Research comparing pedestrian behavior in Bryant Park and outside the Met, 1979-1980 versus 2008-2010: The biggest change in behavior was that lingering fell dramatically. The amount of time spent just hanging out dropped by about half across the measured locations. I personally am a fan of “lingering” and “just hanging out.” Via Tyler Cowen
Clouds and mountains were dancing this morning. I think they’re in love.
There’s an alley off Albuquerque’s Central Avenue, old Route 66, between the Southwest Capital Bank and St. John’s Thrift Store. You can’t go down the alley on Google Street View. Google Street View mostly doesn’t go down alleys. Alleys mostly don’t have names. You have to go there for yourself. Down past the “Drug Free …
When John Oliver used some of my work in a piece about water a couple of years ago, I spent a long time with one of the show’s producers as they developed it. Then, right before it aired, I spent more time in an intense round of fact-checking. It was marvelous. They were fact-checking the jokes. …
I got up early today, threw a camera and a bike in the car, and headed down to the Rio Grande. There’s a spot south of downtown I discovered last month where, when the river’s low, you can get out on the sand flats and look up to see downtown, rising above the river bed. …
I was delighted when veteran journalist Peter Rice started publishing the Downtown Albuquerque News, an emailed daily M-F news source for downtown Albuquerque. I also figured it was nothing more than a happy experiment, and probably wouldn’t make it. I am remain delighted with DAN as a reader, and am also delighted to have been …
Continue reading ‘Downtown Albuquerque News: My Favorite Albuquerque News Source’ »
Being a professional writer carried with it, for me, a bundle of contradictions – the arrogance of the act (I have something to say that’s so worthwhile that you should spend your time and your money to read it!) crossed with the insecurity, the fear (Do I really have something to say that’s worth their …
tl;dr I’m stepping down as director of the UNM Water Resources Program at the end of summer semester to write another book. longer When I was happily toiling those many years as an inkstained wretch, I had secret fantasies of leaving newspaper work to spend my waning years on the campus of the University of …
Continue reading ‘The next steps in “my semi-charmed life of the mind”’ »
Five plus years on from my career spent in newsrooms, I mostly don’t miss it, except when I do. The great joy of a newsroom was the intensity of being in the midst of All the Things. A newsroom, at least the ones I worked in, was a boisterous place, with chatter about whatever the …
My memory is vivid of the moment I realized newspapers – my vocation, my dream, my way of life – were fucked. I think it was the spring of 2008. Prices for oil and related commodities were spiking. To help write about it for the Albuquerque Journal, I’d signed up for UNM economics professor Jennifer …
Continue reading ‘Elephant Diaries Revisited: the end of McClatchy’ »