My own dislike of the noisy Fourth is magnified by the terror it strikes in poor Lucky Dog. He cowers; he trembles; he slinks from spot to spot, finding no escape. I have held him shaking, his heart pounding; it is hell for him.

When I was a kid, I loved fireworks, of course. I had little interest in snakes and sparklers: I liked flying things, like helicopters and rockets or the spinners one nailed to a tree. I recall wheedling my father into buying a huge assortment of fireworks for an outlandish price. As I got a little older, I bought my own fireworks. There was an afternoon I methodically studied the effect on various objects of single firecrackers extracted from the long chains favored by the Chinese. As you would expect, the effect was delightfully destructive — and in the name of science, yet. I had no sympathy for the neighbor who called to complain and threatened to call the police. Old fart.

But I grew up. While I haven’t put away all childish things, I have turned my back on the destroyers and those who love loudness. I sit here, all the doors and windows closed, the stereo up, the swamper rattling futilely overhead as it sucks in sulfurous smoke, wishing to drown out the noise that so delights others.

A year ago, after a very long period filled with extremely loud, explosive rockets that flew directly over our house, littering our yard, I stormed out into the street and charged my neighbors in a rage, a human Roman candle. For days now, I’ve wondered what to do, where to go, how to escape. Is there anyplace people don’t go mad over pyrotechnics? Dare I take Lucky to the woods or the wilderness. What if there is a passel of patriots where we end up? (I’ve had many camping experiences ruined by gun nuts delighting in noise and destruction. And those were regular days, not even the Day of National Ejaculation.)

The way we celebrate the Fourth is the epitome of Americanism: Short-lived, loud, flashy, expensive, destructive. Underlying it all, the smug certainty that we Americans live in the Shining City Upon the Hill, the Greatest Nation on Earth and of All Time. Add in an aggressive indifference to anyone who doesn’t like the way we do things — We’re Number One, Screw You!

Still, we’re not the only nationalists and chauvinists; it’s as natural to our species as murder. Years ago, in a beautiful campground in Canada, we were awakened by booming music thumping from a stereo as some local began his drunken celebration of Canada Day at 6am. There are loud idiots everywhere. Today is one of their high holy days. peace, mjh

PS: The clearly illegal rocket racket — Operation Slackened Jaw — lasted almost until midnight. The streets and park are littered with debris.

KOB.com - Dozens cited for illegal fireworks

Fire officials show off fireworks confiscated in the past three days

In the last three days, Albuquerque police and fire marshals say they have given out more tickets for illegal fireworks than all five days of enforcement last year.

Since Tuesday, 69 tickets have been written. Additionally, they have confiscated a large amount of fireworks, some of which officials liken more to small explosives.

Fire marshals said they are planning a massive enforcement operation on the night of Independence Day to keep everything safe and legal. They say it will be no small task.

“It appears to be much busier and we anticipate with the fourth being on a Friday night, that it’s gonna be real busy,” an official said.

Firefighters say if you are lighting off your own fireworks, keep it safe and legal.

“If you’re gonna do fireworks, please just do the ones that are sold in the city and not any of the arials or anything because its fun for a while but the whole department is gonna be out tonight,” an official said.

If you are caught with illegal fireworks, you could face a $500 fine and 90 days in jail. If authorities see you launching one, it is punishable with a second ticket of $1000 and up to six months in jail.

KOB.com - Dozens cited for illegal fireworks

Perhaps you felt the latest slap in the face? Much of the past week, a plane has flown over Albuquerque towing an air-borne billboard. Imagine: burning precious fossil fuel while generating noise just to get you to look up and — if you are shockingly impressionable — to run into a local business, even though that business wants to irritate you for their own profit. Let’s go! You’d better hope this ideal is deeply unprofitable, because if somebody goes into that noxious place and says, “gee, I saw your sign and came right in,” we can expect more and more and more of this obnoxious advertising. Oh, well, it does distract us from all those damn helicopters. mjh

(… and the quiet.)

Sigh. I’m not often forced “to take a stand.” I have values and rules to live by, but I rarely get tested or asked to choose something I loathe in order to further something I love. In addition, I believe an open mind requires consideration of many things and a closed mind cannot grow.

I love taking pictures and I am very happy with — even proud of — some photographs I have taken. For me, a great photo is an intersection of art, craft and luck. I have been lucky to be in the right place at the right time a few times.

A noble artist works for himself or herself alone — the world means little. I am not noble. I want my photographs to be seen and — heart on my sleeve — loved. I should withdraw in shame at this point, but I must confess this unseemliness for the larger effect.

Today, two photographers I admire sent me an invitation to a photography competition. I’m not afraid to compete. I have entered other contests, sticking my neck out to bow before judges. In this case, the prize is extraordinary: To be seen all over Albuquerque. Wow.

Long before blogs existed, I frequently wrote letters to various editors and a few were printed (though I’m no Don Schrader). Occasionally, I’d run into someone who’d say, “I saw your letter….” (Often, they couldn’t recall what it was about.) I even saw one of my letters on someone’s office door once. That needy child within me — please, look away! — bubbled with joy.

Imagine: To be seen by countless Albuquerqueans. What a prize!

The Face of Albuquerque
Call for Entries

ClearChannel will be introducing seven new digital billboards into the Albuquerque area market in mid-November. The billboards utilize LED technology and their messages rotate every 8 seconds. As part of a testing period scheduled to run through December 2, 2007, they have agreed to display an exhibit of local photographers’ work on those billboards; the show will be titled, “The Face of Albuquerque.” Marc Gutierrez and Lisa Tannenbaum are working with ClearChannel to select approximately 40 photos for the exhibit.

In the end, doing nothing is always easy. I can do nothing and save my self-respect for another day. There is no need to be in anyone’s face, either on a billboard or in protest of the same. No need to snap at my friends. Still, I must protest: Billboards are litter. Billboards are a stick in the eye. Billboards are vile distractions for a populace barely able to focus on a txtmsg or 10 second commercial. Clear Channel wishes to use our art as a lubricant for that stick. I’ll have no part of it. mjh

mjh’s blog — Puh-lease, god, no!
http://www.edgewiseblog.com/mjh/loco/albahquerque/puh-lease-god-no/

Albuquerque will get new bus shelters as part of an agreement with Lamar Transit Advertising.

“We’ve really had a great need for shelters, and funding has always been problematic,” Mayor Martin Chávez said at a Thursday news conference.

The City Council earlier this month approved a bus advertising contract with Lamar. As part of the deal, Lamar will build new bus shelters.

“In return,” Chávez said, “they get to put advertisements on them…”

Of the 2,814 bus stops in the city, 155 have shelters, according to the Transit Department.

About 100 new shelters will be built over the year. They will be lighted at night, using energy collected from the sun. [mjh: making this a *green* thumb in your eye!]

At the very least, the lighting on these eyesores should be restricted to times the buses run, not 24 hours a day. mjh

I’m stunned by the hung jury in the case of the cop accused of raping a then-14-year-old. The issue seems to hinge on consent and deception. As I understand it, a minor cannot legally consent: Sex with a minor is always rape. Should it be regarded as such if the minor lies? If a minor cannot legally consent, I’m not sure she can legally be responsible for a lie of consent. Further — come on! — how incompetent is a cop who believes a lying minor? He must be some poor judge of character. Cops think everyone who talks them is a liar. Unless there’s something in it for him.

Sadly, another public servant — this one a fireman — is accused of the same jaw-droppingly dim judgment. Or, simply, raping and lying about it.

And now, a 24-year-old frat “boy” serially rapes under-aged girls and videotapes it for the added pleasure. Drunkenness negates consent, if there was any and if any of his victims was old enough to legally consent sober. His parents must be proud, if the news has reached their cellblocks.

Ours is a sick society unable to restrain its own evil. You fear terrorists? There are three — just the smallest sampling. mjh

I appreciate the Albuquerque Journal’s eulogy for Lady Bird Johnson. She tried very hard to get America to clean up its act and to recognize that beauty should be commonplace and vistas should not be ruined by billboards.

I understand a eulogy is not the best place for the truth, but an editorial is, and so I’m disappointed that the Journal’s ignores the truth: Lady Bird lost, as did we all. Start at the Big I and drive in any direction. You’ll see countless hideous billboards within yards of starting, each blocking the magnificent vista of the Rio Grande valley. You’ll see hundreds before you leave the city or reach the stateline. The winners are corporations like Clear Channel, which invoke sacred personal property rights as a shield for personal profit. Everywhere you look, someone sticks a thumb in your eye and deposits another dollar in his pocket.

Beauty is blocked by blight. Greed won. Lady Bird is already spinning in her grave. mjh

ABQjournal Opinion: Lady Bird’s Legacy
Friday, July 13, 2007
Remember Lady Bird Johnson as a reason more wildflowers bloom along highways lined by fewer junkyards and billboards.
Claudia “Lady Bird” Johnson, the widow of President Lyndon B. Johnson, died Wednesday at 94.
Known as the Environmental First Lady of America, she did more than plant bluebonnets. She translated concerns about pollution, urban decay, recreation, mental health, public transportation and the crime rate into national policy.
The Beautification Act of 1965 called for control of outdoor advertising, including removal of certain types of signs along the nation’s interstate highways. It also required junkyards along primary highways to be relocated or screened.
Her vision is distilled to perfection at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center in Austin, with its woodlands, sweeping meadows and public gardens filled with native flowers and plants.
But the seeds of her advocacy for beautification scattered far beyond Texas. Her legacy can be seen perennially flowering on roadsides across America.

http://www.abqjournal.com/opinion/editorials/578102opinion07-13-07.htm

I’ve written about this before and will again (talk about Sisyphus). See http://www.edgewiseblog.com/mjh/category/loco/albahquerque/ (scroll down for more stories and photos).

Update: Thanks to Coco on Dukecityfix for the link and taking the discussion to more of Albuquerque.

Billboards are a finger in the eye. An erect middle finger. A billboard is a selfish and cowardly statement. It says anonymously, “my profit is more important than the environment.” It places personal gain ahead of community values. Every billboard in the world should be pulled down by angry mobs.

Isn’t this picture beautiful? Doesn’t it make you proud to live in New Mexico? The mighty Tijeras Arroyo is already doomed by Mesa del Sold. In the meantime, enjoy the view. As you drive this stretch with its dozen billboards, notice most are for Clear Channel, the owners of most billboards. Buy stock and demand they get out of this business.

Farther south, Isleta shows what Indians really think of Mother Earth, with their dozens of billboards north of Los Lunas. No stoic native with a tear in his eyes at the sight of all the garbage — those are dollar signs.

Where’s your shame? mjh

‘Billboard King’ Reid Looks to Leave Mark on Senate War Funding Measure By Elizabeth Williamson, Washington Post Staff Writer

In a (quite) large sign that protecting U.S. troops isn’t the only thing on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s mind these days, the Nevada Democrat inserted an item into the Senate’s Iraq war funding bill — safeguarding billboards.

Senate debate began yesterday on the bill, which provides $122 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; sets a goal of March 31, 2008, for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq; and — if Reid has his way — allows thousands of billboards destroyed by bad weather to be rebuilt.

For the senator, who has referred to himself as the King of Billboards, “it’s a constituent issue, but it’s a value that he believes in,” said Reid spokesman Jon Summers.

The battle over billboards began in 1965, when the Highway Beautification Act set a policy that “nonconforming” billboards — defined by states but usually meaning those packed closely together, or in scenic areas — would be allowed to die of natural causes. As storms and other acts of God destroyed them, their owners would not be permitted to replace them. Recent hurricanes have fueled a fight between the powerful Outdoor Advertising Association of America (OAAA), which wants to roll back the federal law, and opponents led by Washington-based Scenic America, which decry billboards as “visual pollution.”

On March 15, Reid wrote Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Robert Byrd (D-W.Va) asking for a provision that “clarifies” the rules governing rebuilding of “outdoor structures” after natural disasters.

“This is a matter of personal importance to me,” the majority leader wrote, a comment that “goes back to the values,” Summers said. Meaning that out west, “there’s a big sense of independence, and your property is your property,” Summers said. [mjh: "so fuck you if you like scenery."]

About 40 billboard companies operate in Nevada. Over the past two years, Reid’s Searchlight Leadership Fund has received $6,000 in contributions from the OAAA’s political action committee.

The OAAA represents a booming industry that earned $7 billion nationwide in revenue last year, but it emphasizes the role of billboards in advertising local businesses. Association spokesman Ken Klein said Reid’s amendment aims to reverse “a pattern of overreaching” by the federal government, which threatened to withhold highway funds to Florida when companies rebuilt nonconforming billboards hit by hurricanes in 2004. Reid’s bill would have prevented such actions.

Kevin Fry, president of Scenic America, said: “The bill carves out an exception to local land-use rules for a single industry that is not available to any other. . . . One might reasonably ask why legislation affecting the South and Southeast was introduced by a senator from Nevada.”

Reid’s request went to the Appropriations subcommittee on transportation, which pared it back to apply to 13 mostly hurricane-prone states, instead of all 50. The law would come up for renewal in 24 months.

Scenic America is fighting the amendment, which “sets a destructive precedent that will certainly be revisited anytime natural disasters take their toll on nonconforming billboards,” Fry said. “The two-year time frame is a joke.”

The OAAA sees the measure as a “positive step,” Klein said. “Senator Reid is a longtime supporter of mobility, tourism and property rights. We appreciate those principles.” [mjh: and he hates beauty]

PS: I don’t expect Republicans to oppose Reid’s support for the right of every landowner to stick his finger in your eye as you drive through beautiful countryside. I’m reminded of the end of Animal Farm, where there was no longer a difference between the new masters and old — they were all pigs.

Albuquerque is riding the crest of a new wave in digital billboard technology.

Phoenix-based billboard giant Clear Channel Outdoor has picked Albuquerque for a pilot test of digital technology that allows advertisers to beam rapidly changing messages from street-side billboards. …

Clear Channel lit up the first of its 10 digital billboards, located on Lomas just west of Interstate 25, this month. The remaining billboards are located along similarly busy streets near intersections.

Instead of the traditional printed text and image, digital technology enables the billboards to display a series of images and messages that change every eight seconds.

The technology allows advertisers to introduce new information daily or even hourly. For example, a McDonald’s restaurant could advertise specials for breakfast, cheeseburgers for lunch and something else for dinner, Adams said.
—–

When I can, I’m going to add pictures of these and the countless other vomit-inducing, eye-gouging billboards all over the god-damn state. We need to ban billboards in New Mexico.

I’ve noticed both sides of I-25 between Isleta and Los Lunas have more and more billboards going up. Two side-by-side evenly spaced for a mile or more. A couple of guys are putting these up every weekend. Who is behind this? mjh

Flickr: mjhinton’s photos tagged with albahquerque

It seems I misunderestimated Don Harris. Somehow, I had the impression he is a Right Wing whacko out to “Take Back The Courts.” He seemed to be a student of Karl Rove when he smeared his opponent last fall. And, yet, here he is, doing something I don’t find disgusting — in fact, I thank him for his efforts.

In my own tiny way, I’ve been waging this battle for a while. I’ve posted a few pictures of the grotesqueness businesses will shove in your face — ah, the beloved unfettered Market. Recently, I’ve gathered a few photos under the category “alBAHquerque” (here and at Flickr) — so far, I am the only one to use that tag. With luck, it will become historical documentation of just how stupid we were and how we sometimes stand up to the Market. mjh

ABQjournal: Councilor Wants Cell-Phone Towers to Blend With Their Surroundings Journal Staff Report

Irritated by massive cell-phone towers?

City Councilor Don Harris wants to do something about it.

He said Friday that he plans to introduce an ordinance requiring that towers in Albuquerque be concealed to limit their impact on the environment.

“One of the things that makes Albuquerque great is our vistas,” Harris said in a written announcement. “We must act now before our landscape is forever changed.”

Under his bill, new wireless telecommunications towers would have to be concealed when they are constructed. Existing towers would have five years to comply with the ordinance.

ABQjournal: Can You Hear Me Now? Hide That Cell Tower Abqjournal Editorial

Nobody ever comes back from vacation saying “you should have seen the cell-phone towers.” Nobody flashes photos of their kids standing next to one. Nobody lobbies to get one in their backyard.

Why would they? While most of us use a cell phone [mjh: I do not], we don’t want to look at all the hardware that makes it work. A New Mexico sunset loses a little something when viewed through a forest of metal poles.

Albuquerque has a chance to become the cell-tower city different, a place where towers are heard and not seen, under a proposal by City Councilor Don Harris.

Flickr: mjhinton’s photos tagged with bugs

Bonus -
Come for the Strip Malls, Stay for the Cell Towers!

Flickr: mjhinton’s photos tagged with alBAHquerque