New Takes on An Age-old story There have been countless iterations of the story of the birth Jesus Christ since it occurred more than two thousand years ago, I suspect to account for the many logical loose ends in the narrative: An unmarried teenage girl named Mary becomes pregnant by the Holy Spirit and gives …
A story about how a best laid plan went awry On Saturday morning, animated chirping came from under a plastic tarp that covered a pile of firewood. Curiosity then led Stew to check the source and discover one of our hens guarding a group of seven chicks, one of them hatched so recently its plumage …
Three days at the mercy of internet crooks Not even twenty-four hours after returning from Peru, I received a strange phone call that should have been a red flag but which I ignored because of either jet lag, stupidity or both. I didn't recognize the caller's Spanish accent, dripping with fake concern and assumed he …
A weekend when Everyday Worries Floated away Every day we're pelted with so much alarming news—political wars, dire predictions and yesterday, even a report of a tsunami—that you are left feeling like someone caught bare-assed in a hailstorm. Some friends have concocted escape mechanisms, most commonly going on a "news fast," or in my case, …
We'll take the rain no matter what it smells like "Petrichor" is one of those five-dollar words that you might fling at someone you are trying to impress, or put off, at a church picnic. It describes the earthy, pleasant smell when rain dampens dry soil. This morning on the way to the coop to …
What we've worn, never to be worn again When Stew and I moved down from Chicago some twenty years ago, the packing began in an orderly fashion, boxes clearly labeled and sealed—books, tools, kitchen utensils and such—but we were nowhere finished when the crew from United Van Lines showed up. The pace of the packing …
A cluck-cluck here and a cluck-cluck there Several years ago, Stew and I came upon a traffic accident we didn't quickly forget. A semi-truck filled with what must have been hundreds, maybe thousands, of chickens caged in wire compartments had just overturned and its load had turned into a bloody pile of dead and wounded …
When you live in the country, driving home on a lonely road after dark is scary. Sometimes it makes us wonder why we didn't pick a place in-town to live, easily accessible by an Uber or kind friends who would take us home. No, we're not afraid of roving narcotraffickers, highway robbers, bandidos or other …
The most important trick is a dash of chutzpah After watching my mom struggle with English when she came from Cuba, Stew go mano a mano with Spanish after we moved to Mexico 20 years ago, and my own experiences learning English at age 14, I've concluded that neither perfect grammar nor a flawless pronunciation …
Something else to worry about? As 2024 comes to a close—already a humdinger of an annus horribilis, what with wars in Europe, Africa and the Middle East plus Trump getting elected—lexicographers at the Oxford Dictionary have designated "brain rot" as the Word of the Year. They defined it as "a supposed deterioration of a person's …
El Rancho Santa Clara 