News you can use
News you can use
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When I had cataract surgery a few years ago, when the pads were removed from my eyes, I felt like I had been given a new set of eyeballs. Suddenly the world appeared more clearly, more colorful than ever before in my clouded memory. Other gifts of new sight have happened more gradually, like this one I want to share with you. You all know I have quite an extensive array of plants in my garden. To some of the flowers, bushes and trees I’ve given names. I have a couple plants I...
Some days when I look out my door, there just doesn’t seem to be much happening. I remember wishing, when my children were young, just wishing for one boring day. Just one day of absolute boredom, please, Dear God. That wish-prayer was never answered. I’m the kind of person who simply does not get bored. However, back in the day, I also remember when good friends sat me down and suggested that I was a bit of an adrenalin junkie, just a tad addicted to drama. I listened. It...
I’m not saying winter is over and done. I’m not that presumptuous. However, it surely does feel like spring has bumped winter off the edge. Why, when we’ve only sailed through mid-January, am I waking up to mornings 15 and 20 degrees warmer than at Christmas? Why are some of the jacaranda trees beginning to flower? Those trees bloom in April and May through June. Purple flowers pop out like moles in a newly laid lawn. This tree, then that tree, then the one over yonder. But n...
Here we go again, ’round and ’round the merry-go-round, twirling so fast we dare not jump off. Leo was just here with the daily death report from town. Last night the governor of Jalisco spoke to the people. He basically locked us down again. Don’t go anywhere. Don’t congregate in bunches. Wear masks. No travel unless absolutely necessary. Now that the holidays have passed, tourists and Mexican-Americans here to visit family have gone back home, the latest COVID variant is on...
To jump start a new year and top off my week, we had a puzzling close encounter of the impossible kind. Lola The Dog chased down an adult opossum. It might have dropped out of the avocado tree. Lola was beside herself with dog joy. Lola has a good measure of hunter in her parentage. She’s brought me birds and lizards of various shades. But this is a biggie. She proudly deposited her gift at my feet, tail wagging like ‘copter blades. Good dog. There it lay, dead. I’d never...
Farm Report: Tomatoes are up and everything else is down. More or less. I’m not sure what it is about tomatoes here but they insist on growing under extreme conditions, such as winter. Well, our winter, not your winter. Still, they astonish me. Remember, my farm is in five-gallon buckets, baby baths, and other assorted strange containers. I’m really tired of eating tomatoes. My neighbors are glad to relieve me of the excess. Herbs are year round. Flowers are forever. But the...
I thought to write a Christmas newsletter but then common sense prevailed. What would I say? For all of us, 2021 has been a year of isolation, of illness and deaths in our friends, families, neighbors and acquaintances; a year of worry and fret. To balance what I said above, the solitude, for me, has been a most precious gift. I don’t have any words to explain, just that it has allowed a deepening and sharpening of senses and sensibilities. That doesn’t make sense. You’d have...
Don’t get excited. This is not a big deal. I might save a tree or two. I won’t be leading parades nor expect anybody to jump on my bandwagon. Three things linked together in my head and this idea shot out the other end. (Please, do not examine that statement too closely.) Weather devastations and our dying planet met up with my shrinking income met up with a memory of childhood when I learned to iron clothes beginning with handkerchiefs for the whole family, some embroidered i...
Well, it is, you know. The season of too much. Christmas begins in August in the stores. There are too many presents under the tree. Excessive decorating until what would have been pretty becomes tasteless. Too much spending. Too much eating. Too much guilt. As you might surmise, I have managed to pare down my life even more. Here on the Rancho, every year we exchange little gifts. In one breath I announced that nobody was going to get a gift from me and begged my neighbors...
Easy to say. Difficult to pull off. Oh, oh. I see you are giving me the stink eye over my use of “Be lazy.” My friend and I grew up on neighboring farms. Our fairy godmothers waved magic wands at our births and gifted us with the gift of “Busy.” You know, as in “An idle mind is the devil’s workshop and idle hands his tools.” My grandma used to actually say that to me. Frequently. She raised my dad, of course, so I come by some things served up in a double-dip cone. Let me...
Back in July, I took a big step in my single life. I adopted Lola, a sweet dog, raised by friends who had rescued her mother, abandoned, heavy with pups, from homeless life on the streets of Oconahua, sleeping in doorways, eating garbage. I like animals. I like pets. Dogs. Cats. Pigs. Rats. Yes, rats. When my daughter was 3, I went to buy a guinea pig but the pet store owner talked me into a pair of Chinese hooded rats. Rats make excellent pets, are intelligent, affectionate...
Nobody could have been more surprised than myself at my reaction when, seemingly overnight, 10 snowbird residents from northern climes descended upon us, wings flapping, eager for discourse. During the past two years, our small community, which had become a hermitage in all but name, suddenly reverted to the Rancho with residents in every casa. Me, I was saucer-eyed and hyperventilating, making comfort food (for myself) and hoping everybody would stay away until I had...
Growing up in tiny Harlem, Montana, local shopping — and there was no other kind — consisted of small individual stores for every need. A monthly trip to town and women could stock up on groceries and perhaps check out what’s new at the clothing store. For breakdowns and tractor parts, back in the day, we had a plumber, an electrician, a couple hardware-variety stores, three farm equipment places, two car dealers and an insurance agent. For all things cowboy, we had a saddle s...
Changes happen whether we want them or not, don’t they? It’s just the way it is. This week we in Mexico fell back, time, the clock. Since I’m not tied to a schedule, my body works by the sun. Sunshine, wake up. Sundown, yawn. You’d think the clock change wouldn’t bother me a bit, but it always does, puts me on edge for a few days. I find myself thinking, whether spring or fall, the clock says “seven,” but, the “real” time is “eight.” I was blathering on to my son Ben about i...
This morning, a friend whom I’ve not yet met sent a photo of foliage turned colors in Maine. Everywhere the season is turning a corner. Maine. Montana. Mexico. Everywhere. Rains are tucked back into their rain locker until next rainy season. We’ve a week with nary a drop of moisture, nary a cloud in the sky-blue sky. Immediately the daytime temperatures ramped up fifteen degrees. I put away the rain towels, draped across my windowsills since June. Just like that, I’m out dragg...
Honest to Pete, sometimes I’m blind as a bat. Yes, I know; let the clichés roll on. These last six years that I’ve lived in my Etzatlan house, I thought my bodega roof drained frontward. My neighbor Janet asked if I knew what that large pipe was about on the other side of our shared wall. What pipe? We asked “the boys.” Yes, that pipe drains the gutter from my bodega roof onto the other property and makes a right mess. Joe and Yvonne used to own both houses. They were her...
We stood side by side on the ditch bank, relaxed, Dad leaning on his irrigation shovel. The July afternoon was quiet, air hardly moving, hot, dry. I was in high school but I can’t remember which year. A wisp of cloud lifted above the horizon. We stood together, in silence, watched the cloud gather substance. The spring rains had abandoned us that year. Here it was, mid-summer, and the earth gasped for moisture. We tracked that cloud all the way from the cusp until nearly o...
Turned out to be a surprise party at my house, planned by Ana and Leo, unbeknownst to either myself or Michelle. I knew Ana and Michelle were coming over. I’d asked them if they would accept a lovely tooled leather stool that had no acceptable place to live in my home but I thought it would have several spots it would like to live at their place. Michelle said they had to be in town so would stop by to get the stool. I’d considered asking Michelle if she’d bring her espre...
I have become adept at simply watching the sky, at comprehending or at thinking I comprehend, the grim and gritty shades of gray, unrelenting gray, and nothing sexy about it, and I confess I never read the above hinted at book but had it been around when I was a teen, I’m sure I would have thought myself quite sophisticated to hide the pages under my bed quilt and greedily turn pages in secret by flashlight. Today I’d rather read the sky, of which on second thought, I hav...
I begin my days with a loose routine of morning readings, nothing cast in concrete, but generally start with the poet Rumi. This epitomizes the week. “But for us this day is Friends sitting together with silence shining in our faces.” If friendship were a basket, this week the basket is large and we filled it to the brim. Leo announced his birthday. He’s an old soul in a 35-year-young body. I quickly put a peach/mango crisp in the oven. Leo noted that Ana and Michelle had i...
Some days, I feel like I’m living in Dali’s famous painting with timepieces slumped and limp and empty. Except with differences. My “painting” would have the clock hands clutching at the wall in futile attempt to stay put. “What do you mean, we are well into September? August began yesterday, don’t you know?” What do I have to show for a month gone by? I mean, I haven’t accomplished anything. We are supposed to, aren’t we? We are told that, aren’t we? In my self-imposed lif...
I suppose it’s my own fault. I should have known when the toilet tank innards up and died and bled water all over the floor. But no, I had nary a clue. Then a few days later I remained blissfully unaware when my washing machine puddled all over the bodega floor. Turned out a crack eroded in the tub which had to be replaced. I should have caught on that something was afoot more than the simple mechanical obvious. The appropriate specialist doctors came out and applied the a...
Consider this to be as though you accidentally tuned into the cooking channel. The difference is that I’ll tell you about the mistakes I made along the way. When Uncle Lee retired from being a fireman in Indianapolis, he and Aunt Joanne bought an Airstream trailer in which they spent every winter, lolling in the Florida Keys. This was back when cars were built as sturdily as ocean liners and were almost as big. I picture my aunt and uncle rolling down the highway, in the t...
After all my bragging about all the lovely rain we’ve been having, day after day after day, this past week we’ve been dry as a desiccated bone in the desert. I’ve been floored with a couple wet exceptions. Saturday morning I woke up with puddles on my bathroom floor, around the toilet. Easy to figure out where that water was dripping, from tank to tile. Josue, our resident plumber, electrician, fix-all man, is still in California. Leo looked at the tank and, wisely, said...
Here I am again, sitting at my computer, staring at a blank page of paper that’s not real paper, waiting for inspiration to write, to share with you, the latest happenings in my real life. And one of the most real things that occurs to me is guilt. I feel guilty. Real good ol’ Catholic guilt. Let’s take the little things first. Every day it rains, here on the high plateau surrounded with mountains in central Mexico. Beginning in June, through July and now into August. The e...
