News you can use
News you can use
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Once upon a time, in the far northern reaches of China, bordering Mongolia, there lived a beautiful princess. Oh, wait, wrong story. Start again. Once upon a time, in the far northern reaches of China, bordering Mongolia, a factory dedicated to producing the best umbrella clotheslines in the world, meticulously began to piece together the very Prince of All Clotheslines. Disclosure: Parts of this story have been fictionalized. However the main thread of the story is absolute...
My friends, I don’t have a story for today. Instead, I’ll send a poem. It is raw, fresh and flawed, but I no longer care about flaws. I’ve been thinking a lot about love. Remember how we used to say “Make love, not war”? Today my chant would be, “Make love, not hate”. Love is difficult, takes careful consideration, time, decisions. That’s my experience. I’m so fortunate to have known and to know so much love. I’m human. I get angry, frustrated, irritated at my friends, but...
In each life it seems there might be one or two individuals with whom, no matter how hard we try, we simply cannot communicate. We usually marry them. Seriously, if nothing else, we surround ourselves with people of like mind. We act together in ways beneficial to both parties. We are on the same track, click-clacking to the same destination. However, now and then we encounter a person with whom out tongue jumps the track, derails, stops at the wrong station, or otherwise...
The northeast wind doth blow! Just like that, fall is no longer on the way but has arrived. This is not our prevailing wind but is our October wind, here in Etzatlan, Jalisco. Not that much can be said to prevail these uncertain days. Conditions here are generally mild. This morning the winds are at 6-7 mph, gusting to 25! For us, this is windy! I love autumn. One thing I love most is that the air carries whiffs of spices. Spicy scents seem to be layered, to waft around my...
Scritch, scratch, scrape, scratch, scritch. Chips flying. Breathing dust. I really should have eye protectors. I cannot believe I am doing this job. Just last week, just days ago, I told you I do anything to avoid using sandpaper. Here I am, sanding down metal rocking chairs, one pair so old that the only thing holding them together might be the paint. I proceed cautiously, dust up my nose, in my hair, in the fibers of my clothing. Oh, well. Must be done. It was not my idea. K...
Often I say that I am never bored. It’s true. Always I find plenty to do, things that I enjoy and want to do. Fortunately, I grew up learning to like whatever I am doing. I give credit to the good Sisters at St. Joseph’s. Even today, I take pleasure in plunging my hands into warm dishwater or ironing creases into my cotton pants. I’m not pure or perfect. I dislike touching sandpaper and a lot of things in my home would be better detailed had I not skipped a crucial step in a p...
I am writing this, talking about this hard subject, for you, for that one person out there who needs to hear that you are not alone. This is a topic nobody wants to talk about. Me, included. Let’s sweep it under the rug and pretend that lump isn’t real. I’ve lost my son. Again. Last time I lost him, the County Sheriff picked him up in a ditch, beat up with broken bones, a backpack containing heroin and other contraband. Landed in jail. The County had a special program, uniqu...
My morning readings include a short poem by Rumi as translated by Coleman Barks. One morning this past week, I read: Who makes these changes? I shoot an arrow right. It lands left. I ride after a deer And find myself chased by a hog. I plot to get what I want And end up in prison. I dig pits to trap others And fall in. I should be suspicious Of what I want. And that pretty much says it. My life in a nutshell. Rumi has not become my daily horoscope. Some days his words mean...
The longer I live, the less certain I am about anything. In fact, when I detect certainty in my thinking, I immediately stop and investigate to find the flaw. You’ve all met Leo. He works in my yard a couple half-days a week. Leo is much more than a garden worker. I’ve come to depend on Leo for all manner of help. He is a gentle man, educated, generous, and has a brilliant sense of humor. Over time, he’s come to seem a grandson to me. He trusts me enough to tell me when he th...
It was a dark and sleepless night, not a storm cloud in sight. I did the usual when I don’t sleep. I gazed out the window. Turned from my right side to my left side. Threw back the blanket. Turned from my left side to my right side. Pulled up the blanket and tucked it around me, a cocoon. Too many times. Sensible people, I am told, get up and do something. Binge on Netflix. Scrub the toilet. Read until their eyeballs fall out. Work an entire book of Sudoku. Drink a bottle o...
We all get them. This has been our turn. A week fraught with “one thing after another.” The kind of week where the little disasters loom large in shadows of big fears. My friend Ana in Oconahua had been having stomach pains for a long time, much longer than anybody knew when she finally admitted them and went for tests. Bango — into the hospital she landed, gall bladder surgery. She left minus a body part, with rocks in hand. She is recovering nicely from the surgery but s...
Grandma raised me. When I was born, my Dad was overseas fighting in The War. My Mom had what we today call mental health issues. For all know, from stories told me by that side of the family, she might have been Mad as the Proverbial Hatter. Uncles and Aunts rescued me often and I’m sure they were glad to hand me and Mom over to Dad when he returned. My Dad was a farmer. He loved farming. He loved my Mom. Mom loved Dad. Mom did not love farming. I was 3 when my sister was b...
I want to ride my tri-cy-cle. I want to ride my trike! Queen, I shall sing you all day. Do you remember your first wheels? Mine was a tricycle, all metal, sparkly red. I remember the size, the shape, the feel of leaning over the chrome handlebars, skinny legs pushing the rubber-clad pedals with all my might, wind in my face, tooling down the lane between the house and the barn. My friend Janet bought an electric tricycle and she is excited. Her excitement is infectious. I...
Here we are, smack in the middle of August, wondering how we got here already. Yes? As a friend said, “What do you mean, August? It’s only June.” Yes. June. I mean, August! The days move along too quickly on their progression through the equinox. You can feel the difference in the air, can’t you? It might be subtle but it is there. The air has a different scent, a different brush against your skin. A different energy. Summer is still with us. The signs of the season turning...
When I moved to Etzatlan in Jalisco, Mexico, I said to myself, as well as to anyone who would listen, “I will live here until I die. This is my last best place.” Unless I die in the next few weeks, I find that I have one more last best place to experience in this life. It had been a month since I’d visited my new house in Oconahua, a casita tucked into a corner of property owned by Ana and Michelle. This morning Leo helped me load his car with a few things I could take over...
Lest we forget. I tell this story lest we forget. We have suffered a tragedy in our little community. You are probably tired of hearing me celebrate every raindrop. The rain that makes this mountainous country look like the green, green, green of Ireland, wears the familiar comedy/tragedy mask, same as any country with arroyos and gullies. Water will wear and tear channels through mountains, valleys and hillsides. Last week the rain turned its tragedy cheek toward our town. Et...
It was not the usual party. Bear with me while I paint a picture for you of the background that led to this strange, but not unfamiliar, party. First thing, Baby Marley, my great-granddaughter, who spent the winter in the hospital NICU in Billings, who is still fighting the effects, came down with COVID. Oh, yes, the whole family fell ill, one by one, like a standing-on-edge row of dominoes. Every morning I’d check in. How is Marley? How are Kyla, Leilani, Tate, Jessica and D...
Poor Homer. He started to look disreputable. Rather down in the mouth, long in the tooth, rusty around the edges. Sadly, I had reached the age to consider procuring a companion. While Homer is not exactly a cabana boy, I was attracted to him the first time I saw him. His price was mind-boggling. It took me a good year of back-and-forth trips to Tonala, home of huge artisans bazaars, before I made the purchase. This was back in the first couple years I lived here, when each...
One of my Montana classmates, who has chronic problems with her back, sometimes to the point she cannot walk, told us the story of what happened a several years ago that caused her to resort to hanging onto her walker this week. Cheryl was on a ladder painting the eaves of a new-built garden shed. She needed to move the ladder, started down, slipped and landed on her bottom, broke her tailbone and crushed several vertebrae, but, by golly, she hung onto the paint bucket. Does...
Rainy nights. Sunny days. Moderate temperatures. “I could live in this season forever,” I said to a friend this morning. If only. Right? Nope, we get to experience all things. We got to experience a mountain-storm almost-tsunami the other night. A right whopper. A few days prior, during a lighter storm, I lay in bed thinking about geography. I’m at the foot of mountains. If a phenomenal rainstorm, something much more than the ordinary, were to burst forth, we could be flood...
I am packing the long packing. I am saying the long good bye. I am readying myself for the big move, the great distance of ten kilometers, all the way to far off, exotic Oconahua, a move which is months away. I love where I am living now, this place, this small house, all my plants. Nobody would ever question my love for this place. And this place has loved me back, big loves. Everybody’s financial and personal situations are different. We who live on the rancho are a v...
I’m not going into a lot of detail. There was a death, not unexpected, in the family who own this rancho. It’s a big family, a lot of history here. For the past few days, it’s felt like, humor me here, spirits wandering, a lot of back and forth, disconnected and disconcerted. I’m talking about a lot of restless spirits. I’m sensitive to these things, to an extent. Aware, that’s all. This morning I woke up angry, for no discernable reason and with no object for my anger. This...
Out of nowhere, no foretaste, foretelling, forewarning, it dropped from the sky, swooning, gobsmacked us in the best way. Rain, glorious, wondrous, wet, rain. Before the sun settled, the rain swung low like a sweet chariot, and dropped love from the sky. The trees, the grasses, the flowers, the chili peppers, the weeds, me; we all lifted our arms in glad welcome. Lola The Dog scurried into her wee casita and hovered against the back wall. Lola is not a water dog. She cools...
Truly. I’ve nothing to say. My mind is fried, blackened to a carbon crisp beneath the unrelenting heat dome. The way it is today is the way it will be forever and ever, amen. I know that is a big, fat lie, but it is the way I feel. Discouraged. Every morning I scurry to get basic cleaning done before 9:00 because three-digit heat comes with companionable dust. I knock back the most visible dirt and mop the floors because that layer of dust is slick and slick is dangerous to o...
We’ve most of us inadvertently swallowed a bug or two, usually a mosquito. Right? Here the gustatory bugs are most likely Argentine ants. They are taking over the world, by the way. Saw that on a You Tube documentary. Moving north, house by house. It is so. You might not even notice them, they are so tiny, like a speck of dust on legs. Anyway, what happened that busy morning when I was sewing a tunic top, is that I sat my glass of agua fresca, a fruity drink of papaya, p...
