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John Fleck

@jfleck.bsky.social
1.9K followers 220 following 307 posts

Writer in Residence, Utton Center, University of New Mexico School of Law. Writing a book about the Rio Grande and the making of Albuquerque. People pay me for sentences - "a curious guy with good typing skills".

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John Fleck @jfleck.bsky.social · 02/07/2026
Currently 85 miles of river drying on New Mexico's Middle Rio Grande. a) That's a lot. b) We literally pay people to go out and look at the river every quarter of a mile (? I think this is the right spacing. ?) to see if the river is dry. What a weird job.
Column chart showing maximum extent of annual drying on New Mexico's Middle Rio Grande since 2002. 2026 is the highest column on the chart at 85 miles.
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John Fleck @jfleck.bsky.social · 19/05/2026
1965 Albuquerque Tribune with headline reading "Rio Grande Reaches Record Levels Here" and picture of high water flowing under a bridge.
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John Fleck @jfleck.bsky.social · 03/05/2026
Writing the Wild: John Fleck, Ribbons of Green: The Rio Grande and the Making of Modern Albuquerque. Date: Tue, 6/2/2026. Time: 6:00pm. Place: Bookworks on Rio Grande, Albuquerque, 4022 Rio Grande Blvd NW, Albuquerque, NM 87107-3100.
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John Fleck @jfleck.bsky.social · 02/01/2026
I’m not an animal expert, but I’m pretty sure these aren’t dogs.
Chain link fence with “Beware of the dog” sign, a field beyond full of sandhill cranes.
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John Fleck @jfleck.bsky.social · 20/10/2025
Tracking the slow return of ducks to the University of New Mexico duck pond after more than a year of remodeling. It’s been two months since completion. Spotted three ducks on Sunday. It’s soon time for the winter wigeons’ return. Will they find their way back? #urbanecosystems
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John Fleck @jfleck.bsky.social · 13/01/2025
Also #SeenOnTheBike
A close-up of a bright blue industrial door with a distinctive white logo and text for 'MONSOON DESIGN' featuring a minimalist silhouette of a figure holding an umbrella aloft. Below the logo reads 'DELIVERIES ONLY'. The door's surface shows subtle texture and wear patterns, with a few small scuff marks and imperfections in the paint. Two silver door locks or handles are visible on the right side of the door. The deep blue color of the door combined with the umbrella motif creates a whimsical, artistic touch in what appears to be an otherwise utilitarian setting. The composition suggests this is likely the back entrance or delivery door to a design studio or creative business. The contrast between the crisp white logo and the rich blue background gives the door a striking, graphic quality that feels intentionally designed despite its functional purpose.
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John Fleck @jfleck.bsky.social · 12/01/2025
Is cottage cheese the magic elixir of which the wise one speaks?
An industrial streetscape on what appears to be the outskirts of a small city or town. The image has a stark, open feeling with a cloudy blue-grey sky. In the foreground, there's a sign board with text reading 'NEW YEAR NEW YOU TRY CREAMLAND COTTAGE CHEESE' displayed in simple black letters. A prominent turquoise-green Sunbelt Rentals building and sign dominate the middle of the image, with their sun-gear logo visible. The street features multiple utility poles, power lines criss-crossing overhead, and white street lamps. There's yellow construction equipment visible behind a chain-link fence near the left side. Multiple stop signs are visible along the street, which appears to slope downhill. In the distance, there's a Comfort Inn sign and some low-rise commercial buildings in beige and brown tones. The overall atmosphere is distinctly industrial and utilitarian, with a somewhat empty, expansive feel typical of American commercial districts. The lighting suggests it's during daytime, possibly early morning or late afternoon, giving the scene a stark, matter-of-fact quality.
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John Fleck @jfleck.bsky.social · 08/01/2025
Signed us up today to provide recurring monthly financial support for the Internet Archive. Public goods are underprovided.
 Wayback Machine screenshot of the Inkstain homepage from late October 2000. The page has a black background with a glowing white ‘Inkstain’ logo at the top, a Jello Biafra quote, a set of red navigation links on the left, and text describing Inkstain’s dedication to the idea that ‘information wants to be free.’ A W3C XHTML 1.0 badge and date (‘Sunday, October 29, 2000’) appear near the bottom.
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John Fleck @jfleck.bsky.social · 27/12/2024
OK!
A long-necked red dinosaur sculpture with a red white and blue bicycle in front of it and the shadow of the photographer.
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John Fleck @jfleck.bsky.social · 23/12/2024
The Rio Grande, from yesterday’s bike ride. Bridges (and other crossings, ferries and fords) are often a community’s first collective action in its evolving relationship with its river.
River in foreground, receding into the distance, with brown foliage on both sides, and a big sky.
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John Fleck @jfleck.bsky.social · 23/12/2024
My favorite picture of Speedy platforming. Respect.
A roadrunner (the actual bird) running along the top of a wall that has a painting of a roadrunner and a cactus.
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John Fleck @jfleck.bsky.social · 23/12/2024
Working on a piece about Ed Ruscha, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and my fascination with signs, I found this favorite:
Sign reading “police parking only” with black text on a white background and an arrow. A small “Burque Against Fascism” sticker has been added.
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John Fleck @jfleck.bsky.social · 21/12/2024
New Mexico’s Middle Rio Grande Valley, dressed for the start of winter.
Brown stubble farm field with cottonwoods, birds, and a distant treeline and mountains.
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John Fleck @jfleck.bsky.social · 21/12/2024
Now I want to make an animated musical with a band of dancing wire cutters fighting for justice.
Ten blue-handled wire cutters. Their arrangement suggests a band of two-legged creatures.
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John Fleck @jfleck.bsky.social · 18/12/2024
Yesterday morning they bumped the flow up from 75 cfs to 200. This morning it’s up to 400. Fingers crossed it’s working. (4/n)
Graph showing increasing river flow on the Rio Chama below Abiquiu dam.
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John Fleck @jfleck.bsky.social · 17/12/2024
It’s that time of year when I’m looking for a storm a week to build a snowpack. More is better. Zero is not better.
Map of United States showing wet Pacific NW forecast for the next week, a dry Four Corners area. NOAA quantitative precipitation forecast for Dec. 17-24.
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John Fleck @jfleck.bsky.social · 16/12/2024
It’s got separate bike paths like this threaded all through the neighborhood, and little bollard-blocked ped-bike cut through at the end of cul-de-sacs.
Suburban street with trees, a separate paved bike path, and a bike lane.
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John Fleck @jfleck.bsky.social · 14/12/2024
Guy seemed puzzled by my presence. Guess I looked lost – old guy on a bike on a road that dead ends in a junk yard? He wasn’t fazed by my explanation: “I’m trying to ride on every road in Albuquerque, and I haven’t ridden on this one yet.” His neighbor has 75,000 hub caps. This is why I ride.
An outdoor lot filled with old, worn-out vehicles including vintage trucks, a painted salvage race car, and other aged automobiles. The salvage race car is painted in bright orange and purple, with 'North 54 Salvage' and 'We Buy Junk Cars' on the side. The background includes an industrial yard with construction equipment and a dirt mound.
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John Fleck @jfleck.bsky.social · 07/12/2024
Some people call ‘em scallions.
An album cover with the words “Green Onions: Booker T. & the M.G.’s” and a picture of green onions.
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John Fleck @jfleck.bsky.social · 15/08/2024
#HeadlinesWithoutContext
Newspaper headline: “Disrobed Men Lucky To Get Belongings Back”
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John Fleck @jfleck.bsky.social · 03/08/2024
The “plate of food with a bike helmet” is my favorite genre of Strava photo.
A plate of tacos on a black tray sits on a weathered wooden table. The tacos are garnished with cilantro and lime wedges. In the background, a person in a bright green jacket is eating from another plate. A bicycle helmet, water bottle, and car are visible, suggesting an outdoor dining setting.
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John Fleck @jfleck.bsky.social · 15/07/2024
The Rio Grande through Albuquerque is dropping fast. This is from yesterday’s bike ride. New graffiti on the bridge pilings. Bespoke hydrology content!
Highway bridge with river flowing beneath it, small vegetated island, and graffiti on bridge pilings.
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John Fleck @jfleck.bsky.social · 24/06/2024
Here is me wearing the socks at the Water Education Foundation’s 2022 Colorado River symposium. My performance as moderator received mixed reviews, but the socks were a big hit.
Man in a tall chair moderating a panel wearing rainbow unicorn socks. Sign on lectern reads “Colorado River Project, Water Education Foundation”.
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John Fleck @jfleck.bsky.social · 24/06/2024
I am completely normal in every possible way, where by “normal” we mean “has a tremendous collection of rainbow unicorn socks that he wears to all important speaking engagements.”
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John Fleck @jfleck.bsky.social · 18/02/2024
Meeting in Socorro yesterday at 11 a.m., went early with a bike. Rio Grande levee roads are wonderful corridors through our valley - riverside woods on one side, drains, canals, farms on the other. Rode downriver on the levee, then back on the ditchbank roads along the edge of the farmlands.
Dirt road with canal to the left lined with red-barked leafless willows, and cottonwoods to the right, with a deep blue sky.
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John Fleck @jfleck.bsky.social · 18/02/2024
More preparations for spring - goats trimming the stubble. Function, and also the goats are super cute. On Rio Grande bottomlands on the eastern edge of Socorro, New Mexico, between the town and the river. #nmwater
Dirt road in foreground, barbed wire fence, farm field of stubble with goats, houses and trees in the background.
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John Fleck @jfleck.bsky.social · 18/02/2024
Downriver, past Socorro, work clearing sediment from one of the irrigation canals. The Rio Grande is a very dirty river. "La limpia" - the annual ditch cleanout - is done by heavy equipment operators now. #nmwater
Dirt road paralleling a waterless, dry dirt canal, with an excavator clearing accumulated sediment.
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John Fleck @jfleck.bsky.social · 18/02/2024
Crews were out Saturday hustling to finish the concrete lining of the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District's Socorro Main canal, just downstream from San Acacia diversion dam. Hurry! Hurry! Irrigation season is about to start! #nmwater
Dirt road, irrigation ditch in the midst of a concrete lining project, and train cars on a parallel railroad track.
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John Fleck @jfleck.bsky.social · 12/02/2024
The Colorado River year to date is already not great - Colorado Basin River Forecast Center current projection (note big confidence interval!) sez ~1 million acre feet below average: (2/n)
Forecast graph for inflows into Glen Canyon Dam showing 5.2 million acre feet forecast, below a 6.4 million acre foot mean.
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John Fleck @jfleck.bsky.social · 12/02/2024
The next four weeks don’t look great for the Colorado River’s snow-making (and therefore river flow-making) high country in Colorado (and Utah and Wyoming). Source: www.drought.gov/data-maps-to... (1/n)
Evaporative Demand Drought Index forecast showing drying out of Colorado and Utah over the next four weeks.
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John Fleck @jfleck.bsky.social · 09/02/2024
Trying to learn how to use this tool, which estimates short time scale evolution of drought conditions. Pacific Northwest: bad. #ColoradoRiver Basin - less joy than I thought given the current wet. www.drought.gov/data-maps-to...
Evaporative Demand Drought Index (EDDI) U.S. map showing red - increasing drought risk - across the Pacific Northwest and much of the eastern United States with some neutral and wet conditions in Arizona and New Mexico.
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John Fleck @jfleck.bsky.social · 05/02/2024
“The secret corridor proves an amazing fast shortcut to any explorer determined to brush aside low-hanging branches and to risk broken glass and rusted wire…. [I]t makes clear the stealth with which change comes.” - John Stilgoe, from his book “Outside Lies Magic”
A blue and red touring bicycle with bags attached to the frame and handlebars is parked against a wooden post in an urban setting. The area is strewn with dry leaves and some litter on the ground. There's a chain-link fence in the background with a concrete post beside the bike. The setting appears to be a neglected urban corner with no people in sight.
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John Fleck @jfleck.bsky.social · 24/01/2024
There’s a great 1943 picture by Jack Delano taken from nearly the same spot that I love! www.loc.gov/pictures/ite...
Diesel Santa Fe Chief engine being refueled, with Albuquerque skyline in the background, Kodachrome colors suggesting the picture’s age.
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John Fleck @jfleck.bsky.social · 24/01/2024
Stop For Horses In Underpants
Yellow warning sign next to a bike trail: “Stop for horses in underpants.” It appears to have been altered from the original text.
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John Fleck @jfleck.bsky.social · 30/12/2023
"Thar be dragons."
Satellite map image of suburban neighborhood and open space with labeling text reading "Fire Danger", "Western Black Widow Spider", and "Salt Cedar Ct".
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John Fleck @jfleck.bsky.social · 29/12/2023
Total annual flow on the #RioGrande at Otowi (key measurement point for New Mexico flow) was high in 2023, but only the fifth time in the 21st century above the period of record mean, going back more than a century. (Working on year-in-review post.)
A bar graph of annual Rio Grande flow at Otowi in New Mexico, showing declining flows in the 21st century, with only five years since 2000 above the period of record mean dating to 1900.
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John Fleck @jfleck.bsky.social · 27/12/2023
and glorious ditches. It was cold on the morning bike ride, if you look closely you can see a thin film of fog/steam floating above the surface of the water. #RibbonsOfGreen
Irrigation canal, flowing past a large tree, and passing in the distance under a freeway.
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John Fleck @jfleck.bsky.social · 27/12/2023
and junk yards… #RibbonsOfGreen
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John Fleck @jfleck.bsky.social · 27/12/2023
Used to be a big dairy farm. This part of the valley, just south of downtown, was the old stockyards and meat processing plants. It’s a weird mix now - rich horse farms…. #RibbonsOfGreen
Horses behind a house, desert drab colors.
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John Fleck @jfleck.bsky.social · 27/12/2023
Early light at Valle do Oro (one of?) the nation’s first/only urban wildlife refuges. Along the Rio Grande, Albuquerque. The white bits in the mid-distance are the petroleum tank farms, to fuel our cars. #RibbonsOfGreen
Dry irrigation ditch with field and mountains in the background, in lovely early morning light, casting a sweeping shadow.
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John Fleck @jfleck.bsky.social · 18/12/2023
The future turned out weird.
Pac-Man Panic video game in an arcade.
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John Fleck @jfleck.bsky.social · 17/12/2023
Looking north through Machine Shop, Atchison, Topeka, Santa Fe Railroad, Albuquerque Shops, 908 Second Street, Southwest, Albuquerque, Bernalillo County, NM, Jet Lowe, 2005: www.loc.gov/pictures/ite...
Looking out of a dilapidated building, railroad tracks and a Santa Fe sign. Black and white.
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John Fleck @jfleck.bsky.social · 15/12/2023
Working on a piece (“essay”? “blog post”?) about graffiti (“wall art”?) along urban waterways. Here’s Rio Santa Fe (NM) near the old plaza. Tourists walking the river trail can’t see the graffiti, which lines the north side of the river channel and its tributaries in this part of town.
Large graffiti on a retaining wall next to a creek, with an adobe-style building in the background and snow all ‘round.
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John Fleck @jfleck.bsky.social · 12/12/2023
Elephant Butte Reservoir, New Mexico’s largest, is up 200,000 acre feet over a year ago. But that’s very low bar to clear, and isn’t a lot given the huge snowpack and runoff on the Rio Grande in 2023. #nmwater
Blue line graph showing elevation of Elephant Butte Reservoir, which was high in the 1990s, but dropped to very low levels ever since.
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John Fleck @jfleck.bsky.social · 28/08/2023
I spent a couple of days last week in the San Juan River headwaters of southern Colorado, touring forest restoration work on the watersheds from which my community of Albuquerque gets its water. (1/n)
People standing in a forest clearing with pickup trucks in the background.
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John Fleck @jfleck.bsky.social · 26/08/2023
Also seen on the early morning bike ride - Damian and Lola are an item. Maybe? And some back and forth re Berlynn:
Graffiti on a railing with bike seat in foreground: “Damian and Lola 4ever” with a heart, followed by “Never” with a smiley. “Berlynn is stupid” followed by “I don’t think so!”
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John Fleck @jfleck.bsky.social · 26/08/2023
Rio Grande’s on the brink of drying through Albuquerque, but last night’s rain brought us a day or two reprieve
River with bridge and clouds in the background, lines of trees on each bank, and a platform railing in the foreground.
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John Fleck @jfleck.bsky.social · 26/08/2023
The Posole Platform wishes you a good morning as well, and is happy to join you in the rectangle.
River with clouds in background, green greens lining both banks, a distant bridge, and the railing of the Posole Platform in the foreground, so named because of graffiti that once graced its railing.
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John Fleck @jfleck.bsky.social · 25/08/2023
A third of downtown Albuquerque is devoted to car storage: parkingreform.org/resources/pa...
Map of Albuquerque with black street grid and area devoted to parking in red. Legend: 33% of central city devoted to parking.
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John Fleck @jfleck.bsky.social · 19/08/2023
E-bikes - a use case: Long, hard week. Feeling, tired. But w/ a bit of pedal-assist, the childlike joy of random exploration: stopped by a cop (does “police chaplain” count as “cop”?), passed by a dude on an e-skateboard, ended up at the horse track, watching the easy trot of the morning workouts.
Horse trotting at a racetrack with guardrail in foreground and mountains in background.
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