Malcolm knew when to come in and when to leave About fifteen or sixteen years ago when we'd barely fenced in our land and begun construction of the house, a pack of six or seven stray dogs, among them an ingratiating curly-tailed orange mutt we named Malcolm, showed up each morning looking for food. Pretty …
Tag: mexico
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, …
This blogger is old
How i went from 'getting old' to 'being old' Lifestyle preachers may talk about "70 being the new 50" by profiling some 85-year-old guy who swims a mile a day in Lake Michigan in the middle of January. Such inspirational epistles never impressed us though. Less so after my husband Stew underwent serious spinal surgery …
When does populism become authoritarianism?
Except for the gasoline crisis a couple of months ago, I must confess that I have not followed the performance of Mexico's new president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (popularly known as AMLO) since he took office earlier this year.The avalanche of political news from the U.S. pretty much eclipses what goes on here—at least from …
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A giant step for Mexico's little brown people? Hold that applause.
Stew and I watch the Oscars, a day or two after they actually take place, with the invaluable aid of a recording machine that allows us to zoom past commercials, logorrheic acceptance speeches, clips of movies we've already seen and other time-wasters, and effectively condense the three-hour marathon of self-indulgence into a more bearable package, one …
Continue reading A giant step for Mexico's little brown people? Hold that applause.
Dirty Rotten (Republican) Scoundrels!
Two days ago I noticed a tiny blue sticker, about one-and-a-half inches long by three-quarters-of- an-inch high, on the right end of the rear bumper of our old Nissan Frontier pickup. On closer inspection I discovered it was a "Trump Make America Great Again" sticker. Before my cataract surgery a year ago, I probably wouldn't …
Farewell to recycling
When we moved to the ranch about seven years ago we took to recycling with the fervor of tree-huggers from Portland, San Francisco or Vancouver.Of course, we set up a three-bin compost pile. And we also began to separate aluminum, cardboard, plastic, regular metal cans, and glass, which we took to a recycling center on …
Bad news rains on San Miguel
What to do when nasty rumorssuddenly come true? Recently I've received news of outbreaks of San Miguelophobia, particularly in the picturesque mountain town of Pátzcuaro, where the sun goes up and down every day, and in the heavily air-conditioned Pacific Coast resort of Barra de Navidad, where in August even iguanas wear sun protection. There might …
A Mexico story: Getting rear-ended and screwed on the same day
This week did not begin auspiciously. Six weeks ago we had left our motorcycle at the local hole-in-the-wall Suzuki dealer, located next to an auto electrical supply store oddly named "The Mummy," to see if they could sell it.There were no buyers, so Monday morning we picked it up so Félix could drive it back …
Continue reading A Mexico story: Getting rear-ended and screwed on the same day
Too early to rehabilitate George W.
Absence might make the heart grow fonder but the recent gushing over George W. Bush as not-such-a-bad-president-after-all is myopic if not delusional. Compared to the present occupant Bush's eight years at the White House might look like the Age of Wisdom, but that's setting the bar about an inch off the ground.Granted that Trump's perpetual …
El Rancho Santa Clara 