News you can use
News you can use
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One day last week Leo asked, “Had breakfast yet?” I grabbed my bag and we headed to the gordita place. I’m certain there are a hundred gordita places in Etzatlan. This one is on the man street; that’s what I call it. Block after block of repair shops, tire and tool stores, that kind of thing. Man stuff, man street. These aren’t stores like we are used to seeing. Might be five or six a block, open fronts, no signage. Might be more workers than tools. I sat in a plastic c...
I have turned into my father and I don’t like it. When I lived in Washington, I used to almost dread Dad’s phone calls because they too frequently meant that somebody we knew, in the family or in the neighborhood, had died. Every day I open the Havre Daily Homepage, ostensibly to see what is going on in my old neighborhood. But a not-so-teeny part of me can’t wait to scan down to the obituaries. I am always relieved when there are no names I recognize. Just this week, out o...
Used to be, if I had a serious deadline, I would work all day, work all night, work until the project was finished, ready to deliver. Ah, well, that was then. “Used to be” is like paint, it covers a multitude of sins. Nowadays, in what the “boys” here call “my wonderful retired life,” and it is, mostly, I parse out my day in bits and pieces. Perhaps like today, hang laundry, rest, generally with a book in hand, make the bed, rest, sweep floor, rest, work on project, re...
Today I bring you the banal, the mundane, my trite self-discovery in household hints. Soap-pads Ohso Special. Also known as SOS or, in Español, “fibra metalica.” Can you believe I could not find any of those soap-embedded, finely-shredded wirey scrub pads that I think of as SOS pads, no matter the brand? Not anywhere in town. I am a proponent of shopping locally. Though my town is small, I generally find whatever I need in a store right around the corner. Fruterias and abor...
My backyard pulls me out of the house. I take a book with me, as always, but cannot focus when surrounded by such magical glory. This is the same yard, the same beauty, the same powerful stillness around me day after day after day. What makes it feel different today? I don’t know. Maybe something about the quality of light in August. Already the sun slants winter-wise across the sky. Perhaps it illuminates more detail, each edge of leaf, each bird wing, each petal of b...
Do you ever wonder if the big ol’ sun up there looks down and thinks, “Those are some mighty strange beings down on that little ball of mud, especially that one there, standing by the mango tree, looking up in the sky and trying to puzzle out the unfigurable”? (Not only can I anthropomorphize with the best, I’m good at making up words.) I can smell the moisture in the air. Morning is heavy with fog. The afternoon hot and sticky. The clouds split and gallop along the mountai...
Yesterday my computer went strange on me, would not let me make any of my usual connections. So after trying everything I knew (not much) I phoned my son for help. Ben was at work, so he said he’d call me to fix it when he got home. A few hours later, I thought to give it one more futile try. Obviously, the dang bugger heard me make the call to Ben, quaked in its reboots and fixed itself. My errant computer was a small glitch in my day. Even with the importance my computer h...
DNA and ancestry search sites are the latest greatest. I’m not sure I want unknown relatives crawling out of the woodwork. The relatives I know are scary enough. Of my background, I know I am predominately British American (English, Welsh, Scotch, Irish) with added German from Dad’s side and French (Brittany) and a secret on Mom’s side. That is to say, mongrel. Cousin Nancie and I have spent the last two weeks talking about our shared maternal family. Nancie and I did not m...
I was sitting on my front patio talking with my gardener, Leo, when a velvety brown bat fluttered between us and landed in a hollow metal rafter supporting the patio roof. Ah, I had wondered if bats might be moving in. This morning there were figs on the floor below the bat perch. (Figs in full, figs in processed form, but identifiable by seeds.) Several neighbors have false fig trees which drop a nasty fruit, not a true fig. Bats haul these fruits to their perches but drop...
Here in this high plateau valley surrounded by mountains, in the rainy season, roughly mid-June through mid-October, the sky bursts with pyrotechnic activity nearly every night. I like storms. I like the beauty of lightning skittering across night sky. I like the rumble of thunder. Storms do not scare me. I admit, there are times I’ve nearly jumped out of my skin at a sudden clap of thunder directly overhead but that is simply a startle reflex. Rain pounding on the roof c...
I boarded the Empire Builder #7 in Wolf Point. I quickly kissed my daughter goodbye, the door clanged shut, I found my seat and the train rolled west. I cried all the way to Glasgow; the sky, November Gray in June, mirrored my sorrow. My daughter Dee Dee and I had managed to steal time from her busy schedule to talk, to laugh a lot and to argue the inconsequential. We had three weeks together, family times, good times. I wanted to go home and I wanted to stay. Human nature,...
Does anybody remember Mighty Mouse? Is Mighty Mouse still alive? Evidently, I thought I’d swoop into my daughter’s life singing, “Here I am to save the day!” Boy, howdy, was I ever wrong! I totally ignored the part where I am in my 70s and my daughter is 50. Once a “Mighty Mom,” always a “Mighty Mom.” I also ignored other basic facts of her life, such a her husband, her teenaged daughter and 42-hundred family pets. Expectations trip me up every time and land me smack on my fac...
After a whirlwind trip around eastern Montana last week, I’ve settled in a room with no view but, more importantly, with private bath, at my daughter’s new home in Glendive. At times in our lives, circumstances dictate in unpleasant ways. Their last home was a mice-infested hovel with a black-cloud grimace. This home, also an older farmhouse, welcomes one with arms wide-open. It perches on the edge of Glendive with expansive field and yard surrounding it, spacious room for...
Bacon and eggs are common base ingredients, but we created a different kind of omelet at Char’s the other morning, a “Friend Omelet,” made of ingredients (ourselves), old friends and new. I had no idea whether we could pull it off. I conjured the germ of an idea shortly after I spontaneously decided to fly to Montana. My little girl needed me. She was born in ’66 — you do the math — but age is meaningless to a mother, and I wanted to see her new home. Dee’s family moved...
Depression by any other name is no rose, let me tell you. Steve and Theresa, my friends from my long-time home in Washington, are back in their home. We had a lovely time together; I especially treasure the stories we told, peeling back layers to reveal more of ourselves. When friends leave me, typically I count on three days depression before I can get myself back in gear. I don’t mean deep-clinical-want-to-rip-my-heart-out-with-a-rusty-machete-and-no-anesthetic type d...
Friends come in every size, color and flavor and I would not want it to be any other way. I’ve heard it said that some friends are for a reason. I’d agree with that. Take Benjamin, for example, the man who delivers my twenty liter jugs of drinking water. He is a delightful man. I enjoy our short chats, always like to see him. But we don’t share home visits. My long-gone but always with me friend, David, would say Benjamin is a business associate. And that is true. We have...
When Guadalajara rumbled with a 3.9 quake, I neither felt nor heard it but at the same time a weird wind seemingly blowing from all directions hit us hard. That night I lay in bed looking up at the bricks that form my roof. What if . . . I’ll never forget the quake that shook Seattle a few years back and terrified me. It sounded like a freight train headed for my head and the ground rolled. Though a child, I still remember the Yellowstone Quake. Another quake hit this m...
My son Ben lives in Poulsbo, a lovely town across the water from Seattle, where I lived with my family for 25 years. He sent the following email to me and it is a better story than any I could write. He presents this story in a stream-of-consciousness way so I broke it into paragraphs. Otherwise, it is all Ben’s words, unedited. Have you heard of the Coffee Oasis in Bremerton? A guy started it years ago. It gives homeless and people in recovery a chance to have a job and a h...
I know that I said (quite plainly), “I am not going to buy any more pots for my plants.” I spoke these words quite sincerely, often, back when I had accumulated a total 100 (plus a small number) pots. I counted several times, trying to be, wanting to be, wrong. Plants, flowers, bushes, have a done-by date, just as we do. Some I’ve pulled out by their dead roots and reused their containers. But I’ve also made changes in my garden, some of which require more containers. For exa...
Several weeks or months ago, all the women in the Rancho jumped onto the latest diet-craze roller coaster. One at a time. I’m not sure how or why. Each is beautiful in her own way. I say “all” the women. I mean all but myself. I wasn’t invited. Not that I would have bought the ticket. I once rode that carnival ride and it cost me dearly. I have not dieted since. When I was in high school, several girls attempted the diet of that time. When I make up my mind to do somethi...
I felt lost the whole week. I had absolutely no sense of direction. How could I tell? I have long been able to orient myself to water. I sense the presence of a body of water. On our last day, luggage packed for return, I stood on the balcony over the Caribbean. “I got it!” I said to myself. Sometimes I am a slow learner. The Caribbean Sea is to the east, not the west. No wonder I have felt so disoriented. I had spent the entire week upside-down, so to speak, heading in the...
Remember a few weeks ago I stayed in the sleaziest hotel in Chacala? Lovelytown. Ugly hotel experience. This week, thanks to the generosity of Kathy and Richard, I am in the most posh hotel in Cancun, which says a lot! Cancun is “Tourist Mecca,” jaw-dropping beauty. Our friends also invited Leo. Leo started as our gardener. Now he is our friend. It is our bonus that he helps us with gardening. Kathy said that this is the Ultimate Blowout Vacation, making use of timeshare point...
Time flies and the older I get, the faster it fugits. As I contemplate yet another birthday, that mean ol’ tempus is fugiting at the speed of light. To add injury to insult, this weekend we will set the clocks ahead in Mexico. I know, you up north are already over the shock of change. In a few days I will struggle to remember what time it really is, whatever that means, since “time” is but an arbitrary measure. Before I wax too philosophical, let me change directions and n...
We told her. We told her. Never again is she allowed to pick the hotel. “The owner is really nice,” she said. “Yes, the owner is a nice man; his wife is nice, his three-year-old daughter is cute.” The hotel is sleazy. Not sleazy in the way of an immoral business conducted in a hotel on the outer edge of town posting hourly rates, but sleazy in the way of shabby, dirty, sordid, inadequate and unpleasant. In her defense, she didn’t know and none of us checked it out before we...
Three weeks and counting. Two deep wells supply the municipality of Etzatlan with water. One of the city well pumps quit working. Died the good death after a life of service to his community. Down on the lower edge of town, we in my neighborhood experienced an extreme decrease in water pressure. We had no idea or thought of concern to what was occurring up on the hillsides. A week passed before we were aware of a problem. Until our own water ran out. I took immediate measures...
