SWCAMBORNE

There is new evidence that the Arabs are continuing to infiltrate the United States:

Everybody knows about the danger of Al Qaeda.

Now it appears that cells are appearing in the southern USA

WMD circa 1863 

Want proof think about: Al Abama

It seems apparent to me.

The title of this entry reminds me of the grammar rule “avoid alliteration always.”

Around the country new houses are wrapped in Tyvek before they a finished.  Dupont the brands owner has convinced builder, code writers and the public that Tyvek will make houses more weather proof.  It sounds true.

a new home near Santa Fe

Taken with my iphone 

Here in the southwest almost all houses are colored adobe brown when they are finished.  But for the few months during construction that they are in clad in Tyvek they are stark white.

The standard Santa Fe house color 

Why can’t Dupont make an adobe colored Tyvek?  This might be an opportunity for the maker of a competitive house wrap product to gain market share.

“The summit is not the only place on the mountain.”

Drew Leeman

Director NOLS

as quoted in Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales

It wasn’t many years ago that if you wanted a drink of water in public it was free at a drinking fountain. Now a store will sell you a bottle of water for a $1.00 and most of the fountains are gone.

A cause for concern?

What happened? Briefly it was the convergence of a few separate issues:

• It was chic for those who could afford it to drink Evian (spelled backwards is naive!)
• Immigrants from countries with bad public water systems demanded bottled water.
• The worrying class started being concerned about the quality of tap water.

Within a decade most of the public water fountains were gone and we were all paying for something that used to be almost free.

A very old drinking fountain in Taos

Now the same worrying class whose motto is “I worry, therefore I am (better than you)” are concerned about all of the plastic bottles that they helped to cause. This article in National Geographic Traveler is an example.

We were laughing about this worrying class dilemma one night at dinner with Dahlia and Joel G and Rebecca and came up with a brilliant solution.

The companies who sell home water filtration systems, Brita, Pur and others could sell branded fountains to cities along with contracts to change the filters regularly. With this product everybody benefits: the environment because there are many less plastic bottles, the cities because they don’t have to clean up all of the bottles and they can be green and the public because they don’t have to buy expensive bottled water.

The way for Brita etal to start this sort of program would be to choose a few already green cities (Pasadena, Seattle, Madison for example) and give them some fountains to start the program. With a good public relations firm they wouldn’t even have to advertise.  It would catch on quickly and they would have a new revenue stream.
Another good idea free from “Mr B”

Do you know what you get when you cross Texas and California?

Santa Fe 

Missy, the dog, came to Santa Fe with us and so we take her places. Some of the places are not very dog friendly including some restaurant patios.

But at Counter Culture they accommodate nice dogs and have a sign about it:

Counter Culture has very nice sandwiches, matches and a generally nice laid back attitude. It is highly recommended with or without a dog.

In Pasadena where we have a dog door in our house we don’t try to take Missy places other than on walks.  My sample size is small and not fair so I can’t really judge, but of course I will.  For a supposedly casual town, Santa Fe  doesn’t seem to be very dog friendly.

Why is the Boston baseball team called the Red Sox?

Based on their uniforms in the World Series they seem to be the Red Sleeves.

From what I can see none of them are wearing red socks but they are wearing red sleeves.

Go Figure

There has been a long dispute between St Augustine, Florida and Santa Fe, NM about which is the oldest European settlement in what is now the United States. West of the Mississippi we believe that it is Santa Fe and East of it they are convinced that it is St Augustine. Of course, to paraphrase Bill Clinton, it all depends on what “oldest” is. We found this house in Santa Fe that unequivocally claims to be “The Oldest House in the USA”

It sure looks old.

And of course now it is a gift shop with an ATM.  To digress slightly, where in the USA is the oldest ATM?

It seems to me if the Oldest House is in Santa Fe then Santa Fe is the oldest European settled town in the USA.

In Hong Kong we went with our friends Jacky and Malcolm A to see “The Worlds Largest Outdoor Seated Bronze Buddha.” We have made it our Hyperbole Standard.  I’ll post a picture of it someday.

Nurit and I had to fly back to Pasadena on Monday to see Gary D. who is still very ill. The trip meant we had to leave Acequia Madre at 5:45am and wouldn’t be home until midnight and because we were flying Missy, the dog, couldn’t go with us. Nurit googled (new verb) petsitters (new noun) and found NMpetsitters.com

Missy

A few phone calls led us to Sloan Cunningham of Pet Care by Sloan. We hired Sloan over the phone and she turned out to be extremely reliable, she loved animals and in all respects exceeded our expectations. We highly recommend her.

What an amazing world we live in where a need as arcane as “someone to take care of my dog for the day in a new town” can be met via the internet.

As regular readers of my SWCamborne will know for almost two years now I have been working on a documentary film about immigration.  Click here to read my first post about it.  Specifically I wanted to make a film that asked the question: “Is there a basic human right to migrate?”  It has been terrific learning experience.  Technically about how movies are made and intellectually about the immigration issue.

The final product, thanks to Dave Szamet and Brian Ging, is much better than I deserve.  It is so good in fact that we have submitted it to the Sundance Film Festival with a reasonable chance of being selected.

The press release on the submission begins:

Los Angeles, CA (October 1, 2007)—Camborne Productions announced today that the new feature documentary Beyond Borders has been submitted to the Sundance Film Festival. Subtitled “The Debate Over Human Migration,” the film takes a wide-ranging look at the subject of immigration, both from historical and modern perspectives. Prominently featured is the current fight over Mexican immigration in the United States. To read the entire story click here.

To learn more about the film visit its web site:
http://beyondbordersfilm.com/

Or come to a private benefit performance on November 15, 2007:

Be sure to RSVP space is limited

This really is the beginning of an important movement.