2009-01-22-2047Z


A lot is happening. HR45 is already being floated out, testing the waters, to see how badly we gun nuts want to keep our arms. I'm thinking about walking or bicycling to El Paso along highway 9, with my AK47 slung over my shoulder, trailing a big sign: "NM and TX: 'OPEN CARRY' is your RIGHT. It is your RESPONSIBILITY to yourself and your loved ones. USE IT or LOSE IT! FIGHT HR45".

Pistols can be openly carried in NM, too, but only long guns in Texas. There's the danger a cop can say I'm "alarming" people by carrying it, but that's only a petty misdemeanor. And if I can round up some media coverage, I don't think any cops will mess with me.

My target start date is February 1. Anybody have some contacts at NRA? I'd like to get some TV stations and newspapers to cover this.

Every now and then, a certain color or smell, or just the seasons changing, will trigger memories I can't quite grasp. I wonder what kind of programming I've been subjected to that causes these recollections. When I was a kid in the early 60's, there was a "Bozo" show that had these cartoony introductions and/or endings, and every now and then it would be different, with a darker Gothic-style painted background that seemed to have something hidden in it... I don't know what keeps reminding me of that, but it surfaces every now and then.

I'm getting better with the air rifle. I got a rabbit two days ago, and a dove 3 or 4 days ago. This rabbit isn't as gamy as the last 3, I hope that's a precursor of good things to come. Problem with the BBs is that sometimes the animals get away, then die later. I found a dead rabbit in the arroyo that I probably hit the other day. And a dove dropped yesterday evening, but I looked all around the mesquite tree and couldn't find it.

This morning, a cloudy warm one, doves were on my greenhouse structure at dawn, and on branches of mesquites all around. That doesn't seem to happen on cold or sunny mornings. And on windy afternoons, doves cluster in the big forests of cholla cactus. Good things to know if you have to live on the little bastards. One regular-sized dove makes an adequate meal for one person. Of course, they are being fed by people, inadvertently or not; their gullets are full of cracked corn and birdseed. Gullets? I don't know if they really have one. If so, it's not anything like that of a turkey. The grain seems to be in their neck, just under the skin. I'll have to look it up one of these days.

Deming was rainy when I took the 11:43 bus home from Sun Valley Hardware. By the time I got to Columbus, everything was dry. We almost never get the rain. The gods just don't like us, I guess.

Last Saturday 3 guys and a truck, myself included in that number, pulled the solar-powered pump out of the 300-ft well. Today I picked out what looked like the right socket to take it apart, a 30mm; got it home, and it fucking fit! Why bother measuring when intuition works as well or better?

Another thing I want to do soon is go back into the Tres Hermanas and look for more springs and reservoirs. I bought a 1917-era topographic map on eBay that shows a spring, with the very non-PC name "Niggerhead Spring". It's not named on more recent maps. And I want to take another stab at Lonesome Cabin Tank, which apparently would not have been visible from where my friends and I stopped the other day.

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