were who were quite helpful as as suggest the corporate entities that that these these names and brands now are often the same as the families and so you know they have their interests they have their kind of marketing campaigns and ways that they want to present the brand i haven't had anyone has given me any trouble but book is just out we'll see what happens but at least but but you know certainly knew that was in tequila frequently and doing research and and you know interviewing people and going through all of the municipal archives records there and i didn't ever have anybody give me any any trouble. i do think that that where things are a history, it's a little bit easier than when

things start to get close to the present. so fortunately and unfortunately fortunately this conversation could go on for much longer. it can. so we do have time constraints. thank you, ted, for being us.

welcome everyone. the 13th annual sand for san antonio book. thank you to the central library for helping us present this day. and thank you to the horn family for sponsoring this particular venue. we encourage you to share your experience today on social media and you can tag the essay, book fest, all events in this venue are going to be recorded by booktv, so if you could silence your cell phones flash.

photography is also not permitted and i also want you to know that book sales and signings will take place after the session ends at the nowhere bookstore shop tent outside the festival marketplace. so you can support local economy and our official bookseller and author selling buying your books at the festival. so when introduce our author but so we're talking about the southwest of the united states and originally i should say i'm david martin davies from texas public radio. introduce myself and our authors, kyle pallotta. and this is his book, american oasis. going to talk about him first. the second, the first. originally when we were at the of talking about the book festival and having this book festival, we're going to have a panel and we're going to be with richard parker with this book, the crossing el paso, the southwest and the america's forgotten origin story.

and he was making the case about his hometown of el paso being a central american city. if not these central american city, in defining what american identity looks like and diving into the history and and also the present and what the future like for el paso, texas. and unfortunately, richard parker, we lost. shortly after the book is published. and so he can join us today. but the book is substantial. it has weight. it is a great read and think. these two books do pair up very well. and so i just wanted to acknowledge richard and his work and he is missed and he was a great voice for paso. and so that that needed to be said. but we do have kyle polluted us and his book, american oasis. so kyle, his reporting criticism has appeared in the new york times, harper's magazine, new york magazine, the nation, the

new republic, lots of places he holds an mfa in from columbia university. he previously worked for gq in, new york magazine. he grew up in albuquerque new mexico and he now lives in san diego, california. and kyle, you for coming with us today to talk about your book. so american, oasis, this is the finding the future in the cities of southwest. hello. we're going to get into that. you wanted to do a reading list? yeah, to get a flavor. and thank you so much for having me. it's really good to be back in texas and to be in san antonio. yeah, a little bit in honor of richard. i was to do a short reading about driving into el paso. so the book is very much about what i think of as like the five courses of the southwest so albuquerque, el paso, phenix and las vegas. we can get into though the sort of edges, the southwest, which i think san antonio much

qualifies, but kind of between in the book as i'm kind of going between these cities, i got these little passages of kind of driving in the desert and of the spaces that connect them and the region feel very cohesive. so this is just short thing about driving into el paso from from out here, as much as the finances, as technologists and career of dallas, austin and san antonio sometimes like think of themselves as inhabiting the southwest. but texas only really dries once you cross the 100th meridian near abilene then it's about colorado city where you get into the 100 mile west texas dereliction zone, where metro gnomic pumpjacks and drilling rigs are what passes for a company in the manmade no man's land surrounding? big spring, odessa and only after merges with i-10, the

brown earth starts to roll into hills that flank. the guadalupe mountains. can you be sure you've left the rest of the lone star state behind and entered the unlikely cradle of the great chihuahua on desert for generations. merchants from el paso del norte de would make the two day 70 mile trek to the salt flats just west of the guadalupe base, gathering salt there for distribution, chihuahua and sonora after the treaty of guadalupe hidalgo. anglo efforts to privatize the salt flats became, a political flashpoint, culminated in 1877 when charles howard claim to the land the mexican community revolted. when howard tried to arrest two men for trespassing on the flats, holding businessmen captive in the farm town of san lazaro after howard was freed, he tracked down the state legislator, louis carty, whom he blamed for popular to the

scheme. howard cornered carty on san francisco street in el paso, blasting him in the chest with a shotgun, fearing retribution for. the murder. howard took shelter with the texas rangers, but his coterie was soon by an angry mob. howard and two of the lawmen were executed by firing squad. afterward, a gang of vengeful anglo vigilantes from silver city, new mexico, pillaged san jose rio, killing at least four mexican farmers. the so-called salt war only ended after the military arrived. many of the rioters fled to mexico. in the end, the salt flats became just another mineral deposit to feed the profits of extractive industry. i kept driving west a little after horn, one of the eastbound lanes of the freeway was closed and traffic was backed up for miles. nearly every was a semi truck that had come from mexico, each one waiting in turn to zipper into the one remaining lane and

then the gas. the drivers anxiously checking the clock and doing the mental math to figure out just how much time they needed make up to get to their destination on schedule somewhere back east where their load would feed the inexhaustible american hunger for new clothing, televisions and cars. sun blasted through the windshield and the interstate curve through the pass between the bowen white peak of sierra blanca and the tiny equipment mountains that began its gentle descent into valley of the rio grand. the road came within a few miles the river before tipping north to a 50 mile corridor of farmland chamisa and rushing to salt coated the hills, but have been long since the bushes got rain that they turn nearly white. still down in the valley, there was a green sward of life clinging to the river, extending all the way to saint-lazare before finally giving way to the industrial parks. freight lots and border checkpoints of el paso del

norte. de thank you. yeah, that's what it's making that drive and hoping that you have enough gas in your car to absolutely out so you know the cities that you focus talking about you know these are the cities of the southwest that indicate the future of america and the and and the important past. so el paso albuquerque phenix and las vegas and what am miss in tucson and tucson. okay so which has the best food, best tacos. albuquerque. absolutely. albuquerque's best tacos tacos. i don't know. but yeah, i'll always ride for new mexico food. no offense, tex-mex aficionados. okay, this is over. the correct answer is san antonio. yeah, i so but to that point, why is san antonio not

considered a south city? so i think i think culturally antonio is very much like a like if i was doing six cities, san antonio would have been the sixth one. but i think i wanted to. to me, the southwest is very much a place of the desert. and so the cities i focus are cities that fully within a desert, a college so, you know, tucson and phenix in the sonoran desert, el paso and albuquerque and a chihuahua on desert as in las vegas in the mojave desert. and because san antonio is close by, much more temperate or certainly more rainfall getting into the of grasslands of, this part of the continent like i think culturally it's very similar because it was also settled by spanish.

it also went through this i write about in the book of these previous spanish holdings and then mexican becoming kind of integrated into rest of the united states like that's history. antonio shares as also a history of los angeles and san francisco go and san diego share. but i think those cities are like they are not of the desert in the same way and so for me it really is that like how do you contend with this extreme environment with this very just sort of everything is so bare in the desert. and that's certainly like kind of what i'm gesturing at in that reading that i think that changes culture too. like it's not just the environmental concerns, but it's also the kind of mental way of living in the desert. sure. so san antonio is not in the desert. we still have water check back

in august. yeah well, well, and i think the you know the main argument of the book is, these cities are sort of at the forefront of what the rest of the country is dealing with when it comes to climate change that these are the cities that have long had to deal with water scarcity, intense heat. and as you know, san antonio is right there them and even like in that reading, i mentioned the 100th meridian and at least in terms of, you know that once being a dividing line between like the moist east and the dry west, it's moved east in the past 20, 30 years. and is now closer to the 90th meridian, which san antonio is now on the wrong side of that line. when it used to be on the right side of that line. and i know that was a five year drought that just ended here. did it end? it's mean i have seen some story that it was over i guess we'll

see they forgot to tell the the rain gauge but like that is a sign that san antonio is becoming a desert city and like i think 2030 years it will fully be kind in that desert ecology so but like a city like phenix it's so hot there that when they pour they have to put ice in the concrete or else it won't solidify. yeah. i mean, how do you create a city and it's booming, you know, the taiyuan chip makers are building a huge facility, their billion dollar facility. i mean, that certainly is the future of the united states. and they put it in what you're a hostel in environment. i mean, how does how does that make sense? well, i mean, i think all i'll go i'll go back into history to answer that question. so i think certainly so part of writing this book was me having on the east coast for a long time and they kind of like

blindness of so many people on the east coast to the southwest because you have kind of an insider outsider view as you tell the stories. yeah. like having grown up in albuquerque, then lived out in the northeast for the past 15 years and now i'm back in the west but certainly not back in new mexico. but i think certainly somewhere phenix. i will often hear people say just like that shouldn't exist, or like, why is that city there? it doesn't make sense. you shouldn't build the city there. and i tell them that before there were europeans on this continent, there was a thousand years when there was a thriving farm society on the river. and what's now, phenix, as was one of the most robust agricultural communities in all of north america. there's people think 30, 40, 50,000 people were living there, and they had sophisticated irrigation canals and rotating crops. and all of these things because

to live in the desert, it sort of forces you into community. and so even going out of north america like there's the history the ancestral sonora and peoples and the ancestral pueblo and peoples. but if you look at egypt, if you look at mesopotamia you like civilization and cities start in the desert first. so i, i very much think like phenix is allowed to be where, phenix is the question is how do you do that sustainably? and clearly we have not done that sustainably. so there was a time say like just post-world war two, where all those cities had basically the same. yeah, we got 100,000, you know, and then phenix flourished and other cities, fe decided we're going to not to do that and deliberately decisions in order to preserve its culture, its identity, but other cities were like, you know, we want to grow. and why did why did phenix do so well? so it's a it's one of the big questions of book because

growing up in albuquerque, i had a sense of like, why is phenix much bigger than like cities seem? like ostensibly pretty, pretty similar. and i think for an answer actually looked at the magazine arizona, which is was sort of a it continues to be a state sponsored tourism magazine that it was basically one of the first magazines in the country to have color photography and certainly to put color photography on the photo or on the other of this magazine from when it was founded in the twenties until the 1960s, it grew to have a circulation of over a half, 90% of which was outside of arizona. and so arizona highways served kind of change the idea as the rest of the country had about arizona where before it was very much like austere, scary desert. don't go there.

arizona highways was really like it its goal to say look at how beautiful arizona is look at the grand. i'm like look all of these things of the desert you might not know we're there. look at these flowering ocotillo cactus like giving this sense of the desert as kind of magical place and then embedded in it would be real estate ads in phenix. it would be get twice the house for half the money if you moved to phenix so there's sort of this like a year round golf and year round golf so there's this kind of like cultural organ that is kind of broadcasting like come to arizona. and at the same time that you have this group of civic boosters. so it is a part of the chamber commerce with a group called the thunderbirds. and they were the ones who were kind of welcome visiting business people and, especially if someone was looking to open a new like aerospace plant or something. in the years after world war

two. and they kind of wined and dined them, them golfing at the country club offer them a huge passel land for no money. and so it was sort of this this economic strategy paired with a cultural strategy of we need to bring in industry. and once once we kind of like change people's ideas of arizona. so that now it seems kind of intriguing someone visits we take them golfing, we give them a big tax break. that's why they're going to put their plant here instead of in albuquerque or el paso. these places that did not have the same concerted effort, but then much later, like i write about it in the book and i think richard actually writes about this in his is el paso realizing had been left behind because el paso starting in kind of the railroad was the leading city of the southwest and in the sixties and seventies was like, wait, what happens? like we got overtaken, how do we catch up and by then it was kind

of too late. american oases, you know, implies a water situation as you drink water and, you know, you're welcome. so how in part of the book, you talk about climate change and we're going to have more scarcity, more hotter, longer droughts and heat waves, and other cities are having to adapt that. so, i mean, what are the lessons of the other cities need to be learning like san antonio are going to be getting other than, you know, put cactus in your your fill out your lawn and zero escape. i mean that helps. but yeah, i think the the two kind of case studies i look in the book are phenix and vegas as a phenix i write about you're starting 1990. they just change the way they charge for water they start charging people more for water

the summer and that alone led to tremendous savings because use a lot more water in the summer so people are really incentivized to take out their lawns but. i think an even better example is las vegas, which i think has this kind of reputation, ocean of profligate water use when really it's the most efficient water user in the country far. they recycle about 40% of all of the water they take of lake mead. and so that has allowed the city of las vegas to double in size since the nineties without using any more water than it used to. and so i look at las vegas as an example of a city that made big public investments in order to avoid having a real crisis that i mean only a couple of years ago the governor of arizona to basically call a moratorium on new residential developments in parts phenix that were sold

based on groundwater because. they already know that what's been built in that part of the valley is going to run out of water in 100 years. las has kind of gotten ahead of because they have invested a lot in water recycling, but they also invested in a in a new intake from lake mead that, you know, previously when lake mead was, you, the hoover dam was built and you get this big, they just were skimming off the top to get their water because it was full. it hasn't been full since 1999. so they built a pipe that goes under lake mead and basically functions as a bathtub drain. and it was built sort of as a worst case, but then in, i believe, 20, 21 or 2022, the level of lake mead dropped to the point where the old intakes were no longer. and now all of las vegas is water comes from that third intake. and the reason there was not a

international news story of a city of 2 million people suddenly running out of water is because i spent billion and a half dollars that big there they bet big and. that's what you do in vegas and it worked out, i think to me, texas is very much the next frontier, these water issues. i there are tens of billions of dollars of water improvements that the state knows needs to be made in order to kind of serve the future population of and growth plans. yeah and growth plans especially and i know here in san antonio there's you know the pipeline to burleson county which mr. rich. yeah, which i understand kind of immediately dropped water levels quite low there here in texas most water is from the aquifer is and as it gets drier and drier here as that kind of line of a ratification keeps creeping

east those aquifers are not going to be replenished anymore. so i think places like san antonio, places like austin are truly on the front line of like need to be making big investments right now because in ten, 15 years that source that they've relied on for last two centuries is not going to be reliable anymore. yeah. and so, but they're complex to be had about okay let's do that but then the issue is who pays for it is it falls on the so a lot of this water that we need for development in texas is going to industry. yeah for refineries and plastic and lithium refining and things that are huge water and then they want household water users to pay for the expansion and the creation of new water sources to go to these refineries who get at a cut rate and who don't have to follow drought restrictions.

yeah. so there's a lot in there. so that needs, you know, people are going to have to really be educated about, you know, smart reporting about water politics. absolutely. and it's the same way in the southwest. i mean, you mentioned microchip manufacturers in phenix that are a huge water draw. yeah. and you know, i've and i write about it in the book, but i've also done a lot of reporting about the colorado river or they are colorado river or not the colorado river. the colorado. oh, yeah. but that you know something, 80% of colorado river water goes to agriculture. it mostly grows. it goes to grow alfalfa, cotton. and so it's not that we just have agriculture industry, but it's if we like i have the head of the las vegas water authority in the book, there's a guy named john springer. and he says, like, we are not going to have a situation where 40 million people don't water so that we can keep growing. and we say we actually it's they

grow. alfalfa yeah because not actually domestic use often it is shipped overseas absolutely yeah. so it's complex so las vegas how does las vegas get counted as it so southwestern city because the other cities that you mentioned you know you're talking about the landscape but i'm thinking about the iberian peninsula and how so b and but i'm thinking that vegas was a created city. yeah. of dust and hopes and you know a roll of the dice. absolutely way. so how does that fit into the identity of the southwest? yeah, well, i kind of draw a line between what i think of as like the old southwest, the new southwest and the old southwest are these cities that were, you know, there wasn't an indigenous population first and then there were spanish colonies. so albuquerque, i mean, even the mormons left las vegas at the

start, a city there, they called it the land that god had forgotten. yeah. and there was. yeah, and there was so there were some, you know, artisanal springs in the las vegas valley, which is how it gets its name but basically you needed something like lake mead order to have a city there because springs went dry within 40 years of las vegas being founded. the early 20th century. but i guess so there's that sort of like old new thing, like the old southwest are all of these cities where there had always been some kind of population and there was this real, you know after 1848, this kind of existing spanish speaking population and native population, and then new kind of anglos in and this very kind of like knotty battle for that new version of america would look

phenix and las vegas are both founded fully in the american era. and so i talked a little bit about kind of the history of how phenix developed las basically took the phenix blueprint and did it in time and but it was very much through that same idea, like, how do we create a narrative around this place that draws people in? and of course, in las vegas, it was all about and about base and this this sense of like a destination where you can do the things you can't do anywhere else. and it turns out americans really like that. we really we gravitate towards that. and so i think the thing that feels really southwestern about it beyond, you know, the ecology of being in a desert, i think there is this real deep thing in the southwestern soul about, you know, you go to this place

that's so expansive, so and certain people kind of see that and want to fill it up. and phenix las vegas are both cities that tried to it up and successfully did. so this kind like striving of you we can build whatever we here and like that to me it's very american in general but the kind of like combination of that sense of striving with a desert is very of unique and strange and and leads to some just like fascinating characters that i write about in the book. so, you know, i think a lot about, you know, goldwater, barry goldwater and his version of conservatism and freedom and liberty. and so how that flourished in in that area. and is was that also a product of that mindset of living in the

desert, in the southwest and you know because he not a who cared about what you did in the bedroom and all these other things and he wanted to keep religion out of conservative politics. and so he was very much just about, you know, freedom. liberty. is that a southwestern freedom and liberty? and let's make some money. yeah, but really not like in texas. freedom and liberty where you you can't have an abortion. you can't get well, you can't buy real pot if you want any of those things, you got to go into new mexico. absolutely. okay. so talk about, you know, real freedom and. liberty. so is that a product of, you know, sunbaked, idealism? i think so. and kind of like libertarian ethos, right? and i think so goldwater is a really interesting figure where, you know, his dad is one of the kind of founding fathers, phenix and goldwater, a department store that spreads the state. his parents are some of the founding members of the phenix

country club. his brother bob was the kind of started the phenix open golf tournament that's still every year. so he i think the goldwater family is very baked into the identity of phenix, but it is that sort of, i think, small conservative politics that very much about like government needs to get out of the so that we can all prosper and to me that is still the dominant political motivator and some incongruity to that yeah because without government you know taking the reins there would no water. absolutely yeah. government needs to get out of the way except to build this 200 mile aqueduct that's going to take 20 years and will be the main source of water for our two biggest cities like, well, their government do that yeah no there's there's for sure some contra addiction but but i've

thought about this a lot and written it if you like as these have become you know democrats had some more success with, you know, the two senators from arizona are democrats. nevada is a purple state. people kind of, i think the national political conversation and you guys get plenty of this in texas is like the future of the democratic party and the future what democratic party if exists it will be finding a to win places like texas and to kind of turn arizona nevada into blue states like new mexico is like new mexico. i think the problem that there is still that kind of goldwater i ethos that is if you talk to katie hobbs if you talk to mark kelly sure they will. they are not like bleeding heart. they are very business friendly. they are very much beholden to the real estate industry and.

phenix that still very much runs show in that state that there's a real kind of like go along get along mentality with business that that like how you're successful at politics there and it has very little to do with the national parties so we're right where we need to open it the floor for questions if anyone has a question we'd love to hear it and. i think we're going to have a microphone that goes around and so just raise your mano and let us know. so what would be the best to be in if for like spanish speaking and just being able to do business with mexico? i mean, i would say el paso i think with de la tariffs and whatnot, that is changing. but, but el paso still is i mean, el paso, juarez, as i write about in the book and obviously richard's book has one of this is are very much still very close and el paso i think

is sort of the most mexican-american city and in ways that yeah so richard was making case and you're kind of in that sort of category that there are times and he's saying all the time that we are a southern facing nation not so a european facing nation. there is an origin story of the states on the us mexico border and that's signify accent and should not be dismissed as a little. but i want to hear from audience member sorry, this is just a nuts and bolts question. i'm just wondering what your background is. you geology, just journalism. yeah. so i, i, i guess identify myself as a journalist. i've written, you know, i do magazine journalism. so kind of long form story stories. you were trained as a fiction, but i trained as a fiction. yeah. i have a mfa in fiction, so i

think i came into journalism more as a storyteller and more more kind of interested in, you know, i'm i want to get into these big ideas about climate change, political history. but like how do you how do you make that engaging story? how do you how do you set that in place where those things feel visceral rather than just kind of like things on a reporter yeah, it's very lush writing, you know, not barebones. like, as if i had written in a simple declarative sentences, you know, as, as a journalist, you know, but as a fiction writer. you've been trained. yes. the next question. hey, i a question about immigration, politics. i know in the book you in the el paso section, you go into some of the just the immigration politics of the moment, but especially in san antonio. and i see of the same thing in albuquerque and phenix, where these cities that are kind of one step removed from the border. what do you think about what's happening with the current immigration and moment and how do you see that playing out in

the future? these cities? yeah, it's a challenging moment for sure. i in the book, i write a lot about rubén garcia in el paso, who runs the organization house, which is a shelter that has capacity for about 30,000 migrants every day. and so i kind of write about the the informal system of mostly faith based organizations, but other nonprofit that have kind of like stepped in to do humanitarian aid to migrants because the country's immigration politics on a bipartisan basis are much more about enforced and prevention apprehension. and we don't have any real government sponsored migrant aid the way they do and say the european union right groups like annunciation house are really struggling because you know, migrants are coming to the border because they know they're not welcome under the current

administration. and so you have a lot of these groups that for you two decades, if not longer, have been kind of providing for people and now they kind of can't do that. there isn't anyone to shelter, no one to feed, there's no one to help. they're on their way to their ultimate destination. and so they're having to lay staff, they're having to close facilities, and all of them are doing this. no way, that migration not going anywhere. the people will be coming back. there will a need in the future like. there have always been these kind of ups and downs. so i think it's a very moment for people in that and that question about kind of san antonio, albuquerque, cities that are not on the border but are kind of near enough. i mean, this deportation plan like we will very much be in the

middle of it. i mean, there is a plan to convert part of kirtland air base in albuquerque into, a mass detention facility. same at fort bliss in el paso. believe i'm not sure if san antonio is on that list, but i know in texas there's a couple sites where, you know, if they get money to detain nine or 10 million people, they're going to be coming to these cities that are in proximity the border for processing. so you know in dili is south of san antonio, that's where that's dili. okay, thank you so for me, like i think my grants document or not a part of the american fabric, i think we need them. we need economically, we need them culturally. there are neighbors. i don't think we should be ejecting them from our country. so i encourage people in the communities that i think are going to be. and like every community is dealing with raids right now and

certainly my two alma maters tough and columbia are both places. students have been targeted like i do think. there needs to be a lot more grassroots activism around kind of defending vulnerable people and and and making a forceful argument on their behalf that i don't see coming from the democratic party or the opposition to president trump. i think i think a lot of people in politics are very gun shy about immigration. and i would like people to be saying no, like we need a path to citizenship. we need these people to stay here. we need workers. we need them we're going to be putting tariffs on food from around the world. we need people here who can grow. we have crisis. we need to build houses like we need these people. yeah, so did you write this book because you thought that the was misunderstood? then what were they getting wrong? yeah, i think it's very

misunderstood and i think it's very much maligned as may be too strong, but i think there is a kind of blindness that the rest of the country has to the southwest. so i don't know that i thought the rest the country was getting us wrong. so much as they weren't even seeing us or they were seeing us only as the grand canyon or georgia o'keeffe painting, which are wonderful, get me wrong. but i certainly, as someone who grew up in a city in the southwest and it is the most urbanized region in the country, i felt a real need to forcefully advocate for like no like these are beautiful vibrant cities that are really dynamic and very deeply american and we kind of need to need to be recognized the same way the midwest, the deep south, that new england is as like a core core component of the country right. and when we talk about when we say the southwest don't mean the

airlines, which is a different thing, we've got another question. can you expound a little bit about the phrase use land destroying settler land, destroying settlers? yeah. well i think it's the idea that like do you to a landscape as as a guest or as a conqueror and my perspective is that all of us are guests on whatever land that we regardless of your race ethnic background like the earth is so much older us and what absolutely outlive regardless of what we do to it that when i talk about land i'm also talking about destruction of ecology is destruction of ecosystems, means displacement of species is and often of trying to take what a

place is and refigure it into somewhere else. and you certainly this and phenix of a long history of trying to phenix look like chicago or you know like china is a story of architecture and how you know how houses we choose to build absolutely and so building the wrong kind of houses in the wrong place. yeah. and i, so i, i think in book i'm really calling for let's engage the environment, whatever land we choose to live on in a more sensitive way, but also a more kind of gracious way. let's, let's, let's work with the place that we live instead of kind of trying to master it or trying to change it. so this one town, clovis, new and you know, that's where they found clovis stone tools and it considered to be like oldest evidence of human and of north america and it showed people

have been here far longer than we recognize. and they had a technology of shipping away at the flintstones and creating know hand axes and other really precise tools. and so the idea that, you know, clovis, new mexico, the clovis is the word we use to describe this preexisting, a real civilization. people that knew the stars knew the land so much, knew mathematics existed, and yet we don't really think about them much now. well, and if anyone's been to clovis new mexico, it's a pretty it's, pretty unglamorous place. so. oh, yeah, i just, i, i and i think, like, the main thing is that i'm really saying and the book is just like the desert is a place for humans. it always has been. and, and people thrive. people thrive, yeah. civilizations thrive. people thrive like the desert

can hostile and challenging. but it is such such a vibrant place and just a place that i very deeply love. so we have another question. yeah, hi. sorry. it's probably not really question more of a comment. i am from southern new mexico and i feel like i've never been more seen by knowing this book exists before. my family has a farm in tula rosa, all the extra things like that. so i've never like heard of you or this book until until today and that's i came because and it is i wanted to say it like it is a very different feeling from new mexico going to california or or here in texas. i moved here for a family and stuff. so it is a very different feeling and i just a shout out new mexico to be like, please visit. and less and less curses is a good mexican place. also, you don't really order tacos very often you order burritos. burritos state i'm very excited to meet you. yes, yes, yes. red and green.

both all of the chili. but i'm very to read both of these books and, get more into it. and it does make me feel really like acknowledge that there is people out there writing about new mexico, arizona, these desert states that feel are always kind of like the -- of the joke sometimes like i've gotten people being like, oh, i you speak english if you're from new mexico or from mexico, you know what those kinds of things. so it is very like encouraging to see, see things like this. so thank, so much for all. we have time i think, to get more person back there if can get her and also just say a shout out to southern new mexico is just often overlooked compared to santa fe and albuquerque. but it certainly mexico is very beautiful, just a wonderful place. so here's a follow up. my husband and i are looking for retirement cities and albuquerque is on my list because the criteria are urban, blue state and, relatively moderate climate. but i am very concerned about

climate change and new mexico. so talk me and my husband into retiring to albuquerque. oh, man, if you get a commission, if they go. i know, right. i mean think albuquerque honestly is actually much i think it will fare better in the next 20, 30 years than phenix. well, for sure. i mean, where? albuquerque is is it really is this you know, it's on the rio grande. it's at the kind of northern fringe, the chilean desert. but it's also a mountain. it's very much a place of the rockies. and like i mostly grew up kind of in the in the sandia is outside of albuquerque and so it's climate is much more moderated than somewhere like phenix. so you know i talk about water water is a problem that can be solved. we can reuse water, we can make the necessary investments to make sure people have enough water, heat. i am less certain of when people

talk about phenix getting already getting into the one twenties, it will get into one thirties within 50 years. like i think there is a limit to how hot a place can be. people can live albuquerque. you will not get that hot albuquerque think because of its geographic position will stay cooler. it's a much smaller city. it's a much the it is a much more um they use water more sustainably. there. so if climate is your biggest concern i, think you'll be okay? yeah. all right. we out of time. i think that's okay. all right. i got to wrap this up so do want to thank our author it kyle paoletta. and his book is american oasis finding the future in the cities of the southwest. i also want to thank richard parker who wrote the crossing, el paso, the southwest and

americas forgotten origin story. richard, you are not forgotten. we want to thank you for for this book. we lost you. and so the nowhere bookshop tent outside the festival marketplace, they have book sales and signings and the next events coming up shortly after this one. so you can exit quickly we can get the new one going on. i'm david martin davies. thank you so much for being part of this.