Each of our five dogs has its own sad-sack story and that's why they joined our household. We're buddies. Ellie is an orange, short-haired something-or-other with a broad head and face somewhat reminiscent of a pit bull except she is small and weighs only about twenty pounds. Her most distinctive traits are her bowed rear legs and …
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When Santa Clara came marching in, followed by her cats
The lives of the saints bear close scrutiny—or none at allHagiographies are tough to fact-check: Religious fervor and the fact most saints lived hundreds if not thousands of years ago conspire against definite answers.And so it is, I found, with Santa Clara (St. Clare in English), who lived nearly eight hundred years ago in Assisi, Italy, …
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When grasshoppers came to dinner
How do you maintain your ecological witswhen Mother Nature turns on you? We returned home after a couple of weeks traveling and Félix reported everything was fine, except for a not-so-minor detail: Our ranch is under attack by an overnight blitzkrieg of thousands, hundreds of thousands—millions for I all know—of chapulines or grasshoppers.I went out this …
On the road again, ready or not
Once upon a time—it feels like a hundred years ago though it's closer to twelve or thirteen—I reached a peak of physical fitness by bicycling to work, about six miles each way, through any weather Chicago threw my way.Old Glory, ready to roll again. Depending on conditions, each morning I'd put on my black Spandex biking …
A surprise in every taco
This morning I showed Félix a photo I took of an Icelandic horse, a rather stumpy but powerful fellow with a beautiful long mane. I thought I'd shock Félix by telling him that some people in Iceland eat horsemeat.It's what's for dinner. Hah! You have to get up early in the morning to shock Félix. Sure, he …
A Muslim prayer for the United States
From the Washington PostImam Abdullah Antepli, chief representative of Muslim Affairs at Duke University’s School of Arts & Sciences, delivered the opening prayer at the U.S. House of Representatives Wednesday. Starting in 2003, Antepli was a chaplain at Duke, Wesleyan University and Hartford Seminary. He was nominated to give the prayer, which is offered days the House is in …
Why are political disagreements today so disagreeable?
Political arguments, even within the family, are nothing new: Think the hippie era, the Vietnam War and the time Sis announced over Thanksgiving dinner she had joined a free-love commune near Taos.Ever since the last presidential election, though, disagreements have become more rancorous, even seemingly unbridgeable. I know people who avoid family visits for fear …
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Our neighbors' unencumbered religious faith
Theologians, philosophers and mystics have spent centuries plumbing the mysteries of religious texts and what God may have meant when, from up above, He commanded, spoke or thundered to someone, down here below.Strike up the band.And every year I'm reminded that all that intellectual and spiritual firepower may have been wasted on the people in …
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As mass shootings become ever bloodier, American politicians keep shooting blanks
Félix, our jack-of-all-trades assistant at our ranchito, comes from a dirt-poor family plagued by illiteracy and other problems. Felix himself only reached the sixth-grade before going off on his own to work at whatever he could find, including a stint doing manual labor in Texas.Yet if you were to dismiss him as a pitiable dumb …
Continue reading As mass shootings become ever bloodier, American politicians keep shooting blanks
Rain, roaring creeks and wildflowers
After four or five days of one- to one-and-half-inch rains the ranch is swamped and glorious.The same over-grazed, almost scalped land we found ten years ago now is covered with wildflowers. Amid the stolid agaves, which not even a hurricane could budge, the delicate wildflowers constantly dance and sway to their own music at the …
El Rancho Santa Clara 