Please print for neighbors and friends without a computer!
twEyeLight raVen
October 23, 2017
Volume 28 ~ #43
“Joy is a symptom by means of which right conduct may be recognized.” Joseph Wood Krutch
From Hugh Garrett: Serving as the Brewster County Precinct 2 Commissioner is an honor and privilege, and working with the citizens of Brewster County has been a pleasure, but I will not run for reelection in 2018. I will retire when my term ends and I intend to indulge my wanderlust and work on my bucket list. Thank you. First day to file for the 2018 elections is November 11, 2017, and the filing deadline is December 11, 2017.
Terlingua CSD Scholarship Fundraiser: Quilt Raffle
Tickets are available at: Quilts by Marguerite (just west of 170 @ 118). $5 a ticket or 5 tickets for $20.
Big Bend Student Council will be hosting a Halloween Carnival from 4:00-6:00 pm on Tuesday, October 31, at the Big Bend Library. This activity is associated with Family Night during the Book Fair at the Library. Free games, candy, and prizes! All children in the community are invited.
Espresso ... y poco mas! Hours: 7:30 a.m. until 2 p.m. daily.
We serve Big Bend Roasters coffee - keeping it local from Marfa - and the best coffee anywhere! We make the best fresh burritos, waffles, meatloaf sandwiches, Ruben’s, salads and homemade pastries. We do have daily specials, too! Everything is cooked to order and the
freshest you'll find anywhere. Come enjoy the views, the newspapers, the free WiFi - all located
in the Ghost town.
This Week (plus) at The Starlight
What a week and then some do we have in store! Plan now! eYe of the Beholder continues through November 18. The photographs of Erik Walker, Jen Pena and Molly Dumas. Amazing local photographers and photographs. Plus – every night this week, Butch Hancock will be playing after the early entertainment. WOW! What a planet!!
Monday 10/23: John Whipple @6/ Butch @9
Tuesday 10/24: Uh Clem @6/ Butch @9
Wednesday 10/25: Jeffro’s Song Swap with Laird Considine @6/ Butch @9
Thursday 10/26: Sarah Burton @6/ Butch @9
Friday 10/27: GET READY!! Butch Hancock plays the early show @6’ish. Then Dana Louise & The Glorious Birds at 9/9:30 p.m.
Saturday 10/28: Dana Louise plays the early show @6’ish. Butch Hancock at 9/9:30 p.m.
Sunday 10/29: Early Show/ The Muse and Eye @6 THEN. . . The Rocky Horror Picture Show!! Goodie Bags, Prize for Best Costume/ Character @9:30.
Monday 10/30: Chet O’Keefe
Tuesday 10/31: HALLOWEEN! KRTS MARFA PUBLIC RADIO PRESENTS GHOST (TOWN) STORIES. Come join us at 7 p.m. for a fabulous Halloween rounded out by River Arkansas (out of this world bluegrass!)
Wednesday 11/1: Jeffro’s Song Swap
Thursday 11/2: Dia de Los Muertos. End the evening at The Starlight with Grupo de la Paz after participating in the ceremonies at The Terlingua Cemetery.
Friday and Saturday (11/3 & 4): Butch Morgan’s Bandaholics
Hope to see you soon!
THE GREEN SCENE IS BACK!!!!!! Several Items of Note!!!
The 9th Annual GREEN SCENE will be on Saturday, October 28th at the Terlingua Community Garden in the Ghost Town! This year will be a GREEN SCREAM -- spooky costumes encouraged! Live demonstrations start at 11AM at the Farmers' Market Building. Don't miss the Recycle Fashion Show at 6PM and the Charity Auction at 8PM! All proceeds benefit the Terlingua Community Garden and the new Learning Garden at the Terlingua public schools.
Daytime Events @ Market Building
11:00 AM : Intro to Solar Power with All Energies
12:00 PM : Paper-crete with Jeff & Binky Sartain
1:00 PM : Vermiculture with Zoey Sexton
2:00 PM : Composting with Jenny Schooler
3:00 PM : Grow Your Own Food - Sprouting in Jars with Jack & Alice Knight
Evening Events @ Boathouse
5:00 PM : Halloween Costume Contest
6:00 PM : Recycle Fashion Show
8:00 PM : Live Charity Auction
9:30 PM : Dance Party! There will be live music, food, and drinks all day and into the starry night! Please join us for another wonderful celebration of sustainability and the Terlingua way of life. Thanks to everyone who has made this possible!
Hello Fashionista's, count down--6 days to wrap it up for the Screamin Green Scene Recycled Fashion Show. We need all designers and models at the Boathouse at 5:00, show time starts at 6:00. Molly Dumas is downloading music for the fashion show, if there is something you want played for your model, contact Molly on Facebook. There will be forms at the Boathouse to fill out: Artist Name: Model's Name: What inspired your creation: Description of item and what it is made from: Is it for sale: Proceeds go to you or Green Scene. See you there.
Music for the Green Scene will be in an open mic format. Either sign up starting at 11am at the Green Scene or email Buckner Cooke at bucky2shot@yahoo.com to reserve a certain time.
ART at the GREEN Scene Saturday in the Ghostown
Bring your art made from recycled, reused or re-purposed materials to the TVA booth at the Green Scene. If you sign up ahead of time, display cards will be made for your artwork. Exhibit for sale or NFS, and keep or donate all or part of the sale money to the Green Scene fund. Sign up at https://goo.gl/forms/rtHhdynBemepPBpx2 or email spottedslinky55@gmail.com. Post your progress on the TVA page with photos of your "raw materials."
And, speaking of GR Let’s keep this party going!!!! Terlingua Recycles EEN and RECYCLING!!!! could use your help all year long with making sure our recycling bins (behind EMS) are kept in good shape. A few things to note - all items that we accept are clearly marked on the sign in front of the recycling bins No matter what you recycle, please be sure it's clean. Human beings have to sort through all items as we parse out the recyclables at the recycling station in BBNP. Plastic: Bubble wrap is not an acceptable item. Plastic hair brushes and tent stakes are not acceptable plastic. Please crush milk and other plastic containers as well as possible before placing in bins.
Cardboard: Please break down boxes as best you can. Tossing into bins “as is” a) takes up a considerable amount of space and causes the volunteers to have to break down the boxes. Aluminum: Clean aluminum. Not crumpled up aluminum foil with the remnants of last night's dinner. Ditto no window frames or metal tent stakes.
NO BATTERIES OR CAUSTIC MATERIALS. EVER.
Please use common sense when the bins are full. There is a not-to-exceed line marked on each bin. If you exceed those levels it creates a lot of extra work. If a bin is full, please take your items home and store for a few days. If bins are overflowing, trust us, we're aware.
WE NEED ALL HANDS ON DECK THIS COMING THURSDAY – 10/26/17 – when we take Terlingua’s recyclables into the Recycling Center at BBNP. Please meet at Terlingua Recycles at 8 – we’re typically back between 12 and 1 p.m. If you need a ride, you’re welcome to ride with one of the other volunteers. Many hands make light work. For more information send a message to terlinguarecycles on Facebook or call 830.739.6986.
PAINTING CLASSES
Mary Paloma Diesel will begin offering painting classes at her home twice a week, beginning Wednesday, November 1. She will work with students on their own projects in watercolor or acrylic in two hour sessions: Wednesday morning 10 am - Noon, and Thursday evening 6:30 - 8:30 pm. For more information or to schedule a session, email spottedslinky55@gmail.com or call Mary at 371-2999. Each session is $20, and you will need to bring your own materials.
KRTS/ Marfa Public Radio - Hey friends! Going to be at The Starlight on Halloween? Marfa Public Radio: KRTS will be here, too, presenting Ghost (Town) Stories. Have a great Ghost Town Story? Let us know as there are still a few spots in the line up! email jeff@faroutbooking.com. And don't forget your costumes!!
Texas Dark Skies Star Party. Friday, October 27
7:30pm to 10:30 pm. at Fort Leaton. Park Rangers will take you on a tour of the Stars, and GhostTracks of west Texas will give a Paranormal tour of Ft. Leaton. Come on out for a real adventure!! Come dressed as a your favorite El Dia de los Muertos La Catrina or El Catrin !! Prize for the best dressed/painted!
Earth and Fire Gallery
With our prime location in Terlingua Ghostown, our favorite holiday time is the period starting this Saturday, with the Green Scene, then Halloween and through to the community Day of the Dead celebration. To make this year extra special, we've brought out all of our scariest art, leading off with work from our guest artist, Debra Guerrero. We'll have a jumble table of ghostly bargains at fabulous prices for the Green Scene. AND, we'll cap it all off with our favorite thing, a Ghostown Gallery Party thanking Debra and welcoming our incoming guest artist Anne Roberts. We will cap off the Day of the Dead festivities at the gallery with wine, food, and ghostly doings starting about 7 on November 2nd.
Jackass Flats Halloween Potluck!!!
Tuesday, October 31 at 6:30 pm. Bring a dish, chair, voice or instrument.
Open Mic for musicians - (Anyone wanting to play please contact Pam at the Little Burro 432 271 2082). Prizes for BEST "Halloween Dish" and Best Costume! Witches Galore!!
We may even get a visit from THE HEADLESS HORSEMAN and his BLACK TEAM of HORSES!
Terlingua Ghostown Family Crisis Center
October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month - World Peace begins at Home
Join us at the Terlingua Ghostown Family Crisis Center of the Big Bend in the Terlingua Ghostown
Community Lunch Noon to 2:30 PM Friday, October 27 Tortilla Soup!!!
Then, Sundown to 10 p.m. "The Amusing History of Capital Punishment"
$2 Entry benefiting Family Crisis Center of the Big Bend
'
The Terlingua Bottoms Group of AA meets every Thursday at 7:30 at the Big Bend Church in Study Butte. The meetings are open to anyone who has or thinks they may have a drinking problem.
Shottime Liquors
Open Monday – Saturday, Closed on Sundays
Hours 10:00am – 9:00pm
Come in and check out our new items in our Rum, Tequila, Mescal, and Vodka sections!
Like us on Facebook
Draftex LLC - Residential design work for south Brewster County. Contact Jeff Gavin: 830.739.6986 or draftexllc@gmail.com.
Alpine Animal Shelter: Fern is a young adult cur/lab mix who is dreaming of a tender, gentle keeper to recover from all that was unfortunate about being a stray. Fern is friendly and playful and wants to be a beloved companion. She plays well with most other dogs, loves dissecting her dog toys, and is sensitive in the best of ways. For more information about any pet in the Alpine Animal Shelter, email heatherthemule@gmail.com
Only Surveillance Technology Manages This U.S.–Mexico Border Crossing
By ERSELA KRIPA & STEPHEN MUELLER/AGENCY
In one of the most remote stretches of the United States–Mexico border, a different kind of border crossing has emerged: A remotely managed mash-up of new document-processing technology, rowboats, and donkeys.
The Boquillas Port of Entry (POE) does not have the large processing volume of a typical port on the Southwest U.S. border with Mexico. In high season, the crossing will process a couple of hundred visitors a day; no vehicles are allowed. Most days only a few tourists pass through.
For years, the U.S. government shuttered the remote crossing, citing security concerns after 9/11. Only after National Park Service rangers and teams of scientists expressed a need to reconnect across the binational divide did the port reopen in 2013; a new processing facility was also constructed to manage the minimal security concerns.
It is hard to imagine a less likely area for illegal entry. The crossing is hours from the nearest large city, in Big Bend National Park (BBNP), land controlled and managed by the National Park Service (NPS). The surrounding landscape is majestic, but foreboding for those on foot, with steep canyons, ravines, thick vegetation, and the Rio Grande providing a host of formidable natural barriers. Park visitors are warned of the dangers of heat stroke, exposure, and dehydration, even in mild months.
The binational imaginary here is pervasive and persistent. BBNP is part of the most expansive and biodiverse desert region in the U.S., and shares a transnational ecosystem with natural preserves on the Mexican side. Here, the two nations seem knit together by the river valley, and diverse advocates on both sides voice strong opposition to the proposed expansion of the International Border Fence through the region.
In the early 20th century, landscape architect Albert William Dorgan imagined transforming this land into an International Peace Park, a hyperbolic simulacrum of the real and imagined opportunities latent in border space, complete with replica frontier towns and hydroelectric power. Even in this idyllic proposal, national security concerns crept in—a scenic motorway for tourists was proposed, with a double use to support expedited military deployments.
While cultural affinities remain, the binational dream of a joint international park has faded in the midst of stark juridical differences and philosophies of land management on the two sides of the river. In the U.S., the NPS manages and enforces the conservation and protection efforts. While the Mexican land enjoys protected status, it is mostly privately owned, and is allowed to maintain traditional land uses. Communal land (ejidos) transforms the territory through farming and agricultural water use.
The remoteness of the area, coupled with strong ecological and cultural affinities, has produced unlikely cross-border partnerships, enacting an exuberant transnational territory despite calcifying juridical barriers. Longstanding agreements, in place since the 1960s and more recently amended, have allowed both U.S. and Mexican firefighting services to cross the international boundary within a “zone of mutual assistance”—a ten-mile swath on either side of the border—when property or lives are threatened. Select Mexican nationals form a crew of experienced firefighters—Los Diablos—with permission to work within U.S. territory. Supported by the Park Service and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), they set controlled burns to rid the banks of the Rio Grande of invasive plant species. BBNP has a “sister park” partnership with two adjacent protected areas in Mexico, and park officials travel through the Boquillas POE to share conservation techniques. The reopening of the port has helped park officials to connect more often and more directly, avoiding long detours through “narco territory,” perilous regions with high cartel activity.
The border crossing station is itself supported by an unlikely partnership. The port of entry falls under the purview of the Big Bend Sector of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), which happens to have the most “border miles” of any sector on the southwest border with Mexico. Unlike other POEs, it is the first to not be managed on site by U.S. Border Patrol (USBP) agents, but by an NPS ranger. CBP remotely manages the site through nearby mobile patrols of border patrol agents stationed in the park, capable of collapsing on the site in short time if needed. Sensing technology and nearby checkpoints further limit unauthorized movements.
When we visit early on an August day in 2017, we wait for the port to open. It is only open certain days at certain hours. A park ranger warns us that if we do not make it back by the time he closes the port, we will need to stay in Mexico for the night.
Down a short, winding path from the POE, surveillance cameras and a wake of turkey vultures monitor a boat launch, while a small rowboat grandiloquently named the Boquillas International Ferry shuttles a few travelers at a time across the Rio Grande for a $5 round-trip fee. The river crossing is easy, relaxed—the 30-foot journey over in under a minute. Once in Mexico, visitors can travel by burro, taxi, or on foot to the former mining town of Boquillas del Carmen, about a mile away.
The town is welcoming, but sleepy in the early morning and August heat. Visitors are rare this time of year. Children ride burros to the crossing in hopes of a busier afternoon. When it’s time to return, we need to work to get our passport stamped, waking the Mexican customs official and asking that he open the office to complete the processing.
According to a press release in 2014, issued on the first anniversary of the new international crossing, the “state-of-the-art” border crossing employed “cutting-edge technologies” to secure this new outpost, building on the “already robust border security in the area.” As we reenter the POE, this technological infusion is evident, if awkwardly executed. Two kiosks with document scanners are wired into an old-school telephone receiver. Fingerprint scanners, like those now common at airport customs processing facilities, provide secondary ID confirmation. The telephone rings, and a Border Patrol agent located five hours away in El Paso asks a few questions and welcomes us to the United States. If there is robust security here, it is in the untold sensors, cameras, and field agents invisible from this unassuming ranger station.
As congressional committees call for “advanced unattended surveillance sensors” and other managerial landscape technologies to more intensely control the most remote stretches of the Southwest border, the un-monitored border will become an even more distant memory. Clandestine human movement will be discovered less through formal checkpoints and more through distributed networks of mobile, responsive patrols, hyper-managed by a constellation of federal, local, and private actors and technologies.
At Boquillas and a dwindling number of other crossings maintaining an informal atmosphere, generational customs survive by striking opportunistic alliances with emerging security officials and technologies.
The Boquillas crossing can be seen as an experiment in “unmanning” the border, a retreat from generations of border security dependent on human, face-to-face contact in dedicated brick-and-mortar facilities as an essential fail-safe to controlling cross-border migration. As sensing capability improves, buoyed by biometrics, unmanned vehicles, and surveillance technology, we can imagine these encounters of authentication and enforcement taking place even further afield, rendering physical installations and human actors unnecessary.
Hurd on the Hill: Cybersecurity Awareness Month
‘The importance of cybersecurity cannot be overstated’
October marks Cybersecurity Awareness Month, an opportunity to recognize the increasing importance of digital security and to share best practices for keeping our digital information safe. As we continue to become more dependent on computers, automation and digital data storage, every aspect of our lives – from personal banking information to private health records to our credit records – is vulnerable to hacks. Government, private-sector and individuals have a long way to go to implement basic cyber hygiene, but the first step towards achieving this goal is having an awareness of the problem. While October is devoted to spreading cyber awareness, we have to protect our systems all year long.
One of the things that make major hacks so frustrating is that many could have been prevented with simple cyber hygiene basics like installing regular software updates and utilizing a complex login password (something other than ‘password’ or ‘12345678’). For individuals, the easiest way to protect your digital information is by having different, strong passwords for each platform – using numbers, letters and special characters. It seems simple, but it is alarming how many folks have their personal information compromised due to failure to implement this easy step.
As a graduate of Texas A&M University in Computer Science, a former cybersecurity entrepreneur and current Chair of the House IT Subcommittee, one of my highest policy priorities in Congress is defending our digital infrastructure. As a Chairman I’ve been able to explore ways to better protect our digital infrastructure and I continue to work with my colleagues across the aisle to advocate for policy solutions that drive innovation. One of these solutions is our Smart Government bill called the Modernizing Government Technology (MGT) Act. This major IT Reform package is designed to strengthen information security by accelerating the federal government’s transition to modern technology like cloud computing. The federal government spends $90 billion a year on purchasing technology and software and 75% of this money is spent on maintaining old, outdated systems. Our government needs to be able to introduce cutting-edge technology into their networks to improve operational efficiency and decrease cost. The MGT Act does just that, and I am proud that it has passed in both the House and the Senate, and is merely days away from becoming law.
My next initiative is championing the development of a Cyber National Guard. The premise behind this idea is relatively simple: If a student wants to pursue a college degree in computer science, the U.S. Government will pay for it, but they have to agree to work for the federal government for a number of years after they graduate. Once they complete their term of service in the government and have moved onto the private-sector, they will still rotate back into the federal government for the proverbial two weeks per year in a capacity that would closely resemble that of a reservist. A Cyber National Guard would ensure a pipeline of quality talent into the federal government and maintain our world leadership in the digital realm by ensuring a regular exchange of talent between the public and private sectors.The security that Americans enjoy today will not last if we don’t continue to discover the latest ground-breaking technology, engineer the most advanced weaponry and protect our cyber infrastructure from attacks. The United States must continue to invest in cutting-edge research, encourage private-sector technology development and educate future generations of scientists, technologists, engineers and mathematicians. And the importance of cybersecurity cannot be overstated.
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