News you can use
News you can use
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What a precious two weeks in Poulsbo, Washington, while I stayed with my son, Ben. Ben and I had always been close; we’d weathered some tough early years together. Ben, at 35, a responsible family man with the best computer job in the world, working for a toy company where he went to work to play games, hit some extremely painful emotional times. He chose to opt out of the pain. At that time, Ben pushed me out of his life and, in retrospect, I’m glad he did so. It took a while...
I certainly never expected to spend an afternoon in the emergency room of the local hospital on my holiday with my son and granddaughter. Just an innocent scratch, I tried to tell myself. Lexi and I, along with Deckard the Dog, had walked the newly-hacked trail to the “Fort” in the woods, constructed by Lexi’s grandpa and father. If you’ve never been around wild blackberries, you need to know, the vines are indestructible. Left to grow uninhibited, blackberry brambles will ev...
“Mom, I keep telling you. You’ve gone native.” After spending all but a few weeks of the last four years in Mexico, immersed in a different life, what is one to expect? My first intimation that I needed to be alert to where I am, “one world” notwithstanding, came when the man who assisted me at LA International with a wheelchair, zoomed me through customs, held my hand through security and escorted me to my next gate, gave me a raised-eyebrow, incredulous stare, when I gr...
My suitcase perches, mouth open, on my sofa, poised to swallow piles of clothing and jumbles of travel essentials: toiletries, Kindle, laptop, gifts. Mine is not a planned trip. The “plan” was for my son, Ben, to visit me, granddaughter Lexi in hand. It’s still a plan, delayed by the IRS. That fearsome entity is auditing my son’s taxes for the year he sent his life veering off the rails. Evidently, they fear he might come to Mexico and never return. Once the audit is finished...
Ants, those little buggers, are a constant, year-round plague. Mosquitoes don’t irritate me nearly as much. I don’t disdain the power of the mosquito, dastardly carrier of dread diseases, to wreak havoc on people and animals. But after surviving years of Milk River Valley mosquitoes, this inferior breed is a mere inconvenience. Okay, the truth is, I seldom see any. Ants are another beast entirely. A nearly invisible fawn-colored ant likes my house, especially the kitchen and...
“Like the first morning.” Scrub oaks, verdant from recent rains, reached out branches and clutched passing clouds onto high mountaintops, puffy sombreros heavy with moisture. Mountains held onto the clouds tightly until near noon when clouds, with a mind of their own, lifted off and away. Clouds will return, dark with a new load of water in the late afternoon, tonight’s fresh downpour. Since the season began, about six weeks ago, we’ve averaged half an inch each night....
Have you ever had a day when you feel unutterably sad for no earthly reason except that you are human? On my patio, on this day when my thermometer registers a mid-afternoon temperature in the low 70s, rain still dripping from tree leaves, a lizard lays splayed out, soaking up every iota of warm comfort from the patch of sun-drenched concrete. I know how he feels. My habit, when I get this way, is to work through the mood. But in the last few years I’ve learned to slow d...
“I love my night life.” “You don’t have a night life,” my cousin Nancie, in Mexico for a three-week vacation in her house across the road from mine, countered. “You’re in bed when the sun goes down. What do you mean, night life?” “My dreams. I dream marvelous stories. I usually wake up feeling happy and full of energy. Most of the time I don’t remember my dreams once I’m out of bed. Most of my dreams are like playing solitaire with a pinochle deck, but, lately, I feel that i...
For the past three weeks it has, indeed, been greener on the far side of the hills surrounding our parched valley. Rains come in June, the local people tell me. And the rains surrounded us, in Ahualulco, San Marcos, Magdalena, Ameca. We in Etzatlan sat high and dry. Our last rain fell in October. Every day I scoop sand dunes off my floors. I worry. Is this a drought? June is nearly done and gone. What will we do for water? I grew up worrying about weather. I learned from my...
Well, why not? Back in the day, I devoured self-help books. Back in the early 1980s when my life was shattered like a jigsaw puzzle with missing pieces, in an attempt to put myself back together, I read a raft of self-help, pop-psychology, pull-yourself-up-by-bootstraps, think-your-way-to-success type fluff-and-stuff. I’d finish one, find another, thinking each would have the solution for me. I soon had accumulated an entire bookcase filled with sugar pills, innocuous c...
A friend, a man who has been single for a number of years, wrote to say that he’s been feeling down in the mullygrubs. He said he’s probably just feeling lonesome. He’s considering jump-starting a romance, even though he thinks he might be headed the wrong direction. I’m not one to sneer at romance in any form. My inclination, and I suspect my friend’s is likewise, is that when I meet somebody I tend to color in the blank spots to fit the pattern I want to see. That’s ne...
I hate physical therapy. Writing with a computer means you’ll give me no sympathy. If we were talking face-to-face, I’d be able to mumble, “It’s my own fault. I quit too soon. It’s been mumble-mumble-slurred-words since I quit. Arturo told me I should do these few simple movements forever. Sheesh!” And you’d pat my hand and say, “There, there. Poor thing.” And if I were using pencil on depleted rain-forest, I could smear the tell-tale number with my tears of frustration and y...
Two weeks ago I had declared, “New window glass all around; new patio roof; I love it all. These are my final projects. My home is complete. My garden is full and lush. No more projects!” This isn’t a full-blown project. Really. Honest. Sorta. It began with a bedraggled hibiscus. She hadn’t flourished since she’d been planted, several months ago. Her sister plants were “blooming healthy,” to borrow a British expression. Leo, my partner in digging dirt, asked if I wanted to g...
Tell me, what is all the foo-foo-rah over being fit and healthy? I have friends who abstained from meat (?Not eat meat?), ran marathons, contorted themselves into pretzels with an hour of daily yoga, no sugar, no dairy, no smokes, no booze. Died young. One in his 40s and one in her 50s, each skinny as a rail. Recently, prior to eye surgery, my doctor insisted I go through a whole-body work-up: blood, lungs, heart, the full-meal-deal of medical tests. The heart man told me my...
I didn’t want to go. I was still recovering from burning the soles of my feet on the hot sands of Mazatlan. The plan was for Lani, Kathy, Crin and me to go to Tonola for the tianguis, the huge street market, and from there to Best Buy for Kathy to buy a washing machine. It’s hard to pass up a day in Tonola. But the bait that hooked me was Best Buy for a shop vac. My house is all brick walls, tile floors. I really don’t need a vacuum cleaner. But you go around the walls with...
For years, I’ve been privileged to be Kathy’s guest, generally on the 24th floor of the El Moro Tower, fronting the Great Pacific Ocean, in Mazatlan. When we were young and foolish, we might, and I hedge my bets, have run up and down the stairway for exercise; an attempt to balance the effects of the rich food nobody forced down our gullets. We might have. If we were young. And foolish. Without hesitation, we head for the elevators. (In all fairness, I’ve never seen anybo...
I always like being back in Mazatlan, the town I visited year after year, the town where I lived nearly three years. Familiar places, familiar people, old friends. A sadness, a worry, clouds my holiday. You remember Carlos, my friend who drives a pulmonia? He would take me for groceries, for medical care, for important paperwork. He became my interpreter when I needed one. He and Selena helped me paint my apartment. We shared meals. Three days prior to my leaving Etzatlan,...
With appropriate apologies to Willie Nelson, I’ll soon be “making music with my friends.” We all know that I haven’t a musical molecule in my body, much as I love a wide variety of music. But this music to which I refer is metaphorical music. Tomorrow I’ll board the posh Primera Plus autobus from Zapopan to Mazatlan where I’ll meet Kathy, who will fly in from Victoria, B.C. Rock and roll! This is a special time for us. Over years of vacationing together, Kathy and I grew accus...
John and Carol walked over for Qi Gong on my patio. It’s how we start our day. “How are you this morning?” “Fine, all things considered.” My stock answer when I’m not feeling all that well. “We came to tell you the workmen have started bathroom tile. We need to be at the house this morning. No Qi Gong for us today.” “Actually, that’s fine with me. I had a miserable night with the smoke.” I wiped my cheeks. Tears have continually washed my eyeballs for the last three weeks...
This morning when I opened my eyes, I saw a bird sitting on the roof of the bodega outside my bedroom window — a beautiful yellow-headed, yellow-breasted, shrill-voiced gray bird with a long curved beak, the beak for, I imagine, digging bugs from bark. “Hello, Bird. Hoy es mi cumpleanos,” I told him in approximately adequate Espanol. Today is my birthday. I want for nothing more than this peaceful day. Several hibiscus are gaudy with bloom. My five “dead” trees are in full l...
This morning at Qi Gong, a practice which requires focus, every bird in the tree, wisp of cloud, skittering lizard robbed my attention. Where’s my focus? I have a bad case, not fatal, of “I want it all.” Crin left this morning. We shared café con leche before she took off for the airport. Nancie left a couple days ago. As long as I’m wanting that which I cannot have, I want all my friends here with me all the time. When they are here, I want, please, just a few minutes...
Thank you, Daughter, for writing my article last week. Rocking chair, indeed! Next time I’m incapacitated, I’ll ask my son to take my place. I didn’t break that many rules. New eyeballs! There is a huge, vibrant, crisp and clear world out here, just waiting for me to explore. But my most excellent doctor, with whom I nearly fell in love pre-surgery, turned into a growly ogre post-surgery. End of romance. “What do you mean, stay indoors? Don’t garden? Stay away from public pl...
Three nights ago I couldn’t sleep. Rather than crawl out of bed, slump into a comfy chair and grab a good book, or even a boring book, something conducive to sleepiness, I chose to review every dumb, ignorant and bad decision I’ve made throughout my entire 71 years. Unlike in the past, now that I’m hopefully wiser, I rarely waste my time in such ways. But that night I simply couldn’t close the door. So I hosted the entire troop, which had been under lock and key for so long...
Last week Bonnie called the Rancho Esperanza residents together for the first meeting in years. Understandably, it is difficult to have a meeting when the casas are, for the most part empty. This year has brought changes. Do hotcakes sell fast? Well, these casas are selling like the proverbial breakfast staple. The meeting was called to announce that we would have meetings. Oh, yes, there’s more. First, the nuts and bolts — choose officers to preside. Bonnie’s vision is to fo...
Back in March, the first day I moved into my wee casita, a noise, like a 747 on the runway awaiting clearance for take-off, startled me into combat position. (It ain’t pretty.) Once my heart quit pounding in my ears, I realized the racket came from my refrigerator. Three days later I began accompanying the noise with pilot to control tower “conversation.” Another three days and the sound was background noise, like cars on the highway, ignored. Something is wrong. The fan r...
