Dawn finds me camped at Bottomless Lake SP, just east of Roswell NM. If you are like I was prior to last year, your first thought is !saucer people! And believe me, the town has embraced the theme. But on my way through Austin last year, my friend J clued me in on something amazing. The Pecos River flows along the Mescalero Escarpment (the western palisade of the Llano Estacado) a mile and a half from where I’m writing this, and waters some beautiful wetlands. Where there are wetlands in the US southwest, there are waterfowl. All kinds of waterfowl! In this case the stars of the show are thousands and thousands of Sandhill Cranes. You’ll probably get more crane content than makes sense over the next couple weeks… My original plan was to spend two weeks here, hawking ducks with Clovis. Alas, just as I was getting ready to leave New England news arrived regarding Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza. The advice from those in the know is “keep your raptors away from waterfowl this year”; infected raptors are showing 95% mortality within 48 hours. Ugh. I’m still spending the 2 weeks, but I’m going to bird watch, fly Clovis to the drone, ride my bike and maybe even go schnorkeling.
I’ll be here for Thanksgiving; my plans are pretty low key. I may actually learn how to use the combo microwave/convection oven to whip up some cornbread; beyond that, who knows. But! while faffing about on the dying birdsite (twitter has the Leon Skum infected HPAI) I saw an image that led me to this – a perfect painting of Thanksgiving in Roswell, complete with anthropomorphic Clovisbruja in a apron:
Ritual Cactus Offering
More soon.
Update. As is my wont, I’m wearing a semiotic dadjoke* t-shirt today. If you don’t know who José Guadalupe Posada was, I’ll bet you know his work.
You probably don’t know Marxist writer J. Posadas (pen name of Homero Rómulo Cristalli Frasnelli). From the linked article,
He led the Latin American bureau of the Fourth International, but eventually split from the revolutionary socialist organization in 1962 and created his own Posadist Fourth International.
Then, in 1968, he published an essay arguing that extraterrestrials would play a crucial role in a global anticapitalist revolution. By that point, Castro had already denounced him and Posadas was advocating a nuclear war to demolish capitalist states, leaving the working class to rise from the ashes. Still, his cult-like following grew—despite his increasing interest in communicating with dolphins.
I Want to Believe: Posadism, UFOs and Apocalypse Communism
As the Au Pairs sang, it’s obvious. Posada to Posadism to LGM** to Roswell!
*for pretty weird values of dad/opa
**little green men