From the morning paper, a riff on getting acquainted with our river:

The question of what we know about our river, and how we care for it, has been on my mind since I finished reading Cynthia Barnett’s new book, “Blue Revolution.”

Barnett, a Florida journalist, writes about the need for a water ethic. She was in town this month to speak at the annual meeting of the American Water Resources Association, and while she was here I offered to show her our river. We spent a delightful Sunday afternoon working our way up the Rio Grande from Isleta to Alameda — the ditches that spread the water over the valley, the old neighborhoods that grew up around them, and the river corridor itself, the great strip of golden fall cottonwoods and brown water down the middle of our city. But I found myself apologizing (and complaining) as we followed a tortuous path to reach the relatively few places where I could actually get her down to see the river itself.