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 …
Tag: Donald Trump
Dogs and Cats are on the Menu
Served with sides of racism and xenophobia about immigration If we all could get past the sheer lunacy of Trump's assertion that Haitian immigrants eat the dogs and cats of people of Springfield, Ohio, or destroy the local economy, this could be a propitious moment for both parties to inject some rational, fact-based thinking 0n …
Cat people of the world, unite!
The Republican run for the White House turns even uglier Kamala Harris hasn't yet been formally nominated as the Democratic Party's candidate for president but the mud-slinging already has begun. A 2021 rant by JD Vance, now the GOP vice-presidential candidate, has resurfaced that targets Kamala Harris, Representative Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, and Secretary of Transportation Pete …
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 …
Continue reading How do you explain U.S. democracy to foreigners?
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 …
In battle against Covid-19, it's Germany 1, U.S. zero
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
And now, let's pause for a moment of gratitude
I've been trying to write a post about the COVID-19 virus for three or four days, only to cave in and quit, under the weight of so much bad news. And who can blame me? The last news bit I read yesterday was that Chicago, our hometown, has plans to turn its huge convention center …
Continue reading And now, let's pause for a moment of gratitude
Uncle Vlad and his unsinkable Russkies
Last week I finished Adam Higginbotham's Midnight in Chernobyl, a thrilling, if at times technically dense, account of the world's greatest nuclear disaster, just in time to tune in the first installment of an HBO documentary on the same subject. Such are the benefits of all that spare time offered by retirement.Chernobyl, officially the V. I. …
When death came marching in last week
This past week, appropriately enough when Mexicans celebrated the Day of the Dead, we witnessed four different facets of death and the reactions it elicited from different people.The massacre at a Pittsburgh synagogue, ironically named The Tree of Life, was a horror that left decent people speechless. It's precisely on those occasions when the president …
El Rancho Santa Clara 