What happened in the years before you and I were born, and …

How it relates to these years before we depart.

Security guarantees w/ Jeffrey Sachs

***

I really enjoyed visiting downtown Farmington.

Here’s why, for me, it isn’t perfect.

One: It’s 45,000 people and growing fast, which, though small, is still about three times bigger than my ideal. This leads to knock-on effects that you can easily discern by just putting ‘Farmington NM’ into a YT search box.

Two: All through the charming district of galleries and shops, they’ve decided to pipe in an assortment of classic rock songs which range from the overexposed to the dumb and gross. Doubtless there’s been a deal made, with some radio station or content owner to do this. It sucks. I would have filmed a lot more if it wasn’t there trying to copyright-strike me.

Three: The boomtown element. We had a lovely shady parking spot on the side street running along the best gallery, and when we were done walking and returned to the car, there was a capitalist dude walking up and down the shade yammering about deals into his phone, oblivious to the fact that we were doing our own research and enjoying the cool leafy place before he fucked it up. Really this could just be described as another knock-on effect I guess. Or a function of 45K being too many people in one place.

All that said, it was still much more spirit-lifting than a whole lot of other places, and the price of living there is still shockingly reasonable.

For she and I, Farmington was a pleasant surprise, and not at all necessary to any future planning.

But unlike us, people I care about are still looking and trying to figure it out.

So I keep looking, for those fellow travelers, and for the addictive fun of it.