Last week, before we left for the beach, I asked Félix to turn over the soil in the two raised beds, as a prelude to our yearly fantasy of an orderly cornucopia of vegetables—a few types of lettuce, radishes, carrots, tomatoes, chard, beets and what-have-you—that by midsummer, inevitably turns into an riot of vegetables on …
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And so, on to the beach
It's been only a year since our last two-week sojourn at the beach, except for 2020 having warped our lives, and everything around us, including our sense of time. It feels as if we'd been locked up at the ranch for eons. The drive from San Miguel to Barra de Potosi was the usual seven-hour, 350 …
What couldn't happen just happened
While I sat in front of the TV on Wednesday, stunned by images of a Trumpist mob laying siege and storming the U.S. Capitol, I got a call from Olguita, a cousin in Miami who came from Cuba about 20 years ago. She was upset, sounded almost tearful. She couldn't believe that such lawlessness, routine in Venezuela, …
A touch of "pandemic fatigue"
Back in March, when the Covid-19 virus had barely begun to infect and kill people in the U.S. and most of the world, the state of California imposed strict preventive measures that, for a while, seemed effective and were embraced by the citizenry. Ten months later the epidemic has returned to California with a vengeance, …
Have faith people, 2021 will be much better.
As a roommate I had at Indiana University would say, 2020 has been the kind of year that would piss off the Good Humor Man. Indeed. We've had a pandemic that still rages and whose death toll in the U.S. alone has surpassed 300,000; an economic dislocation that has left millions unemployed and scores of small …
Continue reading Have faith people, 2021 will be much better.
Back after a brief and expensive hospital break
Hello again, after a few weeks of silence during which our lives were, in fact, filled with ups and downs, though fortunately, with more of the former. About three weeks ago, we had the opportunity to sample Mexican hospital care, when Stew had to have a knee-replacement operation. We ended up at Hospital Angeles in Querétaro, …
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How do you explain U.S. democracy to foreigners?
As much as I swear I'm not going to read, or write, any more about American politics, nowadays that's like trying to avert one's attention from a five-car pile-up in full view. During a two-and-a-half hour sojourn at the dentist yesterday, mercifully most of it under a haze of Novocaine, Stew received two root canals, along …
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Feeling at home in Mexico, finally
My husband Stew, who has a much better memory that I for dates and anniversaries, reminded me yesterday that 15 years ago, sometime during the first few days of November, we moved to Mexico from Chicago. I do vividly remember our VW Passat station wagon, jam-packed with what we thought were essential belongings, some absurd, such …
Countdown to sanity: 8 days, 6 hours, 25 minutes, 58 seconds
Even some 600 miles away from the nearest U.S. border, we can't escape the roaring chaos surrounding the 2020 presidential election. It reminds me of Thomas Paine's memorable words in 1776: "These are times that try men's souls." Indeed, Thomas: both men's souls and minds.Uncle Rudy has a Halloween surprise. Wednesday, on a typically beautiful, cool and …
Continue reading Countdown to sanity: 8 days, 6 hours, 25 minutes, 58 seconds
When your normal empathy fails you
Two days ago, for a couple of hours, I struggled with the wording of a get-well post for President Trump. My mind went blank; my fingers recoiled; words escaped me. My angst was for naught: On Monday, Trump helicoptered back to the White House, stood on the balcony, defiantly ripped off his mask, like Batman returning …
El Rancho Santa Clara 