News you can use
News you can use
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My friend Jerry wrote me this week. Skipping the personal stuff, he asked, “Is it possible for you to create a 501 3C to raise money in U.S. to help people in need in Etzatlan?” Once I picked myself off the floor still hooting, I wrote back something like the following. A 501 3C? Oh, Jerry, I thought you knew me better than that! You ask me to do a suit job. I am not a suit. I am a well-worn flannel shirt. I am a lot of things, my friend. I am an artist, an inventor, a mec...
I have lost three entire nights of sleep this week, misplaced where there will be no finding, scratching the seven-year itch. You could also name my malady the Grass Is Greener Syndrome. The grass is never greener. It just looks that way from across the fence. This is not an unusual occurrence for me. Something within me likes the challenge of new experiences. Frequently over the years while I’ve lived out on my little chunk of quiet, peaceful Paradise, I’ve cast my eyes aro...
It was a dark and stormy night. Oh, wait! Different story. It was the day before New Year’s Eve. Leo and I were sitting in the sun chatting after he had mouse-proofed my washing machine with a length of screen and duct tape. Mice are on the move every year during corn harvest when they temporarily are forced out of their home and well-stocked grocery. My washing machine sits tucked away in the back corner of my patio, outdoors. This is not the first time mice thought the m...
My bed jacket. It is a sign. A portent of things to come. Christmas Eve, I went to Oconahua for a traditional Mexican feast of tamales and hot chocolate with my friends. When I returned home, a gift bag stuffed tightly with something rather heavy, sat on my patio table. I reached in and pulled out … a jacket. This jacket is made of that plush, fluffy stuff, like a baby blanket. Thank goodness it is not a pale pastel. I’d have to gift it onward. No, amazingly, the jacket is...
Or, one might say, this week, apples are my world. Every year I put a lot of thought into my gift giving for Christmas. Grandchildren are easy. Gift certificates. They are of the age where money is the better choice. Gold, right? For the babies, my grandchildren, my daughter handles that chore for me. She knows best what they want, need and enjoy. The hard part is for us few who are here this holiday season in Gringolandia. We are old. We already have everything we want. If I...
No longer can I remain in denial. I am an addict. I am addicted to sunlight. When I lived in Poulsbo, Washington, on the Kitsap Peninsula where it rained 10 months of the year, I remember how hard it was by February to keep up my spirits. That is normal behavior, pretty much. Now, these years later, after a mere couple (2) cloudy days with rain, and I begin to wonder if a Prozac Big Gulp would really work. Having grown up in a country of constant drought, I love the rain....
Interesting how we carve time to suit particular purposes. I won’t look it up, but thinking about it, I’d not be surprised that our universal way of dividing our days started with the Industrial Revolution, as a way of getting the workers to be where and when the bosses wanted them to be. That is as political as I am willing to be this morning. My day began yesterday, actually. It rained yesterday, so that jiggered up walk times with Lola, but we managed to wriggle them int...
I don’t. Truly, I don’t know. Life is so much more interesting when I don’t know. When I “know,” I limit myself to where it is difficult for new and different information to filter into my brain. Hey, because I already know! A closed door. Right? Take something simple, like tortillas. What is there not to know about tortillas? I feel pretty puffed up that I can make decent corn tortillas. I seldom make flour tortillas because they always come out looking like amoebas....
One of the many things I have come to respect about the Mexican culture, the Mexican people, is their ability to celebrate. Times may seem grim and the larder near empty, but they somehow will scrape together beans, tortillas, tomatoes and peppers, gather family and neighbors into their homes to share a feast, and maybe even shoot off a few fireworks, always with music in the background, even if from a radio. Remember radio? We, my friends, in our country, seem to have...
My friend Jim from Glasgow sent me a short video clip of the Little Rockies, Three Buttes, Snake Butte and the Bear Paws. Immediately, I yearned, homesick. I shared the video with friends. “This is my beautiful country.” Their response, not unexpected, “Ah, yes. Uh huh. Beautiful,” as they looked for an exit. Which brought on this following chain of thought. To some this will sound as though I am describing two foreign countries, and I am. Both countries have disappe...
There aren’t many of us here on the rancho. Not all of our houses have their people. But the last several days, we who are here, me, Nancie, Julie, Lani and Ariel, Tom and Janet, frequently found ourselves running up against, no, not a wall, but a hole. This hole has a specific size and shape, exactly the size and shape of Leo. Leo helps all of us with gardening, planting, pruning, mowing, cutting, watering. But Leo is more than a gardener. He has helped all of us, at one t...
Last week, a registered historic hotel in Glendive burned. The night the fire was started was also the night of the first winter blizzard. Firemen from a hundred-mile radius came to fight the fire which razed the hotel and a neighboring building. My daughter’s office is in the upper floor of a building adjacent to the hotel. Firemen battled the blaze all night and the following day to keep her building from burning. For three days the hotel fire smoldered and flared. For three...
Two of my friends are touring Italy. Their husbands did not want to go. The women said, “That’s okay. We will go ourselves. You keep the home fires burning.” When we get back, we will have so much To tell you. One friend, the one from Washington, Sends photos, photos of famous palaces, pictures Of hotel rooms, of food, of streets, of stores. Now and then we see a picture of each of them, Usually sitting at a plate of food, looking glad. Or looking exhausted. Or, one with...
The other day I found myself feeling a little low, a little down in the dumps. The problem is, I was enjoying the feeling, to some extent. The next problem is that I found it so dag gone hard to maintain the slump. We don’t come with an instruction manual so I figure it is high time somebody writes one. ***This does not apply to real depression. Depression is a serious matter. For real depression, see your doctor. Please. One of my friends said, “It’s your bio-rhythm. Wait...
Dear Editor, I recently spotted an opening for a sports person for the newspaper. I didn’t read the description closely but am confident I could quickly polish and perfect my qualifications for the position. When I was 9 or 10 years old, before we moved to Montana, my dad took me to a Cardinal’s game at the stadium in Louisville, Kentucky, a skip, a jump and a slide across the Ohio River from where we lived. The game was at night and the field was well-lighted. I did won...
September ended here in my little patch of Mexico with record-breaking heat. The heat I can handle. The humidity is brutal. Early this morning, 70 F, humidity in the 90s, go hang laundry on the line, come inside with sweaty wet hair. In the afternoon, when it is 90, when I return to the house with dry laundry, I’m hot but dry. When we Montanans say, “Yes, but it is dry heat,” we know what we are talking about. October will be different. Won’t it? And the critters, oh, my, the...
Usually I sit down to write with something specific on my mind. Today I have a scrap of this and a scrap of that. What does one do with scraps? One makes a quilt. Michelle called. “Let’s go to the Plaza for cake.” In the Mercado a teeny coffee shop recently opened, fancy drinks and baked goods. They make the best carrot cake. Michelle, Ana and I found a bench in the shade in the Plaza, where we enjoyed our drinks and cakes put our worlds in order. During this time, I had a...
Some stories should stay hidden and this might be one of that kind. It is ridiculous, embarrassing and impossible. I have three lime trees in my yard. In the backyard, I first planted a key lime. After three naked years and lots of talks, including veiled threats, she began producing limes in profusion. So I planted a regular-type lime in the front yard. It made limes a mere toddler and hasn’t paused yet. So I planted another regular-style lime in back next to the key lime. I...
Every morning these past few days, when Lola and I take our early morning walk, the clouds are rolling down the mountains. We move through the mist, feet on the ground, heads in the clouds. Another hour and the sun burns the air crisp and brilliant with shadows of orange. As happens, my day turned topsy turvy. I was all self-hyped to go to Dr. Imelda, my dentista, to finally have my last crown set onto my tooth. This crown has been a process and practice in delay and...
I was excited. I had just signed the papers and prepaid for a cremation plan. It is the sensible thing to do. I live in Mexico. I, no doubt, will die in Mexico. Dying in Mexico is a hassle when one’s family and citizenship are elsewhere. For one thing, the customs are different. If one dies on a Monday, one’s body is washed and dressed for viewing on Tuesday and the funeral and burial are Wednesday. Or even Tuesday. I live in a tiny retirement community. Most of the year, the...
While waiting for my daughter to get okayed for an operation at the hospital in Billings, I dumped a puzzle onto my table. Jigsaw puzzles are a good distraction. I had loaned this particular puzzle depicting an antique car show in front of a typical diner to snowbird friends to work last winter. Intact. One thousand pieces in the box. It is a particularly challenging puzzle, fun, so I borrowed it back. When I finished the car puzzle, on the day of Dee Dee’s surgery, I had t...
I grew up, my early childhood, in southern Indiana, on a farm. I spent my free time outdoors, in the yard, the barnyard, the woods. I could name by sight or sound more birds than I can today. I had a cinematic butterfly collection in my mind. Summer nights my cousins and I caught fireflies. We called them lightning bugs, made a Mason jar lantern, made sparkly rings on our fingers with some of the fire, then let them go. A lot of years passed. In the late ’70s, I returned, b...
I’ve had several dogs along these many years but never had one get a hot spot. In July, about the time the storms, pitiful as they have been, began blowing and blustering, Lola started chewing at the base of her backbone, right above where her tail attaches. It worried me. Leo helped me corral her between my knees and we sprayed her with the purple stuff, you know, the stuff you use on cows and horses when they get a barbed wire cut or some such. I was wearing white pants that...
Life. Huh. It is hard not to label things, situations. Oh, that is bad. Oh, that is good. We don’t really know if what we call bad might not be really good. Hey, voice of experience here. Often, what I thought was the worst decision, the worst situation, in my life, turned out to be my greatest gift. Likewise, the opposite. Uh huh, both ways. Wait and see. Arrgh. Easy for you to say. I can tell you what I think, hope, fear, all conjecture. I think my son has lost his last w...
Yesterday, an email from Jerry pinged into my inbox. (See, I can talk modern too.) Jerry is a high school classmate, Harlem, Class of ’63. Back in ’05 I attended my first class reunion, or was it ’06. No matter. Surprisingly, several classmates showed up, we met in clusters, here and there, discovered we wanted more time together. Back in that other world, we had been a tight class, maybe because there were so few of us. At any rate, we determined to meet annually. And we di...
