A complex system of pipes, tunnels and canals carry water around the Western U.S., like this one in Colorado's Fraser Valley. However, policy experts say a cross-country pipeline wouldn't make sense for political, financial and engineering reasons.

The Colorado River is a lifeline for about 40 million people across the Southwest. It supplies major cities like Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Denver and a multibillion-dollar agriculture industry that puts food on tables across the nation. But it doesn’t have enough water to meet current demands.

Policymakers are struggling to rein in demand on the river, which has been shrinking at the hands of climate change. The region needs to fix that gap between supply and demand, and there’s no obvious way to do it quickly.

But one tantalizingly simple solution keeps coming up. The West doesn’t have enough water, but the East has it in abundance. So, why don’t we just fix the Colorado River crisis by piping in water from the East?

The answer is complicated, but experts say it boils down to this: It doesn’t make sense to build a giant East-to-West water pipeline anytime soon for three reasons — politics, engineering, and money.

Political headwinds

If the West’s leaders wanted to take some water from the East, who would they even ask? Right now, there’s no national water agency that could oversee that kind of deal.
“I would argue that there aren't many entities with the authority across the country to do this,” said Beaux Jones, president and CEO of The Water Institute in New Orleans. “I don't know that the regulatory framework currently exists.”

Water is often managed using a messy patchwork of different government agencies and laws. The Colorado River is managed through a fragile web of agreements between cities, states, farm districts, native tribes and the federal government. Even though they’re all pulling from the same water supply, there’s no central Colorado River government agency.

A similarly complex system applies to many watersheds in the East. Even if a single city or state in the Western U.S. seriously wanted to build a pipeline from the East, it’s not even clear who they’d meet with to ask for water from a different area. And there’s no single federal agency that could sign off on such a deal and make sure it doesn’t harm people or the environment.

Delegates from states that use the Colorado River met in Las Vegas on December 15, 2022. Western water is managed through a fragile web of agreements between cities, states, farm districts, native tribes and the federal government. A similarly complex system applies to many watersheds in the East.

Any serious effort to pull new water in from the East to the Southwest would likely touch some part of the Mississippi River basin. It’s a sprawling network of smaller rivers that covers 31 different states, from Montana to Pennsylvania.

It’s a busy river with a lot of uses. And while its shortages aren’t as severe as dry times in the West, the Mississippi River basin goes through its own droughts. So even if, someday, the governments of the East and West set up a formal way to negotiate a water transfer, the cities, farms, boaters and wildlife advocates to the east might not be willing to share.

“The very nature of there being sufficient availability of water in the Mississippi River Basin to, in a large scale way, export that water,” Jones said. “I think there are many people on the ground within the Mississippi River basin that would fundamentally disagree with that.”

Engineering limits
​There are countless examples of large pipelines and canals moving liquids around the U.S. at this very moment. The longest existing today is the Colonial Pipeline, which carries gasoline from Houston to northern New Jersey through 5,500 miles of pipe.

So if we have the engineering capacity to do that, could we build similar infrastructure for water? In theory, yes. But it would have to be much larger than existing pipes for oil and gas.
“It takes so much more water to supply a city than it takes gasoline,” said John Fleck, a water policy professor at the University of New Mexico. “So the size of the pipe or the canal has to be a lot bigger, has to be much wider, has to cover a lot more ground.”

Because that pipeline or canal would be so big, it is more likely to ruffle some feathers along the way. Fleck suggested that landowners in its path, including local governments, could push back on a giant new piece of infrastructure running through their properties and mire any pipeline project in regulatory red tape.

Phoenix, Los Angeles, Denver and Salt Lake City wouldn't look like they do today without giant water-moving systems, like this pipe that is part of the Central Arizona Project. Experts say all of the feasible water pipelines have already been built, and a system to carry water in from the East is too difficult to be worth building.

All that said, a pipeline is still physically possible. There is perhaps no better argument for an East-West water transfer than the fact that the Western U.S. is already crisscrossed by multiple huge pipes and canals that carry water across long distances.

The West as we know it today wouldn’t exist without that kind of infrastructure. Much of Colorado’s population only has water due to a series of underground tunnels that bring water across the Rocky Mountains. Phoenix and Tucson have been able to welcome new residents in the middle of the desert with the help of a 336-mile canal that carries water from the Colorado River. Los Angeles, Albuquerque and Salt Lake City would not be the cities they are today without similarly ambitious water delivery systems built decades ago.
​
The existence of those water-moving projects isn’t proof that we should build a new, even bigger water pipeline from the East, Fleck said. In fact, he pointed to those systems as proof that we shouldn’t.

“All the feasible ones have largely been done, and the ones that are left are the ones that weren't done because they just turned out not to be feasible,” he said.

Money problems
Even in a world where the West’s leaders could find a willing water seller, get the right permits and put shovels in dirt, experts say an East-to-West water pipeline would simply be too expensive.

Any solution to the Colorado River crisis will require massive amounts of public spending. The federal government alone has thrown billions of dollars at the problem in just the past few years. But water economists and other policy experts say a cross-country pipeline isn’t the most efficient use of taxpayer dollars.

Stacks of hay bales sit beside an irrigation canal in California's Imperial Valley on June 20, 2023. Experts say there are more cost-effective ways to fix the Colorado River crisis than building a cross-country canal, like paying farmers to pause growing thirsty crops such as alfalfa.

Kathleen Ferris, former director of the Arizona Department of Water resources, pointed to two ongoing efforts that might be a more cost-effective way to help correct the region’s supply-demand imbalance. One involves paying farmers to pause growing on their fields, freeing up water to bolster the region’s beleaguered reservoirs. Another uses expensive, high-tech filtration systems to turn wastewater directly back into drinking water.

“Sometimes I feel like people don't want to do the heavy lifting,” said Ferris, who is now a water policy researcher at Arizona State University. “Instead, they want to just find the next water supply and be done with it and have somebody else pay for it.”

Ultimately, she said, those kinds of programs already have momentum and cost less money than an East-to-West water pipeline.

“Why don't we do the things that we know are possible and that are within our jurisdiction first,” Ferris said, “Before we go looking for some kind of a grand proposal that we don't have any reason to believe at the moment could succeed.”

Pipe dreams becoming reality
Piping in water from outside of the Colorado River basin, for all of its challenges, is a tempting enough idea that the federal government has given it a serious look.

In 2012, a Bureau of Reclamation report analyzed ways to bring new water into the Colorado River Basin, including importing piped water from adjacent states.

The study concluded that strategy was not worth the money and effort.
​
“It just isn't the time yet,” said Terry Fulp, a retired Reclamation official who helped write the study. “We felt that there were other things we could be doing in the basin, particularly in the Lower Basin, that would relieve the pressure.”

This map from the Bureau of Reclamation's 2012 "Colorado River Basin Water Supply and Demand Study" shows places where water could theoretically be imported. One of the report's authors said now "isn't the time" to pipe water in from the East.

Fulp said the study was a worthwhile endeavor, and that the idea of importing water from the East might make sense down the road. The scale of the challenge posed by the Colorado River crisis, he said, will take some big thinking, “on the order of the thinking when we built the Hoover Dam.”
“It's one of those possible solutions that should always stay, if not forefront on the table, somewhere on the table, so that you don't lose sight of it,” Fulp said.
Despite the fact that many Colorado River experts have cast doubt on the feasibility of a cross-country water pipeline, even some sitting state officials say it deserves more research. Chuck Podolak, director of the Water Infrastructure Finance Authority of Arizona said the idea deserves “serious attention.”
“We understand that every option is hard, every option is expensive, every option has political hurdles, every option is a daunting engineering task,” he said. “Right now, we’re in a let's-look-at-everything mode with eyes wide open.”
Arizona and other states around the region, with their eyes on continued growth, are already looking at ways to stretch out the water they already have using technology. Terry Fulp said those efforts may need to expend past the spendy and ambitious engineering projects that are already helping facilitate that growth.
“It'll be the time someday, if we want the Southwest to continue to grow the way it's been growing,” he said. “There's only so much water in the basin.”
This story is part of a series on water myths and misconceptions in the West, produced by KUNC, The Colorado Sun, Aspen Journalism, Fresh Water News and The Water Desk at the University of Colorado Boulder. KUNC’s coverage of the Colorado River is supported by the Walton Family Foundation.

Written By Coleen Graybill and Tina Kleckner

Step into history at Abiquiu Inn on October 25th and 26th, 2024, for Curtis & Cuisine, a two-day event honoring the legacy of Edward S. Curtis, the renowned photographer of Native American peoples. In collaboration with the Curtis Legacy Foundation, this immersive weekend will feature captivating stories, rare photographs, and unforgettable culinary delights.

The event opens with a reception on Friday, October 25th, from 4-6 PM, where guests will have the opportunity to meet John Edward Graybill, Curtis’ great-grandson, alongside Teri Fraizer (Laguna) and Shawnee Real Bird (Apsáalooke), descendants of the Native Americans Curtis photographed. The weekend will also include an exhibit of unpublished Curtis photographs, offering a rare glimpse into previously unseen images from his Alaska, Plains, and Southwest series. For the first time, these photographs will be available for sale, with proceeds supporting the publication of Edward S. Curtis: Unpublished Southwest.

A culinary highlight of this event will be the authentic Native American cuisine prepared by award-winning Navajo Chef Freddie Bitsoie, whose specially crafted menu perfectly complements the cultural experience. Friday’s reception will feature Native-inspired appetizers, and both days will offer exquisite dinner options in addition to lunch option on Saturday, with cultural exploration and exceptional dining, reservations are highly recommended.

Saturday, October 26th, brings even more insight into Curtis’ life and legacy with Special Presentations by the Curtis Legacy Foundation: Gain insights into Edward Curtis' life and the enduring impact of his photography.

• 10:00 AM: "Edward Curtis - The Man/The Legacy" Did you know that Curtis’ daughter smashed his original negatives? Come hear the story! Presentation by John Graybill/Curtis’ great-grandson and Tim Greyhavens/Curtis Historical Expert

• 1:30 PM: "Carrying the Legacy Forward" with special guests Teri Fraizer (Laguna) and Shawnee Real Bird (Apsáalooke), contemporary descendants of people that Curtis photographed over 100 years ago. Be transported to a different time and place as these storytellers bring their culture to life in different ways through art. Presentation led by John and Coleen Graybill/Project Manager for CLF.
• Book Signing: 11:30 AM and 3 PM - After over three decades without new Curtis scholarship, meet the authors who have unearthed unpublished materials and penned the first fresh look at his life and work.

”We’re honored to host Curtis and Cuisine and welcome Chef Freddie Bitsoie to Abiquiu Inn,” says Colin Noble, owner of Abiquiu Inn. “This partnership with the Curtis Legacy Foundation is a perfect way to celebrate Indigenous culture through both art and cuisine. We invite the community to join us for this unforgettable experience.”

Don't miss this extraordinary opportunity to immerse yourself in Edward S. Curtis' world.     With book signings, exclusive presentations, and a chance to purchase rare Curtis prints, Curtis & Cuisine is a must-attend event for lovers of history, culture, and exceptional food by Award Winning Navajo Chef Freddie Bitsoie. Join us at Abiquiu Inn, a beautiful gem nestled in the heart of New Mexico, for an unforgettable celebration of Indigenous heritage and Edward S. Curtis’ enduring legacy.
​
For more information or dining reservations,  call Abiquiu Inn 505-685-4378

By Jessica Rath​​

​There are few creatures I find more fascinating than bees living in a  colony. A large community of beings that act almost like a single organism: each individual member of the collective acts to further the wellbeing of the whole. Doesn’t this sound like something we humans should emulate a little?

​People have been keeping bees for over 7,000 years. And yet, bees are not domesticated – they live the same way, whether in a beehive or in a hollowed-out tree. They are independent, and while they don’t need humans to live, the equivalent statement “humans don’t need bees” is incorrect. We very much need bees for pollination of many fruit trees, vegetables, nuts, and beans.
​
Over the last ten or so years I read a lot about bees getting ill, colony collapse, and other rather worrisome news. When I learned that Stan Bader, proprietor of the Abiquiú vineyard Las Parras, also kept bees, I decided to talk to him and learn more about these fascinating insects, the diseases that plague them, and what methods beekeepers apply to keep their bees healthy. I found that Stan is a walking encyclopedia when it comes to bees, and he kindly shared some of his extensive knowledge with me.
 
Stan’s father was a dairy farmer who also grew clover seeds as a cash crop. He took care of about 15 beehives which helped with pollination, and Stan was familiar with bees and beekeeping from an early age.

​Honey Bee Queen Laying Eggs, Arizona State University

​In 1998 Stan retired, and he and his wife bought the 55 acres which became Las Parras. There was an old, totally dead cottonwood near the acequia, a “snaggletooth” as Stan called it, which had to be removed. After they cut it down, Stan discovered to his horror that they had cut off the top of a beehive! Luckily, this happened in the winter when it was freezing cold, and the bees had all huddled down in the lower part. Stan built a make-shift roof for the hive and took one of the honeycombs, put it in an ice chest,  brought it back to Cheyenne/Wyoming where he was still working at the time, and extracted the honey.
​
“It was absolutely putrid. Who in the heck would eat this stuff?” Stan is a great raconteur, and it was fun listening to his stories.  “I took a little jar of it to a person at the Botanical Garden, he was a beekeeper. ‘Well, these bees have gotten into rabbit brush’, he said, ‘it  makes a really terrible honey. But if you wait six months, it'll clear and it'll be perfect’. I probably didn’t believe him but I gave some to Marsha Mason who lived in the Valley at the time. That spring, she brought it out because she had some guests, and she called me, saying, ‘Stan, it's the most wonderful honey in the world!’.  You gotta be kidding, I thought. I still had some, and I went and looked at it and tasted it. And indeed – it tasted great.  It came from chamisa which is also known as rabbitbrush. When you smell the flower in the fall, it's rank. It has a sweet, sick smell, but then the honey clears and becomes super-tasty”.

​So that was Stan’s Abiquiu introduction to beekeeping.  How many hives do you have now? I wanted to know.

“I've got five right now. I had as many as 15 to 18,  prior to two things that have created real problems not only for us beekeepers  here in the valley, but across the nation. One of those is called the Varroa destructor. It's a mite that attaches itself to the adult bees and gets into the hives. There's no way to keep it out”, Stan explained.

I had read about the pests and diseases that can affect adult honey bees. Varroa destructor, or varroa mite, is a parasitic mite that attaches itself to a bee and feeds on it – sucking out its storage of fatty acids, glucose, and other energy sources. Besides weakening the bee, the open wound exposes it to virus infections, which further debilitates the insect, leading to deformed wings.

“It’s called a straw wing. The wing will not unfurl but just looks like a stick of straw. It's also called a K wing, because it looks like the letter K coming off the bee’s body”, Stan explained. “They can't forage, and are of no value to the hive”. He has seen this with his own eyes, and it is devastating.  “Once the Varroa mite is in your area, every hive is going to get infected. There’s no way to keep it out”.
 
Is there anything you can do to help the bees, I asked anxiously.

“Yes,  there are a couple of things that you can do”, Stan assured me. “First, we've learned you can use oxalic acid. It's an organic compound, present in many fruits and vegetables. But the most prominent place to find it is in the leaves of rhubarb. We don't eat the leaves because they are presumably poisonous, they're bad for cows –  that's oxalic acid. So you can get crystals of oxalic acid, and you put it in a little tray which you slide into the hive, attached to a 12 volt battery. You fill the little tray up with a couple of teaspoons of oxalic crystal. And when  heat is applied to it via the 12 volt battery, it sublimates, meaning that it converts from crystals to smoke. It literally becomes smoke inside of the hive. In the wintertime you'll block everything off, and you fill the the hive up with the sublimated oxalic acid,  and the smoke kills the little mites, but it does not affect the honeybees. You'll go in and do this in October, wait three weeks, and treat it a second time”.
​
“This will reduce the level of the mites dramatically, and so you get through the winter. This past winter, I had four hives. And all four of them came out strong in the  spring, ready to go”.

​Stan continued: “The other thing you can do: you can smoke your hive with the bark of juniper, and it has an impact on the mites as well. They'll fall off of the bee. You put some paper underneath the hive and you smoke it for roughly a week. Every evening you pull the paper out and you look at it. When I started doing this years ago, I found tons of them after the first day, and you'd get it down to maybe half a dozen, that’s the impact I made over five days of smoking. It agitates the bees, it doesn't hurt them, but bingo, it sure knocks the mites off”.

There are a number of commercial miticides available, insecticides which kill mites, but Stan doesn’t like to use those chemicals with his bees. He now uses oxalic acid, because it is a naturally occurring product.

But there are other kinds of issues with bees that will take the hive down, Stan told me. There is  American foulbrood and European foulbrood;   bacterial diseases which are so infectious that  some countries require all infected hives and equipment to be destroyed. Then there is chalkbrood disease, which is caused by a fungus. It affects the bee larvae which ingest the spores of the fungus which then look like little pieces of chalk, or tiny mummies. The spores grow mycelia, a tiny network of filaments which steal the nutrients from the baby bee, eventually killing it and forming a hardened mass around it. Luckily it usually isn't a serious disease because it can be prevented with good ventilation and adequate warmth.

And what is colony collapse, I asked Stan.

“It followed right after the mites,” he explained. “What happens here:  you go into the hive in the spring after winter, and there's absolutely not a dead bee around.

There are no bees. Well, where did they go?”

“Earlier, we saw a telltale sign of this symptom: you would find bees on the ground, just out in the field, and they're going around and around in a little circle. They seemed confused, disoriented. And then they don’t find their way back to their hive and die somewhere outside”. How sad, when you consider that every worker bee wants to fulfill her duties: take care of the queen, feed the babies, forage for nectar.

​Stan knows why this happened: “Colony collapse, we think, is due to a pesticide that was developed by Monsanto (now owned by Bayer, one of the largest pharmaceutical and biomedical companies in the world): a neonicotinoid (“neonic”). We think it affects the minds of the baby bees. The bees come out to forage, they're going to eat the nectar. And this product is in the nectar. It's in the pollen that they feed to their little ones, and that's at the time when the cells are dividing rapidly, because they're in a tremendous growth period. This neonic, chemically similar to nicotine, affects them, and as an adult bee, they go in and out, they're foraging, but ultimately, it's like Alzheimer's. They can't find their way home, and there’s no dead bees in the hive  because they died somewhere out there”.

“In Europe, they banned it”, Stan continued, “and in a couple years the bees came back. So that seems to me to be a pretty good indicator for what was creating the colony collapse disorder. The Europeans, country by country banned Monsanto pesticides. Of course, Bayer has taken them to court, but I think the European countries have won so far. But here in the States, it’s not banned. There have been attempts to restrict its use by the EPA, etc, but at this point it's still being used”.

I had to look it up. According to Wikipedia, the Obama administration issued a blanket ban against the use of neonics on National Wildlife Refuges in response to concerns about off-target effects of the pesticide, and a lawsuit from environmental groups. In 2018, the Trump administration reversed this decision, but in May 2019, the Environmental Protection Agency revoked approval for a dozen pesticides containing clothianidin and thiamethoxam as part of a legal settlement. Remember that giant corporations such as Bayer have a powerful lobby.

But Stan has even more to say about the causes for colony collapse and other diseases afflicting our bees.

“Farmers in the United States do a lot of what we call monotype crops: everywhere you look in Indiana for example, you see corn.  Prior to all this, Mother Nature provided a whole plethora of flowers and crops and whatever. The bees got a wide variety and not just one source of nectar; many, many sources of nectar. And so they fed the baby bees pollen along with that, and they got pollen from a whole host of different flowers. I think all of those things played into the health of the bees. So if you look at it from the standpoint of how varied was the source? Prior to
corporate farming it was very, very varied”.

“We're blessed here in the valley, quite frankly, because we don't have that kind of farming. So there's a lot of stuff available to the bees. It's really interesting to watch the bees come in, starting in the spring. They have their little baskets on their hind legs that they use to bring the pollen in. And the pollen that comes in very early in the year is looking very much like an olive green.  It’s a bit hard to see, but if you stand at the entrance to the hive when the bees are coming in, maybe every fifth bee will have pollen on its legs”.
 
“The rest of the bees are bringing either nectar in or water. They use a lot of water, and so they'll bring in water as well, but the color of that pollen changes, and one of the first trees to produce pollen of some kind is the elm. The elm tree is a big one for the olive green color. Juniper, or cedar if you will, is probably the next one, it has a very bright yellow color. So the pollen will change color from a green-grey to a bright yellow. And then it'll change to a blood red. It changes to a blood red, which is from another source of pollen out there. And as the year develops, it turns  pretty much into a yellowy orange color”.

I had no idea – nectar can have almost every color of the rainbow, but that’s lost with monocrop agriculture. Bees should have different sources for pollen throughout the year, but in states such as Iowa they only have one – they only have corn.  We humans change the natural process of things at our own peril, it seems. Besides bees, other insects like moths and butterflies are affected by pesticides. The caterpillar of the Monarch butterfly feeds on the leaves of milkweed which often grows near cultivated fields. The wind carries the neonics over to the milkweed which the Monarch caterpillar eats, with the result that over the last two decades the numbers of Monarchs have declined by about 80%. And it goes on: birds are starving because they can’t find enough insects to eat.

​​I’m glad Stan took the time for this interview. I learned so much about the threats bees have to face, and how it affects not only food production for humans, but other animals as well. Stan raises his grapes organically and makes sure that his bees are as safe from harm as possible. That’s good to know and  lets me hope that humans won’t destroy life on the planet in the near future.

By Los Alamos Reporter

BY JOHN RAMON VIGIL
Mayor
City of Española

The debate over banning single-use plastic bags is not just a matter of environmental concern—it’s a practical, necessary step to combat the growing litter issue in our Valley. A significant portion of this litter is caused by the unhoused and unsheltered population, who often use these bags for temporary shelter or bedding. While this is understandable given their circumstances, the unfortunate result is that our streets, parks, and neighborhoods are becoming overwhelmed with discarded plastic bags, contributing to an already rampant trash problem.
​
What’s especially disheartening is that many of the opponents of this ban—some of whom are members or former members of our City’s Governing Body—have never actively participated in community cleanups. They fail to see firsthand the accumulation of trash that those of us involved in these efforts witness daily. It’s a case of “out of sight, out of mind.” These officials may claim to have the best interests of the community at heart, but their lack of involvement shows a disconnect between their political stance and the reality of what’s happening in our neighborhoods. Their failure to realize and discuss initiatives like the single-use plastic bag ban demonstrates a lack of understanding of the very real impact litter has on property values, public spaces, and the overall beautification of our Valley. Just recently the city manager and I took a cruise through Santo Niño and discovered a multitude of smaller encampments from the unhoused population set up on the traditional lands of Santa Clara Pueblo. The massive amount of trash found was plastic bags that the unhoused population uses to carry their belongings around.

By Zach Hively

Any Minute Now

​I can think of no human creation as ungodly as the waiting room.

And yes, I considered the iron maiden, but I ruled it out because, in one of those, you at least know with certainty you’re not going anywhere. I also considered the guillotine—the worst part of which is waiting your turn. This, kiddos, is how revolutionary France invented the concept of the waiting room.

The idea of a room itself is not so vile. Dining rooms are delicious, and mud gets its very own tiny room. It’s the room modifiers that make or break a room. 

Waiting itself is not so terrible either. Some kind of thing comes to those who wait, but I’m too impatient to look up what it is. I am certain, however, that my ancient ancestors waited for days, sharp sticks in hand, for a wooly sloth to wander by, or a particularly delectable-smelling neighbor. Waiting is in my lineage.

But the modern world has messed up this genetic mastery. My ancestors waited for something. To spring into action, or to invent sharpened rocks, or to die of old age at twenty-seven.

In a modern waiting room, oh let’s just say hypothetically the one I’m sitting in now, one waits simply to be called into another room where one will finally—I swear this is true—continue waiting, but in a more uncomfortable chair.

In this liminal space, a man—oh let’s just say, hypothetically, me—loses all sense of his life’s passions, his personal interests, even his bodily autonomy. He cannot remain alert for anything, like his ancestors primed him to do, because the environment is strictly anesthetized to remove thought-provoking stimulus, lest someone wander in and decide to stay forever.

He also cannot create any amusement to occupy his mind or assuage his heart or relieve his bladder, because the moment he does, Someone Important will call him in, and he will miss it, and then he must start the whole waiting process all over again, with the added bonus of admitting to an underpaid staff member that he failed to hear the sound of his own name.

​(Incidentally, I believe this is why the United States of America abandoned the railroad for the automobile. What is a train depot but a waiting room, or an Amtrak but a waiting room behind schedule? Airports and airplanes are the same deal, no different, but there we at least hold a non-zero chance at peanuts.)

I did not anticipate waiting in this particular waiting room, at this particular moment. Silly me, I failed to bring peanuts or any other snacks. So with nothing better to chew on, I am stuck contemplating mortality. 

There is no priest on hand here to weigh in on the matter. Thus, all on my own, I have come to suspect that the primary distinction between Limbo and Purgatory—the godliest of all the ungodly waiting rooms—is the volume of their TVs.

I used to think that a special threshold of hell was a waiting room TV with the volume on. The waiting room never shows the show you want to watch. It shows programs like The Best of Last Week on The Price Is Right, or CNN: Ten-Minute-Loop Edition. And the volume is never subtle. The audio is engineered to drown out the complaints of people being upsold on their oil change, or learning that their airline has been canceled. 

I no longer think, as of about ten minutes ago, that this is the definition of hell. This particular waiting room is quiet. Too quiet. About eleven minutes ago, I figured out the quiet is coming from the television. It’s showing a marathon of “Little House on the Prairie,” and while I appreciate the silence, I cannot fathom why they even have a TV showing “Little House on the Prairie” when there are so many home shopping channels that deserve to be muted instead.

​A too-loud TV, and a too-quiet one. One of these is meant to make us atone for our sins; the other is meant to punish us for all eternity. That’s presuming we even have souls anymore, once we enter a waiting room, a truth about which I am increasingly uncertain.

I have been in an underground crypt with more vivacity than the assemblage of other people here with me. I’m dying to strike up a conversation with one of them, any of them, just to pass the time and verify they are actually breathing. But you don’t talk with strangers in a waiting room. As soon as you strike up a decent chat, they call for someone named “Jack Lively,” and you just know your name will be next. 

~Moving Arts

Espanola, NM – Moving Arts Española is excited to announce the launch of the Mars Odyssey Project, an innovative initiative designed to revolutionize Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education with a special focus on cybersecurity. This groundbreaking project will be integrated into the Mathematics, Engineering, Science, Achievement (MESA) classes at Española Valley High School (EVHS), providing students with a dynamic and engaging learning platform.

Mars Odyssey is not just another educational program; it’s an immersive experience that brings STEM to life through the power of gamification. By incorporating hands-on activities with both software and hardware commonly used in today’s industry, the project aims to ignite students' interest in topics such as programming, web design, security best practices, 3D printing, and more. The interactive nature of the program ensures that learning is both fun and meaningful, bridging the gap between theoretical knowledge and practical application.

The project includes a dedicated team of professionals including high school interns, NNMC college students, recent graduates, and seasoned professionals. This project structure provides valuable work based learning experiences, near peer support, and professional mentorship to aspiring STEAM students.

Leading the implementation of the Mars Odyssey Project in the schools for Moving Arts is Christopher Maestas, a versatile member of Moving Arts Española, who also teaches Hip Hop and Gymnastics and manages Light and Sound, among other roles. Christopher, who holds a bachelor’s degree in Information Technology and Engineering from Northern New Mexico College, brings his expertise and passion for technology to this initiative, eager to inspire and educate local youth. He will work in collaboration with the MESA teachers at EVHS–Lyne Salero and Janice Badongen Patel-e to bring the project to life in the classroom.

A key component of Mars Odyssey is its emphasis on cybersecurity. Students will be introduced to the potential dangers associated with various technologies and software, gaining essential skills in handling and protecting Personal Identifying Information (PII) and Sensitive Personal Identifying Information (SPII). This knowledge is crucial in today’s digital age, equipping students with the tools they need to safeguard their data in any future pursuit. 

The project’s first beta test, conducted in mid-July, was a resounding success. The positive feedback from participating teens has reaffirmed the project's approach and provided valuable insights for further refinement. As a result, the Mars Odyssey team is now preparing to deploy the first full iteration of the project at EVHS on October 10th, 2024 which means students get to play. With their feedback the Mars Odyssey game will continue to adapt and new challenges will be created.

“We are thrilled to see our students embark on this journey, exploring the fascinating world of STEM and cybersecurity through a lens of adventure and discovery,” said Christopher Maestas.

This exciting new educational experience is made possible through the generous funding from the Google Kids Initiative and the New Mexico Community Trust Technological Grant. Their support enables the Mars Odyssey Project to expand its reach and impact, bringing cutting-edge STEM education to the students of Española Valley High School.

Stay tuned for more updates as we continue to develop and grow this groundbreaking
initiative! For more information about the Mars Odyssey Project or to schedule an interview,
please contact:
Contact: Carmelita Archuleta , Marketing and Communications Coordinator
Email: carmelitaarchuleta@movingartsespanola.org
Phone: 844-623-2787