Death Comes For Lamy

“They ravaged neither the rivers nor the forest, and if they irrigated, they took as little water as would serve their needs. The land and all that it bore they treated with consideration; not attempting to improve it, they never desecrated it.”― Willa Cather, Death Comes For the Archbishop  

According to Jack Clark, one of the No Crude Oil in Lamy organizers (Facebook page), the Open House I made sure to attend on January 18th was called to "share facts and reach a consensus for future action." Actions taken would be in response to the almost unbelievable news that Pacer Energy and Santa Fe Southern had struck a deal to convert the rail facility in little sleepy Lamy, New Mexico, into a transfer station for crude oil. Tanker trucks would barrel in and out of Lamy, their engines idling while they wait to offload crude oil to railroad cars, their liquid cargo to be transported to refineries near Albuquerque. That's the plan.

When I saw this sign on 285, I knew the organizers were dead serious about the fight ahead.

And this one too, in front of the recently paved 2-lane road that is the only way in or out of the unincorporated village of Lamy. The woman seated next to me in the meeting groaned, "What fools, we thought the county paved the road for us!"

After announcement of the ground rules, Jack informed us that there would be a presentation by Pacer Energy employees, questions to them from the ten-member Steering Committee, followed by questions from the floor, introduction of the electeds or candidates in attendance, the reading of a statement from Santa Fe County Commissioner Kathy Hollian who unfortunately for all was in California caring for her ailing mother, and a discussion of possible courses of action including the pursuit of a legal injunction against Pacer, et.al.

Devil take me if Pacer Energy didn't send a couple of know-nothing reps, who by their own admission were “shanghaied into coming to the meeting at the last minute,” to not answer the many astute questions asked by members of the outraged and ultra organized Lamy, Galisteo, and El Dorado voting blocs. These communities, and all the rest of us up and down the 285 corridor, were there en force, united by a deep and urgent feeling to protect our watershed from Oil & Gas at all costs.

What the Pacer grunts didn't know about what headquarters had cooked up for us could fill several blogposts.

They weren't privy to the business terms of the deal, they weren't certain of the number of trucks that could eventually routinely be deployed to our area, they couldn't even be sure of the proposed hours of operation--daylight hours at first, they thought, but that could change to 24/7. Storage tanks weren't likely to be placed at Lamy but couldn't be ruled out, and no, they didn't know why Pacer had not asked to meet with the affected community. The effects of idling trucks, air and noise pollution were quantified thusly: "could be a bit of a nuisance."

The Pacer duo also didn't know the dollar amount of the anticipated profits for one-year's operation, how much it would cost to place the facility at their Plan B elsewhere location; they were not informed as to the present condition of the railroad tracks--that would be a question for Santa Fe Southern. They couldn't comment on issues of liability, insurance coverages, other than to say: "I know we have some." Nor could they remark on how property values would be affected in the area, how owners could be compensated for losses to those values, or what the safety risks would be in case of flooding during monsoon season.

Not ten miles from my casita, on the road to Lamy where 50-100 double tanker trucks, weekly, each weighing 80,000 pounds fully-loaded are proposed to transport crude oil.

Where the historic protest meeting in Lamy was held.

The overflow crowd filled this hall and an adjoining room.

The meeting was exceedingly well run, many voices were heard.

Our two Pacer boyz, with nametags a'blazin!

I wonder if they ever looked up to see where they were?

According to the paper in Albuquerque, the body count at Legal Tender protesting the proposed invasion by oil and gas was numbered at 275. Among us were skilled geo-hydrologists and seasoned water-protection activists with abundant expertise to bring to bear to this serious threat to our bio-region. The nomenclature of engineering sussurated throughout the Q&A—tonnage, stress, road degradation, black ice, hazmat incidents, permeable soil, irreplaceable natural resources, etc.

But after all the brilliant and incisive questions were asked (not a ding-a-ling among them), and the many near incoherent utterances of  "don't know," "have to check," "we'll get back to you on that," "not sure," "hard to say," and out-and-out silence were given--the inescapable conclusion was simply this: 

Spills, accidents and wrecks are inevitable. With Lamy's community well head only 109 feet from the proposed crude oil transfer site, our aquifer is vulnerable.

Even while the heaviness of our situation was settling upon us, as we each struggled with this new proposed reality being foisted upon us, a bit of radical relief was fortunately on the way. Former elementary school teacher Rainy Upton rocked the casbah when she coolly asked the Pacer stooges in the same measured cadences with which she might totally devastate a couple of misbehaving third-graders: “Why did you come here looking for trouble?”

Rainy's question was like a refreshing rain falling on a community in the process of being seriously shit upon, and it was a welcome, cleansing rain. The pathetic, almost pitiable, response from Pacer? "Um. Uh. That's a good question. We asked that ourselves. We're not looking for trouble. It's a hard question to answer. We don't have an answer."

Moments later, and even with the pointed reminders from our facilitators to remain civil, and notwithstanding the presence of a couple of armed law-enforcement personnel standing by (!) inside the meeting hall (!!), local democracy, that ole messy thang so loathed by oligarchs and plutocrats alike, was spontaneously, anarchically asserted. After a bellyful of Pacer's biz development lingo—“cost-effectiveness,” “path of least resistance,” and pointless repetition of the totally banal phrase “best practices”—we took a vote, an impromptu one. With quiet fury, the man directly behind me rose and demanded of the crowd: “Anyone want this?” Nary a hand was raised, to which he thundered: “Nobody wants this!” 

It was a rare public moment of pure, unanimous, absolute consensus, charged with all the fervor and frustration that a collective act of withholding assent in no uncertain terms can muster. 

Santa Fe Southern--the little engine that shouldn't.

 

At Lamy's rail yard in this evening's twilight. A magical, peaceful place.

This is the landscape at risk. We have so precious little water.

Is Oil & Gas so arrogant that they've completely misread the power potentiality of our regional alliance, especially now that we are galvanized and united against an immediate and dire threat?

Have they been unattentive to the willful challenges to corporate oil and gas interests posed by our neighboring counties—in San Miguel and especially Mora, the first county in the nation to ban fracking and be sued in federal court by Royal Dutch Shell's US subsidiary? Do they not understand that many of us are committed to protecting Mother Earth from their ravages, come what may?

Painting by New Mexico modernist Juane Quick-to-See Smith

One is forced to presume that in New Mexico--a state so nakedly corrupt as to be ranked last in the U.S. in child well-being--that it must be standard operating procedure in business dealings such as the one Pacer has made with Santa Fe Southern, to have a quid pro quo of one sort or another between the powers that be, whoever they are. The path of least resistance, etc. Staci Matlock indicated in the announcement of the meeting that appeared under her byline that it was curtains for Lamy, that we could "weigh in," the unstated implication being that the deal was done and our lawful compliance a big fat fait accompli. 

Is the pro-Pacer camp under the foolish impression that all they have to do is go through some (loco) motions—make a few vapid appearances at community meetings, relinquish some small number of inexpensive concessions, announce that they'll hire a couple of local dopes as security guards to watch over the tankers, terminal, floodlights, and ("no plans at present for") storage facilities? In short, impose their will on us with impunity because the State bureaucracy has sold us down arroyo?

Coincidentally, I've just finished reading this classic of the Southwest, an explosively comical fiction, that reminds us via its vivid characters: Another way of being in the world is possible.

 Thought experiment: How many New Mexicans would it take to peaceably  block the Pacer trucks on a little road like this? And who would the local peace officers stand with--us, or them?

Gunther Worrbein, volunteer sign painter, standing by his handiwork after the eventful session.

[Miracles] . . . seem to me to rest not so much upon faces or voices or healing power coming suddenly near us from afar off, but upon our perceptions being made fine, so that for a moment our eyes can see and our ears hear what is there about us always.”  ― Willa Cather, Death Comes For the Archbishop

Taking Inventory

"We're a small store, only six people. We literally couldn't do it without help."

We were at Self Serve in Albuquerque, an inventory-rich store, helping co-owners Matie (purple v-neck) and Molly (aqua and tan striped v-neck sweater) to comply with the NM sales tax requirement to conduct a comprehensive semi-annual stocktaking. Every little pillow packet of Sliquid Sassy had to be accounted for. “Accuracy is all” were the watchwords of the day!

I was assigned to the Vibrator, Dildo and Lube Team. We were gently, yet firmly, led through our multiple tasks by team captain Stevie, the resident sex educator who teaches both levels of Blow Job classes, Introductory and Advanced. Our team was strong—Captain Stevie, me, Lexie and Tazz.

It's illegal in the State of Alabama to sell a vibrator--an offense punishable by fines of $10,000.

Store Manager, Hunter Riley had put out a call for help on Self Serve's very informative and fun Facebook page, promising lunch and $50 gift cards in exchange for five hours of participation, 12-5 pm on January 2nd. And we all came running to count and double-count products like Gun Oil, for example--which comes in bottles of 4, 8 and 16 ounces (though there were none left in the big size). Tedious tasks to be sure but broken up by the kind of frank adult talk one doesn't get to enjoy very often.

Tazz says, "Never feel pressure to do anything you don't want to do. Be safe and have fun!"

Tazz, a self-described regular at Self Serve, knows her way around the store. “They have a little bit of something for everyone here. That's why I'm here today,”she explained, “because they always help out the community. I'm into radical stuff, I'm down to meet new people, and the shop has a great message--sex positive.

“I don't think sex is taboo, no matter what you're into, everything should be okay. And there should be a safe space to make people feel like that. This is one.”

Tazz told me that she's come in with partners or friends who have never before been in a store like Self Serve. “The staff is amazing, they make everyone feel comfortable to shop. Safe sex is really, really important. A lot of times people want to have safe sex, but they don't know how. It's really important to get more education. That happens here.”

I asked Tazz what should be in everyone's Safe Sex toolkit and her answer surprised me. “Condoms are a definite. Dental dams. And choosing clean partners, people with whom you can have open conversations.” 

Stevie has a masters degree in Adult Learning and has been a sex educator for eleven years. 

 

“Why take a blow job class?” I asked Stevie, the instructor. Her answer inspired confidence. “To feel comfortable navigating the whole cock region. I have a vulva,” Stevie explained, “and that makes it hard to understand how male sexual response works. It's a total unknown.

“A lot of people don't like giving blow jobs. I focus on making it less of a chore. They don't feel like they know what they're doing, or it takes too long. If you don't have a good position it can be physically uncomfortable. A lot of people haven't had a good partner—they shoved or were overly aggressive. The way to handle that is to have a conversation. If you can't talk about it, that is not a person you want to be in bed with.

“Look, you would never want to suffocate anybody with your vulva and yet people are choked with the penis, to the point of vomiting a little, or crying.”

I asked Stevie if there was such a thing as “a bad blow job”?

“There's a bad everything. There can be biting, for instance, or not enough pressure. I think it's also important to know there does not have to be ejaculation for it to have been a really good blow job.” 

Stevie said:  "Self Serve is like having that friend you can ask that weird question.”

 

What do you do if your partner's genitals smell bad?

Matie, who teaches the Cunnilingus class chimed right in, “Take a sexy shower. I always tell my students, anything that needs to be changed and that's easy to change right away, change!”

Stevie added: “Make sure you have enough room, that special stool. A stool gives you better access. Throw a towel on the ground first. The towel gives you better traction. Sit down. I call the position The Seated Lady.

“Flavored lubes are great. Lube for the hand portion, a tight pressure on the cock. You're lubing for the hand portion so you can suck the head. In my class, you will practice with a sterilized dildo. People say I'm like a stand-up comic. I make it funny. But I'm teaching real skills they can really take home and actually use.”

"No, I didn't plan to be a single mom," Lexie told me.

 I asked teammate Lexie why she was spending the day on Central Avenue adding up dildos on a tally sheet on a clipboard.

“I wanted to step out of my box, experience something new. It's my first time in the shop. One of my resolutions is to do things that make me feel uncomfortable.”

Lexie is a new single mom, her baby's 9 months. She became pregnant when the condom broke but her partner didn't tell her, so she couldn't take a Day After pill, which she would have been fine with. He only told her about the mishap when she told him she was pregnant. Something like, “Oh yeah, I guess now's a good time to tell you, the condom broke that time.” Because of her experiences she wants “a whole new change around sex.”

"We love supporting the community," said co-owner Matie Fricker, "and we're so grateful that the community supports us when we ask for it.'

“Before I had my son, sex was important to me. I had to have it. Now, it's mid-list for me. I'm focused on schooling and raising him so he doesn't turn out like his father. I won't pursue his father's involvement. I can do it on my own, and I've been doing a good job. I prioritize my son. This or that guy may not be around forever, but your kids will.”

I asked Lexie which was her favorite product in the store. “Vibrators, I have a few—they have saved my life in multiple situations. When I needed a release and there was no one around.

“Every toy is different—different speeds, size, texture. I have different vibrators for different moods, partners, for whatever you're into. You never know what may come up!”

What would you say to the people who haven't found the store yet?

“To anyone out there who hasn't shopped at Self Serve...come in with an open mind, don't be afraid to ask a question.”

Thin in 2014

I am very grateful and excited to introduce WW,SW's first guest blogger in New Mexico, Colin Lincoln Holloway. I asked Colin for a bio to accompany his post and he wrote: 

CLH has lived beyond the pale of the intellectual ghettos that I was born into since I was 16, running to sit on some railroad tracks with the likes of Dan Ellsberg & Allen Ginnsberg. For the last 30 years I've called the Cow Creek Drainage, in the Upper Pecos, my home.

I believe that I woke up into this life with a deep passion, love and concern, for our beleaguered natural systems, though my first love was the ocean. I looked up from the tracks at Rocky Flats to the mountains, starting right there, and realized that the seas start in the hills. Since that time I've been intrigued and passionate about forest ecology.

  

Rakehell’s Return or a Clear Case for Cutting

The evening before, setting up camp, sun setting, Snow Lake lower than I’ve ever seen it, burned over along the fringes.

Those years ago, we would come here to fill our water containers, looking like strange bedraggled refugees, still wearing our chaps, sometimes our hardhats. Back then, this time of year, the place would be teeming with campers, all the spots along the loop taken up by the bright colors of tents and the bulk of RVs.

This evening, nervous, more than just a little trepidation, as we danced the tent pole dance, only one of two sets of campers there. Tomorrow I’d see it: that stretch of forest I had worked, sixteen years prior. Quaking Aspen thinning would turn out to be the last time I ran saw crews as my primary source of income. Not for lack of love for the job but for lack of a steady, reliable income.

This Calm evening belying the fury of the middle of May to the end of July when the Whitewater Baldy Complex Fire raged around the nearly 298,000 acres surrounding.

The largest fire in recorded New Mexico history.  To Date.

An afternoon’s drive through edges and hearts of the burn, scorched soil, not quite destroyed, sterilized or hydrophobic. Coming through, several miles and a bit, to the lake, passing the turnoff down to Willow Creek, bearing witness to miles of 100% mortality, that proverbial moonscape, the elk, at the height of calving season, absent from the sweep of headlights. They had seemed overcrowded, back there, where the fire hadn’t brought this expanse of hills to destruction.

All I was thinking, hoping fervently for, dark descending, while we finished setting up camp, that maybe that area, off the Bear Wallow Road, wasn’t so bad. That maybe I’d find a copse of trees, a stand, the soil would be in decent shape. Maybe only 80-90% mortality.

“Stop. Stop the car.”

Sitting there in disbelief, gawking.

“That’s the old unit boundary.  See the blue paint on that dougfir?”

I’m a naturalist, or, that is to say, I prefer to think of myself as such, in the tradition and definition of a Jefferson or Thoreau. Jefferson, who would refer to science as art. Free to thrive in the anecdotal, the raw observational, beyond the Imperial constraints, the dour restrictions, of the Empirical. In this, I am allowed miracles. I couldn’t see what was in front of me as much else.

Sixteen years ago, there was no difference of basal area, one side of the road to the other, a tangle of mixed conifer, ponderosa to fir, engleman spruce, the crowns boxing and brawling, fighting for what light, for what soil, they could.

Sure, we ran along the slopes of the northeast side of that canyon like a swarm of really ugly, really noisy bees, not on the southwest side of Quaking Aspen Creek. Sure, the road bisected the bottom and formed part of our unit boundary, a natural place for a herd of smoke eaters to take a stand against hell roaring.

Whether crews set a backfire because of the work on “our” side, or whether the fire simply broke containment, fire did romp up those slopes I had worked, those years before, low and slow, lying down and doing just what a fire should in Intermountain West, moderate elevation, mixed conifer.

Like in a story book, climbing into the lower limbs, as if pruning, staying out of the crowns, but for isolated incidents, not continuing the scorched earth mentality the fire had done, just one hundred meters away, across the creek, where mortality was 100%. I hadn’t stopped that fire, dead in its tracks, sixteen years before it happened, it ran right on through there, but where, on one side, it was a frightening thing of rage and total destruction, on the other side the fire produced only purely positive results – as if that stretch of forest had enjoyed a thoroughly refreshing shower, now invigorated and ready for another century.

    Like I said, as a naturalist, I allow myself miracles.

I’m sure there are those that battle in the trenches of the scribblers of chalk boards that might give up their empirical tendencies to agree. As there are those that might claim thinning to be logging and, therefore, counterproductive, regardless of the fact that they’ve no working definition for one or the other, like knowing pornography when they see it. As there is that annoying majority that would profess that such activity is too difficult, too expensive.

So let us consider the costs, fiduciary and beyond, starting with the $GreenFrogSkins$:

The cost of suppression, just suppression, for that fire, the Whitewater Baldy Complex was 23 million dollars for 297,845 acres.*

Although it was sixteen years prior, our bid for the drop and lop work we did was (admittedly lowball) $85 an acre. Or suppression at 77.22 an acre and thinning at 85 an acre. So, in that, it turns out that the price was comparable, thinning versus fire suppression.

Comparable.

Just for fire suppression, no consideration for BAER team remediation (an incredibly difficult number to find), or the equally difficult number to pin down, as to economic loss of the surrounding communities whose cash registers would be filled by the gas tanks and coolers filled by those that would be fishing on Snow Lake, backpacking and hiking on the trails into the wilderness, now closed, or the costs of damage and repair to roads and other infrastructure.

 

But what of the other costs?  Certainly the Ghost of Gifford Pinchot would be apoplectic for the loss of what he would perceive as so many commodities, tens of millions of board feet of lumber, lost, that could supply the engines of industry. Well, Pinchot is dead (in my view, thankfully), and so is the attitude that a tree should only be measured in dollar signs.

Here we are left with the mathematics of our era:

At what cost a forest?

At what cost carbon sequestration?

An acre of mixed conifers in the Western Cordillera Bio Structure, in New Mexico specifically, has the ability to sequester approximately 60,700 kilograms of carbon, around 67 US tons, per annum. What is that worth?*

What is the societal value of that forest? Sequestering that much carbon times the average age of trees once growing there, that ability, now stripped, irreplaceable for decades, compounded by the fact that carbon released would be by a factor, the order of magnitude, equal to the average years of sequestration, as measured by the percent of the average tree’s girth as it is related to annual growth, that burned, releasing all those years of the hard work of those trees, their carbon, into the atmosphere? As simple an example of the destructiveness of climate change feedback loops as we can get.

Can we, now, deny that our Western Forests are in great peril? That it is well worth an effort to do what we can to stave off such a disaster? How can it not be prudent to incorporate such costs into the value of our era? For myself, it always puzzles me that many folks don’t consider this, measure this. I find it a responsibility less economic than ethical. After all, we the people, as a society in a representative democracy, caused this to happen, this degradation of our forests and natural environment. I find it pointless to point fingers, struggling for self absolution, we’re here, we did it, own up to it. The time for recrimination is past.

Thing is, what’s to be done?  The time for action is upon us. Yes it would be a gamble to spend our blood and treasure on such a venture, assessing and doing all we can to bring as much health and stability to our forests. Yes it’s a gamble; plenty could go wrong in any number of ways & places, time might not be with us, slash might not have had the year or two needed to break down, a fire could be so hot it makes no difference, blight & disease might override all efforts.

Still in all, a thinned forest definitely stands a better chance of staying a stand. I fail to understand how some would rather see such awful devastation of miles of mortality rather than being annoyed by crews of saws in the woods. I fail to understand those that would argue, one scientist to another, the denizens of the chalkboards, over the historical frequency, heat, size and mortality of fires in the past, whether a certain bird could be a grand mitigator. We stand on a knife’s edge of an environmental reality.  I don’t see how a reasonable person could beg to differ.

We’ve got to look to the future, that past we’ve struggled to measure ain’t here anymore. The future of hockey stick curves whacking on our environment, the future we would have the world live. We’ve got to give our forests every chance, every second we can to adapt to the new paradigm.

The time for action is upon us. Time to drop the chalk and grab our socks. After all, there is more to be gained than lost and miracles can happen if one works like hell to make them happen.

Colin Lincoln Holloway
DeWitt’s End
Lower Colonias, NM

*"2012 Whitewater Baldy Fire Gila National Forest", Southwest Fire Science Consortium

* “Baseline and Projected Future Carbon Storage and Greenhouse-Gas Fluxes in Ecosystems of the Western United States”,  USGS Professional Paper 1797, Zhiliang Zhu and Bradley C. Reed, Editors

The Hot Mess

The Hot Mess by Frances Madeson

His kisses made promises he had no intention of fulfilling. I knew that early on. But the overlapping oval of our Venn diagram—the space containing our shared spheres of interest and sensibility—though not large, glowed red chile hot.

His linguistic defenses (or were they offenses?)—anyhoo, jeepers, excuuuuse me—were curious to me. What to make of them?A kind of camp, certainly. And what is camp but a defensive aesthetic strategy? Pre-emptive self-mockage.

He said he didn't take himself that seriously, but that was either a self-deception from lack of self-knowledge or an outright lie. He's even a bit precious in that regard. He told me his middle name with a good bit of pride, I had asked him lying beside him under clean flannel sheets. “Waldo,” he said, “my uncle's name. He was a good man.” His voice grew deeper, fell quieter, remembering that connection with that good man from long ago.

His breath was sour the first time we made love, post-nasal drip, and I'm not proud of this, but every time he tried to kiss me I turned my head away, until he stopped trying. But the next time, at his place, he laid a kiss on me that made the world stop turning. His tongue, slow and thick, took possession (no other way to say it) of my open (no other way to say this, either) yearning mouth. He termed them “perfect” kisses.For me they were suggestive of a depth worth probing, though I never found it—buried too deeply under all his many rituals.

Set in his ways. His ways kept him safe. Safe from what? From the likes of me.

I kept him at a healthy distance. “You don't text! Wow,” he said. Our first date he made a stark comment. “You think very highly of yourself.” I couldn't deny it. Having exceeded my own limitations so many times, having conquered so many fears, I can practically grow on demand, in real time. Another morning, he said, “You're a central figure.” Which is a little different from putting me on a pedestal.

He made me feel very beautiful in bed, served me there like a queen. He held me close, tight as we shuddered together. He laced his fingers in mine and twisted and turned my hands making me feel his considerable strength. Pushing into me, away from me, pulling, then resisting. His signature gesture, this push-pull, and how I loved it. I rubbed his chest, feeling his heartbeat. “You've found my nipples,” he said. Grateful. He placed his fingers over mine on them and applied pressure, my professor, instructing me. “You don't have to be so gentle.”

He invited me to balloon fiesta and then canceled at the last minute, ruining everything just as he intended.

There was another man, hovering in the wings. Bearded, long still-dark hair tied back in a coated rubber band, Samurai style. Too young, but I sampled him, more than that. I couldn't help it, he had thrown himself in my arms. Another heat seeker. He did things with his tongue on my ear to make me forget Romulus's perfect kisses. Almost.

Romulus introduced me to his former student, now a professor like him, but in a college back east. A lovely girl, a lesbian as it happens. “She's the daughter I would have wanted,” he confided, really meaning it. I peeked at a picture of them together on his Facebook, her graduation day, his arm was around her shoulder, paternally. I was happy for them both. I wondered who had taken the picture.

The last time we were at his house, he turned on the television. Football, so much more brutal then I ever remembered it. Gladitorial, we agreed on this. Then hockey. “They're so speedy,” I said about the players. “Yep,” he said, “those guys can stop on a dime.”

Romulus of myth was raised by a she-wolf. Mine too, though a different kind (speaking plainly, his mother was a drunk). He's careful with alcohol, my Romulus, but reckless with aspertame. His poor, poor brain I thought, caressing his shaved head, my fingers floating over the little skin tags here and there.

His house in Nob Hill—a long-term rental, empty walls, TVs in every room, a meditation on beige. It's a trap I thought when I saw no art on the walls, a tar baby to a commonplace domesticity. He wants a woman to want to envision herself complementing his environment, but only in the abstract. He speaks of correlates, however, the correlation calculation only works well for relationships that follow a straight line, and he'll never allow that; his herky-jerky scheduling will insure non-linearity. One of his cats (I couldn't tell you which one) chased a starling inside the house. I slammed the door to his office, the cat on one side of the door, the wounded bird trapped inside the relentless beigeness.

When he came home from teaching his graduate seminar, I told him about it. Matter of factly, he unlatched the window screen from the outside and released the wounded bird, watching it fly off. He swept the pile of feathers, some of them bloodied, into his backyard where the breeze took them. You can see the Sandias from his patio. Sunset turns them to coral, beautiful even with the sagging power lines in view.

So many ruffled feathers undone from such a small bird.

Still sweeping, he said: “It comes with the territory.”

A New Political Woman

i am not proud

of being a woman and having lived

as a man

to hide behind

white cis male privilege

wearing a man's face and body

feeling disgusted

everytime

i look in the mirror

and see

blood red bathwater

--Polina Smutko

No More Pants Roles For Her

In Santa Fe--the “City Different”--we celebrate difference, or so we say. Well, what could be more different than a natural born woman strapped at birth with a freakin' useless cock, or a natural born man saddled with a bleedin' pussy?

Polina Smutko's childhood would make an almost classic example of how not to raise a Trans child. The things that should have been lavished upon her—love, respect, ample support for her humanity, especially given the quirk of biology with which she was endowed (she was born with a penis)—were not given, even stintingly.

Afraid they were raising a pervert, Polina's parents forcibly reared her as a little boy, even encouraging her and her brother to have fist fights to reinforce her alleged maleness, turning the siblings on each other like two cocks in the ring. The enforced violence didn't “make a man of her”--how could it? But, damn if she's not a fighter, and a tough-minded one.

Someone else can tell you more details of her tortured adolescence, the descent into depressions, delusions, even psychosis—they're important to tell. The relationships lost, jobs and cities let go of, the tumult and disruptions, the regrets of not breaking free of the shaming bonds that kept her living a corrosive lie. “I missed out on being a young woman, I missed out on a lot.” Another correspondent can tell a more complete chronicle of the thoughts of suicide, the grim statistics around suicide attempts: 1.6% in the general population as contrasted with 41% of the Trans community. And as Polina has reminded me, this too is a form of violence.

"I thought I would be alone and unemployable."

But what turned my head in her direction when I heard her remarks at The State of Female Justice in New Mexico panel, was that simultaneous with commencing to live life openly as a mature woman only nine months ago, an activist was wholly born--welcome to the fold, Polina, darling! In addition to being a lecturer for the Speakers Bureau of the Transgender Resource Center of New Mexico, she has an ambitious To-Do List for us here in Santa Fe, which I'm honored to present to you--and hot damn, if every single item on the list doesn't make perfect sense, isn't totally doable, and wouldn't be a blast to help manifest!

Mayoral Candidates, Yes You, We Need to Have A Little Chat

As Bushee, Gonzales and Dimas, all know, there's a T in the LGBTQ constituency. When we talk about inclusion and intersectionality, as it sometimes behooves us to do, there is no one more prepared to break those things down for you than Polina Smutko. And do so with a whole lot of grace. She's not so hard to find, she's the Director of Collections at the Folk Art Museum, a museum that is not only an International Site of Conscience, but that has been a supportive workplace for Polina throughout her metamorphosis. “You know, I've been a woman all my life, “ Polina told me. “Transition isn't really the right word. It's more of a sloughing off a gender that's been forced upon you. It's a getting rid of all the manifestations of that, rather than becoming.”

Woman With a Plan—Seven Areas of Needed Attention

Polina sez: Awareness of who we are in the community. We have a cultural competency training we would like to bring to the various agencies of the city government: police, fire, EMTs, hospital workers. We've done it a number of times already and we know it to be an effective training.

Polina sez: Education in the Schools. We want children to be taught that we're people. We want “Trans-friendly” schools as they have in Portland, San Francisco and now Los Angeles, California. These are schools in which Trans kids are treated as their proper gender, not on the basis of their genitals. This means access to facilities—locker rooms, etcetera. It's very important. Those people now growing up will one day have children. There is a 1% chance that those children will be Trans. It's important that they respect, love and not reject the child, and not subject the child to abuse. If the schools are treating the children with respect, then they have a chance.

Polina sez: Violence. 50% of all LGBT violence is against Trans people, however 90% of that violence is against Trans women, and 70 % against Trans women of color. So you know it's out there and happening. We want to become more aware of what's happening.

Polina sez: We want gender-neutral restrooms in all city buildings. We already have them at Santa Fe Community College, specifically separate facilities from men's rooms and women's rooms. It's more than symbolic, it's practical, and the city can probably get ADA funds to finance their construction. Arizona tried to ban us from using public restrooms entirely!

Polina sez: We want health insurance benefits for city employees to cover transition and surgery costs. There's no reason why they can't.

Polina sez: Trans prisoners are currently assigned to prison based on the genitals they possess. But it's not safe for Trans women to be put in with men. It's not safe, they are assaulted. And it's just as bad in the jails. (Most Trans prisoners are in for prostitution.)

Polina sez. We want an awareness campaign in New Mexico

similar to the one in DC. We want signs splashed on bus stops and at airports, a whole PR campaign. We want to use local people as much as we can.

“Those that went before me that were brave...I should have been that brave, been there with them to fight that fight.” --Polina Smutko

Who amongst us hasn't had a similar regret? All we have is now.