News you can use
News you can use
Sorted by date Results 326 - 350 of 644
When one has pared one’s life down to the bare essentials, little things take on incredible importance. I arrived in Mexico City with 40 minutes to make my connection. Airports are designed in such a way that domestic flights and international flights are situated at opposite ends of the real estate. I think it is a universal law. Having had previous experience with said law, I always request wheel-chair service. Rogerio ran, and I do mean ran, with me from deplane to r...
It’s a mystery. I hear Jack Webb’s voice (Sgt. Joe Friday) in my ear. “Just the facts, Ma’am. Just the facts.” July 25, a sweltering sunny afternoon, my granddaughter Antoinette, rode her bike down Kendrick, a side street in Glendive, Montana. At 3:30 her Mother sat in her office, recording client notes into a file, waiting for her 4 o’clock appointment, when her phone rang. “Mom, come get me. I wrecked my bike. I don’t know where I am.” She was on a street she rode every da...
When passing by a mirror this morning, I thought, “Lord, oh dear, I’m composting.” Well, aren’t we all but that’s no consolation. Which thought led me to a memory that shook me to my bones. My Aunt Mary, at 90, who had composted a lot by that time, said to me, “I’ve outlived all my friends. There is nobody with whom I can talk about how it used to be. “And many can’t hear me when I talk about how it is now,” she continued. Which memory led me to several threads, lines convergi...
Rule No. 1: Never write when sick. Rule No. 2: Do whadevah ya gotta do. It’s a virus, I’m sure. Caught it from a hug from Josue, who thought he’d eaten bad mangoes. Four days ago. Mangoes good. Virus bad. Hugs good. I’m not going to live under a blister-pak. I twist myself into knots in order to avoid paying obeisance to the toilet god, Ralph. Fortunately, neither my stomach nor my mind felt hunger that afternoon. I felt listless. I should have seen the clues. Next day, yo...
I live at #3 Nopales on a small piece of the Rancho Esperanza set aside for a dozen or so retirement homes. That’s the sum total of any pretense to an Americano community in this still traditional small village of Etzatlan. It’s not an official government-recognized address. No mail delivery. Jane emailed me that a woman she knows, a woman without benefit of email (how quickly we believe if we do it, everybody does it.) would like to correspond with me. This is not my fir...
I woke from my dream with that southern hill-country woman’s voice in my ear. The voice, the memory, from past years, was triggered in that non-linear way of memories, by a phone conversation with my daughter the previous day. My oldest granddaughter is in a precarious place in her life. A baby with babies. Jessica is young, alone with two babies, lonely, no job, no direction and thinking biologically instead of using her logical brain. I remember those feelings; I was young once. Harper’s father sent her train tickets for a...
That morning, while eating a plata de fruta on the patio, ten feet from the incoming tide, a family of Tenates, Grackles to you and me, swooped onto my table. They look like ill-groomed clowns, like they got up on the wrong side of bed and forgot to comb their hair. While I believe sharing food is good and honorable, these birds are of the crow family, and like their northern relations, are unrepentant scavengers. I invited them to leave. They grinned, all six of them, and...
I like to mix my metaphors. Images impossible evolve. In partnership with Jim I bought a pig-in-a-poke, a hot tub that wasn’t working when we bought it. Between Jim’s persistence and Josue’s electrical knowledge, said pig works like a hot-diggity-dog. To me, it’s a gift of finest sensibilities. Never look a gift horse in the mouth. Our horse on pig’s trotters didn’t have a full set of teeth; no matter, easily (cheaply) resolved. With tub fully functioning, precipitati...
Remember when the Big Store in Havre was Buttrey’s? What a magnificent place to shop, in the Atrium, with an escalator. That was truly “down town”. And Havre boasted many, many smaller stores, enough to satisfy any shopper’s needs. Then the Mall on the hill was built; things changed. Stores closed in the center of town. The Mall struggled, filled, struggled. Another big store came to town. An independent grocery left. My heart lurched when I read that K-Mart, Sears and Her...
It’s my own fault, of course. I’ve hit the wall. Can’t go any further. A day of rest would do wonders. Two days might put me back to myself. If I’m not myself, who am I? I feel like a brainless blob. A wart on a toad. A knot on a log. For one thing, Jim and Crin and I have been having too much fun. Since both of them are here for only a few weeks, we try to cram the time with explorations and adventures, fun along with our designated projects. Jim alternated building a fountai...
Went to the artisans' tianguis (street fair) in Tonala and got me a man. Yep, brought home a genuine Mexican man. Next I wrote to my women friends and you should have heard the response. Oh, my. I had immediate replies expressing everything from shock and outright horror to reluctant caution. They should know me better by now. Not to worry. I'd had my mind on this man from the first time I saw him, three years ago. (Him, or a counterpart.) I even had my picture taken with him...
By the time I got from beneath my covered patio to my front door, a few steps, I was drenched and dripping rain. Already the floor filled with standing water, a shallow lake, half-way across the room. Not even a minute had passed. The sky opened. No warning. Oh, sure, I’d heard a few rumblings from the mountains on the other side of town. Nothing serious. No gentle drops to precede the deluge. Suddenly, the wind whipped in circles and buckets of water fell, whipped in all d...
Paradise. Yes, I live in a garden of Paradise. I suppose there is a snake in every garden. My snake is gray. Pure deep gray with diamond shaped markings like fish scales. I’m told he is harmless. Every woman since Eve has heard those words whispered in her ears. I can live with my gray snake. What can I do? He slithers whither he wills. My hope is that he eats rats. Week before last, a rat infested my bodega. Until the evidence appears, One doesn’t know a rodent has set up hou...
We didn’t exactly buy it sight unseen. Well, I suppose I did. My half. Unseen. Last winter, Jim, a neighbor here on the rancho, and I began hankering (that word generally precedes a pig in a poke) after a hot tub for pain therapy. We agreed that if we found what we wanted, we’d share the cost, share the use. We made two dread trips into Guadalajara only to find them outrageously expensive. Searches on such sites as craigslist: Mexico, for a second-hand tub yielded no res...
Have you ever woken up with a sense of impending doom — for no apparent reason? That’s my story today. Could be I’m asking for trouble. Could be the shadows I sense hovering around the edges of my life are tricks of light. Could be I’m just an old woman with old woman worries. I cannot put my finger on a thing that is wrong. So why this niggling anxiety? My awareness seems heightened. I strongly sense the incredible beauty which surrounds me. I am in awe of the idyllic...
The delightful musical comedy by the above name is about people in love. It’s not quite the same thing, but my perfect love is my garden. Not a month ago, I said to Leo, my garden helper, “I’ve now done everything I want to do with my garden. It is perfect.” It is. Truly. Leo rolled his eyes and grinned. Last week I met a couple from Seattle at the nearby campground. They wanted to know which house is mine. When I described my location, she said, “Oh, you are the garden....
I’m angry. It’s selfish of me, but I worked myself up into a right little snit when I heard Amtrak is cutting service in Havre. Please, no, not an unmanned station. Selfish, I admit. In my personal phone and address book, yes, I have one of those old-fashioned black books, under “A” for Amtrak is the number for ticketing at the Havre station. I can phone that number from anywhere, talk to a real person, one with a welcoming voice, make my travel arrangements and know that I...
Broken bones. Missing parts. Titanium joints. Scraped eyeballs. A gimp, a limp and a cane. Moving more slowly every day. “Pain is a brute dictator,” said Dr. Backman, the quiropractico I saw this week in Mazatlan. “The more we hurt, the less we move.” He didn’t say — and — the less we move, the more we hurt. But I got it. And, yes, that is his real name. Dr. Backman, the man who works with backs. To my shame, I put myself in the shape I’m in today. After hip replacement, th...
My friend Dick is gone from our lives. We feel sad. We feel relieved he no longer suffers. We feel guilty we couldn’t take away his pain and confusion. We will miss him, his kindness, his motorcycle rides to Malta for lunch, his incredible stories. Dick and Jane. Who would have thought I’d have ready-made such good friends when I moved from Washington to Montana. Dick and I were in the same class in school but we didn’t hang out together. We’d reconnected when I visited...
We don’t see ourselves. We aren’t able. Even surrounded by walls of mirrors, we only see glimpses and reflections. And I’m talking broad scope here. Not just the outside package of who I am. But the me beneath my skin and the life I create. So I delight in being able to share bits of my daily life with friends from afar who come visit. Sunday morning Steve and Theresa from Washington arrived tired and bedraggled after an overnight flight. Steve and Theresa are beneath the s...
Setenta tres. Seventy-three. I bought a fancy chocolate cake yesterday at my favorite pasteleria. I’m invited to dinner at John and Carol’s house tonight. Nobody knows it’s my birthday and I ain’t telling. But I’m taking my cake to share and will get great and secret pleasure from having a party when nobody else knows it’s my party. Day on top of day, the years have a way of rolling past. Getting older doesn’t hold the same pizzazz and crackle for me that earliest year...
That iguana spit on me today. I stood below him, next to the wall in my front-patio courtyard, watching him soak up the sun. He turned his head, looked me in the eye, and spit. Well, that’s a fine howdy-do. No manners. But, maybe, like many a youngster, he had a valid complaint: “She looked at me.” There’s a pair of what I call teen iguanas, middle-sized, who sun at the top of that particular section of wall. You should see them skitter up — or down — a vertical wall. Yet,...
This morning after Qi Gong, I told Jim, “I write my column today and my mind is blank. ” “Easy,” his reply. “Write about purple.” We were beneath the Jacaranda, which this week is a purple umbrella, sheltering 50 shades of birds burying their heads in each blossom, milking the honey-nectar. In that disconnected way that one thought leads to another, I knew that what I really wanted to write about is my simple life. “Jim, the more I pare down my life, the more important small t...
Two weeks ago the neighboring trees out my east window were naked sticks. Today the same sticks are tricked out in every shade of leaf, heavy with green. Most trees here shed their leaves in spring; the old brittle leaves pushed off the branch willy-nilly by the new sprouts. The Jacarandas are still naked, just budding into flower. By next week a giant purple umbrella will fully cover the northwest corner of my yard. The Prima Vera wear great daubs of primary yellow. And over...
I feel sad. This morning I made a list of things I wanted to buy in Etzatlan. Since I don’t have a car, I rely on taxi service or a friend or one of the workers here on the ranch to take me around. I had asked Leo, my gardening helper, to “bring your car and let’s go have breakfast at Dona Mary’s before we shop.” It’s been easy for me to swing into the Mexican way of eating. Early morning coffee with a small snack, fruit or a biscuit. Mid-morning, a breakfast meal, somet...
