McNeal Arizona

(life, not politics; for politics, go to http://littlebigdog.net/ccipra.htm )

and Elfrida ("North McNeal") too

because the McLaurys may have died in Tombstone, but they LIVED here.

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Separated at birth

and

The coat color shows the same parentage, and the giant ears seal the deal.

The sibling on the right simply suffers from "stubby snout syndrome."

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Liz Pointer gives a heads-up:

There will be a rummage sale in Sunizona on August 14 --

-- $5 to set up a sale table.

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Our friend Hedley Bond is in the

Peace Corps in Armenia!

Here's his blog:

http://hedleyinhayastan.blogspot.com/

We could not wish him weller!

Hedley updates his blog about once a week, and his reports are always interesting.

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When Cactus Decides To Bloom:

The Elfrida Art Center's main webpage is

http://www.elfridaartcenter.org/

and see also

http://www.youtube.com/user/elfridaart

a  MUST VISIT! 

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We hear that our neighbor Judi Grantham is doing well in the Valley with Avon:

Her website is

http://judithgrantham.avonrepresentative.com/

Go Judi go!

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Morning fog in the desert, March 24, 2010.

It does happen.

Charlene the Library Lady

has a new business card.  Believe it!

The Bookmobile is a great thing!

Here's a link to its schedule:

http://cochise.lib.az.us/cbookmobile.html

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Don't worry about missing McNeal as you drive by!

The Sulphur Springs Valley was the route for rustling cattle both ways across the border, and McNeal is only about 3 miles from the location of the McLaurys' last ranch.

And we have this, the real thing, right where they found Johnny Ringo's body:

(and we also have some kind of space dog, the "Area 51" breed, whose members give every appearance of wisdom beyond their years, until they open their mouths:

and those kinds of things are pretty much why the Sulphur Springs Valley rules!

McNeal is in Cochise County, Arizona, about 20 miles north of Walmart, Radio Shack, Safeway, and Mexico, on US 191. Elfrida (aka North McNeal) is about 6 miles further north. McNeal has a few dozen visible people, Elfrida a few hundred.

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Here's a dandy, taken right across 191 from the library:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0GgFKisVto

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Here's a link to the Benson Museum,

aka the San Pedro Valley Arts And Historical Society

http://www.bensonmuseum.com/

and also a page about the Gleeson Jail:

http://www.gleesonarizona.com/

For an 8-minute tour of central McNeal,

for people who haven't been here,

go to Youtube.com and use search terms McNeal Arizona Tour

Warning, this video makes Andy Warhol's movies look interesting.

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Another new business in McNeal:  Allen Sperling's

Sperling Saddlery

Saddles / Gunleather / Custom leather

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Here's a link to the Danish cartoons of Mohammed that caused all the commotion a couple of years ago, that's just revived again:

http://littlebigdog.net/mohammedpix.jpg

just click on the pix, they'll get big enough

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Here:
http://www.bellestarr-az.org/index.html
is a wonderful website & a wonderful place to visit in Cochise County.
About mile 353 on AZ 80.  South side of the road.  Look for a lot of corrals.
This is a private home, not a business, but Belle is very sociable.
So are her horses and burros and lord knows what.  Take apples and sugarlumps!

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AIIIIEE!  HOW CAN PEOPLE LIVE LIKE THIS?

The great blizzard of Ought-7:

In our own back yard:





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LOCAL SONGWRITER CHARLENE KENNEDY WINS PRIZE!

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A "goathead," the unofficial County Flower of Cochise County:

In real life, about 1/4" across -- even higher until the spike breaks off in your foot.

Goatheads weren't always a symbol of the Sulphur Springs Valley

Standing water once dotted the Sulphur Springs Valley. In 1872, a survey found water just ten feet down almost everywhere. Alfalfa and other such plants covered the valley.

Our surface water went for cattle. By 1890 we had a hundred thousand cattle. Cochise County was actually called America's Cattle Capitol. Came a drought. By 1895, only 25,000 cattle survived. The rest starved to death, after eating every plant down to the dirt, creating the desert that we live in now.

Our underground water survived until about 60 years ago. Old-timers remember diving into running rivers. Then came rural electrification, and cheap energy made it feasible to pump water out of the ground. In 1944, the County had only 12 square miles irrigated. By 1950, with electrification, that was 40 square miles. By 1975, 312 square miles. Came the oil crisis, and expensive electricity. About 2/3 of the irrigated land in the County went bust. Irrigation hasn't come back much, nor has the water table. It's typically 300 feet down. In places, the surface of the ground has sunk 6 feet or more. And abandoned farms keep blowing away in dust storms.

Today's money crop is housing. To real estate developers, housing means profit. They always want just one more project. They say we'll never run out of resources. That's what miners, cattlemen, and farmers said in their turn. But we live in their ruins -- mine tailings, ghost towns, a desert, sinkholes, dust storms, and scarce water. All over the county, new cracks in the earth show us that the aquifer is drying up today.

Government wants to appear in control, and developers and their allies want us to think that with new zoning and careful use of water, we can keep adding housing. But our eyes show us that we are out of water, and Cochise County history shows us that whenever we push the limits in this county on the edge, disaster happens.

On March 8, 2006, Planning & Zoning approved over a thousand new housing units. If developers eventually fill just a third of the County, with big 4-acre lots holding standard-size families, that's 750,000 people -- 6 times our population now. But the water's not here. It is either insane or crooked for politicians to keep pushing for developers to get rich by adding new homes to a valley that cannot support them.

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I call the McNeal area "Rustler's Range" because this area was home base for a lot of rustlers back in the days of the Wild West. The McLaurys may have died in Tombstone, but they lived here, and rustle they did.

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Here is a panoramic shot of McNeal:

Yep, that's right, McNeal's small.

At the far left and far right of the picture is US 191 facing south. The car whose top you can just see is about halfway between Davis Road and McNeal Road. A hundred feet or so ahead of the car, you can barely see Davis Road branch off to the left and right. In the middle of the picture is US 191, facing north. The white blotch just to the left of US 191 facing north is downtown McNeal.

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All of us in the Sulphur Springs Valley get to enjoy sunrises like this:

Elfrida has a library.

The library is by the community center, west of 191 on the north side of town. Its address is 10552 North Hwy 191; phone 520 642 1744; hours Tuesday 1 to 8, Thursday 9-12 & 2-5, Friday 1-5, Saturday 9-12, with the usual holiday closings. Except for Charlene Kennedy, the honcho, the staff is all volunteer, so be nice. The library has four computers with free internet access, and an online catalog with links to much more stuff.

On a personal note, "here" is a link to some books I have liked in the last few years. Many of them are available through the Elfrida library.

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The scene below looks nice until you know what it is.

You are looking south towards Mexico, from about 20 miles north of Douglas AZ and the Mexican city of Agua Prieta. Agua Prieta has a few hundred thousand people, many of whom come from parts of Mexico where people have no hope or opportunity at all, to get jobs in factories that are far below American standards of wages, safety and pollution. In the picture above, the golden area low in the sky is the pollution over Agua Prieta. That's how "free trade" looks.

Many impoverished Mexicans don't want to stop in Agua Prieta, they want across the border into America, where the streets, not the skies, are paved with gold. From the American side of the border, the illegal immigration looks like a crisis -- which leads to the following item:

Cochise County is in a State Of Emergency

On August 23, 2005, the Cochise County Board Of Supervisors voted, 3-0, to place Cochise County in a state of emergency.

Arizona law allows a county to declare an emergency to meet a man-made calamity, disaster, or civil disobedience which endangers life or property.

Cochise County's "calamity, disaster, or civil disobedience" is the border situation. The Board was following Governor Napolitano's lead. On August 15, the Governor issued a Declaration Of Emergency for the counties bordering Mexico, stating "that the massive increase in unauthorized border crossings and the related increase in deaths, crime and property damage justifies a declaration of a State Of Emergency."

A State Of Emergency is not the same as martial law. Under Arizona Revised Statute 26-301(16), a State Of War Emergency "exists immediately whenever this nation is attacked or upon receipt by this state of a warning from the federal government indicating that such an attack is imminent." The Governor did not find that language appropriate for the border situation.

The States Of Emergency do, however, give state and county government great power. The Governor can directly control every state agency in Cochise County, and exercise the state's police power, subject only to Arizona's constitution and laws. And the Cochise County Board Of Supervisors can, among other things, impose curfews, close any business, and close any public street or place.

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Despite having such great powers, the Board Of Supervisors is reluctant to use them, because the Supervisors have to be elected, and perceive Anglos and Latinos as distinct voting blocs who must be separately placated.

In this situation, because our politicians are no better than average politicians, two bad things happen. First, when the politicians do anything, they build on the differences between the Anglo and Latino voting blocs, and make the differences greater. Second, whatever the politicians do, they do in twisting, turning, evasive ways, so that nothing bad can be pinned on them.

Thus, people are taught to look at others as enemies instead of fellow citizens, and governmental structures are distorted to rule subjects instead of representing citizens.

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The best features of Cochise County

It's been a while since I added anything here, so I broke my rule & put a business up front. Cochise Sports & Recreation seems to me to do a good job of teaching people how to get a CCW license. I took their class and was very impressed. If you want to be able to carry concealed legally, you might call them at 824 2299. This is a good time to get that permit anyway, because the state has just dropped the hours of instruction required from 16 down to 8, just one day.

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Another job for the pros, as far as we are concerned.  Doing some well work:
 

And the results of my asking to see some teeth for a closeup.  Careful inspection of the photo below shows the strange disappearance of one subject, and the strange lack of teeth from the smile of the other.  It's back to the portrait studio for a refresher course in portraiture for me:

Here are a couple of fellows who did right by us on some water well work and education.

Most of the housing around here arrived in one or two pieces on a big truck. Here is A-Ray's, a business that does a fine job taking care of them, new or old. They made our floors much more level.

They do such good work it's almost worth while to break things just to see real craftsmen.

Here are (little) Gary & (big) Gary Mattingly, of Bar-Heart Enterprises. They do heavy-duty plumbing for farms & homes, including backhoe work. They know what they are doing, they care about doing it well, & they are scrupulously fair in their billing.

Every one of the people listed above is somebody we are glad to know, & would be proud to have as a friend. Things down here are not like in the big city. These people all pull their weight.

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To contact the webmaster, email mpj@vtc.net