Nearing the end his life, he's not worried about eternity More than sixteen years ago, when we had bought the land but not yet begun construction, a small stray dog showed up at the gate merrily wagging his tail as if we were all old friends. We started to feed him each morning and for …
Category: Blogging
The Nativity Reinvented
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 …
Up in the Air
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, …
The smells of spring
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 …
The clothes of our lives
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 …
Chicken Liberation
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 …
morning breaks at the ranch
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 …
After the Trumpocalypse
How to keep my head when everyone's lost theirs On the Monday before election day Stew and I left on a three-day excursion to Pátzcuaro, a beautiful colonial town about three hours from San Miguel. And on the day after the election, while sitting on a bench in the main square of Erongarícuaro, a nearby …
Strangers we knew
People we meet are the most memorable part of travel In the 1993 movie "Six Degrees of Separation" the character Ouise (Louise) Kittredge, played by Stockard Channing, gave us this bon mot about how all people on this planet are related to one another, by blood, accident or coincidence. "I read somewhere that everybody on …
Flowering succulents to the rescue
Blooms that bring cheer when we most need it A few days ago while brushing my teeth I noticed that an otherwise unremarkable-looking potted cactus the size of large grapefruit that had sat on the counter for months, perhaps years, had sprouted a beautiful bright-yellow flower on top. This fellow goes by the name of …
El Rancho Santa Clara 