
8) Transition funds away from the war on drugs (which is counterproductive) by decriminalizing some drugs while, simultaneously upgrading the level and availability of treatment for drug addiction. The goal should be to decriminalize some narcotics while ensuring that the current rate of addiction and narcotics-related health problems decreases. Funds saved from the war on drugs will go toward the health care program.
Saturday, February 6, 2010
Friday, February 5, 2010
A Message to the President
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-brenner/obamas-tribulation-home-a_b_450926.html
I loved this article, although I think it may bear re-reading and reinterpreting in somewhat simpler prose.
This is the crux of the matter. What we do domestically is morphed with that abroad. I'm grateful to Michael Brenner for explaining it so ably...even though it needs to be repeatedly, and even more simply, explained.
And Haiti's earthquake was a fault line in America's dealing with itself and the world. Given our immense historical involvement with Haiti, and our wealth and proximity, our response was top heavy, mindless and lumbering in the extreme. This, despite the amazing generosity of our people -- a case of American duality, I guess.
The need to re-think Haiti parallels the need to do likewise for America. Political gridlock and polarization, coupled with a failing economy--among the list of ills Michael Brenner describes--have rendered our nation on the brink of catastrophe. Where health care is concerned, for example, we have become a third world nation.
Haiti needs to be tent-city for a while as it transitions, first, into semi-permanent and then permanent living mode. America needs a public option health plan that is administered in tents and mobile units. We need to get down to reality, putting aside false pride and ostentation. Great schools can exist in tents or old school busses or just about anything that is weather appropriate.
When we get down to reality here, we'll have the money to keep our people healthy, and by the same token, able to lay the groundwork for a global shoring up, creating the broad, sketchy outlines for a re-thought planet. Tent cities, basic food and medical supplies are widely needed worldwide. Social and physical infrastructure to offset the increasing damage of global warming must be put in place. Once the "sketch" is made, we need to get the rich countries (very much including China) to help us fill in the details.
The key is to use cheap, "appropriate" means based on sophisticated systems (global) thinking--proper thinking is the main priority--to deal with America and the world. We must deal with America well in order to deal appropriately with the world. We must deal with the world well in order to deal appropriately with America.
I concede that President Obama doesn't get it, can hardly be expected to, given the tiger he's riding. We, the people, need a coherent alternative to the Tea Party to see that he gets this message. The Tea Party folks are organized. Where are the rest of us?
I loved this article, although I think it may bear re-reading and reinterpreting in somewhat simpler prose.
This is the crux of the matter. What we do domestically is morphed with that abroad. I'm grateful to Michael Brenner for explaining it so ably...even though it needs to be repeatedly, and even more simply, explained.
And Haiti's earthquake was a fault line in America's dealing with itself and the world. Given our immense historical involvement with Haiti, and our wealth and proximity, our response was top heavy, mindless and lumbering in the extreme. This, despite the amazing generosity of our people -- a case of American duality, I guess.
The need to re-think Haiti parallels the need to do likewise for America. Political gridlock and polarization, coupled with a failing economy--among the list of ills Michael Brenner describes--have rendered our nation on the brink of catastrophe. Where health care is concerned, for example, we have become a third world nation.
Haiti needs to be tent-city for a while as it transitions, first, into semi-permanent and then permanent living mode. America needs a public option health plan that is administered in tents and mobile units. We need to get down to reality, putting aside false pride and ostentation. Great schools can exist in tents or old school busses or just about anything that is weather appropriate.
When we get down to reality here, we'll have the money to keep our people healthy, and by the same token, able to lay the groundwork for a global shoring up, creating the broad, sketchy outlines for a re-thought planet. Tent cities, basic food and medical supplies are widely needed worldwide. Social and physical infrastructure to offset the increasing damage of global warming must be put in place. Once the "sketch" is made, we need to get the rich countries (very much including China) to help us fill in the details.
The key is to use cheap, "appropriate" means based on sophisticated systems (global) thinking--proper thinking is the main priority--to deal with America and the world. We must deal with America well in order to deal appropriately with the world. We must deal with the world well in order to deal appropriately with America.
I concede that President Obama doesn't get it, can hardly be expected to, given the tiger he's riding. We, the people, need a coherent alternative to the Tea Party to see that he gets this message. The Tea Party folks are organized. Where are the rest of us?
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Up from Copenhagen
Below is my comment to Yale Environment 360 e-magazine. It relates to the article: "Copenhagen: Things Fall Apart and an Uncertain Future Looms," written by Bill McKibben.
His The End of Nature, published in 1989, is regarded as the first book for a general audience on global warming. He is a founder of 350.org, a campaign to spread the goal of reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide to 350 parts per million worldwide. He and 360.org (leading up to the Copenhagen conference) campaigned to spur global compliance for reducing global warming emissions.
MY COMMENT RE: "Copenhagen: Things Fall Apart and an Uncertain Future Looms,"
It's not that I doubt the efficacy of technology fixes for climate-warming emissions, or of countries getting together to make hard-headed restrictions to those emissions. Quite possibly, with more stringent negotiations prior to the Copenhagen climate conference, a better outcome would have resulted. And while Bill Mckibben worked tirelessly to raise awareness of the parts per million of CO2 in the air that the world can live with, something essential is missing. There is more emphasis on the what than on the all-important how.
The model for global agreement is unnecessarily abstract. And I think we would benefit by changing that:
1) Try giving them (future climate-change delegates) something they can feel...or at least that they can SEE!
I would suggest that 350.org partner with Google Earth, NASA and others to bring compelling, understandable, strategic global mapping to everyone with a computer, to every student everywhere in the world. Future climate delegates should DO something, based on the information gleaned from this visual program. The program should look at various nations' and regions' CO2 emissions, climate fitness (see Gaia Vince), wildlife protection, energy resources, conservation strategies, etc.
2) Think outside the box.
Nothing should be simpler to comprehend than that the "surface" of the planet--land, atmosphere and water--forms a seamless whole. When countries get together to resolve the climate crisis, they should be focused less on what happens within their own geopolitical boundaries, and more on relationships between such units of governance and neighboring ones. In other words, political leaders should be required to think outside the box.
3) Always keep the whole in mind.
Climate change cannot be affected without an inclusive, cooperative strategy that is seamless, not only geographically, but also socially and economically. No issue of governance can be excluded, and no geopolitical boundary can be allowed to obscure the seamless flow of issues and ecologies. So can large global planning projects, such as the G8 and G20 summits be brought more in line with climate planning?
4) Focus on the edges.
In order to arrive at a paradigm of seamless-earth thinking, border ecologies should be emphasized. The land must come first. And since people depend upon the health of the land for sustenance, the health of the land is also a human-rights issue. For instance, how does a border fence between the USA and Mexico affect the border ecology between these countries? What are the human rights implications for the state of the Rio Grande as it leaves the US and enters Mexico? How does the war on drugs affect the above?
5) Start with a rough preliminary assessment.
What I think should come first is a very rough assessment of the state of places--geopolitical units--around the world. Google Earth and NASA earth mapping could help provide a baseline of which areas produce what emissions, which countries are suffering the most from warming, etc. Then let's see, in the future, what social, economic and environmental pushes and pulls between places might effect a better outcome.
6) Do charettes.
Future conference delegates should not have to sit and listen to dry speeches. Instead, they should be looking at pictures of places. They should split up into regional groups and do charettes. (A charette is a collaborative session in which a group of designers drafts a solution to a design problem.) If, for instance, a group that included Mexican and US delegates sat down and designed their hoped for outcomes vis a vis the Rio Grande, which both nations share, a dry Rio Grande reaching Mexico would not be acceptable to either party.
7) Bring in the heads of state (preferably, after first getting their buy-in to begin the planning process).
These delegates would arrive at proposals to enable more health to the river (above), and these proposals would be taken to the respective heads of state. Later climate conferences would determine how effectively governments have been implementing similar strategies proposed by their delegates.
8) Accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative...
There is a plethora of dysfunctional clutter in the way of doing the right things, however. Since the US Congress is stymied, we should not pin all our hopes on what they can deliver. Let's focus instead on worldwide success stories where appropriate actions are independently being taken. There are many US states and cities that are already legislating lower CO2 emissions and cooperating toward regional sustainability, not to mention the achievements of other countries such as Denmark. Let's highlight these achievements and encourage more. Let us do this within the context of a seamless-earth strategy that is concrete rather than abstract.
9) To the future of 350.org
350.org is a fine organization for coordinating such a program worldwide. It is already doing something similar, but it must continue on a more ambitious scale, acting more as an organizational catalyst. While world governments must be pressured to act responsibly, we should be taking separate action to make irresistible their buy-in to global coordination. We should all be looking at the same picture(s). The big picture. What any country does, climate-wise, within its boundaries is everybody's business. By all visually perusing nations' climate issues, we can arrive at a measure of transparency that helps us to keep governments accountable.
His The End of Nature, published in 1989, is regarded as the first book for a general audience on global warming. He is a founder of 350.org, a campaign to spread the goal of reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide to 350 parts per million worldwide. He and 360.org (leading up to the Copenhagen conference) campaigned to spur global compliance for reducing global warming emissions.
MY COMMENT RE: "Copenhagen: Things Fall Apart and an Uncertain Future Looms,"
It's not that I doubt the efficacy of technology fixes for climate-warming emissions, or of countries getting together to make hard-headed restrictions to those emissions. Quite possibly, with more stringent negotiations prior to the Copenhagen climate conference, a better outcome would have resulted. And while Bill Mckibben worked tirelessly to raise awareness of the parts per million of CO2 in the air that the world can live with, something essential is missing. There is more emphasis on the what than on the all-important how.
The model for global agreement is unnecessarily abstract. And I think we would benefit by changing that:
1) Try giving them (future climate-change delegates) something they can feel...or at least that they can SEE!
I would suggest that 350.org partner with Google Earth, NASA and others to bring compelling, understandable, strategic global mapping to everyone with a computer, to every student everywhere in the world. Future climate delegates should DO something, based on the information gleaned from this visual program. The program should look at various nations' and regions' CO2 emissions, climate fitness (see Gaia Vince), wildlife protection, energy resources, conservation strategies, etc.
2) Think outside the box.
Nothing should be simpler to comprehend than that the "surface" of the planet--land, atmosphere and water--forms a seamless whole. When countries get together to resolve the climate crisis, they should be focused less on what happens within their own geopolitical boundaries, and more on relationships between such units of governance and neighboring ones. In other words, political leaders should be required to think outside the box.
3) Always keep the whole in mind.
Climate change cannot be affected without an inclusive, cooperative strategy that is seamless, not only geographically, but also socially and economically. No issue of governance can be excluded, and no geopolitical boundary can be allowed to obscure the seamless flow of issues and ecologies. So can large global planning projects, such as the G8 and G20 summits be brought more in line with climate planning?
4) Focus on the edges.
In order to arrive at a paradigm of seamless-earth thinking, border ecologies should be emphasized. The land must come first. And since people depend upon the health of the land for sustenance, the health of the land is also a human-rights issue. For instance, how does a border fence between the USA and Mexico affect the border ecology between these countries? What are the human rights implications for the state of the Rio Grande as it leaves the US and enters Mexico? How does the war on drugs affect the above?
5) Start with a rough preliminary assessment.
What I think should come first is a very rough assessment of the state of places--geopolitical units--around the world. Google Earth and NASA earth mapping could help provide a baseline of which areas produce what emissions, which countries are suffering the most from warming, etc. Then let's see, in the future, what social, economic and environmental pushes and pulls between places might effect a better outcome.
6) Do charettes.
Future conference delegates should not have to sit and listen to dry speeches. Instead, they should be looking at pictures of places. They should split up into regional groups and do charettes. (A charette is a collaborative session in which a group of designers drafts a solution to a design problem.) If, for instance, a group that included Mexican and US delegates sat down and designed their hoped for outcomes vis a vis the Rio Grande, which both nations share, a dry Rio Grande reaching Mexico would not be acceptable to either party.
7) Bring in the heads of state (preferably, after first getting their buy-in to begin the planning process).
These delegates would arrive at proposals to enable more health to the river (above), and these proposals would be taken to the respective heads of state. Later climate conferences would determine how effectively governments have been implementing similar strategies proposed by their delegates.
8) Accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative...
There is a plethora of dysfunctional clutter in the way of doing the right things, however. Since the US Congress is stymied, we should not pin all our hopes on what they can deliver. Let's focus instead on worldwide success stories where appropriate actions are independently being taken. There are many US states and cities that are already legislating lower CO2 emissions and cooperating toward regional sustainability, not to mention the achievements of other countries such as Denmark. Let's highlight these achievements and encourage more. Let us do this within the context of a seamless-earth strategy that is concrete rather than abstract.
9) To the future of 350.org
350.org is a fine organization for coordinating such a program worldwide. It is already doing something similar, but it must continue on a more ambitious scale, acting more as an organizational catalyst. While world governments must be pressured to act responsibly, we should be taking separate action to make irresistible their buy-in to global coordination. We should all be looking at the same picture(s). The big picture. What any country does, climate-wise, within its boundaries is everybody's business. By all visually perusing nations' climate issues, we can arrive at a measure of transparency that helps us to keep governments accountable.
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
The Pojoaque River Art Tour
SCRATCHING THE SURFACE OF POJOAQUE; Reflections on the Pojoaque River Art Tour.
By Trevor Burrowes, July, 2008
“Explore our loca lartists' nests in the Pojoaque River Valley, an eclectic and beautiful old farming community off Hwy 84/285 and Los Alamos Highway 502 north of Santa Fe, with a side flight into Pojoaque Pueblo and Nambé. Both native and introduced species enjoy its proximity to Santa Fe as well as the beauty and solitude it affords”. (Excerted from the Pojoaque River Art Tour web site.)
Pojoaque promises to be the next big thing on Santa Fe’s rural horizon. Although a land-conservation ethic pervades among its artists, as is the case elsewhere in New Mexico, the difference in Pojoaque is how this land ethic butts up against the monumental urbanizing thrusts within the Pojoaque Pueblo territory. Casinos, hotels, restaurants, some as part of the Southwest’s largest resort (Buffalo Thunder), are springing up without necessarily displacing the traditional produce-growing and animal husbandry here.
According to the New Mexico Tourism Department, “Buffalo Thunder is comprised of a Las Vegas-styled casino, state of the art conference center with 66,000 square feet of meeting, pre-function and event space, luxury themed spa, outdoor tennis facility, and Hale Irwin designed golf at Towa Golf Course (already open), Homewood Suites by Hilton (already open) and the Hilton. The Resort will feature seven fabulous restaurants, bars and lounges, including the Red Sage Restaurant by renowned Chef Mark Miller.”
But there’s a lot more to Pojoaque than this. Centered on the artist and farming communities, it is the world of the Pojoaque River Art Tour.
The quality of the rural landscape has attracted prominent residents – poet Arthur Sze and writer Sheri Tepper, for instance. Mrs. Tepper is a famous science-fiction writer, but Rancho Jacona, the property and horticultural oasis that she and husband Gene created and manage, also is renowned. I later found the Teppers to be gracious hosts, and Rancho Jacona full of stories. It was once the home of the McCulluch Chainsaw Co. and, earlier, part of the Roybal property that extended from Jacona to Agua Fria in Santa Fe. Its exotic farm animals -- goats, sheep, rabbits, peacocks -- fertilize the luxuriant plantings with “cool” compost. And I wish I had asked the significance of giving animal names to the “Twelve Rental Vacation Houses…set in a 35 acre oasis of gardens, trees and acequias.“
My introduction to Pojoaque artists (referred to in the tour guide as “nesting species”) came through Marianne Hornbuckle She is the soul of the Pojoaque River Art Tour, which she co-founded fifteen years ago. A tall, plainspoken Texas native, she and husband Bill Preston have lived for 25 years on what is now County Road 84.
Marianne’s own home was my first visit, and there I met husband Bill, a retiring man and sumi-e painter. He wore a T-shirt decorated with praying manti images that he had painted. He paints cactus flowers, one of which I saw and loved. It was dashing and assured. Marianne sculpts lovely little clay nudes, but her abstract paintings are of precise rectangular forms that contain and are surrounded by painterly atmospherics. Art is her job, and they both display work in Artistas de Santa Fe, a cooperative gallery in Santa Fe.
The front wall of their property has an Aztec feeling – adobe brick walls with rectangular cut-out openings. The front yard slopes gently down, past a cattle grate and massive, graceful Honey Locus and Rosa Rugosa trees, to their house. All around the house is their no-fuss, low-maintenance garden, despite which, the whitest ever iceberg roses bloom near a fence. Behind the back yard, an old apple orchard was cleared and is, it seems, a de facto part of their property. The house is 125 years old, and, they keep it going through ingenuity and an ethic of radical conservation that goes something like this: if it ain’t broke, don’t mess with it.
Marianne also facilitated my meeting with tour artist T.C. Williams, an exuberant ex-Marine who is extremely knowledgeable about the international art world. He refers to some of his large canvasses as “political cartoon murals.” Got Water appropriates a popular milk advertisement. Under the large letters of the title is a skeleton wearing a dunce cap and holding out an empty tumbler. Beside that figure is a giggling cactus. Large red and white drops of liquid rain down without having destination or utility. An historic landmark on the property is the quaint “Old Roybal Shop.”
THE OTHER POJOAQUE
While the art tour rightly celebrates its rural heritage, there is as yet no effort to weave together the urban aspects of the Pojoaque Pueblo developments with the tranquil heritage of the “traditional communities.” Many people I have talked with seem nonplussed. These developments fall outside their purview, rendering them helpless. But there may be potential for dialog between the two communities.
Pojoaque Pueblo (Background)
Pojoaque Pueblo is one of six Tewa-speaking villages in the northern Rio Grande Valley whose inhabitants date back to A.D. 900. It has continually been a nucleus of Indian settlement and a Pueblo center. Disruptions from Spanish, Mexican and other incursions, as well as from disease, caused repeated diminution and dispersal of the population. After a period of disorganization between 1912 and 1932, the Commissioner of Indian Affairs issued a call, based on the Indian Reorganization Act, for all tribal members to return to the reservation. In 1936, the Pueblo became a federally recognized Indian reservation encompassing 11,603 acres. Its comparatively small population is growing rapidly.
The Pojoaque Business District
The Pojoaque Business District is virtually a town which the main north/south corridor (Highway 84/285) runs through. I was struck with disbelief at what first appeared as an insensitive spread of pavement at odds with the rural beauty around it. This Pueblo-territory development which contains Cities of Gold Casino and Hotel and a sizable number of other businesses – a supermarket, banks, a police station, restaurants, two clinics, for instance -- bears no trace of Native American culture or of the region’s predominantly rural character.
Well, there is one conspicuous exception.
With landscape elements such as a rounded adobe tower, gigantic rock slabs, sculptures and other culture-specific iconography, the Poeh Cultural Center and Museum. is as exaggeratedly “cultural” as the rest of the business district is the opposite. The museum exhibits, which are quite elaborate, err on the side of caricature. But driving by the Pojoaque Business District one night, I saw the connection between the museum/center and its more drab surroundings. It struck me that the model for the nightscape of the business district might be Las Vegas, Nevada. Thus the plethora of night lights to produce a not-quite-successful glitziness. And so, caricature, Disney-fication, seems to lie at the heart of the park landscape, especially in the quality of the Poeh Museum.
The Business District could use a landscaping overhaul. Roads are too wide, traffic flow confusing, trees insufficient, asphalt paving excessive. Existing buildings would look better in a greener setting, and small renovations here and there might help. Rounding off the top edge of the supermarket would soften and calm it. And, among many doable interventions that might improve the area, there could be planted islands between narrower roadbeds, and roundabouts instead of stop-signs. Night lights could be shielded. Much asphalt could be removed to allow for the planting of drought-tolerant trees and shrubs and recharging of the aquifer. And these interventions are all aspects of the rural environment that encompasses the art tour. Maybe such improvements to the business district, softening its rough edges, could be the focus of a future art tour!
The Wellness Center
Revenue from tribal developments have also created a state-of-the-art community hub known as “The Wellness Center.” Located on a hill that seems impossibly out of the way, it’s like many good things in this area, somewhat shrouded in secrecy. This hub contains a public library, a Senior Center, an athletic track and sports field, a trail uniting the center with the Business District, a Boys and Girl’s (B&G) Club – one regularly sees about 20 brand new vans emblazoned with B&G Club insignia – and a pool.
The generosity of the tribal community, providing needed services for the general public, is at odds with the planning impasse between it and the non-Pueblo community. There are issues over water rights, mining and rural character that have yet to be resolved.
Travel
Highways often overlay two-lane roads, which in turn overlay old horse and foot trails. This might explain why Pojoaque has always been a Pueblo center, since the main north/south artery runs through it. This spine of Pojoaque Valley is the well-maintained, uncrowded Highway 84/285. Bordered to the south by Tesuque, Pojoaque Valley comprises the traditional communities and Pueblos of Cuyamungue, Pojoaque, Jacona, Jaconita, Nambe and El Rancho that took root by Nambe and Pojoaque river banks.
Like many local residents, I travel frequently to Santa Fe to work or to shop, and so this very lovely route has become part of my broader community.
Heading north from Santa Fe, hilly, shrub-dotted desert lands are interspersed with craggy, earthy cliffs. These are scenes out of a Western. The Sangre de Cristo and Jemez mountains, to the east and west respectively, form distant backdrops to this scenery. Tesuque, to the immediate north of Santa Fe, provides a five-acre-lot residential haven from California-style sprawl. Tesuque, through its exemplary land stewardship, has buffered Pojoaque Valley to its north. Its many expensive houses tend to blend into the undulating, muscular terrain. Tribally owned lands to the north of residential Tesuque and beyond as yet enjoy quasi protection against over-development.
Before leaving Tesuque you pass Camel Rock casino, fairly downplayed as casinos go. Then, boom, you get to Buffalo Thunder, located in the Cuyamunge area. This might be the largest resort of its kind in the nation. Applying my rose-colored lenses, I see it less as a set of gigantic buildings and more as artificial hills and cliffs. The adobe-colored Hilton Hotel pitted with dark arched openings, almost reminds me of Bandelier. I may be alone in this fantasy, however.
Pojoaque Business District comes soon after. It is the hub of the traditional communities of Jacona, Pojoaque, Jaconita, El Rancho and Nambe. East of 84/285, along with the traditional community of Lower Nambe, are tribal lands of the Pojoaque and Nambe Pueblos. The art tour, however, is an affair of the Pojoaque river course, which flows from east to west. and incorporates all the above communities except Nambe.
Pojoaque is about equidistant from Santa Fe and Los Alamos with nearby Bandelier National Monument. The High Road to Taos is one of the classic scenic drives in northern New Mexico and takes off from Pojoaque via SR 503 on the north side of town.
.
Conclusion
The tour is the backbone of community identity and empowerment. There may not be another place in New Mexico with more potential to harmonize powerful urban, rural and wilderness landscape qualities that are immediately juxtaposed, and interconnected. One tool for this harmonization of landscape styles is the Pojoaque Community Strategic Plan that falls under the rubric of Santa Fe County Planning Department.
From the Tour website:
“The 16th annual POJOAQUE RIVER ART TOUR takes place On September 19 and 20,2009 Saturday and Sunday, from 10 am to 5 pm, eighteen studios located 16 miles north of Santa Fe in the pueblo of Pojoaque and along County Road 84 (parallels Hwy 502 to Los Alamos) through the traditional communities of Pojoaque, Jacona, Jaconita, and El Rancho.”
By Trevor Burrowes, July, 2008
“Explore our loca lartists' nests in the Pojoaque River Valley, an eclectic and beautiful old farming community off Hwy 84/285 and Los Alamos Highway 502 north of Santa Fe, with a side flight into Pojoaque Pueblo and Nambé. Both native and introduced species enjoy its proximity to Santa Fe as well as the beauty and solitude it affords”. (Excerted from the Pojoaque River Art Tour web site.)
Pojoaque promises to be the next big thing on Santa Fe’s rural horizon. Although a land-conservation ethic pervades among its artists, as is the case elsewhere in New Mexico, the difference in Pojoaque is how this land ethic butts up against the monumental urbanizing thrusts within the Pojoaque Pueblo territory. Casinos, hotels, restaurants, some as part of the Southwest’s largest resort (Buffalo Thunder), are springing up without necessarily displacing the traditional produce-growing and animal husbandry here.
According to the New Mexico Tourism Department, “Buffalo Thunder is comprised of a Las Vegas-styled casino, state of the art conference center with 66,000 square feet of meeting, pre-function and event space, luxury themed spa, outdoor tennis facility, and Hale Irwin designed golf at Towa Golf Course (already open), Homewood Suites by Hilton (already open) and the Hilton. The Resort will feature seven fabulous restaurants, bars and lounges, including the Red Sage Restaurant by renowned Chef Mark Miller.”
But there’s a lot more to Pojoaque than this. Centered on the artist and farming communities, it is the world of the Pojoaque River Art Tour.
The quality of the rural landscape has attracted prominent residents – poet Arthur Sze and writer Sheri Tepper, for instance. Mrs. Tepper is a famous science-fiction writer, but Rancho Jacona, the property and horticultural oasis that she and husband Gene created and manage, also is renowned. I later found the Teppers to be gracious hosts, and Rancho Jacona full of stories. It was once the home of the McCulluch Chainsaw Co. and, earlier, part of the Roybal property that extended from Jacona to Agua Fria in Santa Fe. Its exotic farm animals -- goats, sheep, rabbits, peacocks -- fertilize the luxuriant plantings with “cool” compost. And I wish I had asked the significance of giving animal names to the “Twelve Rental Vacation Houses…set in a 35 acre oasis of gardens, trees and acequias.“
My introduction to Pojoaque artists (referred to in the tour guide as “nesting species”) came through Marianne Hornbuckle She is the soul of the Pojoaque River Art Tour, which she co-founded fifteen years ago. A tall, plainspoken Texas native, she and husband Bill Preston have lived for 25 years on what is now County Road 84.
Marianne’s own home was my first visit, and there I met husband Bill, a retiring man and sumi-e painter. He wore a T-shirt decorated with praying manti images that he had painted. He paints cactus flowers, one of which I saw and loved. It was dashing and assured. Marianne sculpts lovely little clay nudes, but her abstract paintings are of precise rectangular forms that contain and are surrounded by painterly atmospherics. Art is her job, and they both display work in Artistas de Santa Fe, a cooperative gallery in Santa Fe.
The front wall of their property has an Aztec feeling – adobe brick walls with rectangular cut-out openings. The front yard slopes gently down, past a cattle grate and massive, graceful Honey Locus and Rosa Rugosa trees, to their house. All around the house is their no-fuss, low-maintenance garden, despite which, the whitest ever iceberg roses bloom near a fence. Behind the back yard, an old apple orchard was cleared and is, it seems, a de facto part of their property. The house is 125 years old, and, they keep it going through ingenuity and an ethic of radical conservation that goes something like this: if it ain’t broke, don’t mess with it.
Marianne also facilitated my meeting with tour artist T.C. Williams, an exuberant ex-Marine who is extremely knowledgeable about the international art world. He refers to some of his large canvasses as “political cartoon murals.” Got Water appropriates a popular milk advertisement. Under the large letters of the title is a skeleton wearing a dunce cap and holding out an empty tumbler. Beside that figure is a giggling cactus. Large red and white drops of liquid rain down without having destination or utility. An historic landmark on the property is the quaint “Old Roybal Shop.”
THE OTHER POJOAQUE
While the art tour rightly celebrates its rural heritage, there is as yet no effort to weave together the urban aspects of the Pojoaque Pueblo developments with the tranquil heritage of the “traditional communities.” Many people I have talked with seem nonplussed. These developments fall outside their purview, rendering them helpless. But there may be potential for dialog between the two communities.
Pojoaque Pueblo (Background)
Pojoaque Pueblo is one of six Tewa-speaking villages in the northern Rio Grande Valley whose inhabitants date back to A.D. 900. It has continually been a nucleus of Indian settlement and a Pueblo center. Disruptions from Spanish, Mexican and other incursions, as well as from disease, caused repeated diminution and dispersal of the population. After a period of disorganization between 1912 and 1932, the Commissioner of Indian Affairs issued a call, based on the Indian Reorganization Act, for all tribal members to return to the reservation. In 1936, the Pueblo became a federally recognized Indian reservation encompassing 11,603 acres. Its comparatively small population is growing rapidly.
The Pojoaque Business District
The Pojoaque Business District is virtually a town which the main north/south corridor (Highway 84/285) runs through. I was struck with disbelief at what first appeared as an insensitive spread of pavement at odds with the rural beauty around it. This Pueblo-territory development which contains Cities of Gold Casino and Hotel and a sizable number of other businesses – a supermarket, banks, a police station, restaurants, two clinics, for instance -- bears no trace of Native American culture or of the region’s predominantly rural character.
Well, there is one conspicuous exception.
With landscape elements such as a rounded adobe tower, gigantic rock slabs, sculptures and other culture-specific iconography, the Poeh Cultural Center and Museum. is as exaggeratedly “cultural” as the rest of the business district is the opposite. The museum exhibits, which are quite elaborate, err on the side of caricature. But driving by the Pojoaque Business District one night, I saw the connection between the museum/center and its more drab surroundings. It struck me that the model for the nightscape of the business district might be Las Vegas, Nevada. Thus the plethora of night lights to produce a not-quite-successful glitziness. And so, caricature, Disney-fication, seems to lie at the heart of the park landscape, especially in the quality of the Poeh Museum.
The Business District could use a landscaping overhaul. Roads are too wide, traffic flow confusing, trees insufficient, asphalt paving excessive. Existing buildings would look better in a greener setting, and small renovations here and there might help. Rounding off the top edge of the supermarket would soften and calm it. And, among many doable interventions that might improve the area, there could be planted islands between narrower roadbeds, and roundabouts instead of stop-signs. Night lights could be shielded. Much asphalt could be removed to allow for the planting of drought-tolerant trees and shrubs and recharging of the aquifer. And these interventions are all aspects of the rural environment that encompasses the art tour. Maybe such improvements to the business district, softening its rough edges, could be the focus of a future art tour!
The Wellness Center
Revenue from tribal developments have also created a state-of-the-art community hub known as “The Wellness Center.” Located on a hill that seems impossibly out of the way, it’s like many good things in this area, somewhat shrouded in secrecy. This hub contains a public library, a Senior Center, an athletic track and sports field, a trail uniting the center with the Business District, a Boys and Girl’s (B&G) Club – one regularly sees about 20 brand new vans emblazoned with B&G Club insignia – and a pool.
The generosity of the tribal community, providing needed services for the general public, is at odds with the planning impasse between it and the non-Pueblo community. There are issues over water rights, mining and rural character that have yet to be resolved.
Travel
Highways often overlay two-lane roads, which in turn overlay old horse and foot trails. This might explain why Pojoaque has always been a Pueblo center, since the main north/south artery runs through it. This spine of Pojoaque Valley is the well-maintained, uncrowded Highway 84/285. Bordered to the south by Tesuque, Pojoaque Valley comprises the traditional communities and Pueblos of Cuyamungue, Pojoaque, Jacona, Jaconita, Nambe and El Rancho that took root by Nambe and Pojoaque river banks.
Like many local residents, I travel frequently to Santa Fe to work or to shop, and so this very lovely route has become part of my broader community.
Heading north from Santa Fe, hilly, shrub-dotted desert lands are interspersed with craggy, earthy cliffs. These are scenes out of a Western. The Sangre de Cristo and Jemez mountains, to the east and west respectively, form distant backdrops to this scenery. Tesuque, to the immediate north of Santa Fe, provides a five-acre-lot residential haven from California-style sprawl. Tesuque, through its exemplary land stewardship, has buffered Pojoaque Valley to its north. Its many expensive houses tend to blend into the undulating, muscular terrain. Tribally owned lands to the north of residential Tesuque and beyond as yet enjoy quasi protection against over-development.
Before leaving Tesuque you pass Camel Rock casino, fairly downplayed as casinos go. Then, boom, you get to Buffalo Thunder, located in the Cuyamunge area. This might be the largest resort of its kind in the nation. Applying my rose-colored lenses, I see it less as a set of gigantic buildings and more as artificial hills and cliffs. The adobe-colored Hilton Hotel pitted with dark arched openings, almost reminds me of Bandelier. I may be alone in this fantasy, however.
Pojoaque Business District comes soon after. It is the hub of the traditional communities of Jacona, Pojoaque, Jaconita, El Rancho and Nambe. East of 84/285, along with the traditional community of Lower Nambe, are tribal lands of the Pojoaque and Nambe Pueblos. The art tour, however, is an affair of the Pojoaque river course, which flows from east to west. and incorporates all the above communities except Nambe.
Pojoaque is about equidistant from Santa Fe and Los Alamos with nearby Bandelier National Monument. The High Road to Taos is one of the classic scenic drives in northern New Mexico and takes off from Pojoaque via SR 503 on the north side of town.
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Conclusion
The tour is the backbone of community identity and empowerment. There may not be another place in New Mexico with more potential to harmonize powerful urban, rural and wilderness landscape qualities that are immediately juxtaposed, and interconnected. One tool for this harmonization of landscape styles is the Pojoaque Community Strategic Plan that falls under the rubric of Santa Fe County Planning Department.
From the Tour website
“The 16th annual POJOAQUE RIVER ART TOUR takes place On September 19 and 20,2009 Saturday and Sunday, from 10 am to 5 pm, eighteen studios located 16 miles north of Santa Fe in the pueblo of Pojoaque and along County Road 84 (parallels Hwy 502 to Los Alamos) through the traditional communities of Pojoaque, Jacona, Jaconita, and El Rancho.”
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
How To Do Everything
One block at a time; one neighborhood at a time; one city, town or village at a time; one county, parish or district at a time; one nation at a time; one planet, everyone rowing in the same direction.
© Trevor Burrowes
1) Being the de facto head of world governance, the US president is concerned with the entire scope of major world issues.
2) There is a way to wrap world governance issues up into a ball and address them systematically.
3) The world governance ball of issues is the physical planet.
4) Our cultural traditions have taught us to see the world as fractured little fiefdoms, and not as a unified, physical whole. This needs to change.
5) Humanity must evolve to take in the whole planet as a single sphere of governance.
6) Climate change is the best catalyst for this evolution, since it is no respecter of geopolitical boundaries. More than any other issue, climate change affects all living beings in the world.
7) The discipline of planning (as in urban planning and city General Plans, which involve comprehensive land-based planning) is one through which the president can wrap his mind around the globe’s major challenges and opportunities.
8) Every square inch of the planet falls firmly or loosely under some planning jurisdiction or other. In the US, planning jurisdictions can be cities, counties, states, federal government, tribal governments, and overlapping jurisdictions like national parks, rivers, oceans, bioregions, metropolitan districts, etc..
9) Plans are also supposed to be internally consistent, so that one element of a plan, like open space, can be consistent with another, like community health, if open space encourages people to walk more.
10) We need an overarching policy from the federal government requiring that a) various plans lead to common sustainability goals, and that b) all plans within the nation be consistent with each other. Barring this, individual plans are largely ineffective in fostering big picture change.
11) Stimulus funding should apply to projects that are consistent with sustainable planning (economically and environmentally) in any given area.
12) Foreign aid and intervention should help direct international planning toward internal consistency and sustainability on a global level.
13) A survey of plans nationwide and globally is needed. The aim should be to assess the effects, benefits, deficits, gaps, and possibilities for international planning for global sustainability.
IMAGES:
Image 1: The world is a work of art in progress. It is like painting a picture on a grid. Each square of the grid represents a geopolitical area. For each geopolitical area there is a plan. But the image being “painted” comprises all the squares and all the plans, which must coordinate with each other to convincingly render the overall image.
Image 2: While the overall image of the picture is brushed in broadly, there are various other kinds of intervention such as details within squares, or glosses that cover many squares. It is the same with planning. The fine-detail level of a plan could be as small as a street block in scale, while an internationally agreed-to “gloss” could extend planet-wide.
© Trevor Burrowes
1) Being the de facto head of world governance, the US president is concerned with the entire scope of major world issues.
2) There is a way to wrap world governance issues up into a ball and address them systematically.
3) The world governance ball of issues is the physical planet.
4) Our cultural traditions have taught us to see the world as fractured little fiefdoms, and not as a unified, physical whole. This needs to change.
5) Humanity must evolve to take in the whole planet as a single sphere of governance.
6) Climate change is the best catalyst for this evolution, since it is no respecter of geopolitical boundaries. More than any other issue, climate change affects all living beings in the world.
7) The discipline of planning (as in urban planning and city General Plans, which involve comprehensive land-based planning) is one through which the president can wrap his mind around the globe’s major challenges and opportunities.
8) Every square inch of the planet falls firmly or loosely under some planning jurisdiction or other. In the US, planning jurisdictions can be cities, counties, states, federal government, tribal governments, and overlapping jurisdictions like national parks, rivers, oceans, bioregions, metropolitan districts, etc..
9) Plans are also supposed to be internally consistent, so that one element of a plan, like open space, can be consistent with another, like community health, if open space encourages people to walk more.
10) We need an overarching policy from the federal government requiring that a) various plans lead to common sustainability goals, and that b) all plans within the nation be consistent with each other. Barring this, individual plans are largely ineffective in fostering big picture change.
11) Stimulus funding should apply to projects that are consistent with sustainable planning (economically and environmentally) in any given area.
12) Foreign aid and intervention should help direct international planning toward internal consistency and sustainability on a global level.
13) A survey of plans nationwide and globally is needed. The aim should be to assess the effects, benefits, deficits, gaps, and possibilities for international planning for global sustainability.
IMAGES:
Image 1: The world is a work of art in progress. It is like painting a picture on a grid. Each square of the grid represents a geopolitical area. For each geopolitical area there is a plan. But the image being “painted” comprises all the squares and all the plans, which must coordinate with each other to convincingly render the overall image.
Image 2: While the overall image of the picture is brushed in broadly, there are various other kinds of intervention such as details within squares, or glosses that cover many squares. It is the same with planning. The fine-detail level of a plan could be as small as a street block in scale, while an internationally agreed-to “gloss” could extend planet-wide.
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