If you read the comments from this morning's post, you have probably figured out that the photograph above is not of my dog.
It is Raji -- the love of my friends Ken and Patti. And their daughter, Kimmy.
Kimmy gave me the photograph on one of my visits to Olympia this year. I found the perspective interesting.
The moment I saw it, I mistook poor Raji for a wall-mounted trophy. But that is not his style. He is a bundle of energy. The antithesis of poor old Gomez.
Thank you for playing alng with this little game. We will be back to our regular programming tomorrow.
OK, class. Here is your assignment.
If you are so inclined, how about a comment on this photograph? A caption? A short story? It is all up to you.
Have a great Sunday.
Recycling has come to Mexico.
Can you think of any sentence steeped more in gringo hubris than that one?
Mexico, like most other places in the world, has long been a land of recycling. If something breaks in an American suburb, it gets thrown out as trash. If the same item breaks in Mexico -- or on a family farm in eastern Washington -- it will find new life somewhere else.
I am not certain who came up with the idea originally around these parts, but there has been a big drive to recycle plastic bottles. From an aesthetic vantage, it is a great idea. Beach towns are magnets for people who see nothing wrong with tossing bottles and wrappers whenever and wherever they are empty.
To counter that trend, someone has installed large collection areas for plastic bottles. And people actually use them.
But, some of us also collect our plastics in smaller containers. In my case, I save plastic bottles and aluminum cans for the maid. She takes them away when the bag is full.
And this is eventually where all ofthe plastic ends up.
I have been told that most of these bottles are shipped to China where the plastic is remolded into various products -- and then sold around the world. I do not know if that is true, but it makes sense.
During the recession, when China's exports slowed down due to lack of demand, you could see a very physical example of the economic slowdown. The plastic bottles started forming Himalayas of waste. It was Lucy in the chocolate factory all over again.
Now that the world's economy is back on track, the mountains are mere hills.
The reason we recycle in Mexico? There is money in it. Without the Chinese market, I suspect our beaches would be forming plastic bottle islands before long. And then we could float them to China.
Just like latter-day Thor Heyerdahls.
Summer is here.
Now, I know the pedantic will point to the calendar. Proudly counting that I am five weeks too early.
But we all have our own ways of declaring the start of summer here in Melaque. For some it is the arrival of the land crab migration. For others, the start of the rainy season.
For me, summer has begun when the heat and humidity combine to make it too uncomfortable to sit on the patio without a floor fan. Thursday afternoon was summer for me.
I have no idea what the temperature was nor how high the humidity climbed, but I could not read about one more Plantagenet tragedy without schlepping the fan outside. Even Gomez the Foster Dog abandoned his shady corner to join me in the electronic breeze.
The start of summer means it is time for another tradition in my little casa. The water in my shower is gravity-fed from a storage tank on the roof. That water is pumped from a cistern on the property. The cistern water comes from the pipes in the street. Before that, I have no idea where it comes from.
But whatever the source, by the time it gets to my shower head, it starts gumming up the works. Once a year, I take the screen off of the shower head and clean it out. I will spare you the description of the large hunks of debris I find. What interests me most is the calcification.
In just one year, the holes in the screen are almost completely closed by mineral deposits. Almost as if I were showering in Carlsbad Caverns. It takes me about 15 minutes with a brush and solvents to strip the crust and clear the holes. I suspect the screen looked a good deal like my teeth as the dentist cleaned them earlier this week.
But that task is done. The cleaning does not increase the water pressure, but, at least, the water does not spray everywhere other than where it should.
And I can now get ready for the land crabs and the rain. They cannot be too far behind.
After all, it's summer.
Mexico is getting a new 50 peso note in June.
The note is a bit more colorful than the current version. And it has several new security measures to foil counterfeiters. It is a credit to the Mexican economy that counterfeiter's find it worth their effort to print up money worth about $4 (US).
What has not changed is the portrait of the Mexican War of Independence hero, José María Morelos y Pavón. Morelos remains ageless.
That is the hallmark of a republic. The portraits on the currency are as unchanging as the principles on which the republic is founded. At least, in theory.
The portraits of Juárez, Morelos, and Hidalgo act as the reverse of Dorian Gray's portrait -- just as constant as the portraits of Washington, Lincoln, and Jackson -- with each updated series of bank notes.
That, of course, is not true for nations ruled by monarchs. British pound notes and coins have followed the queen's aging process. Even if there is a little time lapse between the ravages of real time and the representations of the engraver's knife.
I recently ran across a file that contained my expired passports. I have no idea why I retained them. But it was amusing to see how passports have changed over time. And how I have changed along with them.
The year was 1974. I had been living in Greece for almost a full year. And because I were there on NATO orders, I did not need a passport.
My cousin, Dennis, and several friends were on their way to Greece to visit me -- and to take what would be my first cruise. A passport was in order.
As was an unfolding war between Turkey (two of our ports) and Greece. The passport arrived. The war didn't.
That 24-year old guy looking back at me seems a bit too serious. At least, for how I remember those days of pure freedom of driving around Greece as if my tail feathers were on fire.
But the passport itself speaks of another era. A clerk in the Athens Embassy has typed in all of the information. And the photograph is merely pasted on the page. I am warned to avoid Cuba, North Korea, and North Viet-Nam.
That passport expired just about the time I graduated from law school. And there was little need to renew it until 1984 when I started traveling on behalf of the Department of Defense.
I look like a junior bank executive. But I was playing the role of a youngish lawyer. A role that did not assuage the difficulties I had with British Immigration during the 1980s.
For reasons that are the elements of another story,I had ended up on an IRA watch list (the Irish terrorist group, not the retirement investment instrument). I quickly learned patience in my hours of standing in front of Her Majesty's warders of the border.
In a mere decade, the Charlie Brown-Ziggie face you now know had started forming.
But, in my mid-40s, I was starting to slip into the best days of my professional life. I had narrowed down my practice to one specialty (workers' compensation) and had been hired by a company that allowed me to do a variety of work.
When this photograph was taken, I had moved on from trial work to appellate work. My second favorite legal position of my career. Life was good.
And it got even better. The photograph is from 1999. I had just retired from the Air Force Reserve and my work style had changed from coat and tie to shirt and sweater.
Of course, times do change. And the passport format reflects a different world. No more paste-on photograph.
The new photograph is so filled with holograms that scanning it is next to impossible. Of course, that was the government's goal. To find a way to get around the new tools of counterfeiters -- scanners and computers.
For much the same reason that the 50 peso note is getting a facelift. And this was before the nation (and much of the world) fell into paranoia after September 2001.
And what do I look like now? Well, you all know the answer to that question. Even though the photograph is a couple of years old, that is me -- up there in the right hand corner.
Chuckling that Oscar Wilde never discovered a way to capture my aging spirit on canvas.
I have left you hanging. And, for once, it was not one of my writer tricks.
Well, not exactly. Procrastination is certainly not exclusive to scribblers.
A month ago, I told you I had seen a dentist in Melaque because of a gum complaint that had dogged me for a couple of months. (jawing with the dentist) His prognosis? I had serious bone loss in my jaw and I might need a bone graft. He recommended that I see a specialist in Guadalajara.
I could not do that immediately because I needed to get my Oregon-licensed Escape out of the country as soon as possible. My plan was to fly back to Guadalajara directly from Oregon, pick up my new Escape, and check into walking away with a new jaw bone.
Well,you know how the "fly to Guadalajara" part of the trip worked out. By the time, I got my finances straightened out and picked up the new vehicle, all I wanted to do was get back to Melaque as quickly as possible.
But I was not ignoring the jaw issue. Several friends had recommended a dentist in Manzanillo. I could, at least, get a second opinion from her. So, off to Manzanillo I went Tuesday morning.
I left the dental office with thoroughly-cleaned teeth. They needed it. Due to some very bad advice I received when I moved to Melaque, I slipped off of my quarterly cleaning schedule. Even with the extra time she took to use a powered pick to chip off tartar, the dentist only charged me $350 (Mx) -- less than $30 (US).
During her examination, the dentist spotted the same problem around my molar. Bone loss that has caused a pocket to form. A pocket that will collect food particles and lead to infections.
But I may have avoided a trip to Guadalajara. Her son is a dentist -- getting his specialty license in periodontics. He will be in Manzanillo the Saturday after next. I will let him see just how far my bone has receded.
She suggested that a deep cleaning may be all I need. But she left the final diagnosis to her son.
In another two weeks, I may have x-rays to show you. I just hope they are better than those at the top of this post.
I am a foster dad.
A doggy daddy, at least. Temporarily.
Almost three years ago, I briefly fostered a dog (dog days of summer) who was recovering from spay surgery. Her name was Tamara.
I wish I could say it was one of my most memorable Mexican experiences. It wasn't.
Not that there was anything bad about the experience. I just could not remember having done it. Until the latest dog showed up at my place.
My landlady and a mutual friend are driving forces behind Pro Animal Melaque -- a local group formed to rescue dogs and cats from the street and to find suitable homes for them. On Sunday afternoon they showed up my place with a dog in tow.
They had been telling me about this dog for a few weeks. Even going so far as to play the "he might have some golden retriever card in him." They were certain if I met him, I would fall in love with him.
His name is Gomez. No one s quite certain of his story. We know he had been living on the street for a bit -- bumming food from restaurant customers and causing tourists to fall in love with him because of his pitiful condition.
So, when Christine and Anne showed up with a dog on a lead, I knew who it would be.
But I was wrong about this being a mere opportunity to meet another dog living the life of Oliver Twist. An entirely different request was in the offing.
The shelter is currently the home to several puppies -- with another batch on the way. And even though we do not know how old Gomez is, he is an old dog. He really dislikes puppies.
That is where I came into the picture. I have a large dogless garden. Why not let Steve foster Gomez for a week or so while the puppies are spayed, neutered, and doled out to homes far more welcoming to cute puppies than to tired, old dogs?
Of course, I said "yes." The work of the shelter is important, and if I can relieve some stress, it should be my pleasure.
And how has it gone?
Not incredibly well. Gomez and Steve have not bonded. And that may be for the better. After all, this is a short-term visit.
What has not worked well is that Gomez has taken every opportunity to get back to the shelter -- including squeezing through gate grills that must hurt his hips.
I crated him last night to keep him from getting through the gate to the laguna. The mama crocodile would find him a rather nourishing meal. He was not happy. Barking and scratching at his carrier for most of the night.
Today I head to Manzanillo to finally attend to my dental problem. I am still not certain what I will do with poor, old Gomez. But I am certain a solution will come along.
I have learned one lesson, though. As much as I want a golden retriever puppy, I may not be ready for the job.
