Enjoy a cholla

 

Make that three of them. The first two cholla cacti (Cylindropuntia sp.) were growing in New Mexico’s City of Rocks State Park on October 12th of last year. No extra charge for the bird’s nest.

 

 

Three days later I lay on my mat on the ground at the visitor center for Petroglyph National Monument in Albuquerque so I could incorporate the morning’s cottony clouds into my portrait.

 

 

And so as the sun sets in the west we bid farewell, at least for now,
to posts about our scenic travels in New Mexico and west Texas last October.

 

✪

✪       ✪       ✪

✪

 

I call your attention to a January 6th article in Quillette by Andrew Doyle titled “A Puritanical Assault on the English Language,” with subtitle “Social justice zealots think they can save the world by inventing absurd new ways to describe it.” Here’s how the article begins:

It is a truism that people are often educated out of extreme religious beliefs. With good education comes the ability to think critically, which is the death knell for ideologies that are built on tenuous foundations. The religion of Critical Social Justice has spread at an unprecedented rate, partly because it makes claims to authority in the kind of impenetrable language that discourages the sort of criticism and scrutiny that would see it collapse upon itself. Some would argue that this is one of the reasons why the Catholic Church resisted translating the Bible into the vernacular for so long; those in power are always threatened when the plebeians start thinking for themselves and asking inconvenient questions.

This tactic of deliberately restricting knowledge produces epistemic closure, and is a hallmark of all cults. The elitist lexicon of Critical Social Justice not only provides an effective barrier against criticism and a means to sound informed while saying very little, but also signals membership and discourages engagement from those outside the bubble.

It is inevitable that the principle of freedom of speech should become a casualty when powerful people are obsessed with language and its capacity to shape the world. Revolutionaries of the postmodernist mindset would have us believe that societal change can be actuated through modifications to the language that describes it, which is why Max Horkheimer of the Frankfurt School maintained that it was not possible to conceive of the liberated world in the language of the existing world. As for the new puritans, they have embraced the belief that language is either a tool of oppression or a means to resist it. This not only accounts for their approval of censorship and “hate speech” legislation, but their inability to grasp how the artistic representation of morally objectionable ideas is not the same as an endorsement.

 

You’re welcome to read the full article (at least if it’s not behind a paywall).

 

© 2023 Steven Schwartzman

 

 

 

Looking back at the Sandia Mountains

 

Late in the afternoon on October 15th we drove up to Sandia Crest, which at 10,679 ft. looms large to the northeast of Albuquerque. The previous post showed views from there. The next morning in our hotel’s parking lot I noticed that the view back toward the mountains, now covered with fog and clouds, was dramatic—at least if I could ignore light poles, buildings, billboards, highways, and other trappings of the city. To exclude as much of that as possible, for the top picture I zoomed my telephoto lens to its maximum focal length of 400mm. With a change of scale and locale you might see an ocean wave breaking near the shore. Three-quarters of an hour later and miles further north as we wended our way toward Santa Fe, the land added color to the still-shrouded mountains.

 

  

 

§

§

§

 

Look at this:

 

1    3    5    7    9    11    13    15    17    19    21    23    25    27    29  …

 

If I asked you what it is, you’d say it’s the odd numbers.

(Or if you wanna get fancy, you’d say it’s the positive odd numbers.)

You’ve been seeing these numbers for a long time, ever since you were in elementary school.

Now here’s something you might never have noticed.

 

The “sum” of the first 1 odd number is 1, which is 1 x 1, or 1 squared.

The sum of the first 2 odd numbers is 1 + 3, or 4, which is 2 x 2, or 2 squared.

The sum of the first 3 odd numbers is 1 + 3 + 5, or 9, which is 3 x 3, or 3 squared.

The sum of the first 4 odd numbers is 1 + 3 + 5 + 7, or 16, which is 4 x 4, or 4 squared.

The sum of the first 5 odd numbers is 1 + 3 + 5 + 7 + 9, or 25, which is 5 x 5, or 5 squared.

The sum of the first 6 odd numbers is 1 + 3 + 5 + 7 + 9 + 11, or 36, which is 6 x 6, or 6 squared.

The sum of the first 7 odd numbers is 1 + 3 + 5 + 7 + 9 + 11 + 13, or 49, which is 7 x 7, or 7 squared.

 

Now if I skipped ahead 93 lines and asked you what the sum of the first 100 odd numbers is, you wouldn’t have to do any adding at all. You’d chime right in and say with verve and élan that the sum of the first 100 odd numbers is 100 x 100, or 10,000.*

  

If you’d like a nifty visual explanation for why the sum of
the first however many odd numbers is always a square, here it is:

 

 

But if you’d also like an explanation of where the word nifty came from, you’re outta luck: no one knows.

 

* One day in the early 1970s I was in a supermarket in my home town of Franklin Square, New York. As I walked down an aisle in that large store I passed a woman who was telling her young daughter that ten times ten is a hundred and a hundred times a hundred is a thousand. Why she was saying that, I don’t know; why I didn’t intervene and correct her I also don’t know. Evidence points more to politeness than a lack of boldness. That’s because in the same supermarket minutes later when I heard two women talking about pressure cookers, with each saying they had one but didn’t use it, I approached them and asked if I could have those pressure cookers that they didn’t use. I ended up several days later with two pressure cookers, one of which, a fancy stainless steel model with a copper bottom, had been a wedding present and was essentially brand new. I used it for decades until finally part of the handle came loose and the rubber gasket no longer sealed properly, and replacement parts were no longer available for such an old pressure cooker.

 

© 2022 Steven Schwartzman

 

 

 

Finally first fall foliage

 

Late in the afternoon on October 15th, hoping for a good sunset, we drove up to Sandia Crest, which at 10,679 ft. looms over Albuquerque to its southwest. As we climbed into high altitudes we began to see quaking aspen trees (Populus tremuloides) with their leaves turned yellow. Unfortunately those trees were in full shade, but even if they’d been better illuminated, the road didn’t offer safe places to pull over near them. Up we went to the top, and finally I found one aspen with sunlight on it. Whether the trees with yellow leaves that I could see lower down from that sunlit perch were also aspens, I don’t know.

 

  

We didn’t have to wait long for the sun to set:

 

   

Of the 27 posts so far showing scenes from our New Mexico trip, this is the first one dealing with a place we’d previously visited. The goal was to see new spots, and new spots aplenty did we see.

 

© 2022 Steven Schwartzman

 

 

 

From Apache plume to plumy clouds

  

On October 15th in a garden outside the Albuquerque Museum I spent time photographing native plants. Among those I photographed was Apache plume, Fallugia paradoxa, which I couldn’t resist playing a flower of off* in a minimalistically** appealing way against some wispy clouds that intrigued me, as you see above.

 

 

Over a span of about half an hour I also couldn’t resist portraying
some of the wispy clouds in their own right as they shifted shapes.

 

 

* Few native English speakers realize that off and of were originally the stressed and unstressed form, respectively, of the same word. Speakers of foreign languages who are learning English have to be taught which form to use when.

* * The sesquipedalian adverb minimalistically doesn’t practice what it preaches.

 

© 2022 Steven Schwartzman

 

 

 

Apache plume in Albuquerque

 

I enjoyed looking at the historical paintings of New Mexico in the Albuquerque Museum on October 15th, but when I arrived and noticed a bunch of native plants in a garden outside, I spent the better part of an hour there before viewing the museum’s exhibits. Among the native plants I photographed was Apache plume, which I get to see only when I travel to far west Texas or further west. Botanists classify this member of the rose family as Fallugia paradoxa, the only species in its genus. When I first glimpsed the plant years ago, its fluffy stage made me think I was looking at some kind of Clematis. The top picture shows the resemblance.

 

 

The flowers are white, but as the one above began to shrivel and produce the characteristic plumes, one petal was turning a rich red. I scrolled through several hundred pictures online and didn’t see an Apache plume flower with a red area like this one. Maybe the red is typical and people just tend not to put up photographs of shriveling flowers. On the other hand, I saw two flowers with a petal turning red, so maybe it’s common.

 

 

In any case, the Apache plume flowers attracted a slew of insects, mostly ants, but also
this syrphid fly, which is apparently Paragus haemorrhous (thanks, bugguide.net).

 

© 2022 Steven Schwartzman

 

 

 

Gestalt

 

English has borrowed the German word Gestalt, though without the capital letter that German uses on all its nouns (and that English used to). Here’s how the Cambridge Dictionary defines the word as used in English: ‘something such as a structure or experience that, when considered as a whole, has qualities that are more than the total of all its parts.’

 

 

I’ve noticed that each plant species has its gestalt, its characteristic way of looking. As an example, take the sand sagebrush, Artemisia filifolia, that drew my attention at the Boca Negra Canyon section of Albuquerque’s Petroglyph National Monument on October 15th. Once you’ve seen sand sagebrush, you’re not in doubt when you see it again.

  

© 2022 Steven Schwartzman

 

 

 

More petroglyphs

 

During our 2014 western trip we visited several sections of Albuquerque’s Petroglyph National Monument.

 

  

Having already done that, on October 15th of this year
we spent only a short while at one section, Boca Negra Canyon.

     

  

The petroglyphed rock above reminds me of a tombstone.
The boulder at the top sported more glyphs than I noticed on any other single stone at Boca Negra Canyon.

 

  

§

 

Even if, like these petroglyphs, you’re of a certain age and you know that among the greatest songwriters for American shows and movies in the 20th century were Irving Berlin, Rodgers and Hart, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Lerner and Lowe, George and Ira Gershwin, Jerome Kern, and Cole Porter, you may never have heard of the composer Harry Warren. Born Salvatore Antonio Guaragna in 1893, he later teamed up with various lyricists to write many popular songs, especially for movies. “He wrote the music for the first blockbuster film musical, 42nd Street, choreographed by Busby Berkeley, with whom he would collaborate on many musical films.” If you’re familiar with that sort of music, you probably know “I Only Have Eyes for You,” “You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby,” “Jeepers Creepers,” “The Gold Diggers’ Song (We’re in the Money),” “That’s Amore,” “There Will Never Be Another You,” “The More I See You,” “At Last,” “Chattanooga Choo Choo,” “You’ll Never Know,” and “On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe.”

Nevertheles, as William Zinsser noted: “The familiarity of Harry Warren’s songs is matched by the anonymity of the man… he is the invisible man, his career a prime example of the oblivion that cloaked so many writers who cranked out good songs for bad movies.” You’re welcome to read more about Harry Warren.

 

© 2022 Steven Schwartzman

 

 

 

More than petroglyphs and a shade-seeking squirrel

At Petroglyphs National Monument in Albuquerque on June 13th I saw plenty of flowering broom dalea plants (Dalea scoparia). Unlike the squirrel that tried to stay in the shade, these plants thrive in heat and bright sunlight. Here’s a closer look:

© 2017 Steven Schwartzman

More than petroglyphs

I photographed more than petroglyphs at Petroglyph National Monument in Albuquerque on June 13th. Presumably to avoid the heat of the sun, this squirrel kept scrunching itself down into some of the narrow shadows cast by a picnic shelter.

© 2017 Steven Schwartzman

Petroglyph National Monument again

On June 13th we visited Petroglyph National Monument in Albuquerque for the second time, our previous visit having been in the fall of 2014. This time we walked a trail we hadn’t on that first visit, the Cliff Base Trail in Boca Negra Canyon.

The third picture gives you a feel for the desert landscape around there.

© 2017 Steven Schwartzman