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An interview with paraglider Mario Manzo By Jessica Rath  From November 8, 2023: the red rocks south of Ghost Ranch, 2,000 feet above ground. Image credit: Mario Manzo. Abiquiú News regulars will recognize Mario's name from the beautiful photos that regularly grace the home page. And if you’re an attentive reader, you may have learned from a recent article that Mario is not only a photographer, but pursues another adventure sport, namely, paragliding. This sounded fascinating enough to merit another interview, and Mario graciously agreed to tell me all about it. It all began with hang gliding, in 1974, when he still lived in Dayton, Ohio. This was actually the city where Wilbur and Orville Wright, the brothers who are credited with inventing, building, and flying the first successful airplane, lived, as Mario pointed out. Maybe it’s easy to be passionate about flying in such an environment! About 15 years ago, Mario switched to paragliding. At first it was out of curiosity and because of the stories some people who were flying paragliders told him. But there was a very convincing advantage compared to hang gliders: the weight of the equipment and its amazing portability. “Being able to actually have a flying kit that's light enough to carry was very intriguing,” Mario told me. “My entire kit including some drinking water, instruments, clothing, and the wing harness all fit into a backpack. It all weighs just under 30 pounds. I'm in good physical shape for my age, I can carry that for an hour or two and boost myself up to a high place to launch. And I love that part of it.” Although current hang gliders use the most lightweight materials available, they still weigh up to 80 pounds and are 15 to 20 feet long folded, Mario explained. Typically, they’re transported on the roof of a car.  Flying at San Antonio Mountain with a friend. “Flying together is more fun. That's one of my best friends who lives near Taos. When you're flying with two or three people, we all watch out for each other and we need to know where everyone is. That’s why the radio is very useful, you can communicate about conditions at your particular location, or your intention to fly away. Some people like cross country flying, which means they land someplace else. And it can be quite far from where you started. So, to be able to communicate helps a lot.” Image credit: Mario Manzo. He lives off Highway 285, and 10 miles south of the Colorado border is a large, freestanding mountain, the San Antonio Mountain. It’s a volcanic dome located at the southern end of the San Luis Valley, with an elevation of 10,908 feet and standing about 2,500 feet above the mesa below. When Mario discovered it, he had a glorious vision: how wonderful would it be to walk up this big, brown mound and fly from there? And that’s what he did. He bought equipment light enough to carry, and the hike itself has become an important part of Mario’s paragliding experience. It is great physical exercise (I was quite impressed when I learned he is in his 70s), and it is a meditative preparation for the upcoming flight: “You're in the environment and you're feeling what the air is actually doing during this time (we never really know 100% what the weather situation is going to be, even when the forecasts sound good)”, Mario explained. This brought up a question: Does one need any instruments when paragliding? To measure the strength of the winds, for example? “Yes. One of the main instruments is a variometer”, Mario clarified. “It’s a very sensitive rate-of-climb indicator. For me as a recreational pilot, it’s mostly needed when the lift is modest. In that case, it's not easy to feel whether you are sustaining your altitude or you’re slowly climbing. When you fly into a thermal, a column of rising air, it's absolutely necessary that you know it. When the lift is modest, you may not feel it, so that's when the variometer comes in handy. Also, it has a couple of altimeters which measure my altitude. The one that I have has a GPS connection to satellites, so it can give me my ground speed, but it can also give me my wind speed. It doesn't take a very strong breeze to negate my ground speed, meaning I’m not moving forward. And you definitely need to know when that's happening, or if the wind sort of blows you backwards, and you don't notice it.”  View of Taos Mountains, San Cristobal. “The foothills are cascading to the right. That's the west side, we're looking south. My friend John lives in Arroyo Hondo and I’ve been flying with him at this site a dozen times in the last couple of years. And he just discovered this open meadow, a hard 45 minute walk but it's a fairly nice launch. It's not an easy site to fly because below it's full of scrub oak and eroded land, it's not flat. One has to be quite careful. This time I finally got it. The reason I would drive up there and do the hard walk was to experience this kind of flying. It was fantastic. I'm at approximately 14,000 feet above sea level, and so the high peaks which are 10,000, even 13,000 feet, like Wheeler Peak, are below me. That’s only possible when the winds are not too strong.” Image credit: Mario Manzo. “So if you look at the picture above, it shows a lot of altitude. It’s just north of Taos, and I'm at 14,000 feet. The mountain tops around us are 12,000 feet, right? You cannot be drawn back over the mountain. In that situation, having an instrument which tells you that you're making some slow forward progress makes a lot of difference in keeping you calm, so that you are operating properly. If you're being drawn back by strong conditions, you need to get forward and get down, because you're going to be thrown back over the mountain into adverse conditions. At 14,000 feet you can end up in a very inconvenient place. Think about it – how long does it take to walk five miles in the mountains? It gets serious when you're at high altitudes, because the distance melts away very quickly. You can end up far away from your vehicle. That’s why the variometer is so important.” What kind of speeds are we talking about? I wanted to know. When does it become dangerous? “The paraglider is an interesting machine compared to a hang glider. It's set up and dedicated for hands-off operation. So when you're hands off, you're not having any input. The inputs are fairly basic, but hands off, the paraglider flies at about 25 miles an hour. That's the air speed. Air speed and ground speed are separate, that’s one of the things that we learn. So, if you're flying at 25 miles an hour air speed, and you have a 15 mile an hour headwind, your ground speed is going to be 10 miles an hour.”  View of Pedernal from East, Trike Flight. “This was taken from a hang glider. I have an ultralight system that’s called a trike. It is a tricycle with a seat and an engine. It has a steerable front wheel with a brake, and it has a mast that attaches to the hang glider center tube and gives you two axes of motion so that the hang rider can be controlled by weight shifting. You basically have an ultralight aircraft which can do things like get you to higher altitude. This picture was the best that I took on this flight. Not long after I took this photo, I had an incident where I suffered a fractured propeller. I lost half of one blade of a two-bladed propeller. The system still works, but I didn't have any power because the vibration now is horrendous, and I wasn't able to kill the engine either, because of another problem. The vibration was horrendous. I had gotten quite far from my launch point, like eight miles or so. I tried to go ahead and use a less obstructed roadway as a landing strip. But this is a pretty nice picture, it shows the Pedernal and has all of its colored cliffs and bluffs. I had a safe emergency landing in the canyon“. Image credit: Mario Manzo. Listening to Mario made my head spin, I didn’t imagine that one had to take so many different components into consideration. To drift a few thousand feet above ground, sitting in a chair with a bit of plastic and some strings holding you up – that sounds scary enough. But then you also have to pay attention to several instruments, air speed and ground speed, moderate thermals, possible lifts, and whatnot. On the other hand, the experience must be absolutely exhilarating: soaring like an eagle, or like a hawk, the wind in your face, no noise, an incomparable view. I can’t imagine a better natural high. Back to the speed: “It becomes important when you’re landing, because if you have an airflow, you want to fly towards it, so that your ground speed is negated or minimized,” Mario continued to explain. “That's very important. When it's breezy, at 15 miles an hour, should you land with 15 miles an hour on your backside? When you land, you're going to take a tumble, right? So it's very important to know the wind speed and the direction. But 40 miles an hour is the approximate. It also depends on the loading of the glider and the design. But a paraglider can do 35 mph of airspeed, if it's loaded heavily enough and is a high performance design. There are some variations. I fly a high, but not the highest, performance wing, which means going 35 miles an hour.”  Eagle Nest. “This was one of those times where the flying was pretty hard and the thermal activity was relatively intense. So there was quite a bit of turbulence. If the thermals are strong, the turbulence can be quite strong too. When I fly out of a thermal, I'm going to get bumped around because there's turbulence on that edge, too. So this was one of those days.” Image credit: Mario Manzo. This led me to ask Mario, “Did you ever get into a dangerous situation where you got really nervous?” “I had an ankle injury near the dam about three years ago. Right by Highway 96 there's a parking area that people use when they go cliff diving, at the part of the lake where the Cañones Creek flows into the lake. There are some little finger ridges that jut out into the water, and people jump from 20, 30, or 50 feet above the water. And we used to land in the parking area. I had flown there one afternoon and was attempting to land down there. But I got caught up in a downdraft that pulled me down to the surface. I tried to get into the clearing away from the juniper trees, but I had a lot of vertical speed because of this pocket of air that I was caught up in. And I used my right foot to catch myself on top of a stone. As it turned out, it wasn't very tall, but it was flat, and I was fortunate that I didn't twist my ankle or break it, but it was serious, and I was debilitated for a couple of months. So the potential is high for injury, you cannot make big errors.”  With Mario’s friend John, Santa Clara Canyon, Santa Clara Peak. Image credit: Mario Manzo. “The site for launching/landing is an important thing”, Mario continued. “It's a place that you get used to, you learn what to avoid, and you learn what works.” This brought me to another question: “Were you ever surprised by bad weather and ended up in some scary adventure?” Sure enough, Mario had a story to tell: “Okay, let me tell you about two of those kinds of situations. It happened twice. Both times, the wind speed would magnify as I'm flying. And there were two situations where I could not land where I wanted because the wind was too strong. I could have landed there if I had changed my approach, but because I tried my normal approach, I found that I wasn’t able to get forward. While I was still 500 feet above my landing area, I chose to not land there, because I didn't think I could make it. But the problem was that if I go further back, like over 150 yards, the area turns into woodland, so it's not open territory. So then I turned downwind and I flew down to the Dollar Store and the Sierra Negra Restaurant because there are open spaces.” Mario continued: “I did that twice. I got 2,000 feet above the mesa, and then I realized that I didn't have the stomach for trying to figure out how to get down and land on this hillside in so much lift. If you're trying to get down when the lift is very strong, it's not an easy task, there's a lot of turbulence involved, a lot of hard, fast flying, which is not the norm. The norm is just cruising around and flying at 25 miles an hour. If you have to get down, you have to spiral and there are other techniques. But I decided to go down into the valley, and I just turned my back on the wind.”  Back to the Reservoir, Chama Valley. “The mesa that is kind of jutting out towards the reservoir is what I call the Dam Mesa. But on that day I could not launch, the wind was too strong. I had to walk down, but it worked out. I landed down below there in that green area. I landed fairly close to the Elementary School and a paragliding friend that happened to come by drove me back to my car.” Image credit: Mario Manzo. “There was a venturi[1] that had set up above the dam. Imagine there's this big Mesa blocking the wind, but over here it's open and streams down. So this big venturi of air set up there, and I'm flying, but now I'm not going anywhere but down, down, down. I got down to where I'm still a bit above the Mesa level, and then I managed to turn back and climb up a couple of 1000 feet. And then I headed more to the west and went over the lake and went all around the venturi, still high up. I flew over the valley, and I landed far away from the air disturbances. It’s like water flowing over rocks, it creates waves and turbulence – the same with air. So I wanted to be in a big, open space to feel safe to land, and eventually it worked out beautifully. I even got a ride back to my car which was parked near the Elementary School. From where I had landed I walked to the road and tried to hitchhike, but it didn’t work. But a friend of mine and his wife – they live in Pagosa Springs and they just happened to come along. He recognized me, pulled up, and drove me to where my car was.” So that was lucky, and a happy ending to a scary situation!  This is a view looking north from near the Abiquiu Inn, bathed in golden light. For some reason, the Abiquiú Land Grant Board asked Mario not to fly there. and he complied. Image credit: Mario Manzo. What an absolutely fascinating hobby. Actually, it’s much more than that – it is also quite strenuous physical exercise, it requires strong mental focus, and takes the paraglider into a calm, meditative state – if there’s no turbulence. Thank you, Mario, for sharing these extraordinary experiences with us.
[1] The Venturi effect describes how wind speeds up as it flows through narrow passages or over obstacles. This phenomenon can significantly impact flying conditions, creating stronger lift in narrow areas but also potentially dangerous situations if the wind becomes too strong or turbulent. Recognizing areas where the Venturi effect might occur helps pilots anticipate changes in wind speed and direction. (Paragliding Meteorology)
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 Los Alamos and Rio Arriba Counties, December 23, 2024 – United Way Northern New Mexico (UWNNM) is pleased to announce that 24 nonprofit organizations in Rio Arriba and Los Alamos Counties will receive $462,000 for 2025 from donations to the Community Action Fund and with additional funding made possible through the Anchorum Community Health Fund at the Santa Fe Community Foundation. These awards are given to eligible 501(c)3 nonprofits serving residents in Los Alamos and/or Rio Arriba counties to support programming, general operations, and direct services. UWNNM received 47 applications requesting over $1,065,388. These applications are indicative of the level of need in our community. “Our Grants committee spent many long hours scoring every application and conducting interviews, and it is unfortunate that we were not able to fund every organization who submitted an application” stated Executive Director, Cindy Padilla. She added “our fundraising efforts are year round, and we are truly grateful to our many donors who make these grants possible. We hope that next year we can increase our donations and hopefully provide additional funding”. 2025 United Way Northern New Mexico Funded Partners  How to give to support these Community Action Fund grants visit unitedwaynnm.org/donate
For more information visit unitedwaynnm.org/grants, or contact: Contact: Jeremy Varela Marketing & Grants Manager United Way Northern New Mexico [email protected] About United Way of Northern New Mexico United Way of Northern New Mexico rallies individuals and organizations. Together, we turn obstacles into opportunities creating a future where collective action transforms the Los Alamos and Rio Arriba communities. The mission of United Way NNM is to uplift local nonprofits through strategic Community Action funding that targets the most pressing needs and this year our identified impact areas included: ● Education/Youth Mentorship: Empowering young people to reach their full potential. ● Behavioral Health/Parental Supports: Enhancing community health and well-being. ● Food/Housing: Ensuring stability and access to essential needs. ● Senior Transportation: Improving transportation options for seniors to access vital healthcare services A Solstice Poem for You By Zach Hively Images Courtesy of Zach Hively I saw a meme recently that suggested, more or less, wishing folks a gentle holiday instead of a happy holiday. The idea being, the holidays aren’t happy for everyone, but we can wish each other ease no matter what or how we’re celebrating (or not). Maybe this is why I like the winter solstice so much. No matter who we are or what’s going on, the light is lengthening once again. So, for this winter solstice season, here’s a poem for you.  How Clever, How Clear the Stars
Today, of all days, let your day exist unmeasured —not by hours, not by accomplishments. Not even by how much daylight you claim. Me? I think I'll weigh today the same way my dog weighs sticks for throwing —ice groans across the little creek, turns the other puppy's head on its side. I think I'll weigh today by how the coffee mug warms my paws, by how clever —how clear the stars will wink, if the clouds stay home. I think, for this one day, I can do away with counting steps. The life cycle of our own star will end the number —of solstices, uncounted, but not the measure of all the things that matter, still matter. By Austin Fisher Source NM  Tanya Lattin, Commander at the Corrales Fire Department, gives Rachel Ralya’s three year old son an injection of the Moderna Covid-19 vaccine on Thursday, June 23, 2022. (Photo by Shelby Wyatt for Source NM) New Mexico health officials urged residents of the state Monday to get vaccinated for the flu, COVID-19 and RSV as people gather for winter holiday celebrations that can also spread infections.
“Getting vaccinated against these winter viruses is about protecting yourself and safeguarding those around you,” said Department of Health Chief Medical Officer Dr. Miranda Durham said in a news release. “Very high” amounts of COVID-19 were found in samples from New Mexico sewers, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Members of the public are left to rely on sewer data to understand how much COVID-19 is spreading in their communities because public health officials no longer provide individual testing like they did earlier in the pandemic. New Mexico started testing sewage for COVID-19 in April 2022, and stopped providing easily available, community-wide, free diagnostic testing for COVID-19 at the end of that year, to the dismay of local advocates. As of Dec. 9, only 12.4% of New Mexicans had received the COVID-19 vaccine updated to fight against the latest variants, according to state health department data. Vaccination rates were even lower among Black and Hispanic New Mexicans, and among people aged 39 and younger. State health officials are directing people toward an online database of providers offering vaccines and vaccination events, and to a list of public health offices for people, including children, who do not have insurance to get a free vaccine. Since last fall, COVID has hospitalized six times more people in New Mexico than RSV, or respiratory syncytial virus, and flu combined. Between September 2023 and Dec. 7, the latest health department data available, COVID has sent 436 New Mexicans to the hospital, while influenza has hospitalized 69 and RSV has hospitalized three. “We cannot talk about COVID in the past tense,” World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said last week. “It’s still with us, it still causes acute disease and Long COVID, and it still kills.” High-speed internet to expand in rural areas impacting students in seven NM school districts12/18/2024 By Leah Romero Source NM  Nearly 40,000 households in seven rural New Mexico school districts will receive high-speed home internet in the coming months. Nearly 40,000 households in seven rural New Mexico school districts will receive high-speed home internet in coming months, following state grants from the Office of Broadband Access and Expansion’s Student Connect program.
The OBAE’s Student Connect program falls under the office’s Connect New Mexico Fund, which was established in 2021 by the legislature. It designated $70 million in state funds to expand broadband in unserved and underserved areas. Working to connect rural students and educational institutions was one of the intentions behind the creation of the fund. Mike Curtis, spokesperson for the OBAE, said about $56 million has been awarded through the Connect New Mexico Fund so far, but this recent award came from the subprogram created specifically to help students. Through the award of $13.5 million two internet service providers and Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo will expand high-speed internet connection to 38,482 households, according to an OBAE news release. This will ensure students and teachers continue to have access to high speed internet outside of the school setting. The money will go toward building towers, installing fixed wireless service and providing receivers to homes. Projects are expected to be completed by June 30, 2025. According to the news release, students and school staff benefiting from the home access will also receive three years of free internet access. Awardees include Resound Networks, based out of Pampa, Texas; Oso Internet Solutions from Ramah, New Mexico; and Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo in Rio Arriba County. Connection will be extended to remote areas of Doña Ana, Catron, Cibola, Rio Arriba and Valencia counties, impacting students and teachers in seven school districts:
 U.S. Army Corps of Engineers News:
ABIQUIU – U.S. Army Corps of Engineers staff at Abiquiu Lake will host their annual midwinter eagle survey, 9 a.m. to noon Saturday, Jan. 11, 2025. No pre-registration is required, and all are welcome to participate. The event is free and open to the public. Volunteers are asked to meet at the Abiquiu Lake Visitor Center for registration beginning at 9 a.m. Hot coffee and snacks will be provided during registration. A presentation about eagles and other potential bird sightings will begin at 9:30 a.m. The count will start at 10 a.m. and run until noon. “We already have confirmed sightings of bald eagles at the lake,” said Kara Rapp, natural resource specialist at Abiquiu Lake. “We are hoping to even see more eagles at this year’s event.” All volunteers are asked to dress warmly and consider current weather conditions. Spotting scopes, binoculars, and/or long-range cameras are also recommended to aid in spotting eagles. The purpose of the eagle count survey is to gather individuals to help count eagles along standard, non-overlapping survey routes as part of a nationwide midwinter bald eagle survey. It is also a great opportunity to encourage shared environmental stewardship efforts with the public to promote wildlife conservation. National Wildlife Federation officials have asked participants in each state to count eagles along standard routes to provide data on count trends. The basic objectives of the survey are to index the total wintering bald eagle populations in the lower 48 states, determine eagle distribution during a standardized survey period, and identify previously unrecognized areas of important winter habitat. The annual midwinter survey represents a unique source of long-term, baseline data. Unlike nesting surveys, this provides information on both breeding and non-breeding segments of the population at a potentially limiting time of the year. The count has become a national tradition since 1984 and is an annual event at Abiquiu Lake. In addition to providing information on eagle trends, distribution, and habitat, the count has helped to create public interest in bald eagles and their conservation. To join the event, come to the Abiquiu Lake Visitor Center at 9 a.m. Jan. 11, 2025, at 4731 Hwy 96 in Abiquiu, just 2 miles west of the Hwy 84 junction.  Image Courtesy of Marc Smith by Karima Alavi You may recall Jessica Rath’s June 7 article in the Abiquiu News about new plans being implemented by the Board of Trustees at Abiquiu’s Dar al Islam facility. The newly appointed director, Rafaat Ludin, spoke of Dar al Islam’s commitment to connecting with surrounding communities. One component of that plan was set into action recently when Dar al Islam sponsored the Abiquiu Studio Tour and hosted artists for the first time. Ten artists registered to show their work during that glorious October weekend. The event was organized in large part by ceramicist Samia van Hattum who sold her stoneware and earrings, along with beaded and feather jewelry offered by Sasha Barrionuevo. Samia received accolades from participating artists not only for keeping things organized, but also for her generous hosting skills that made participants feel welcomed and taken care of. To quote Emmy Cheney, who sold micaceous pottery, everything was “beautifully done thanks to Samia.” Almost every artist who showed work at Dar al Islam had visited the site before, even if just once. In fact, painter Isaac Alarid Pease remembered his last visit to the site as part of an Abiquiu Elementary School field trip. “I had memories of a beautiful white building with corners you could whisper into and have conversations with your friends across the arch.” Photographer Gary Pikarsky, a 7-year veteran of the studio tour, said his sales this year were among some of the most successful he’s seen. He’s already making plans to show at Dar al Islam next year, calling it the best venue he has ever displayed at for the tour. Over six hundred visitors listened as their tires crunched up a gravel road through the typical scenic beauty of Abiquiu before arriving at the mosque and campus. Typical that is, until they turned one corner and got a panoramic view of Plaza Blanca, rock formations made famous by another Abiquiu artist, Georgia O’Keeffe, and situated on Dar al Islam property. Once inside, first-time visitors encountered the magic of sacred architecture with its domes, detailed woodwork, and a series of arches that leads one down the main hall. Add to that the fragrance of Middle Eastern dishes like kabob and spiced rice that drifted through the building like a culinary musk, cooked on-site by Rehana Archuletta, owner of Kohinoor, the Santa Fe catering business that offered visitors a mix of Mexican lunch items along with Middle East specialties that day. Rehana grew up at Dar al Islam, living with her family in one of the small homes on the property. As the only chef on-site during the studio tour, she managed to cook 175 meals that were served by her daughter and Server Extraordinaire, Hadiyyah. By the end of the weekend a band of tired, but satisfied artists followed the caravan of visitors back down the hill, backlit by a sunset of yellow, orange, and purple. Another photo op for Gary.  Image Courtesy of Rafaat Ludin  SFNF
This permit allows you to cut a Christmas Tree within designated areas of the Santa Fe National Forest! Lifelong memories are built during these special times and we are happy to help with any information gathering you'll need to make this trip a safe and enjoyable one. Please be sure to read and agree to all the tips and guidelines when selecting your tree. The Santa Fe National Forest permit is valid for trees 5-inches in diameter and up to 10-feet-in-height. Trees taller than 10-feet require an additional permit - which can you purchase in the same transaction. For example, if you want 15-foot tree, you need to purchase two (2) Santa Fe National Forest (5-inches in diameter and up to 10-feet-in-height) permits. Trees larger than 5-inches in diameter and taller than 10-feet-in-height without two permits may be confiscated and the permit holder may be cited. The limit per household is 3 trees. Cutting dates are Friday, Nov 15, 2024 - Tuesday, Dec 31, 2024 For more information and purchasing online click Miscellaneous holiday fun. By Zach Hively In these times, when controversy is sure to claim our clicks and likes, I choose to be no different than everyone else. So here’s my hot take to stir things up: Canned cranberry sauce is the best cranberry sauce. I swear that the gelatinous ridges on a pristine serving make it taste better. It’s a lot like how a wine connoisseur will declare that a pre-war oaken cask produces superior, I don’t know … mouth splinters? When you’re an expert taster, your opinion matters, even when it is based in something other than reality. My cranberry sauce preferences have proven to be a powerful method for determining who to celebrate the season with. In fact, my girlfriend and I share a pro-can stance, which has goaded us into chancing our holiday dinners together.  We better our odds of survival by not inviting anyone else to join in. So what if we are a proper pair of Ebenezers, only with a lot less money? We like the idea of sharing one single holiday all to ourselves and our own infallible food preferences. That holiday is sometimes Arbor Day. But we’ll take it, because we align on most every Timeless Holiday Controversy there is. Pumpkin pie over pecan pie. Butter over margarine. Star Wars over Star Trek (though why not both). I’m staunchly pro-Christmas, while she prefers no chile at all. (It’s a harmonious discord, because I eat her sides of both red and green.) We even agree that—brace yourselves—turkey is not the best holiday-dinner bird. For starters, it feeds far more people than we want to invite. But mainly, we tend to forget to thaw it the recommended 3-6 weeks before overcooking it. This year, however, we decided to do things differently. Little did I know just how differently. You see, the other day, my girlfriend sent me a photo from the grocery store. The text showed a shelf tag with special member pricing on MISCELLANEOUS POULTRY. “Baby,” she wrote me. “Two, three, or four?”  Now I am not one to balk at a bit of creative reinterpretation of our most cherished national traditions. Last year, for instance, my Turkey Day dinner was mashed potatoes and duck, made by my generous Belgian friends trying to approximate American staples. I ate it out of a Tupperware, in the back seat of their car, next to their very polite and very intent retriever. And I loved it.
Miscellaneous poultry, though? It sounds so vague, so loosey-goosey. It’s not a particularly salivatory phrase. And it could quite literally mean any kind of edible bird. A French hen? A calling bird? A turducken? A street pigeon? No matter which, it is an adventure I cannot deny myself. Upon reflection, I have dined on relatively few poultries in my life. Hardly what anyone could call a miscellany. I’m missing out on a great many of the culinary wonders this world has to offer. So long as the girlfriend picks a miscellaneous poultry that is not an endangered species, or one of those pets trained to parrot bad words, I am game to try it. Our random bird, whatever it may be, has already deepened our bond. This gets me thinking more globally. Adapting our holiday rituals and cultures to include one another might just bring us all closer together. So let’s be less controversial, for a change. May we all experience something new this season. May we all be willing to try something different, something miscellaneous, as a way of spreading love and cheer. Unless, of course, that something is fresh cranberry sauce.  In high desert rural communities fire departments worry about water. So, let’s talk about water. How much water do you need to put out a house fire? The long answer begins with “It depends” followed by a stream of qualifications, specifications, and calculations. The short answer is “A lot.” A fully engulfed structure fire might require 30,000 gallons of water to extinguish. And where does that water come from. In places such as Albuquerque or Roswell, where there are fire hydrants every 500 feet or so along the streets, the water is effectively already on the scene when firefighters arrive. In places such as Abiquiu, which lack community water systems and street hydrants, every drop of water used at a fire must be transported to that fire. And it has to get there right away. This is not a small problem.
The Abiquiu Volunteer Fire Department is now better prepared to address that problem. This past autumn it took delivery of a new “tender,” a fire apparatus designed specifically to move water to fire scenes. Built by E-One, a major manufacturer of fire vehicles, the new truck can carry 2,000 gallons of water and quickly dispense that water with its 750 gallons per minute pump. With the new tender joining its fleet of trucks, Abiquiu Fire now has 7000 gallons of water “on wheels” and the capacity to sustain a water supply by means of a “water shuttle” of trucks moving between the fire scene and the underground water storage tanks at the Abiquiu and Medanales stations. In addition to significantly improving the department’s ability to fight fires, the increased water capacity may also improve Abiquiu’s Insurance Services Office (ISO) rating which may reduce homeowners’ premiums for fire insurance. Fire trucks are alarmingly expensive, often costing more than many homes. This new tender checked out at $430,000, a price that was covered by a $300,000 grant from the state fire marshal and $130,000 saved by the department over several years from its operating budget. It’s money well spent. |
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