Life, food, events, and community in Albuquerque, NM
Ben Roberts's Discussions
Val Kilmer for Governor
Replied Nov. 12, 2008
Best Local Beer
Replied Oct. 1, 2008
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New Mexico Photographers
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ABQ Web Geeks
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The Music Lounge
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Book Club
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Chow Down in Burque Town
584 members
Ben Roberts's Page
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Latest Activity
These positions were 'at will' of Mayor Marty. These new raises he handed out at the last minute help boost their retirement through PERA because their retirement pay is based upon their last salary amount.
These raises smell really bad. Though I have to say the IT folks with the city and APS are woefully underpaid. I have received several calls over the past few years from the City and APS inquiring if I would be interested in open positions. Once s...
good news is that transition is over on December 1st so it's fair game after then to determine the worth/loyalty of those employees to Berry's administration.
If people are worried about putting people ahead of politicis in a lame-duck situation,...
Actually, the article said that some of these employees had language in their contracts that prevented them from being terminated during the transition (i'm thinking of the IT guy, specifically). Time will tell.
While this looks bad, for sure, could it be that we're making mountains out of molehills? It's not like these people will continue to serve under Berry. If not, they'll enjoy these raises for at most a few weeks, then have to hit the bricks.
Or i...
this junk just keeps happening and we are powerless to stop it...Marty and pretty much the entire government knows it.
That wasn't really the point I was trying to make. I don't see those employees as deserving of punishment for Marty's political machinations.
hopefully berry cans those employees or has the power to reverse the raises after he gets into office.
Comment Wall (6 comments)
- At 11:32pm on February 20, 2008,
Amanda Redmond-Neal said… - yup, i suppose, by the law of averages, we both would have gotten robbed or carjacked delivering pizza by now if we hadn't become office monkeys when we did. sigh.
- At 4:22pm on February 5, 2008,
Andrea Lin said… - Hi there. Yep, I hear the coals of PL are still indeed smoking.... I hope the marshmallows are good. :-)
Just talked to a certain "JK" the other day, actually and it was good to hear he's still sane.
- At 9:20am on November 29, 2007,
PidderBear said… - Not new...they did it last year. I think it was Deanna that had some shots of it over at Flickr. I've left a comment with her and will share on the info if she was the one!
- At 9:04am on November 29, 2007,
PidderBear said…
- Ben, heard anything about "Aquacita of Lights "
this year? I thought it was in the valley area around UNM somewhere....
- At 12:41pm on November 22, 2007,
Ben Roberts said…
- Hey, I haven't read his latest one, I'm about 1/2 way through Shadow in Summer, probably finish it this week, maybe today even, I'm really enjoying it though. Both stylistically and for the world he creates. A lot of interesting threads there I'm still picking at for myself.
And yeah, sounds like we did go to school together. Nice to hear from you.
- At 2:56pm on November 21, 2007,
Mikaela Renz-Whitmore said…
- What'd you think of Daniel's new book? Betrayal in Winter? Did you get to it yet?
Didn't we go to school together? I was Mikki then...
Profile Information
- Where I Live:
- Near UNM, Albuquerque NM.
- About Me:
- I'm a 30-something foreign national who's now been in ABQ for almost half his life.
- Favorite Thing(s) About Albuquerque:
- Sunshine, high altitude and green chile.
- Relationship Status:
- In a Relationship
- My Website:
- http://www.flickr.com/photos/benrobertsabq/
- What I'm Reading:
- The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life byAlice Schroeder
I'm plodding my way through this one. On about page 250 of 800 or so. Not sure that I will finish it. Schroder's style is flat and while there are occasional interesting anecdotes about Buffett's life and businesses, if you know anything at all about him you will probably be bored to tears. I knew nothing about him, so the story of his acquiring control of American Express or the origins of Berkshire Hathaway are at least new to me, if not riveting.
The Lost Grizzlies: A Search for Survivors in the Wilderness of Colorado by Rick Bass
It might have been the fact that I spent the last three days in the area of the San Juan Wilderness near Platoro, Colorado, where some of the events in the book take place, but I found Bass's mix of environmentalist narrative and blazes of literary word play pretty compelling.
The book was in the cabin where we stayed, so I don't have it with me to quote, but there are a couple of passages in the first section of the book that absolutely explode off the page. Edward Abbey fans may like that Doug Peacock, who was the model for George Hayduke in The Monkey Wrench Gang features prominently in the book.
Bass strays a little at times, and the second two sections were to me not nearly as attractive to read as the first. The environmentalist sentiment is thick throughout the book, not necessarily a bad thing, but its application varies from insightful and dead-on-point to rambling and heavy handed, verging on preachy. What makes it forgivable is the solid storytelling and occasional flashes of brilliance.
Tying everything together amidst a mix of human players and the grizzly as a central but mostly absent character of the narrative. Bass works well blending the history and mythology of the grizzly into a figure that defies both human attempts to destroy and to catalog it. If nothing else I was surprised how much I didn't know about the grizzly in the lower 48 states, including its (possible) last stand in the San Juans. The book was written in the mid 1990s, so a lot of the events that were hoped for in it have (and in some cases have not)come to pass, and can be researched elsewhere online. This to me added an additional dimension given the mix of hope and cynicism which the efforts to validate the grizzly's existence in the San Juans held for Bass and the other folks in his account. If you like environmental writing in the Ed Abbey vein, you'll probably like this too.
John Adams by David McCullough.
In my usual "if everyone loves it it can't be that great" spirit I resisted reading this Adams bio until it had been fairly bludgeoned into the ground by an HBO miniseries, which I hear is actually quite good. Haven't seen that. McCullough's book is an entertaining read and paints a fun portrait of John Adams, his wife, and contemporaries like Thomas Jefferson and an aging Ben Franklin. No idea how accurate it is, but an interesting read either way, particularly the lengthy passages about Adams' years abroad in Paris.
Blood Meridian By Cormac McCarthy
Re-reading this for the nth time. It's horribly violent, but the language and style still blow me away. Not the book I recommend to first time McCarthy readers though. Normal people should probably start with All The Pretty Horses.:D
His earlier book Child of God is a fair precursor to the kind of violence in Blood Meridian if you're into that sort of thing. Suttree still stands as my favorite of McCarthy's novels, even if I can't read it much anymore.
Collapse By Jared Diamond.
If you loved Guns, Germs and Steel this is probably going to be a winner for you. As Diamond lays out in the introduction to Collapse this is essentially the "Why do societies fail catastrophically and others don't?" side to the "Why do some societies succeed relative to other societies?" that was discussed in Guns....
Diamond discussed his methodology and its flaws in the opening of the book, which shortcuts a lot of the "but what about...?" hypotheticals that I usually make reading this kind of book. Either you buy his take or you don't, but it's well constructed and an interesting, if lengthy, read.
I am Legend by Richard Matheson.
Given the upcoming movie, and some other hype about the original story, I picked up a copy of the original novel. Really more like a novella, it's under 200 pages in paperback. I got through it in a few hours.
Worth a read given its position in the "canon" of vampire stories, Matheson's work doesn't seem very novel given the multitude of stories since it that have posited a biological source for vampirism. But Matheson was one of the first to explore this angle as far as I know.
Taken in context, as it was written during the 1950s, it offers an oddly quirky 50s perspective on popular science, biology and the environment from the central character's "lay person" perspective. As the main character tries to figure out empirically what the cause of the disease is, starting from almost no understanding of biology or epidemiology. Some people have criticized this section as bad science, but really its just an attempt to get the vampirism as disease foundation laid. Its only mildly worse in its way than the twisting of genetics in something like Jurassic Park -- but I'm also not a biologist. :)
I'm curious to see how the movie portrays the book's ending, which I won't give away.
On the whole, I enjoyed it, and its a quick read. But probably only worth a read as a foil to the movie, or if you have a particular interest in the horror/vampire/post-apocalyptic canon. I'm not a huge fan of any of horror or vampire, but I love me some post-apocalyptic goodness.
The Stuff of Thought by Stephen Pinker. About 1/2 way through, this one is much less pop-linguistics than the previous two related books, so I'm finding it somewhat tedious. It's probably actually a more interesting read, I'm just lacking the brain power to chew on it right now.
Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA by Tim Weiner. About 1/3 of the way through this one and so far with the exception of the overthrow of a couple of arguably (from a US perspective anyway) legitimate leaders of foreign countries (Iran's Mohammed Mossadegh for one) the CIA seems to have been singularly incapable of getting anything right on the intelligence side, and on the covert ops side seems to spend most of its time sending foreign agents working for the CIA to their deaths, or shipping weapons intended for those agents into the hands of US enemies.
We'll see if that changes once we get out of the 1960s. At this point I'm more terrified of the CIA than ever, but now it's because of the power they wield with apparent incompetence and unaccountability, rather than their vaunted black-hattery. For those who thought not seeing the WTC attacks coming or not having good intelligence on Iraq were signs of the fallibilty of the contemporary CIA, that doesn't seem to be the case.
- What I'm Listening To:
- "The Postal Service" from way back in 2003 seems to be locked into my stereo right now. Other than that mostly the radio. NPR and stuff. Weird creaking noises from my bedroom ceiling in the wind.
Ben Roberts's Blog
Soon to be ex-Mayor Marty holds pay increases until after City election.
An article in this morning's Albuquerque Journal (yes you will need to log in or use the "Free Trial" link on that page to read the article) notes:
"About a week after the city election, a handful of city employees received pay raises, including a 67 percent bump for an aide to the mayor. Scott Forrester, an assistant to Mayor Martin Chávez, whose term ends Nov. 30, saw an increase in his annual… Continue
"About a week after the city election, a handful of city employees received pay raises, including a 67 percent bump for an aide to the mayor. Scott Forrester, an assistant to Mayor Martin Chávez, whose term ends Nov. 30, saw an increase in his annual… Continue
Posted on October 21, 2009 at 11:30am — 11 Comments
El Rey Theater - Put Your Cleanup Where Your Mouth Is!
For all those who have spoken about how sad it is that the Golden West burned and the El Rey and Launchpad have suffered damage, a chance to get in and do something about it, for the El Rey at least.
I received the following email from the City, specifically the Mayor's office, today.
Dear community volunteer:
The following volunteer opportunity might be of interest to you. Please share this list with your family, friends, neighbors, co-workers, youth group, service club, etc.
If interested,… Continue
I received the following email from the City, specifically the Mayor's office, today.
Dear community volunteer:
The following volunteer opportunity might be of interest to you. Please share this list with your family, friends, neighbors, co-workers, youth group, service club, etc.
If interested,… Continue
Posted on March 7, 2008 at 11:00am — 7 Comments
Form Based Code followup - Sometimes City officials do listen!
So I had blogged previously about the proposed Form Based Code which City Councillor Isaac Benton has proposed as an addition to Albuquerque's zoning codes.
Among other things I thought that there needed to be more community input and time for reflection and refinement of the code before it we… Continue
Among other things I thought that there needed to be more community input and time for reflection and refinement of the code before it we… Continue
Posted on February 20, 2008 at 4:00pm — 1 Comment
How Do You Like, or Not Like, Your Neighborhood Association?
Lately I've heard a lot from people who say their Neighborhood Association is broken.
There are widespread conflicts between board members, rival warring factions, seemingly everything but the actual engagement of weapons.
Or the opposite - total disengagement, people who don't even know they have a neighborhood association. Or when it meets. Or what it does. Or doesn't do.
I've got my own set… Continue
There are widespread conflicts between board members, rival warring factions, seemingly everything but the actual engagement of weapons.
Or the opposite - total disengagement, people who don't even know they have a neighborhood association. Or when it meets. Or what it does. Or doesn't do.
I've got my own set… Continue
Posted on January 17, 2008 at 2:53pm — 22 Comments
Form Based Code Public Meeting - A Summary and My Take
I've been meaning to write a follow up post to this one about the public meeting on December 8th regarding the new Form Based Code which Albuquerque City Councillor Isaac Benton is trying to get enacted.
Below are my observations a… Continue
Below are my observations a… Continue
Posted on December 17, 2007 at 12:11pm — 14 Comments
Groups
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Chow Down in Burque Town
584 members
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Art in ABQ
370 members
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Urban Farmers
304 members
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Living Green
287 members
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Albucooking
266 members
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