News you can use
News you can use
Sorted by date Results 301 - 325 of 644
Last Thursday Kathy, Richard, Nancie and I drove into Guadalajara for a night of highbrow music. El Teatro Santo Degollado, in the Centro Historico district where the Orquesta Filamonica performs, is a spectacular building of European architecture, a treat in itself. Are you impressed? I am. I grew up minus music, other than what I heard on the radio broadcast from Havre. Kathy, however, an avid cello player for many years, is in a different league and knows music intimately,...
I’ve heard stories about this elderly couple who live in El Amparo, the abandoned mining town in the mountains, ever since I moved to Etzatlan. Every Thursday this traditional couple, she in her long skirt, he in baggy white pants, both with wide sombreros, rode horses down the mountain road into town. They stayed the night with family and bought supplies at the Friday morning tianguis. Then in the afternoon, the couple would ride back to their mountain home, carrying their m...
Winter, we are weary. Whether she gambols like a bleating lamb or roars like a lion, we welcome March after the grim days of February. Skies may still be gray but a fleeting scent in the air says winter is over and spring is here, or nearly so. Snow may fall, temps hit the low scale but spring will burst forth, even in Montana. The calendar tells us so. I’ve no complaint, I admit, here in my mountain valley in Jalisco. But friends and family live in frozen Montana and even w...
Jim phoned, “Would you like to go to El Amparo? John and Carol are coming. Be ready in half an hour.” I’ve been wanting to go see the ghost town of El Amparo for three years. Beginning in the early 1500s, the mines were a rich source of gold and silver. From boom town Etzatlan, miners trudged over the mountains to work and brought back refined minerals through our town to Guadalajara to Spain. In the heyday of El Amparo, historians and local stories confirm that the minin...
When our Rancho gardener comes in the morning, Leo often asks me, “Sondrita, how is your wonderful retired life?” “Yes,” I say. We laugh. We both understand my meaning. “Yes, wonderful.” Wonderful, beyond any plan I might have dreamed. But, each day is filled with distractions. Take today, for instance. I get up, make my bed, drink two mugs of coffee, strong and hot, the way I like it. Order. Precision. On my mind is a vague desire to bake cookies. Oatmeal. Chocolate o...
Yes, I know, the song says “don’t worry, be happy” and I reversed the order. Which comes first, chicken or egg, or does it matter and who cares? What I noticed is that when I am happy, I tend not to worry. However, it is within the realm of possibilities that worry is a vastly underrated activity. Consider this. Almost without fail, the things I worry about never come to fruition. When bad things happen, it invariably is something of which I never thought to worry. If worry...
Yesterday John and Carol, Leo, our gardener, and I took a trip up to the top of the sacred Mountain, Volcan de Tequila. Tequila Mountain dominates a huge section of Jalisco, can be seen from Guadalajara as well as from my own yard. We are aware of its majestic presence whenever we think to notice. John had walked over the day before to ask if I would like to join them. I hesitated a few seconds, shook myself and said yes to a chance to see more of this country I have come to...
Dear Lee and Roy, Imagine my surprise when Leo handed me mail this morning. He climbs the stairs at the Mercado every Monday morning to check my mail box. I suspect the real reason Leo checks mail every Monday morning is his secret penchant for deep-fried stuffed gorditas the Senora makes, just down the hall from the Correo office. Stuffed with cheese and jalapenos. Dripping grease. I came as close to dance as I am capable when I held the envelope, Christmas card size, in my...
Those words came out of my mouth with full exclamation stop. And nobody near with ears to hear. Among other things in this mysterious and strange aging process, things like talking with myself, I have an emerging propensity to use phrases I have not heard since I was a child; phrases I snubbed, vowed never to let pass my more educated, sophisticated lips. Ha. Yesterday, I returned from my week on the beach in Mazatlan. With a severe shortage of gasoline in the state of...
This morning I walked down to Tony’s On The Beach for breakfast. I called it a walking meditation because naming it such makes me feel better about my small steps, snail pace. Once again I am in Mazatlan. Kathy and Richard asked me if I would like to join them for a week on the beach. Who would say no? It has been three years now since I lived in Mazatlan. Tony’s is in my old neighborhood. Oh, the changes. Each time I come, there are changes. Economy is booming if one may jud...
The episode began innocently enough. I had walked over to see Carol about something so mundane I don’t even remember. She came out of her door with a stunning pink scarf wrapped around her neck. I commented on the beauty. Scarf and woman — they enhanced one another. “Do you know to whom this belongs?” Carol asked. (She really said, “Whose is it?” But I’m writing an adventure mystery based on a true story so I’ll tell it my way.) “I found the scarf after the birthday gatherin...
Christmas has been celebrated. The first day of the New Year lurks around the corner. We arbitrarily close out one year, stamp it “over and done” and with trepidation open the flaps of the box labeled, “next.” The one thing, the only thing, I can say with certainty, is this: Nothing, absolutely nothing, will come about, unfold, or happen the way I think it will. Just by consistently getting up each morning I have lived long and I have learned that I don’t know much. Jim recen...
Angels and snakes, metaphorical. Every garden has each. While moving my water sprinkler, I stepped in a nest of fire ants. Stepped out quickly, swiping ants off my legs, onto my arms, off my arms, moving at lightning speed to patio and can of Raid where I drenched my legs, shoes, socks and soaked the ground around me. Back to the garden, barefoot, with a stronger spray and obliterated the newly sprung ant nest. Stings like fire. Since Jalisco winter is like Montana spring, I...
For me, it was a fortuitous choice. I don’t sing in public. We were gathered on the festively decorated patio out by the pool. Yes, there is a pool on the Rancho. I don’t talk about it because I don’t get in water lower than my body temperature. We owners, gringos, workers, everybody who had anything to do with the Rancho, sat around the long string of table, practicing the tune with lyrics in Spanish, to celebrate the Posada. Bonnie might have heard me mutter to Carol, next...
Maybe you don’t but I have a tendency to automatically and immediately attach a judgement to various happenings during my day. You know—that’s good; that’s bad. Usually I catch myself and adjust my attitude before damage is done. Usually. Today is not a “catch myself” day. Take this morning. Generally the sun hits my backyard patio beneath the jacaranda by 8:30. I like to take a book and cup of coffee out and bask like a lizard for half an hour, Mexican time, which often...
My daughter Dee Dee sent me pictures of Antoinette building a snowman, the falling white fluff thick on the ground, the tree branches covered with hoar frost. For a moment, just a moment, mind you, I had a twinge of homesick nostalgia, for snow. I have a theory. Since snow in inevitable in our northern climes, in order to find a marginal ability to tolerate the slick, nasty frozen stuff — as opposed to the genius of ice-cream — we inventive humans, creatures without ben...
In other words, “The older the mango, the sweeter the fruit.” Words by which to live from Leo’s Aunt Cuca, 100 years old. Sundays she walks five kilometers to church, refusing rides from neighbors. Señora Cuca Chavez lives on a small farm, alone, near San Antonio de los Vasquez, about an hour north of Guadalajara. I cannot find the tiny village on any of my maps. It is near Cuquio, toward the river. I had written to my son, “Not much to report. Guess my life is boring.” Ben im...
Crin wrote, “Look at the nice young man you can get online these days.” A photo accompanied her note. Ah, Crinny, it’s been done. Mail order was quite a popular movement back in the late 1800s, after the Civil War, when settlers began homesteading the great western reaches of the country. The men sent off ads for brides. Generally, I understand, once the package arrived, usually by train, parties on both sides of the fence were in for an unpleasant surprise, as the promi...
They flapped a clamor like rain drumming on my roof. The day is sunny and bright. Overhead, a gigantic thundercloud of blackbirds shadowed the sky in annual migration. I like to imagine these are the same blackbirds I see gathering in the wheat fields around Havre in September, eating grain, preparing for the 2,500 mile flight south. I will see these flocks daily until spring, moving between feeding grounds in the valley and night perches in the hills. Jim was here with his...
I woke up grumpy. Not normal. Beautiful sunrise. Normal. After coffee and Qi Gong with Jim, I still felt out of sorts, no energy. I sat; he gonged. Decided to go to the doctor. Definitely not normal. Leo, who came to see if I needed anything from town, offered to take me and be my interpreter. “Do you want to see the cheap doctor or the good doctor?” “I don’t care. I just want to make sure I don’t have pneumonia.” The “cheap” doctors are those who are working off government...
I should have a good ten years of health ahead of me, since the last time I was this sick with a head cold was a good ten years ago. The prevailing wisdom is, if you don’t medicate a cold, it will wear itself out in two weeks. If you do medicate a cold, it will hang on fourteen days. In these two miserable weeks, I’ve hardly left my bed. Medical advice from the young men on the Rancho; Tequila. Medical advice from my cousin Jim; Whiskey. My Medicine Cabinet is empty. My fri...
I would like to tell you it is all about the weather. I would be lying. Even though it seems like rain has followed me from Washington to Glacier to Harlem to Glendive, I am simply not that powerful. I do not make the rain. Much as I would like to think it is all about me, it is not. Nor is it all about the weather. Weather is weather, variable. Today weather is rain. This is Montana. Tomorrow might bring a heat wave or it might snow. This week and a half is all about family....
Two dozen Harlem High, Class of ’63 grads, arrived at the Great Northern Lodge for our 55th Class Reunion. Hugs, jabber, huge smiles: We provide instant love, just add self. I blurted, “We can no longer say, ‘My, you have not changed a bit.’” I am not sure anybody appreciated my comment. Truth is, undeniably, we have changed. Life has its way with us. But we are still us. Maybe more us. Pretense and posturing fell away over the years. Better usses. We still say, “You look...
When this gray-haired grandma left Mexico for Washington I filled two suitcases, large and small, with clothing I have yet to wear, with gifts to give, with everything possible I think I might need, most of which I have not needed. Or wanted. At home in Mexico I live a minimulist life. On the road, I have not learned how to survive with two pants, two shirts and a toothbrush. Sadly, I am constitutionally incapable of traveling lightly. Not to mention, my minimal (?) shopping...
I would like to tell you that my trip time in Washington is all sublime, that every moment is perfection, that my head is in the clouds with happiness. You would call me out on it, right? You might sing, “Liar, liar, pants on fire.” So let me start with the sublime, the uplifting, the part I am trying to hang onto and not let go. My time with family takes first place in my reckoning. My son Ben, my granddaughter Lexi, our talks are most precious. How do I put into words my...
