Author: Patrick O'Grady

After decades with his scabby little nose pressed to various grindstones of journalism, Patrick O'Grady came away with plenty of mental scar tissue, a good deal less hair to cover it, and an undiminished appreciation for three subsets of the craft: drawing cartoons, writing commentary, and composing headlines. All three are short, punchy attention-getters, the literary equivalent of yelling, "Hey, look at me!" before hanging a moon out the school-bus window, and thus own a natural appeal for an overgrown class clown with the attention span of a rat terrier raised on angel dust and bong water. And thanks to the Internet, the best thing to happen to journalism since the invention of movable type, he gets to do all three of them without having to go to work at a newspaper, where management has slowly devolved into a button-down mutant hybrid of the worst aspects of the Spanish Inquisition, the dental bits in "Marathon Man" and the DMV of your choice. He and his wife, the long-suffering Shannon, share an adobe hacienda in The Duck! City with their cat, Miss Mia Sopaipilla.

Can it happen here?

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 24 Comments
Punch a button, the heat comes on. Magic!

Here’s a story that every daily newspaper should be running as of, oh, day before yesterday.

Is your state’s power grid in shape for a Texas-size storm? Do you even know where or how your state gets its power?

I sure don’t. Lucky for me there’s this magic button on the wall, and when I press it, zoom, I control the weather! Inside the house, anyway, and only if nothing goes wrong outside it.

Here’s a New York Times story from last fall breaking down how making electricity has changed over the past two decades. Regarding New Mexico, it reports:

Coal has been New Mexico’s primary source of electricity generation for nearly two decades. But coal-fired power has declined since 2004 in response to tougher air quality regulations, cheaper natural gas, and California’s decision in 2014 to stop purchasing electricity generated from coal in neighboring states.

Natural gas, wind and solar accounted for a little more than half of the electricity produced in New Mexico last year, up from just 15 percent two decades earlier. In 2019, the state legislature passed a law requiring utilities to get 50 percent of the electricity they sell from renewable sources by 2030, rising to 100 percent by 2045.

According to [the U.S. Energy Information Administration], New Mexico has among the highest potential for solar power in the country. The state also sends a significant amount of electricity to California, which has long set aggressive renewable energy goals.

Piles of blues against the door

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 29 Comments

There’s a strong whiff of the dumbass coming out of Texas lately. The directions are printed right there on the soles of the damn’ boots, yet nobody in authority can pour the piss out of them.

Maybe it’s frozen.

But not everyone in the Lone Star State is all hat and no cattle. For instance, there’s Steve Earle, and there’s also Steve Earle talking about the literary qualities of Willie Nelson, which is even better.

And finally, there’s Texas Monthly, with “13 Curses to Mutter Against Ted Cruz While You Boil Snow to Drink.”

Mardi Gras on the rocks

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 31 Comments
Save your beads, boys. Ain’t nobody pulling off their tops today.

February almost always looks better somewhere else.

In February 2014 I fled Bibleburg for Albuquerque. In 2016, I traded Albuquerque for Fountain Hills.

And this year?

Well, shit. I appear to be sheltering in place, like everybody else.

Well, maybe not everybody else.

At stupid-thirty I looked outside and noted that our neighbor to the west had laid down some tire tracks in the snow that fell overnight. It kept falling, and after sunrise, the neighbor to the east laid down a matching set on the other side of the cul-de-sac.

They both have jobs and munchkins to manage. Me, not so much. I don’t have to be anywhere, and so I’m not going there.

• Lone Star Update: In Texas Monthly Mimi Swartz feels her hurricane reflexes kick in as the power grid is pushed to the limit.

Road hard, or my home really is on the range

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 8 Comments
Welcome to the Hotel Tacoma.

Some of us want to hit the road; others are compelled to.

I’ve been both over the years, rambling from Maine to Spokane and Bisbee to Bellingham, occasionally by thumb, a time or two by bus, but most often behind the wheel of a Japanese pickup truck with a camper shell and all the fixin’s for a bit of home away from home.

Trucks with beds and friends with couches saw me through my rambling, gambling years, as I rolled the dice with one newspaper after another. I eventually came up winners by leaving the business altogether.

Marrying well didn’t hurt, either.

And while I have kipped in the beds of trucks since, I have done so as a tourist, not an honest-to-Steinbeck nomad like the people in Jessica Bruder’s non-fiction book “Nomadland,” which has been reimagined by Chloé Zhao as a fictionalized film set to debut Feb. 19 on Hulu.

It’s challenging to make a go of it when your house has wheels. Finding a spot to camp, a shower, or an unguarded Internet connection is a lot like that job of work you don’t have anymore. It’s a whole lot easier when you’re only doing it for funsies and can splurge on an occasional visit to Starbucks or Holiday Inn Express.

The people in “Nomadland” are not posers. They swallowed their fears, and their pride, and jumped into that endless asphalt river.

And speaking of jumps, it’s time for another great leap forward … into the latest episode of Radio Free Dogpatch.

P L A Y    R A D I O    F R E E    D O G P A T C H

• Technical notes: I went back to the Comedy Closet to record this one, using a Shure MV7 mic and Zoom H5 Handy Recorder. Editing was in Apple’s GarageBand, with a sonic bump from Auphonic. Music and sound effects courtesy of Zapsplat. Special guest appearances by The Firesign Theatre (“Temporarily Humboldt County”) and Mel Henke (“See the USA in Your Chevrolet”). I usually saw the USA in a Toy-o-TA, but to each his own.