News you can use
News you can use
Sorted by date Results 76 - 100 of 640
Ah, yes, night life. Just those two words are evocative of many experiences. The Prom. Many people have been traumatized for life by simple high school dances. The intention, learning socialization skills, is honorable. The actuality can be, uh, nightmare material for a lifetime. Dining and dancing in later life. Probably a mixed bag for most of us. Some nights quite pleasurable and others cringe-causing. Normal. Walking the floor over you. Babies are born. Night life takes...
Gently down the stream. Well, I try. I try to remember the water is moving. Downstream. Now and then I am compelled to turn my boat and battle the currents upstream. The currents always batter me back into submission. Well, I had to try. Floating downstream is so much easier. Water is movement. Movement is change. Change is neither positive nor negative. Neither good nor bad. We give it those meanings, out of the experiences and perceptions, each according to how we choose to...
Every day brings its own. Its own what? I can give that sentence a thousand different objects. It’s more fun to leave it open. Use your imagination. Last night brought rain. I love lying in bed listening to the rainfall ping on the roof, plop on the potted palm outside my bedroom window. Rain thuds on the thick, waxy avocado leaves, barely makes a sound on the oleander. Rain, heavenly rain. Finally rain comes to us, not a lot, not with sturm and drang, but rain comes, l...
It seemed like it all happened at once. The heat broke. The rains came. And I spent the night hunched over the commode. It is a wonderful thing when the heat breaks, more-so this year as we sweltered under an unrelenting heat bubble. When the rains come, immediately the temperatures drop, 20 degrees this year. Plants of all species lift their heads and drink largely. Birds lift their beaks in the happiest of songs. Bugs of all descriptions line up outside my door, hoping for e...
Despite the fact that we here in Jalisco, Mexico, are still sizzling in a seemingly never-ending, garden killing, daily breaking records heatwave, I promised myself not to write about weather today. What else is there to write about? Ah, ha! Friendship. Michelle’s sister Susan is here visiting for a few days, so the women asked if I’d like to go to breakfast with them the other morning. We decided to go to our favorite coffee shop, Molletes. When they came to pick me up, Mic...
In Jalisco, we are held fast in the grips of unrelenting heat and drought. As northeastern Montanans, we all know what that is like. Hot. Dry. Dusty. Depressing. Blue skies. Not a cloud in sight. My tender magnolia flowers all dried up in the fragile bud, turned to brown dust without opening. Even with daily watering, vegetables I planted poked up their little slender heads, looked around, said, “No, not me, uh huh, no, and keeled over.” As each bucket is harvested, I’m leavi...
I know better. I set myself up to fail. All the signs pointed to early rain. I jumped in with both feet and gleefully shouted to everybody I know, “This year the rains will come early in June. What a wonderful wet year we will have.” Ha. I know better. Sure, it rains in summer. Late June when we are lucky, July, August, and rains dribble off in September. The rest of the year is bone dry and that is easy and safe to predict. If I really wanted to be right, and who doe...
“Here” being Jalisco, the Garden State of Mexico, it seems to be either feast or feast. One day it is too many tomatoes. Another day presents a splurge of tomatillos. On to a glut of papaya. Today’s feast consists of a mess of mango. I must have been out of my mind. Weeks ago I made the decision that the only mangos I would see this summer would be the few I bought at the tienda for eating. No mermelada, which is jam in English. Every year I make mango jam. Every year I give...
An acquaintance stopped by the other day for a visit. Most people would have said, a friend. Another man, a close friend from years ago, whom I miss terribly but can visit only in memory, used to say, we have few friends. Most people we know are business acquaintances. I’ve thought about his saying often. My visitor definitely fits into the transactional group. I’ve known him for several years now but I so easily forget the rules. (His.) I expect a visit to be an int...
Dear Kathy and Richard, Thank you for sending the amazing photos that you take on your walking tours throughout the mountains of France. They are truly beautiful glimpses into the countryside you traverse. I suppose you think I envy you the pleasures you experience these days. Oh, far from envy, my dear friends. While you trudge through the rain and the mud, or sunshine, on toward the next village or city where you stay the night in luxurious hotels, explore the neighborhoods...
Up at 6:30 and out the door to walk Lola. The sun is almost up, the sky spread cool with night clouds. These days, when Lola and I go walk-about, I have an entourage. A few months ago Josue and family adopted a pup, named him Hunter. He is mild-mannered. Most of the time. He thinks I am his. When he hears my belled gate open, Hunter bounds like Tigger, meets me with wet tongue greetings. Lola takes lead. Hunter races between me and Lola. Hunter does not walk. Pup, remember. A...
Thank you, Ram Dass. I confess, I’ve not read his book of above title. But I understand the concept, some. I do be, and I be where I am planted, and I be where I am right at this moment, glorying in the beauty (even when mixed with pain) I am given, every day. I often say, I am the luckiest woman. However … An unusual thought-want-desire-plan sprang nearly whole into my mind the other night while my eyeballs ran over the first paragraph in a new book I’d just sat down to read....
Our gardener, Leo, was gone for a week, off to the beaches of Cabo San Lucas with a group of friends. "No worries, Leo. I can water my own plants. I'll do a section every day. Go have fun. All will be well." Easy to say, yes? Harder to live the reality. I figured three sections: front of house, back and sides of house, back yard. One, two, three. Easy, peasy. Plants, however, are not logical. If a plant is gasping, pleading, "Feed me, feed me," what is a woman to do. I...
We Human Beans are strange creatures, are we not? Oh, maybe not you, but me, my hand is raised. My mind works in strange ways. Take yesterday. Yesterday, I seemed determined to feel sorry for myself. Temperatures were flirting with 100 degrees, a mere kiss away, lips smooched into a pucker. It is our hot season. Not unusual for here. April, May, mid-June. Then the blessed, glorious rains and cool perfection at 85. Big deal, right? In July and August in North-central Montana,...
This is the way we wash our clothes, early Monday morning. Mid-cycle, my washing machine quit working. I mean quit. Dead in the water. I mean, dead, full of water and soggy clothes. The machine gave up, quit, somewhere in rinse cycle. So I had to swish and wring the entire soggy mess out by hand and pin everything on the line, slightly drippy. I knew the clothing would dry quickly, afternoons hang out in the high 80s or lower 90s these days. The day the machine quit, my...
Remember when you couldn’t wait? When each additional year brought joyful anticipation, jumping up-and-down glee? What? When you were 6. Then 10. 18. Even, in a different way, 21. That was then. I have a dear friend who still gets that excited. For years she has extended birthdays from The Day to The Birthday Week and celebrates herself every day. She’s healthier than I am. Me, I skulk around hoping nobody remembers. I don’t want any fuss. So I keep schtum. I also have frien...
John stopped by and plunked a book the size of a dictionary onto my table. When we get together we invariably weave words into a maze of history, philosophy, politics: world situations as we see them. “Ah, just what I need,” I said as I scanned the title. “A large dose of depression.” He and I speak a similar style of tangents, so John rejoined with, “I read an article in the WP yesterday that implied we are lacking one main element in our outlook.” “Intelligen...
A few weeks ago, well, several weeks ago, well, a whole lot of weeks ago, Michelle ordered a throw or small bedspread made from pieces of used saris. She spread out the throw for show and tell, differently patterned on each side, stitched together with white cotton thread, in a long running stitch, lines spaced a half inch apart, a very light quilt. I guessed the sari throw to be about 60 by 90 inches. Despite being made with used saris, the colors were vibrant, the patterns...
I grew up reading Hans and the brothers Grimm and Aesop. I love fairy tales and fables. Back then, we had the unexpurgated versions, full of blood and guts. I’m not saying that was better. I’m simply saying that is how it was. The stories, which I read over and over, never gave me nightmares nor did they leave me pining for the handsome prince to hack his way through the brambles and rescue me from the wicked step-mother. Naïve as I was, I knew that wouldn’t happen. A few mo...
Lola is a dog. See Lola run. Lola barks. Hear Lola bark. Lola is a working dog. She takes her duties seriously. She makes sure her master (Mistress? Mattress? Whatever.) goes outside her garden gate for regularly scheduled walks along with frequent unscheduled walks. Lola sees that I get regular doses of cool wet nose on my knee. She assures that I sink my fingers into her thick neck hair with great regularity. Lola keeps me safe. As Lola became acquainted with my friends and...
“The pain ran from the outer edges of my rib cage, across my diaphragm, here to here,” I told Kathy. “It started right after I got out of bed and got worse during the morning. It hurt to move.” “Sondra, you had a heart attack!” she said. “Did you go in to the hospital? What did you do?” “Funny, that’s what Dee Dee said, too, but I didn’t tell her about it until yesterday evening when it was all over.” “What happened? Do you still hurt?” “I figured it was a pulled muscl...
Back when the earth was still cooling, back when I was a student at Harlem High, algebra was a high school subject. Now they start the kids learning simple equations in pre-school. Or near enough. Up until algebra, I’d made A’s in math. Our algebra teacher was an aerospace engineer the year the field was overbooked, clogged, with aerospace engineers and those who could not follow that path, taught math. Class consisted of Mr. X, or was it Y, ordering us to memorize the equ...
Please don’t grimace like that, Mrs. Hunter. I’m drunk on spring love and language is ours to play games. Spring arrives quickly here in Jalisco, the Garden State of Mexico. I declare, we are definitely in the Sprang stage of Spring. Boing. Boing. Boing. What fun it is. Light opens the sky a little bit earlier. Not much, here closer to the Equator, but a little. And it stays around a little bit longer in the evening before it drops behind the mountains. And the day warms up...
I went to Oconahua to Jane’s birthday celebration for cake and homemade ice-cream. Ninety-five full years. From the stories Jane has told and from stories her daughters told with great glee, that woman was a pistol. She’s still a pop gun. She lived fully and outrageously, a registered nurse, from NYC to Alaska to Washington to Mexico. In what order, I don’t know. There are chapters I’ve not heard. Jane is Michelle’s mother and has a casita on Ana and Michelle’s land a shor...
Some say confession is good for the soul, and growing up Catholic, I’m a believer. Here is something I seldom talk about. First, though, the catalyst. For the past week, on my sunrise walk with Lola, I’ve been singing. Here is what you need to understand. I don’t sing. Ever. I love music. Songs weave through my days, mostly in my head. Silently. I don’t allow the songs to exit my mouth. Unlike bad words which squeak through frequently and often appropriately. My fear of bein...
