Today is MLK Day.
The Donalt(sic) has had his fat attitude(ss) pried out of the White House for about a year now but he continues to thrust it into everything with the eager complicity of way too many of my fellow citizens, possibly even some friends and neighbors. I don't know that I can explain any of it, and simply railing against it doesn't seem to do much either. But I try to do some of both.
Here at Otowi Bridge, where Edith Warner, a comfortable-class single (Quaker) woman chose to settle to escape the confines of being a young woman in "polite" eastern society, things perk along in what appears to be the warmest (least cold) year yet. I've been here nearly 22 years, but have been watching this home(stead) evolve from the highway for more like 42. From a couple of ratty mobile homes to a pole building to an apartment perched over a 2 car open garage to an adobe-style stucco-clad modern(ish) home to the evolving home(stead) that fits (or reflects) me more and more every year. I have buried 3 dogs and 2 cats on the property during my tenure, with several more cats being lost to predation along the way. 2 dozen chickens have lived here at one time or another as well as 4 geese. Most of those moved on to other flocks where they continued their lives on a more traditional arc of farmyard life. Our very last cat was buried 2 days ago. It is very quiet.
Edith befriended the Tewa speaking peoples in the pueblo defined by the Spanish as San Ildefonso, granted soveriegnity within the larger Spanish empire in 1623 by the King of Spain (extending 2 Spanish leagues in each of the cardinal directions). "Po-woh-ge-oweenge" is their own name for this place, "where the water rushes through", reflecting the break in a lava dam where a giant lake eventually drained, leaving sedimentary badlands as far north as 30 miles upriver.
She was installed at the railroad crossing of the Rio Grande just a few hundred meters (or yards if you prefer) west of here to manage mail/freight deliveries from the Chile Line. Leading up to WWII this narrow guage line connecting Santa Fe to Denver was closed. The rails were removed to relocate to Burma where the US was trying to back the resistance in the rising conflicts between Japan and China. Once the Manhattan (atomic bomb) project was underway, she opened a tea house to serve the Lab Scientists who might travel off the hill, including a standing invitation-only dinner for the top Scientists every Tuesday. The Wikipedia article on her does a good job of catpuring some of this, and the seminal text on her life is usually considered to be Peggy Pond Church's The House at Otowi Bridge.
She took up with a native man who helped her with heavier chores and eventually lived with her. After the War, when a new automobile bridge was put in and traffic picked up, the Pueblo and the Lab Scientists joined together to build them a home away from all the noise and traffic where they lived until she died in 1951. That house was abandoned and allowed to deteriorate sometime since I moved here, the original house and depot on the Rio Grande itself has been abandoned now for a handful of years and will surely deteriorate beyond use eventually.
Meanwhile, the Rabbit Hemorrhagic Fever pandemic decimated our Cottontail population just about the same time COVID-19 was ramping up. Where we used to see a number of adult and baby bunnies daily for months during the Spring, we saw absolutely none in 2020 and only a few in 2021. I saw one just the other day and hope that is a good sign for their recovery. It has been reported that the severity in the southwest US has relieved. Perhaps as a predator-prey-forage dynamic, the flux of ground squirrels and pack rats has also reduced significantly. We have also been under increasingly warm/mild winters and a drought that goes with it.
I'm starting to lose the plot of this post so will close it now... maybe the only value here is to add a little background color.
