One of the first books Bob Berrens suggested I read when we began working together was Voltaire’s Candide. This has come in handy. Candide is a bit of a romp, a picaresque in which our hero has all kinds of horrifying misadventures before settling down to tend his garden. Il faut cultiver notre jardin. Our …
An Inkstain guest post from Jack Schmidt, crossposted with encouragement from the Utah State University Center for Colorado River Studies By Jack Schmidt | December 7, 2023 In Summary By the end of November 2023, storage in the reservoirs of the Colorado River watershed had been reduced 1.73 million acre feet from the high of …
Continue reading ‘‘So Far, So Good’ for the Colorado River Watershed in 2023’ »
Alert reader T texted a question: Why “Ribbons” vs “Ribbon”? I can’t wait to read all about it. Thanks, T! The title of our forthcoming book* Ribbons of Green: The Rio Grande and the Making of a Modern American City comes from a passage in the strange and wonderful book The Desert by John van …
Continue reading ‘Inkstain mailbag: Why “Ribbons” plural?’ »
I have devoted an inordinate amount of time over these last few months thinking about two things: finishing the book, and dreaming about the dreamy freedom of my life after we handed over the manuscript to the University of New Mexico Press. The book work, finishing the manuscript of Ribbons of Green: The Rio Grande …
Continue reading ‘Ribbons of Green: A water book? A city book?’ »
I’ve been fiddling with some of the maps we’ll be using for our book Ribbons of Green: The Rio Grande and the Making of a Modern American City, trying to think about how to use this 1888 topographical map of Albuquerque and its surroundings. It may work best unadorned – a river, a railroad, and …
Continue reading ‘Ribbons of Green: the Spandrels of Duranes’ »
The Rio Grande silvery minnow is kind of a big deal in understanding 21st century management of New Mexico’s Middle Rio Grande. So it was hilarious to me to look back at the initial public announcement of its 1994 Endangered Species Act listing. The community first learned of it on page C6 of the Aug. …
Finishing the new book has thrown me into a time warp. We’re about to hand in a manuscript for a book that traces a century and a half of the evolution of Albuquerque’s relationship with the Rio Grande, leading up to now. But the now of the act of writing (November 2023) is different from …
A guest post by Jack Schmidt of the Utah State University Future of the Colorado River Project. By Jack Schmidt A few weeks ago, I posted a perspective demonstrating that we consumed or lost to evaporation the “gains” of Water Year (WY)2011, WY2017, and WY2019 within two years of each of those large runoff events. …
Continue reading ‘Protecting Reservoir Storage Gains from Water Year 2023: How are we doing?’ »
I had the great good fortune some years ago, when on one of my “learning about water” escapades, this one a visit to the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, to have been introduced to Phil Isenberg. Phil – former mayor of Sacramento, and member of the California legislature – devoted much of his life to the pursuit …
A guest post by Jack Schmidt of the Utah State University Future of the Colorado River Project. By Jack Schmidt The end of September marked the end of Water Year 2023 (WY2023). This is a good time to take stock of the year’s runoff and to understand how much reservoir storage improved. What kind of …
Continue reading ‘Water Year 2023 in Context: A Cautionary Tale’ »