New look at www.franklinmountains.org

Just finished a new look for franklinmountains.org. I hope everyone likes the improvements.
Rick

How to Save the Scenic Transmountain Corridor

The Franklin Mountains Wilderness Coalition is sponsoring 2 new initiative petitions. The first calls for preserving in its natural state and in perpetuity the land known as the Scenic Transmountain Corridor and referenced in a proposed City ordinance now scheduled for a vote by Council on January 11, 2011. The second petition adds the wording that the City "shall take all steps necessary to preserve this land and to prevent it from being developed with either private development or major public roadways." It was thought that a petition with the additional sentence would be helpful to TxDOT as they soon will go through a public hearing process after they complete their environmental assessment.

Here's how you can help save the Scenic Transmountain Corridor. At the top right hand column of this blog are links to documents that you can download: Instructions for gathering signatures, the petition forms, and FAQs. Maps and other docs will be added in the next few days and throughout the petition process to help you answer questions and be able to show potential signers the land in question. Look for them daily. The currently posted documents are also embedded in this post below.

Only registered voters residing in the City of El Paso can sign the petitions. We need at least 1547 signatures so please get started.

Item number 7 on the Instructions tells you where and by when to return the petitions.

Thank you for your help.

Instructions for Petition Gatherers
Initiative Petition Form
Initiative Petition Form2
Faqs

Visualize the Vanishing Scenic Transmountain Corridor

Click on this or any of the images below to enlarge.

Above is the scenic corridor as seen from Gas Line road - just about where "Plexxar"will go per TxDOT plan:

Now develop and add traffic and here's your new view of the "scenic" corridor:

Just imagine how ugly that view will be once Paseo del Norte gets built through the Westside Master Plan area that we want to preserve as Natural Open Space. Once that road and intersection are built along with the Ed Archuleta Commercial District, forget the view. In fact, forget the land because creating an arterial like Paseo del Norte will ultimately force development a mile wide on either side or up to the State Park - whichever comes first.

Now, here is the Scenic Corridor and the un-Scenic Corridor side by side:

Seen enough?

Petition May Lead to Special Election

Petition May Lead to Special Election

Visit the El Paso Museum of Archaeology

The El Paso Museum of Archaeology always has worthwhile exhibits, events and lectures. It's well worth the visit at any time. You can even keep up with events at the archaeological museum by joining their email list.

Curator of Education, Marilyn Guida, tells us about what's happening this week at the museum:

Dear Friends of Archaeology,

This week at the El Paso Museum of Archaeology we have a Zip Tour of the Traditions and Symbols exhibit at 2 pm on Sun. Nov. 28 (tomorrow), an Adult Tour of the museum on Wed. Dec. 1 at 10 am, and a Family Workshop on Sat. Dec. 4 from 1:30 to 3:30 pm. Please see details below and share this message with your friends and family.

Zip Tour, Sunday, November 28, 2010, 2:00 pm, Free Admission

Curator of Education Marilyn Guida presents this brief tour of the Traditions and Symbols exhibit in which ten members of the Juntos Art Association of El Paso explore contemporary, historic, and prehistoric Mexican, Mexican-American, and indigenous Native American cultural traditions and symbols.

Adult Tour, Wednesday, December 1, 2010, 10:00 am, Free Admission

Docent Mike Iglar presents this free one-hour tour of the El Paso Museum of Archaeology and surrounding Chihuahuan Desert Gardens which will introduce adults to the people of El Paso’s ancient past from the Paleoindians who lived here 14,000 years ago to the Mescalero Apache people of today. Visitors will also see prehistoric artifacts from several regions of México. To enjoy the gardens, wear suitable clothing, shoes, and sun protection. Reservations are not necessary but contact the museum if you plan to attend, 915-755-4332; guidamr@elpasotexas.gov.

Family Workshop: Holiday Designs in Metal Embossing/Repujado with Maria Almeida Natividad

For Adults and Children Ages 6 and Up

Seating for Maximum of 30 Participants

Saturday, December 4, 2010, 1:30 – 3:30 pm

Admission: $2.00 for museum members; $5.00 for non- members

ADVANCE PAID REGISTRATION REQUIRED

Information and registration: 915-755-4332 or guidamr@elpasotexas.gov.

El Paso artist Maria Almeida Natividad leads adults and children in creating holiday-themed art using the ancient art of embossing or pressing shapes into metal to create a design in this workshop. Aluminum foil metal and other materials will be supplied. Traditional holiday designs such as Christmas trees, candy canes, stars, and ojos de Dios/eyes of God will be provided. Adults and children may select a design or create their own, then add an antique look with paints and/or markers. The metal embossing technique, called repujado in Spanish, arrived in Mexico during Spanish colonization.

Museum Location: 4301 Transmountain Road, El Paso 79924

You may also want to consider joining the El Paso Archaeological Society.

Hike Planned to Plane Crash Site

Click image to enlarge.

The Sunrise Group of the Elpasonaturally Hikers are planning a hike to see the site of the November 9th single engine plane crash. Miraculously all 3 game wardens escaped critical injury including one female who was trapped in the plane for 2 hours. All 3 are reportedly well now.

Hikers plan to meet this Tuesday morning at 7 a.m. at the Shell station on I-10 and Transmountain and will carpool just east of mile marker 5 along Highway 404 (O'Hara Road). The plane, which came down in the same canyon where the trail to the Anthony Gap cave is located, is believed to still be there.

Our Place in Nature

Veronica Chavira sent a lovely note to Judy Ackerman which was forwarded to me since I am a board member of the Franklin Mountains Wilderness Coalition. Veronica shared a passage from What Is Tao by Alan Watts, someone whose writings have had a deep influence on me. With all the recent political ramblings and rumblings, it is easy to forget that our subject is sustainability and that sustainability must be grounded in matters of the spirit and the heart. It is impossible to speak of sustainable agriculture or sustainable community, for example, without thinking about the things which sustain the spirit.

Responding to the issues around Natural Open Space, Veronica wrote:

"When I climb the mountains I feel renewed. I look at the development on our mountain and feel a sense of loss as an animal having to find a new home, a sense of displacement overwhelms me. Understanding the same feelings of loving the mountain and wanting to live in a natural environment, construction and land development continues in this space. A sense of oneness with the land penetrates my body and I feel I am home."

She shares this passage from Chapter One ("Our Place in Nature") of What Is Tao:

Our Place In Nature- Chapter One
Many years ago, when I was only about fourteen years old, I first saw landscape paintings from the Far East. It was as a result of looking at these painting that I first became interested in Eastern philosophy. What grasped me and excited me about the Asian vision of the world was their astonishing sympathy and feeling for the world of nature.

One painting in particular that I remember was called Mountain after Rain. It showed the mist and clouds drifting away after a night of pouring rain, and it somehow pulled me into it and made me feel part of that mountain scene. It is fascinating for us to consider that pictures of this kind are not just what we would describe as landscape paintings, because they are also icons, a kind of religious or philosophical painting.

In the West, when we think of iconographic or religious paintings, we are accustomed to pictures of divine human figures and of angels and saints. When the mind of the Far East expresses its religious feeling, however, it finds appropriate imagery in the objects of nature, an in it's very important respect their feeling for nature is different from ours. The contrast in these two forms of expression arises as a result of the sensation that the human being is not someone who stands apart from nature and looks at it from the outside, but instead is an integral part of it. Instead of dominating nature, human beings fit right into it and feel perfectly at home.

In the West our attitude is strangely different, and we constantly use a phrase that sounds peculiar indeed in the ears of a Chinese person: We speak of "the conquest of nature" or "the conquest of space," and the "conquest" of great mountains like Everest. And one might very well ask us, "What on Earth is the matter with you? Why must you feel as if you are in a fight with your environment all the time? Aren't you grateful to the mountain that it lifted you up as you climbed to the top of it? Aren't you grateful to space that it opens itself up for you so you can travel right through It?"

Indeed, it is this domineering feeling that underlies the way we use technology. We use the powers of electricity and the strength of steel to carry on a battle with our external world, and instead of trying to live with the curvature of the land we flatten it with bulldozers, and constantly try to beat our surroundings into submission.