#Mountainair #Jubilee Starts July 1

Organizer Barbara Chung invites you to kick off three days of Jubilee at 6 pm Friday July 1 with an evening of competitions to determine best homemade chili, best best poker player and best pie in Mountainair. 

More Jubilee 2011 on Facebook with more to come there and on Mountainair Announcements. Here too but the emphasis will be more on backstory and commentary than recycling announcements and press releases. 

FYI ~ Friday schedule and rules (pdf). An expanded schedule for Saturday July 2 and Sunday July 3 activities is also available at the online Mountainair Event Calendar. 

Dealers too!

Barbara writes...

Friday, July 1 from 6 to 10 PM the local Battle of the Books program in the Mountainair Public Schools is hosting a fundraiser that includes a contest for Best Chile in Mountainair ($100 first prize) and Best Pie in Mountainair ($100 first prize). After judging, entries will be for sale to benefit the schools.  

The main event of the evening, however, is a Texas Hold’em Tournament. The winner will hold the title of Poker King/Queen of Mountainair 2011 in addition to winning a beautiful Navajo sterling and turquoise bolo tie (signed by the artist).  Second prize is a unique Navajo Kachina pendant/pin, also sterling/turquoise. The poker game has an entry fee of $20.  Tickets for the poker game may be purchased at the Shaffer Hotel, Ancient Cities or Alpine Alley. You can also purchase them at the event. Seating, however, is limited and advance purchase is recommended.

We need dealers and players.  If you can shuffle a deck and know what a poker hand looks like, you will be fine dealing—Texas Hold’em isn’t a complicated game (unless you’re trying to win J).  

This coming Wednesday evening, there will be a practice meeting to ensure that everyone is comfortable with the process.  We’ll play a few hands — and no doubt have a few laughs.

Please contact Barbara Chung to help with this important community fundraising effort: 847-2819 or via email at little.sheba@live.com

Submitted by Barbara Chung; proofed and gently edited per standing policy

Cranky Balls

Here I have all manner of whatever to write up and blog, and I'm posting a video. What can I say? It made me smile. Don't be a cranky ball about it.

Crank Balls by Devin Bell from Devin Bell on Vimeo

I'll get to MMAC stuffs, 2011 Firecracker Jubilee plans, Farm & Garden Market, comments on / calls for community calendar and Mountainair Announcements, iCreate and community garden news (besides, those have their own blog and get tweeted)... and sundry peculiarosities. Or not.

art & a poem just for today's arts council meeting

#MMAC General Meeting, 4 pm at #Mountainair's new art center on Broadway

"Musee des Beaux Arts" by W. H. Auden

About suffering they were never wrong,
The old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position: how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

You can read the rest of the poem here, which was inspired by the above painting. (Image: Landscape with the Fall of Icarus composed by Pieter Bruegel via Wikimedia Commons)

The Arizona Wildfires

Life goes on. As we continue with week-end plans ~ music, art openings, meetings, farmers market, community gardens, as yet uncounted yard sales and bake sales about town ~ the Wallow Fire continues to rage in Arizona, heading toward NM, threatening power lines and already affecting air quality, something that coping with COPD forces me to pay attention. We start the day with breathing advisories. Better that though than flames. 

From Inciweb: Wallow Fire Update; Burnout Operations

The following is a guest essay by Robert Stieve, editor-in-chief of Arizona Highways magazine. It first appeared on the magazine’s blog on June 9, 2011

It’s hard to watch the news, but there’s no point in turning off the television. The images are everywhere: Facebook, Flickr, Twitter. Especially Twitter. Of all the mainstream social media, Twitter is the best for breaking news. Coups in Egypt. Earthquakes in Japan. Wildfires in Arizona. The information is essential, but it’s hard to look at the catastrophe that’s unfolding in the White Mountains.

As editor-in-chief of Arizona Highways, I’m often asked about my favorite place in the state. It’s an impossible question, because there are so many places, but when I’m pushed, I usually admit it’s a toss-up between the North Rim of the Grand Canyon and Hannagan Meadow in the White Mountains. Unfortunately, because of the cataclysm known as the Wallow Fire, there’s no longer a debate. It’s hard to imagine there will be anything left of Hannagan Meadow and the surrounding forests by the time the fire is finally put out.

As I write this blog, the blaze, which began on May 29, has already consumed 336,000 acres, and the wind gusts of more than 60 mph are making matters worse. At this point, zero percent of the fire has been contained. Zero percent. The fire is now the second largest in Arizona history, and it’s probably only a matter of time before it surpasses Rodeo-Chediski—two fires, both caused by human negligence, that merged as one.

Continue reading The Arizona Wildfires

from Cool Green Science: The Conservation Blog of The Nature Conservancy

Mountainair Wired: Networking the Community

The title says it all: "Connecting Neighbors, Building Communities, and Raising Voices." For now, just overlook references to neighborhoods far from Mountainair and specific hosting arrangements. Look at what would apply here and that we can use. Consider how Mountainair could use its own version of Neighbors Forums right here and now.

 

View more presentations from Steven Clift

No, I'm not just referring to my own local social media pages that I try to network. All of them and more as needed but networked, connected one to another with no one network, page or organization being the "boss."  Online community networking, by definition, is not a solitary endeavor.

This notion has a lot to do with why I do all this blogging Facebook calendar Twitter email RSS Readers listserv online group stuff. The question keeps coming up, not always kindly and sometimes even from family members. Time to address the question but I'll get into that later after you, dear readers, have had a chance to view this video. Now I'm off to an IRL (in real life) version of one my groups.

Ciao for now