Ruscha and Wittgenstein

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A board for the game Scrabble with the words “emu” and “mug” spelled out with game tiles.

A fine word.

 

We had a round of holiday Scrabble this afternoon after first feast. I got “emu,” which is a fine word.

I never really got Ludwig Wittgenstein when I was studying philosophy in college. A lost opportunity. I’ve always been interested in words as objects, since I was a kid scribbling in notebooks, before my first typewriter.

Magical – written words on a page, objects, little vessels of meaning.

Ed Ruscha

It might have been the Spam.

In 2003, the Gagosian Gallery in Los Angeles showed a group of photographs taken in 1961 by the artist Ed Ruscha. Among them was a photograph of a can of Spam. Here is the Ruscha scholar Lisa Turvey:

Each Product Still Life features a single consumer item-Oxydol bleach, Sherwin-Williams turpentine, Wax Seal car polish-on what appears to be a shelf, shot frontally in black and white against a solid backdrop. As exhibited, these works foretold the photographic practice treated in the rest of the small show: Ruscha went on to use such artless viewpoints to picture vernacular subjects, stripped of affect, in artist’s books such as Twentysix Gasoline Stations(1962) and Some Los Angeles Apartments (1965).

Among the pictures at the Gagosian in 2003 was a photograph of a can of spam. It was a sketch of sorts of Ruscha’s later painting Actual Size, which has “SPAM” in big type, the typeface from the can, and an actual size can of spam flying through space. It’s hilarious. It’s hard for me to place what I first saw when and where, but I likely saw Ruscha’s Spam can at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in the 1970s as a teenager, along with other artists who were playing with words and type – Jasper Johns I’m pretty sure among them. (I would normally give you an image, but I haven’t found any that I’m confident are freely shareable.)

I’m done with revisions to the new book, so I’ve let my brain off leash for the first time in a while and it’s been over sniffing at the art.

Ruscha’s L.A., so my roots, and also a goofball. In 1966 he mounted a camera in the bed of a pickup truck, photographed every building on the Sunset Strip, and published them all as a 25-foot-long foldout book. “Pop” or maybe “conceptual artist,” whatever, I’m not here to pick a fight. It’s his words that interest me.

Ruscha, who worked briefly in advertising (a handy explanation?) plucked words out of language and hung them on gallery walls.

Spam.

Later Wittgenstein

The key to later Wittgenstein (there were sorta two of him) is his oft-quoted linguistic bon mot – “The meaning of a word is its use in the language.” I love this, because it recognizes language as a fundamentally social thing – it’s us, in conversation, iterating as we sort out meaning, a rejection of an “essentialist” notion of meaning in favor of looking at how we actually use language.

This is what’s so intriguing about Ruscha’s use of words in his art. He would make these big paintings of a word – “OOF,” “SPAM,” “HONK,” or his later work when he expanded to whole sentences! “ALL WE HAVE IS NOW.”

I stand there. I look. I bring my language to the exchange, and try to understand Ruscha’s. Is it an exchange? Does it matter what the artist *meant* when he picked *that* word?

Wittgenstein defines the meaning concept with something he calls “language-games” – the contextual frame around the type of communication we’re involved in when we’re using words in a particular way. Ruscha made a new language-game, and treated it like an actual *game*. Rip a word out of its context and hang it on a gallery wall!

This is the magic of Scrabble. It’s like an afternoon at a Ruscha retrospective, words ripped one at a time from their context, an aesthetic built around game play but also the intricate relationships of text and meaning. “Emu!”

Lousy start to the Colorado/Rio Grande 2024-25 snowpack season

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Evaporative Demand Drought Index map for four weeks beginning Dec. 21, 2024, showing high risk of drying across the Rio Grande and Colorado River headwaters.

Falling behind.

I was talking to Eric Kuhn Thursday (write a book together – bonded for life) who pointed out that the Colorado Basin River Forecast Center has started running its models for 2025 runoff. They don’t look good.

It’s way too early to think of this as a “forecast.” But they provide a feel for where we’re at now: Do we have a good head start? Are we already behind? The error bars are still huge, with a lot of upside potential, but we are already behind – 1.4 million acre feet below median for Lake Powell inflow.

The current climate forecast headlights, which can at least dimly illuminate the next month for us, don’t look good. The US Drought Monitor folks publish an experimental forecast tool called the Evaporative Demand Drought Index (EDDI).

EDDI uses the federal Climate Forecast System model, an operational model to help gauge conditions over the coming months. CFS is then coupled with tools to estimate evaporative demand – not simply how much snow we’re going to get, but how rain and snow interact with temperature and atmospheric moisture, all of which play roles in the system that sends water from the snowpack in the Rockies to headgates and kitchen taps across the West.

EDDI says that over the next month, we should expect the CBRFC’s runoff forecast to go down, not up. We’re falling behind.

Why this matters

The obvious reason this matters is its direct relationship with this year’s water management. Will Powell and Mead go up or down? What does that mean for near term water supply?

But we’re also all playing multiple games of four-dimensional chess trying to anticipate how the near term runoff scenarios influence long term negotiations over Post-26 river management. One of my little projects right now is to step back from my normative angst (where “normative angst” == John’s super pissed off about the negotiators’ abject failure) to think about the deeper negotiation theory stuff going on.

Peter Kropotkin and the alley behind my neighborhood gas station

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Temporary fence across a narrow dirt alley, with cinder block walls and houses on either side.

Kropotkin’s alley

There’s a pedestrian alley in my neighborhood that provides an important link for the low-stress version of my bike commute.

The neighborhood, built in the 1950s, has a few of them, but they don’t get much use. People don’t walk much any more. Which I guess is why someone thought it would be OK to put a fence up at both ends of my alley.

This seemed wrong.

Whoever did it went to some trouble, hiring a fence company. The one at the south end wasn’t a gate that could swing, it was bolted onto fence posts stuck in the dirt of the alley. I snapped a picture so that I could file a report with the city, then rode around the block to check it out from the other end.

There was a guy with a pickup truck from one of the companies that runs utilities down the alley on the far side. He said the fence wasn’t theirs. Then a man materialized from the building on the far side of the alley – my age, with hands and clothes suggesting he worked, and an unlit cigar in his mouth.

He agreed the fence shouldn’t be there, said the fiber optic crews who have been swarming our neighborhood had put it up, but it’s a public right of way, they built it in the 1950s so people could get from the neighborhood to the businesses on the far side of the alley.

I have a tendency to focus on governance in a situation like this – to study municipal maps to determine whether it is a public right of way. To call the fence company or file a complaint with the city.

Cigar Guy’s approach was more direct. He started yanking at the fence, disappeared for a minute and came back with wire cutters, snipping away the loops holding it in place. Pickup Truck Guy joined in, helping haul the fence out of the way.

We walked down the alley to the other end. The gate was bolted in place, not amenable to wire cutters. But the posts weren’t deep, so we pulled them out and reopened the right of way.

The anarchist toolkit

Cigar Guy had wire cutters. This is important by way of metaphor, but also because the fence was being held in place with wire that needed to be cut in order for us to reclaim the commons – in this case, an alley.

As a student of government, I tend to focus on rules and process and the nature and structure of institutions. The lesson from Cigar Guy is that sometimes you just need wire cutters.

North 54 Salvage

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"An outdoor lot filled with old, worn-out vehicles including vintage trucks, a painted salvage race car, and other aged automobiles. The salvage race car is painted in bright orange and purple, with 'North 54 Salvage' and 'We Buy Junk Cars' on the side. The background includes an industrial yard with construction equipment and a dirt mound."

“We buy junk cars.” John Fleck, December 2024.

The guy seemed puzzled by my presence. I guess I looked lost – why else would an old guy on a bike be riding down a road that dead ends in a junk yard? He wasn’t fazed by my explanation: “I’m trying to ride on every road in Albuquerque, and I haven’t ridden on this one yet.”

His dog looked friendly.

His neighbor has 75,000 hub caps.

This is why I ride.

“a vessel for meaning”

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My kid, Nora Reed, penned an insightful thread yesterday about the nature of the their work – they run a jewelry shop, still not too late* for holiday gift giving! – and the nature of craft and art:

a thing i think about a lot when figuring out both packaging for the business and the basics of what i am selling is that jewelry acts as a vessel for meaning.

all art is like this, it carries the associations an individual has with the point in their lives they first experience it, but art that is made particularly for gifting has to be suited for holding that sentiment

my dad, @jfleck was a science journalist when i was growing up (he’s a professor now) and my mom’s a ceramicist

dad always described the difference between art and craft is that you can make as beautiful a sculptural artistic object as you want, but it has to carry the coffee to be a mug.

journalism, he says, has to carry the coffee. it can be beautiful, but the main thing it has to do is convey the news.

jewelry also has to carry the coffee, but the coffee is much more abstract: you have to make it a vessel for the milestone someone celebrated buying it for themselves, or their admiration or love for a giftee.

it also accumulates a patina of meaning as you own it and wear it for special occasions.

i put a lot of love and care into my work but all i am doing is making a container that people can put whatever feelings they want in.

it’s a pretty fucking good gig.

“Patina of meaning” is a pretty special turn of phrase. They’re a writer, too.

* Nora noted I should be sure to add a link to their shipping deadlines page because if you’re in Finland or something it might be too late to get your vessel to its destination in time.

 

A sign of hope on the Colorado River

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One of the hopeful notes coming out of the recent Colorado River discussions is the way the operation of Glen Canyon Dam in a more flexible way, to accommodate a broader range of values, is back on the table. The USBR alternatives released ahead of this week’s Colorado River Water Users Association, while requiring some tea leaf divination because of their brevity, seem to leave the door open for this discussion.

Jack Schmidt and I have a new white paper offering some assistance, based on our understanding of the legal and regulatory structure around Grand Canyon National Park and Glen Canyon National Recreation Area. The idea behind what we’re arguing isn’t to wag a regulatory finger and say, “The law requires us to do X.” Rather, we’re saying, “The law enables us to do X,” where for “X” we argue for the consideration of a wider range of social, cultural, and environmental values as we make decisions about how to divide the water up between Lake Mead and Lake Powell.

The resources in each part of this spectacular region are unique. Cataract Canyon was known to river runners as the “graveyard of the Colorado” because of its challenging rapids. Glen Canyon held sublime beauty amid the tranquility of its countless side canyons until they were inundated, and those side canyons are now reemerging. Grand Canyon is one of Earth’s greatest geological statements and is sacred to many native American tribes. In the eyes of the Bureau of Reclamation in the 1960s, and to millions of visitors today, Lake Powell is the “Jewel of the Colorado.” Lake Mead, visited by four million people each year, is the largest reservoir in the United States and allowed transformation of much of the American Southwest.

In 2025 we have an opportunity to establish policies for the Colorado River that honor these diverse and evolving environmental and societal values. The legal and administrative foundations that guide river and reservoir management in Cataract Canyon/Lake Powell/Glen Canyon/Grand Canyon/Lake Mead appear to encourage, and perhaps even require,
consideration of the many environmental and societal resources throughout this diverse region.

 

Deficit Spending on the Colorado River

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By Jack Schmidt | December 3, 2024

Drawdown of the Colorado River’s reservoirs now slightly exceeds the amount of gain that occurred during the 2024 snowmelt season. For the next four months until snowmelt begins again, the basin’s reservoirs will be drawing from the excess accumulated in 2023, demonstrating the immense challenge in balancing water consumption with supply.

In Detail…

On 30 November 2024, total basin reservoir storage was 27.5 million af (acre feet)1, approximately two years’ supply at today’s rate of consumptive use and loss (Fig. 1). That amount is 43% of the maximum system contents of July 19832 and is the same amount as at the beginning of July 2021 when the basin’s water managers were beginning to get worried. Conditions are not quite as bleak as in summer 2021, because that year’s snowmelt season had already passed. Now, we can hope that the 2025 snowmelt season might be a good one. Nevertheless, reservoir storage is the bank account from which we draw to maintain the economy of the American Southwest and parts of northwestern Mexico. It would be preferable for there to be more water in that account.

Figure 1

Figure 1. Graph showing total storage in 46 reservoirs (blue line) in the Colorado River basin since 1 January 1999. Also shown are the total contents of Lake Mead and Lake Powell (orange line), total contents of Lake Mohave and Lake Havasu (red line), and 42 reservoirs upstream from Lake Powell (green line) which includes reservoirs managed by the federal and state governments, municipalities, and water districts.

 

Approximately 63% of current total reservoir storage is in Lake Mead and Lake Powell. Presently, there is approximately 400,000 af more water in Lake Powell than in Lake Mead, but the contents of Lake Powell are slowly being depleted. The contents of Lake Mead held fairly constant during the past month. The contents of Lake Powell decreased by approximately 4300 af/day during November, but the contents of Lake Mead decreased by only 800 af/day (Fig. 2). Upstream from Lake Powell, Colorado River Storage Project (CRSP) initial unit reservoirs, as well as Fontenelle Reservoir, decreased by only 600 af/day in November, and other Upper Basin reservoirs lost even less (400 af/day).

Figure 2

Figure 2. Graph showing total basin reservoir storage (blue line), and storage in different parts of the Colorado River watershed between 1 January 2021 and 30 November 2024.

 

Basin reservoir storage must be increased to improve the security of our water supply. We need to increase the balance in our “bank account,” and the only way to do that is to spend less than the amount of our actual water “income.” Most of our income arrives during the snowmelt season of late spring and early summer. Mid- and late-summer, fall, winter, and early spring is the period when we spend the snowmelt-season income, although summer rains and groundwater inflow offset some of our uses.

Occasionally, we have an unusually snowy winter, and the basin’s reservoirs significantly refill. 2023 was one of those years. Reclamation estimates that the natural flow of the Upper Basin3 was 17.4 million af in 2023, the third largest of the 21st century (after 2011 and 2019), and total basin storage increased by 8.38 million af, only exceeded by the increase in storage in 20114. 2024 was a moderately snowy winter.

2024 was a different story, however. The NRCS estimated that the peak snow water content in 2024 was 14% greater than the 30-year average, but dry soils and other effects of a warming climate limited natural flows to between 11.9 and 12.1 million af, which is less than the average for the 21st century5. In 2024, the basin’s reservoirs increased in storage by 2.45 million af. The drawdown of the basin’s reservoirs as of 30 November was 2.46 million af, slightly more than the gain from snowmelt (Fig. 3). The contents of Lake Mead and Lake Powell increased by 1.39 million af in 2024, and the drawdown in those two reservoirs has been 1.07 million af this year. During the next four months, the basin will begin drawing from storage that accumulated in 2023.

Figure 3

Figure 3. Graph showing reservoir storage between 1 January 2023 and 30 November 2024, highlighting the amount of reservoir recovery during the past two snowmelt seasons and the amount of intervening reservoir drawdown. The drawdown of the basin’s reservoirs since July 2024 slightly exceeds the recovery that occurred due to snowmelt in 2024. 

 

Drawdown of the basin’s reservoirs has been much greater in 2024 than in 2023. The amount of drawdown between early summer and today is slightly more than the median drawdown for the past 15 years6 and is 43% greater than the drawdown at this time last year (Table 1). The drawdown of Lake Mead and Lake Powell in 2024 is slightly less than the median for the past 15 years7 but is 98% greater than it was at this time last year.

 

Table 1. Reservoir drawdown between the summer peak and 30 November during the past nine years. The largest drawdown of basin reservoir storage occurred in 2021, 2020, and 2018 when drawdown in Lake Mead and Lake Powell significantly exceeded drawdown in Upper Basin reservoirs. The smallest drawdown occurred last year.

 

The total reservoir drawdown between early summer and 30 November is now 14% greater than in all of last year, and drawdown in Mead and Powell also exceeds the total drawdown in those reservoirs last year (Table 2).  We did well last year, but not so well this year.

 

Table 2. Reservoir drawdown during the first five months following the 2024 snowmelt compared to the total drawdown during the nine months following the 2023 snowmelt season.

 

There are many details ignored in this overview. Reservoir drawdown in the Upper Basin is not only determined by consumptive use, but also by reservoir operating rules that require winter drawdown and by requirements to provide environmental flows. Water use in southern California is significantly affected by water supply available from northern California, the Owens River, and locally. Nevertheless, every drop of water released from upstream is used, lost, or stored in a downstream reservoir, and total basin storage is the only available supply to make up the shortfall between annual precipitation and annual use.

Conservation in the Lower Basin and in Mexico is reducing drawdown in Lake Mead, and the storage contents of Lake Mead are likely to increase during the next few months as water is delivered from upstream. Drawdown of the total contents of Lake Mead and Lake Powell is still 0.32 million af less than what accumulated there from the 2024 inflow season and a 2024 deficit might not occur is Lower Basin water use is drastically reduced or if Upper Basin reservoirs are emptied.

Efforts to date to reduce water consumption in the basin have been significant, and required a significant investment by the federal government. Despite those efforts, we have four months ahead of us before snowmelt in 2025 begins, and we are likely to begin deficit spending unless radical changes in use are immediately implemented. The challenge faced by the federal government, Mexico, the seven basin states, every tribe, and every water user is immense and is not solely restricted to negotiating the post-2026 agreements. We remain in a water crisis today, and the time to greatly reduce water consumption is right now in the present moment.

 

  • [1] Basin reservoir storage is for 46 reservoirs reported by the Bureau of Reclamation in its Hydrodata base https://www.usbr.gov/uc/water/hydrodata/reservoir_data/site_map.html.
  • [2] There was 63.6 million af of storage in the basin on 15 July 1983. Some of this storage exceeded the generally accepted capacity of some reservoirs, notably Lake Powell.
  • [3] at Lees Ferry
  • [4] Basin reservoir storage increased by 8.78 million af in 2011.
  • [5] Natural flows for calendar year and water year 2024 were 12.1 and 11.9 million af, respectively, based on Reclamation’s 12 September 2024 estimate. The average natural flow at Lees Ferry between 2000 and 2024 was 12.4 million af/yr, based on Reclamation’s estimates.
  • [6] The median drawdown between the summer peak and 30 November during the past 15 years was 2.26 million af for the 46 reservoirs of the watershed.
  • [7] The median drawdown between the summer peak and 30 November during the past 15 years was 1.16 million af for the total contents of Lake Mead and Lake Powell.
  • [8]  Includes drawdown of Lake Mohave and Lake Havasu.

Does our current approach to Colorado River accounting hide a looming problem?

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My colleagues with the Colorado River Research Group have a new policy brief out today taking another whack at the question of “assigned water” – water kinda sorta conserved, but left in storage so water agencies can pull it out again at some future date. Think “Intentionally Created Surplus” (ICS). At this point, nearly 40 percent of the water in Lake Mead is tagged as some agency’s private storage account, rather than being available for general system use.

By so effectively propping up reservoir elevations, Assigned Water delays or completely prevents the triggering of some mandatory shortage?based curtailments spelled out in the current rules…. [T]his approach has the unintended consequence of hiding the current paucity of shared (i.e., System) water available in Lake Mead, something that will ultimately become obvious when those waters are someday recalled.

This is the issue Arizona State’s Kathryn Sorensen (one of my CRRG colleagues) has been raising, and that Kathryn (with help from Sarah Porter and I) wrote about in October. The new CRRG paper argues that, as we move toward expanding the assigned water programs available to basin water users, we need to be mindful of the risks.