Amid the daily avalanche of media reports about the Covid pandemic—some based on science, others on speculation and still others, perhaps the majority, on Internet conspiracies and high-octane bullshit—occasionally you run across a new angle to this topic. Such was the case with a July 22 piece in the The Atlantic magazine, that designated an …
Tomorrow evening Stew and I will be going on a thrice-postponed trip abroad, our first since the Covid-19 pandemic began more than two years ago. We've been vaccinated twice and received the booster, in addition to a flu vaccine and the first of two shingles vaccines. And of course, we'll carry our KN-95 masks in …
Continue reading To mask or not to mask? But why? Does anyone know?
Stew checked our rooftop weather station a couple of days ago and found that, so far this year, we've had 0.07 inches of rain. That's damn close to zero. He also found that relative humidity during the past week has been in the low double digits, sometimes dipping down into the single digits, particularly inside our …
Continue reading Mother Nature cuts through the gloom of current events
Some people, myself included, make New Year's resolutions that are bound to fail. Take, for instance, my vowing to take up marathoning despite my penguin-like flat feet that keep me from running more than a block at a time. Other people inventory all their defects and deficiencies, the weight of which end up crushing their …
Continue reading How I'm going to make 2022 an exciting year
Forget the old "April showers bring May flowers" ditty. In San Miguel that seasonal sequence is backward; summer heat comes early in the year, anywhere from March through May, and the springtime showers, and the flip-of-a-switch greening of the landscape and burst of wildflowers, don't arrive until late June. This year the rains started in late …
Continue reading Early spring brings blessings along with caution
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, …
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 …
Six months or so ago San Miguel went into lockdown, and since then we've been living in varying degrees of isolation, along with a relentless stream of news reports and opinions from both sides of the border. And yet, the still-unfolding catastrophe had remained one step removed from my experience: I didn't know any COVID-19 …
In the warm-up to the upcoming presidential campaign, President Trump has already fired salvos of his trademark insults and nicknames at his likely opponent, including calling Biden "Sleepy Joe."If I were Biden, I would welcome that as a campaign slogan: I, for one, am ready to take a little political siesta, a respite from the …
Yesterday Stew ran up the Stars and Stripes up the flagpole at the ranch, as we usually do on the Fourth of July, along with the Mexican flag, but it didn't feel much like a holiday, with the United States under siege by a tragic trifecta of a pandemic still out of control, a sputtering …
Continue reading In battle against Covid-19, it's Germany 1, U.S. zero
El Rancho Santa Clara 