The Liberal's Conundrum

 

 

 We just came back from Mexico.  This time and for the first time in decades, we went to Merida.  At one time, Merida was one of the richest towns of the world.  It's unique landscape made for creation of many great Haciendas that provided the raw materials for rope for the rigging of the sailing ships of the European fleets of the time.

In 1542 Francisco de Montejo gave the name Mérida to the captured Mayan city T’ho (Tihoo). An early base for Spanish efforts to conquer the Maya, it subsequently became an administrative and commercial center for the Yucatán region. In the 19th century, its economy was based on the processing and export of locally grown henequen, a fibrous plant from which twine and rope are produced. By the early 20th century Mérida became one of Mexico’s most important commercial cities.

The city is a base for trips to several Mayan sites, including Chichén Itzá, Kabah, Mayapán, and Uxmal. Many colonial-era buildings, including the Casa de Montejo (1549) and the cathedral (begun in 1561), are also tourist attractions, as are the city’s ornate henequen-era mansions.

Except for going to one of the many water holes (cenotes) that formed after the meteor strike, we didn't go anywhere.  Instead we stayed at a henequin era Hacienda about 25 miles away.  Having been restored over the last several years  to a state of grandeur by a friend of a friend, we were guests.

Our room was a gigantic reproduction of the glory days of Merida.  The walls were thick and well painted. The ceiling was 20 feet high.  (their strategy for dealing with the afternoon heat). The grounds were lush and well manicured. Hacienda Petac has been around for about 400 years.

With the great food and the remarkable Mayan service, We disconnected pretty good. 

And it gave us time to reflect on the situation we find ourselves in.

This from Democracy Journal: 

"In the immediate aftermath of World War II, Theodor W. Adorno, Else Frenkel-Brunswik, Daniel Levinson, and Nevitt Sanford observed a close connection between the holding of extremely conservative, system-justifying values and authoritarian tendencies. They took a multi-methods approach, conducting structured interviews and administering questionnaires and projective tests to countless samples of American adults. Among other things, they observed that people who endorsed statements like “America may not be perfect, but the American Way has brought us about as close as human beings can get to a perfect society” were also more likely to express prejudice, anti-Semitism, and anti-democratic sentiments.

Ever since the Democratic Party first took a strong leadership role on the issue of civil rights for African Americans in the 1960s, authoritarian tendencies have consistently predicted support for Republican presidential candidates. 

Whatever the proximal psychological causes, we are bearing witness—all over the world—to the rebirth of extreme right-wing movements that thrive under conditions of anxiety. These movements promise a return to “traditional” (often religious) values, a curtailing of reproductive and other rights of women (as well as sexual minorities), and a revival of nationalistic (often ethnic) pride and the “restoration” of national boundaries, along with a dismantling of the “administrative” welfare state and the imposition of illiberal reforms and vindictive immigration policies. 

It is worth recalling that Adorno and his colleagues identified nine characteristics of the authoritarian syndrome : 

(1) aggression against those who deviate from “the norm,”  

(2) submission to idealized moral authorities,  

(3) uncritical acceptance of conventional values,  

(4) mental rigidity and a proclivity to engage in stereotypical thinking, 

(5) a preoccupation with toughness and power, 

(6) exaggerated sexual concerns,  

(7) a reluctance to engage in introspection,  

(8) a tendency to project undesirable traits onto others, and  

(9) destructiveness and cynicism about human nature. 

These characteristics provide an uncanny description of Drumph. 

It  is as if he has been doing authoritarianism by the book. 

And that is my point.

We are not dealing with a Man.

We are dealing with something far more sinister.

So forget Drumph and his acolytes.

And remember Robert Frost’s admonition that “A liberal is a man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel.” Even though this is not a quarrel. It is a struggle.

And some would argue that Liberals would be better off “owning” the struggle in this historical moment. That rather than playing out our own internal contradictions, we should try to become as fully aware of them as possible.  

But I suggest we take their stage masks off, turn on the house lights, and see clearly their elaborate but thread-bare costumes. We look behind this curtain of lies.

Those who make up the current regime are a cast of thousands in the presentation of a civil drama that intends to distract and even mesmerize those who would watch it as anything other than a sick play which moves from one scene to the next so that your energy is spent hating the characters instead of removing the producers and their hired directors and light men. 

For there is wealth behind every line as the audience follows the plot and the characters perform.

The recent return to space by the voyagers on Artemus can remind us that we all live on our Earthship.

For our Conundrum is our Salvation.

And the Obstacle is the Path. 

 

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A New Year

 

 

As the New Year headed our way, my little family made its way to Europe, specifically, the Iberian Peninsula.   Over the years, we have spent the New Year all over the place.  We have done the big cities, NYC, Mexico City, San Francisco, LA/Las Vegas, Austin, Buenos Aires, Paris, London, and now Madrid. And we have done the smallest hole in the walls from "Bernies" in Port Aransas, Texas to Real de Catorce, Mexico.  

In Catorce, we used to celebrate the New Year with 50 or 60 international friends from all over the Globe.

After dinner in El Real, we would go to the top of the Hotel and experience the greatest, most dangerous fireworks extravanganza at close range.  The six inch  firework mortars would suck the air from around you as everyone on that roof realized that this unregulated display was not only top notch, it was also a 7 or 8 on the Peligroso scale.  The finale was a Gyro-Gearloose contraption made of bamboo by an aging  Matehualan craftsman down in the valley.  It would light up and spin and slowly but surely ignite all of its arms and appendages,  spraying rivers of sparks in every direction, and then all of a sudden, the very top crown would ignite, start spinning at high speed, and then lift off into the heavens to the screams of delight from the equally lit crowd.

We would find it smoldering on someones concrete roof in due time. 

But before we made it to Madrid, we spent 4 days in Lisbon. The last time I was in Lisbon, it seemed a little sleepy but well maintained.  Perhaps the most picturesque city in Western Europe, it has grown to become a destination for tourists of all stripes.  The restaurants are many, the Hotels are modernized, and with the shops and views from the hills of Barrio Alto and the history of the Castle of St George and Alfama on the opposing hill to the north, the historic old town is nicely knitted into the larger metro area. 

Just south of Alfama is the back road up to the Castle.  On the way up is a great Brunch place called Dear Breakfast.  Up the hill a little further is the Cathedral of Lisbon and across the street is the Museum of Resistance and Freedom.

It was there that we were reminded of the recent history of Portugal during its fascist period beginning before World War II.  

Portugal's history of repression, particularly under the

Estado Novo (New State) dictatorship (1933-1974) led by António de Oliveira Salazar, was characterized by strict censorship, pervasive secret police (PIDE/DGS) surveillance, torture, imprisonment of dissidents (like at Aljube prison), suppression of free speech, and control over media and political life to maintain colonial power and traditional values. 

This authoritarian rule, a continuation of earlier military dictatorships, ended with the bloodless Carnation Revolution in 1974, which ushered in democracy. 

The Museum WAS Aljube prison.  And many of the inhuman cells were still intact.  The place gave me the eeby-jeebies. The fact that it was just a few yards from the Cathedral of Lisbon was not just a brutal juxtaposition, 

It is a metaphor of the unholy alliance of church and state. 

The Portuguese people have a long history of courage and exploration.  They were the first to navigate the seas beyond the safety of visual reference.  Thus we have Brazil.

Portuguese maritime explorations resulted in numerous territories and maritime routes recorded by the Portuguese on journeys during the 15th and 16th centuries. Portuguese sailors were at the vanguard of European exploration, chronicling and mapping the coasts of Africa and Asia, then known as the East Indies, Canada and Brazil (the West Indies), in what became known as the Age of Discovery. 

And their technology was advanced:

Portuguese nautical science evolved from the successive expeditions and experience of the Portuguese pilots. It led to a fairly rapid evolution, creating an elite of astronomers, navigators, mathematicians and cartographers. Among them stood Pedro Nunes with studies on how to determine latitude by the stars, and João de Castro, who made important observations of magnetic declination over the entire route around Africa.  

Today Portugal and Lisbon specifically is a model of urban design and commitment to that 500 year history of exploration.

But like the US, Western Europe is facing the large movements of peoples as climate change and a new age of political repression collide.  The Trump administration has claimed that around 140,000 people had been deported as of April 2025, and recent figures are closer to 600,000.

And, the number of people in immigration detention in the US has hit an all-time high according to data published by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement  (ICE).  The data, which comes out every two weeks, shows that as of December 2025, ICE held more than 68,400 people.

And as in the US, the flow of peoples across nation states is also moving those who are seeing their streets and towns change in complexion rightward.

And that explains Drumph.

I'm reading Bruno Latour's book, Down to Earth on climate and politics. In it, he says, "By pulling out of the Paris Accord, Drumph explicitly triggered, if not a world war, at least a war over what constitutes the theatre of operations. 

We Americans don't belong to the same Earth as you.  

Yours may be threatened; ours won't be" 

We made our way to Madrid for our New Year's Eve celebration in a place called Ginger.  

We all wore our funny hats and masks, and blew our little horns. 

For a New Year. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The Valley of the Sun

 

We  didn't spend the New Year this year in the mountains of Catorce, or in DF, or in Vegas, or on Times Square, or in London or Paris. This year we were in the Valley of the Sun. And it was delightful.  The weather was just about perfect and our accommodations were the best.  For some reason, my little family decided months ago not to get too far away this year and instead bring in the New Year with my cousin and his family of three boys, two wives, and 2 grandchildren in his large sprawling old adobe home in the center of Phoenix.

We stayed in his large guest house below his personal office. And it was a fortunate thing that we didn't make big plans this year, for there was a powerful event just over the horizon.

Beginning on Thanksgiving Day, where we were planning for 14 family members, the dark shadow of uncertainty fell on us all as my partner's  87 year old mother had a medical emergency in the back bedroom. 

As usual, the Fire Department beat EMS to our tree covered home on Austin's Shoal Creek.  In fact, two firetrucks, two EMS vehicles, and two police vehicles arrived.  And remarkably, they managed to get a pulse, get her breathing though intubation, and rush her to the emergency room just 2 miles away. I stayed at home while my partner and her brother followed the ambulance.

Within a few hours, we received news that she was alive, stabilized, and in intensive care. That evening we had a somber but loving thanksgiving dinner almost as if nothing had changed.  Over the days that followed, Mamo was able to come off the respirator, and begin to recover from the event on Thanksgiving Day.  For almost three weeks, she had good days and bad days and often spoke with clarity on the good days.  But she was needing more and more help breathing from the non invasive respirator.

By the 15th of December, it was decided to move her to Christopher House. There she spent her  last days with all of her 7 children and their partners, 5 of her grand children, and Uncle Herb from Seattle. He was the younger brother of Jerry, her beloved first husband. Always a sports fan, Mary watched her Boise State Broncos play UCLA as she enjoyed her last supper with those she loved.  They sang songs and Uncle Herb sang the Lord's Prayer. Mary even managed to sing for a moment.

Early on the 17th, she breathed her last breath with her oldest daughter, her third son, and his daughter right there with her.  It was a passing of love and beauty.

With Mary's passing, we tried to get Christmas going.  We strung the house lights, and we got our Christmas tree up.  But the lights would not work and it was too late to buy more.  We finished the tree with the only box of lights we could find from our local CVS.  But the tree wasn't just dim, it was somber.

And that was as it should be.

We spent Christmas with good friends at the Four Seasons.  Cousin Lisa flew in from Seattle. We got the new rug installed in the Breezeway. We lit the fireplaces on both sides of our inside/outside house living space.  It was good weather, but it was somber.

Two days after Christmas day, we made our way to the Valley of the Sun.

There we played pickle ball on the flashy Phoenix Country Club courts. We played croquet on my cousins super flat yard with golf course quality grass. But for culture, I had insisted that we go up the mountain to see Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin West.

The excursion was well worth the time invested.  Wright's desert laboratory is now a world heritage site. It had been 30 years since I had visited it in my forties.  During that time, I was building my City of the Future model called Argonon and I was reviewing the city plans of many of our great architects.

But I didn't really get Taliesin West, even though I had used his low ceilings running into a fireplace design in a recent renovation and I was pleased with the result. This time, Taliesin was different.  It's modern design at almost 100 years old is striking. And remember, this was his winter home, in Summer he returned to Taliesin in Wisconsin.

Looking from the South West corner of the site, you can see the double 345 KVA lines the power company put right in front of his magnificent view. It was these lines that prompted the 90 year old Wright to tell the city council that if they did this, he would move from Phoenix.  His partner Olgivanna followed up telling them they were not about to move.

When Frank passed in 1959, he had just seen his last creation come to life.  The Guggenheim Museum had just opened.

But the passing of Frank Lloyd Wright and of Mary McMaster is not the story.

The story is the legacy they left us.

As we all live in the Valley of the Sun.

 

 

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The Hero's Journey

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A longtime friend of mine posted a piece that touched me recently.  It's a different view of the Hero. In narratology and comparative mythology, the hero's journey, or the monomyth, is the common template of stories that involve a hero who goes on an adventure, is victorious in a decisive crisis, and comes home changed or transformed.

Earlier figures had proposed similar concepts, including psychoanalyst Otto Rank and amateur anthropologist Lord Raglan.^[1] Eventually, hero myth pattern studies were popularized by Joseph Campbell, who was influenced by Carl Jung's analytical psychology. Campbell used the monomyth to analyze and compare religions. In his famous book The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949), he describes the narrative pattern as follows:

A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.

Possibly because I think of myself as a hero, and because of a recent event in which two colleagues managed to conduct a coup d etat on a project that I founded, funded, and managed for six years, these words reached out like they might not have before.

"People constantly throw around the term 'Hero’s Journey' without having any idea what it really means. Everyone from CEOs to wellness-influencers thinks the Hero’s Journey means facing your fears, slaying a dragon, and gaining 25k followers on Instagram. 

 

But that’s not the real hero’s journey.

 

In the real hero’s journey, the dragon slays YOU. 

 

Much to your surprise, you couldn’t make that marriage work. Much to your surprise, you turned forty with no kids, no house, and no prospects. Much to your surprise, the world didn’t want the gifts you proudly offered it.

 

If you are foolish, this is where you will abort the journey and start another, and another, abusing your heart over and over for the brief illusion of winning. 

 

But if you are wise, you will let yourself be shattered, and return to the village, humbled, but with a newfound sense that you don’t have to identify with the part of you that needs to win, needs to be recognized, needs to know. 

 

This is where your transcendent life begins.

 

So embrace humility in everything. Life isn’t out to get you, nor are your struggles your fault. 

 

Every defeat is just an angel, tugging at your sleeve, telling you that you don’t have to keep banging your head against the wall. 

 

Leave that striver there, trapped in his lonely ambitions. Just walk away, and life in its vastness will embrace you. "   - Paul Weinfield

 

The friend who posted this was closely involved in our days at Armadillo and Space City Video.  So thank you Paula Helene and wow, you would have so loved our most recent Hero with a Thousand Faces adventure to Vegas to see U2 at the Sphere

 

 

 . 

 

 

 The Sphere is exactly what it is cracked up to be.

 

It is an entirely new form of entertainment venue.

 

I'm waiting for a politician to get a hold of it.

 

And it can't be the orange menace. 

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Children of the Wind

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We spent the New Year in Mexico this year.  It was the first time we had been to our home in Real de Catorce in 3 1/2 years.  On New Years Eve, we ate dinner up the hill from our house with a grand view of the well lit Pueblo some 9,000 feet in the Sierra Catorce mountains.  For the first time since I talked the local priest into letting me light the church a decade ago, the 200 year old cathedral that silver built was lit up for the holidays.

The town was ablaze.

After dinner, when we returned to our home on the zocolo below, we could see the stage where the evening's festivities were just getting into the spirit of the coming New Year.  The bands were loud, but actually pretty good which is not always the case. A few friends joined us and we welcomed the New Year in relative peace and warmth.

On New Year's day, we got up early and started the jalepeno frijoles that have become a tradition replacing the black eyed peas of the Southern portion of Mexico's bully brother to the north.  Although we had intended in staying almost 2 weeks in this magical high mountain pueblo, we decided to head south to San Miguel and the slightly lower elevations of the Mexican highlands.

I used to look at San Miguel with some disdain.  Mostly because there were so many redneck Texans there who not only had no intention of learning Spanish, they held the locals responsible for understanding their mangled Spanish.  That has changed in the last decade.  Many of those types have returned to Texas and have instead been replaced with Mexicans from D F.  Those Americans that are replacing the Texans are from high tech centers in the Bay Area.  It's a much better environment, and we now go to San Miguel to see our lawyer, artists, and business friends that we know there. The food is good and although expensive, the accommodations are first rate.

We rented a nice home just west of the Cathedral on  Los Arboles street just off of Canal. It was private and quiet and nice.  We have another place that we like a lot  just yards away from the very center of town. It's called Cinco Flores and with its location on the upper side of Aldama, its a gem.

We spent the last 2 days in Mexico in San Luis Potosi which is probably the biggest city in Mexico that you've never heard about.  It's now about 1.5 million inhabitants, and the southwest side of town is beginning to have a very developed look of mid rise structures than grow out of the low sloped mountain that runs to the south.  San Luis is an old city and was part of the early highland culture that fought the Spanish Conquistadores to a stand off over 70 years in the 1500's.

So, here is the history of a war you never heard of.  This from Wikipedia

The Chichimecas were nomadic and semi-nomadic people who occupied the large desert basin stretching from present day Saltillo and Durango in the north to Querétaro and Guadalajara in the south. Within this area of about 160,000 square kilometres (62,000 sq mi), the Chichimecas lived primarily by hunting and gathering, especially mesquite beans, the edible parts of the agave plants, and the fruit (tunas) and leaves of cactus. In favored areas some of the Chichimeca grew corn and other crops. 

Chichimeca population is hard to estimate, although based on the average density of nomadic cultures they probably numbered 30,000 to 60,000.^[5] The Chichimecas lived in rancherias of crude shelters or natural shelters such as caves, frequently moving from one area to another to take advantage of seasonal foods and hunting. The Chichimeca referred to themselves as "Children of the Wind", living religiously from the natural land. 

The characteristics most noted about them by the Spanish was that both women and men wore little clothing, grew their hair long, and painted and tattooed their bodies. They were often accused of cannibalism, although this accusation has been disputed, due to the Spanish attempt to smear natives as savages in order to justify forced conversion to Catholicism by Spain during the Mexican Inquisition.^[6]

The Chichimecas Confederation consisted of four main nations: Guachichiles, Pames, Guamares, and Zacatecos. These nations had decentralized governments, and were more of independent states.^[7] Due to decentralized political unity, their territories overlapped and other Chichimecs joined one or another in raids.

The Guachichiles' territory centered on the area around what would become the city of San Luis Potosí. They seem to have been the most numerous of the four ethnic groups and the de facto leaders of the Chichimecas. Their name meant "Red Colored Hair" from a pigment that they also applied to their skin and clothing. Living in close proximity to the silver road between Querétaro and Zacatecas, they were the most feared of the native raiders.

The nomadic culture of the Chichimecas made it difficult for the Spanish to defeat them. The bow was their principal weapon and one experienced observer said the Zacatecos were "the best archers in the world." Their bows were short, usually less than four feet long, their arrows were long and thin and made of reed and tipped with obsidian, volcanic rock sharper than a modern-day razor. Despite the fragility of the obsidian arrows they had excellent penetrating qualities, even against Spanish armor which was de rigueur for soldiers fighting the Chichimeca. 

As the war continued unabated, it became clear that the Spanish policy of a war of fire and blood had failed. The royal treasury was being emptied by the demands of the war. Churchmen and others who had initially supported the war of fire and blood now questioned the policy. 

In 1574, the Dominicans, contrary to the Augustinians and Franciscans, declared that the Chichimeca War was unjust and caused by Spanish aggression.^[15] Thus, to end the conflict, the Spanish began to change public policy to purchase peace from the Chichimeca and assimilate with them.  

The Children of the Wind were not defeated and their spirit in the Mexican Highlands lives on today.

And now I know what a true Zacatero is. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The Future We Want

Thanks to Mayor Adler and his appointment of me to be a Special Envoy for the City, Dr. D and I found ourselves on a 777 headed for Paris in early October.  We were ultimately headed for Copenhagen which would be the site of the World Mayor's Summit, a C 40 event dealing with climate change.

We decided to spend several days in Paris, mostly to see my pal Jim Haynes.  Jim has been my anchor in Paris for over 30 years ever since he spent the night at one of my apartments in Austin in the late 80s while he was on a book tour.

Jim Haynes is the guy in Paris who has a Sunday night dinner at his house in the 14th arr. every Sunday, and he has been doing that for decades.  This from Wikipedia :

In 1966 Haynes relocated to London in the middle of the "swinging 60s". He became deeply involved in the underground cultural scene, co-founding the alternative paper International Times, known as "I.T.", together with Barry Miles, John Hopkins, and others.^[1]

In September 1967 Haynes co-founded the Drury Lane Arts Lab space for mixed-media; it closed in late 1969. That year he co-launched with William Levy, Germaine Greer and Heathcote Williams Suck newspaper in Amsterdam to promote sexual freedom; it was also distributed in the United Kingdom. The first issue contained a long and unrestrainedly descriptive erotic poem attributed to W. H. Auden and an explicit photo of Germaine Greer.

In 1968 he co-founded Videoheads with Jack Henry Moore in London.

In 1969 Haynes moved to Paris, where he taught Media Studies and Sexual Politics for 30 years at the University of Paris. He frequently held open house dinner parties on Sundays in Paris, and published an irregular newsletter about his life and times. In addition he has written an autobiographical memoir, titled Thanks for Coming."

We were pleased to learn that Jim was still holding his dinners but now just the first Sunday of the month.  We had learned from other mutual friends who had just come back from Paris that Jim had a serious health event  that had knocked him off his feet for several months, but that he was on the mend.  (He was born in 1933)

We elected to take the Uber deluxe down to his place in Alesia.  It's hard for me to say something nice about Uber, but in this case it is easy.  They were fast, efficient, and reasonable.

Jim is such a good and genuine human being.  He loves people.  And he has touched perhaps a half a million lives in his soon to be 86 years. His autobiography is worth the read.  And the documentary of his life entitled Meeting Jim  should soon see distribution.

In one of my favorite escapades, Jim once developed and printed up an Earth Passport.

As he said, "I got into a little trouble for that"





















By Tuesday, we were on our way to Copenhagen for the Summit.  We arrived a few days early so we could see and walk the city.  I had been told that the city employed bicycle transportation extensively but you have to see it to believe it.  Fully 50% of all trips are made on bicycles of every stripe. Whether it is raining, you have children, or you are an executive, Copenhagen loves their bikes.

At the C 40 Summit, the production values were really strong.  Bloomberg does it right.  The curved screen behind the speakers was at least 100 feet wide.  It was a strong backdrop for great speeches from Anne Hidalgo, the Mayor of Paris, from Eric Garcetti, the Mayor of LA, for Al Gore, for the Secretary General of the UN, for the Mayor of Rome, and for the Mayors from every continent.

When I bumped into one Mayor, I asked how big is Karachi?  "Guess?" he said.  "A lot!" I responded.

He responded 30,000,000.  I said if he was a state in the US he would be the 2nd most populous.

He liked that.

The closing speech was delivered  by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and it was a hum-dinger.  Inside the naturally lit, tree covered conference hall, once empty seats were now taken.  She spoke passionately of a Global New Green Deal.  The standing ovation she received agreed.  And the new Chairman of C40, Eric Garcetti is on board with that direction.























The 100 Mayors attending represented 25% of World production and population.  Inside that Summit, the future we want not only seemed possible, it became an imminent reality.  For two days I lived in a bubble of hope that we just don't get to feel in the US.

Now that bubble must harden into a crystal ball of prophesies and actions that will transform the entirety of our little blue ball so it will once again become a suitable habitat for all of life.

The Future we Want,

Must become the Future we Demand.

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Prosperity and Power

We generally take a family trip at the end of the year and this year we decided to spend time in Mexico City.  Last year, we managed to choose New York City just in time for the arctic air blast that made Times Square colder than a meat locker.

The weather in Mexico City or DF (DeEffy) as they call it,  is pretty much perfect during the holidays.  Every day was like LA; cool in the evenings and not hot during the day.  (middle 70s)  And during the holidays, Mexico City's pollution is greatly diminished which is important, because there's 20 something million people in the greater DF area.

Here is the blurb on the city:

Mexico City is the densely populated, high-altitude capital of Mexico. It's known for its Templo Mayor (a 13th-century Aztec temple), the baroque Catedral Metropolitana de México of the Spanish conquistadors and the Palacio Nacional, which houses historic murals by Diego Rivera. All of these are situated in and around the Plaza de la Constitución, the massive main square also known as the Zócalo.

Today, the city, now abbreviated as CDMX, is the most populous city in North America and is one of the most important cultural and financial centres in the Americas.^[15] It is located in the Valley of Mexico (Valle de México), a large valley in the high plateaus in the center of Mexico, at an altitude of 2,240 meters (7,350 ft). The city has 16 boroughs.  (wikipedia)

We stayed in a swanky Mexico Hotel on the Paseo de la Reforma, the main street of Mexico.  The Reforma is a grand European style street with 10 lanes of traffic, bicycle lanes, and shaded pedestrian walkways that goes from the center of the city from the huge (larger than Central Park) Chapultepec Park to the historic   Zocolo out to the NE part of town.  It's about 10 miles long.

It is lined with 50 to 70 story towers on its west side close to the park where we stayed.  From our room, we could see the Fountain of the Archer Goddess Diana and the huge Angel of the Independence monument a few blocks away.  Like in Paris, the street is manicured and covered in flowers and groundcover.  It's not the Champs-Elysees, but it's quite impressive.

And it's more than a little odd to come back from this sophisticated foodie city to  our American national conversation about building a wall to protect ourselves from a culture that has thousands of years of history.  Mexico City dwellers must find that conversation deeply disturbing if not a bit culturally insane.

No visit to CDMX is complete without a day in the park.  The anthropology museum is splendid and the 2  art museums are worth it.

It is the most visited museum in Mexico. Located in the area between Paseo de la Reforma and Mahatma Gandhi Street within Chapultepec Park, it contains significant archaeological and anthropological artifacts from Mexico's pre-Columbian heritage, such as the Stone of the Sun (or the Aztec calendar stone) and the Aztec Xochipilli statue.

One thing I got from this trip is that the calendar stone is not a calendar, it is a sacrificial altar where human hearts were cut out to appease the gods.

I also got a sense of their history and how they moved from agriculture to a war society.  It was this society that the Conquistadors first encountered.  They were not helpless farmers, they were sophisticated overlords of a civilization with roots as old as the Egyptians.

Like all conquerors, the Europeans built their temple right on top of the Templo Mayor, the pyramid temple in the very center of the original city that was built on an island in the original lake that existed in this valley.

Watching the feathered dancers and shamans in the square around the European Cathedral, it's hard not to imagine that they consider this time of the Europeans to just be a 500 year old blip in their 3 thousand year history.

The two smaller temples at the top of the Templo Mayor were dedicated to the God of Rain and the God of War.  Prosperity and Power were their Gods...

Much like their dangerous neighbors to the north.

Perhaps they should build that Wall.

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Transportation Transformation

Sometimes, in the spirit of blogging about things that are bigger than the parts, I seem to forget to simply share what I'm doing in my own world and life.  When I blogged everyday 14 years ago, it was not only easy but essential to talk about my projects.  With my reduced blogging schedule over the last 5 years, a lot of that has gone by the wayside.

But last night, as my mind was rolling like a bowling ball down an Olympic bobsled course, I realized that my current project deserves a little attention.

I've been working on it steadily since early last fall and it's coming together.

Last fall at the TREIA conference in Georgetown when Al Gore spoke, I invited several dozen folks to dinner.  At that dinner , we agreed to meet before the end of the year to kick off the new project.

My November letter said:

Dear Colleague:

Several months ago,  (OK it's been almost a year) it occurred to me that the time for a state wide organization to promote electric transportation is just about here.

With announcements coming from existing car manufacturers of their intentions to move their product lines toward electric drive,  and with whole nation states like China, India, and France announcing timetables to end combustion engines within their boundaries and cities, the message is not just on the wall, it's on the jumbo-tron.

In the mid-eighties, a group of us started the Texas Renewable Energy Industries Association.  We knew back then that the time for Renewables was on the horizon. Today we have over 20 GWs of Renewable Energy  in Texas alone!  And it will soon be approaching 30 GWs.

And now it's time to begin to use that energy in our transportation sector.

In late October, I hosted a vision dinner in Georgetown to  introduce TxETRA  at the Al Gore TREIA conference.  About 40 folks attended. And from that meeting, about a dozen folks showed interest in making this happen.  I have also chatted with several dozen industry folks who also want to help make this a reality.  So, I am enclosing a very basic Power Point of the concept, our constituency, and our mission.

I have reserved TxETRA as an org, net, and tech. And if we don't like it, we can change it.

I am proposing that we schedule a preliminary organizational lunch meeting at the Austin Club in early December with a goal to convene the first organization meeting in early February.

You can help by sending me your suggestions for other groups and individuals we will need to make this happen.

Have a good turkey day

Cordially,

MJO

We met in December and created an interim board of directors.  With that board, we built up a good mailing list and began to meet over the last three months.  In the meantime, I got the corporate documents together and put together the TxETRA web site,

Then, in February, we made contact with a guy named Phil Jones.  He was a utility commissioner from the state of Washington and for a while was the president of  NARUC, a national organization for utility commissioners.  Interestingly, he was doing the same thing we were doing, but at the National level.

Also during this time, Tom Smith, the 31 year veteran executive director of Public Citizen asked if he could become the interim executive director.  Smitty and I have worked together for years, so this was not just music to my ears, it was a symphony.

Then we brought in Janis Bookman, the Earthday lady in Austin, who has a lot of contacts and expertise.

Now we are inviting folks to the Founding Meeting and Reception on April 6th at the Austin Club.

We have put together a board consisting of utility execs, transportation professionals, car and truck manufacturers, transmission companies, and academic heavy weights for UT and Texas A and M.  And thanks to Smitty we have folks who can represent the important equity issues that must be considered.

And thanks to a unique mixture of corporate, private, and foundation commitments, we will have the funding to hire a communication director.

We're hoping for a good crowd at the Austin Club.

Mayor Adler is coming and so is County Commissioner Brigid Shea.

And our guest speaker will be Phil Jones.

Sometimes things come together.

And the Texas Electric Transportation Resources Alliance is almost a thing.

And it needs to be.

Henry Ford built 500 cars in 1905.

He built 500,000 in 1915.

Elon Musk is on the same trajectory.

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