mexpatriate — in the key of steve

did you ever wonder --

2012-02-06T01:15:00.001-06:00

who designs bathrooms in expensive hotels?

You know the places I mean. You spend $500 a night for a place to sleep. You would think hotel designers would spend most of their time working out the best sleep formula for weary travelers.

Then you wander into the bathroom. And it looks as if a Japanese artist with a good deal of taste and an advanced case of OCD was turned loose in there.

Little bottles of lotions are lined up like backup singers with a bevy of soloists -- the pleather ice bucket, the hair dryer in a canvas bag, the plant being tortured in near Arctic midnight conditions.

But those little bottles always catch my attention. So tiny. So artistic. And so dysfunctional.

Nancy tells me that the unprofessional French-sounding brand of lotions I have been offered are very high quality. I wouldn’t know.

The bottles look pretty. But they are made of such hard plastic that it is possible to get only little one drop of shampoo out during a full shower cycle. Physics is apparently a course not taught in designer school.

Trying to squeeze thick honey through a pin hole simply does not work. I found myself looking for the artfully-designed ballpeen hammer.

Here’s a suggestion. Why not just have a big bottle of Head and Shoulders in the shower? And just leave it there. Like most people’s bathrooms.

And let the artists get back to designing women’s shoes.

too rich to be poor

2012-02-05T03:20:00.002-06:00

I have always loved San Francisco. It may be the most beautiful city in the world.

But, like many beauties, San Francisco’s assets get a bit skewed. Almost like a monarch who is never thwarted.

And I am not talking about the low-lying fruit -- the city’s politics. Where good intentions result in unintended consequences.

Street people are a perfect example. San Francisco wanted to show its compassion by repealing trespassing laws -- and ended up with streets that look as if touring companies of Les Miserables are stranded in town.

But that is too easy. What fascinates me about San Francisco is the contradiction you will see at every corner.

And nothing could be more symbolic than the statue that stands in the courtyard of the old ferry terminal building.

That is Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi -- in the photograph at the top of this blog. The very symbol of inner peace. He is there because every liberal (and many conservative) Americans would like to believe their soul is one with his.

But Gandhi was also a proponent of self-sufficiency. And there his statue stands in the midst of food crates and stalls overflowing with food that none of the buyers produced themselves.

And at prices that would make Bapu weep. A pound of these beautiful greens cost more than a poor India family makes in a week.

But they are beautiful. The city is beautiful. We are beautiful. And the day was beyond beautiful. One of the nicest I have spent in San Francisco in years.

My friends, Nancy and Roy, drove me around town for an hour or two. We then headed over to Sausalito to dine on clam chowder and mahi mahi tacos while watching the sun light up our bright Babylon by the sea.

I often mention how nice it is to dine slowly in Mexico. To get the rhythm of the culture. And that is what we did today. No rush. Just eating in the sun and chatting about our lives and their part in this great world.

Driving back across the Golden Gate bridge, we decided to take a detour to the ocean beach on San Francisco’s western shore. It has been a long time since I was there. In fact, the last time I was there in the 1970s, I camped on that beach.

As some of you know, I like collecting photographs of signs. Especially signs with odd communications. This one falls into the blunt message category.

If it had been posted in Mexico, it would most likely have included a pictogram of a series of swimmers sinking immobile to their deep dooms.

But later this morning, we leave behind the particular beauty of this city and its contradictions to hunt for new signs in China.

See you on the other side.

dog days of dining

2012-02-04T00:51:00.000-06:00

The great mascota civil war has once again broken out in my little fishing village by the sea.

For some reason, something happens each year to upset one of the visiting tourists when some blue-haired lady finds pleasure in bringing her little Muffy Maltese to dinner at one of our eateries. Dog and companion look lovingly into the other’s eyes and often share bites of the pollo mole off the same fork.

The offended party gets a bit overstimulated and starts venting on the local message board (because these are the type of discussions we can never have directly with one another) comparing the scene to Chapter 17 of Revelation. Or, at least, of the end of culinary hygiene. Terms like “dining with livestock” are launched like ICBMs.

To be answered with a barrage of “NOB fascism” and “go back where you came from.” (Though that last one always causes a good deal of confusion. Not unlike those lewd comments that are more confusing for their physical impossibility than their reflection of a rather stunted social maturity.)

I usually do not get involved in this annual round of fun and games. Not only because the tone of the conversation has devolved to school yard insults (and everyone else has used all of my name-calling phrases) by the time I notice the thread. The big reason is simple: I don’t have a dog in this fight.

I once did, of course. The good Professor Jiggs. Or, at least, the late Professor Jiggs.

When I first moved to Mexico, I often brought The Professor with me when I dined out. I almost always picked an outside table and PJ settled underneath to sleep.

Back then, I never gave much thought to taking him along. It was more like taking an elderly, dying relative to dinner. And no one ever said a thing.

Of course, I was beguiled by my own ideology. Even though Mexico is politically about as far from libertarianism as a soul can be, the philosophy seems to be lived out each day in Mexican society. At least, on the beach.

It finally occurred to me one day to ask the owner of the restaurant I patronized if he objected to Jiggs’s presence. At first, he was reluctant to answer. In true non-confrontational Mexican style, he said: “I would prefer you didn’t.”

Over the years, as I have come to know him better, his reluctance has disappeared. He now refers to dogs in his restaurant as the equivalent of bringing in a goat.

So, why doesn’t he say anything? For the same reason he says nothing when smokers light up. He needs the income from tourists. And, for him, dogs do not top the list of tourist eccentricities. Some of his stories are hilarious.

I will not enter the doggy fray. The tourists can fight their own Antietams with one another. I am happy in my own private Switzerland.

flying food

2012-02-03T09:01:00.000-06:00

You all know him. The guy at the Christmas party who has just one more story before he will turn loose of you.

Well, that guy is me. Because I have one more tale before I climb into the airplane to San Francisco.

Yesterday a bit of exotica came into my life. A local friend called me and asked if I would be interested in some bite-size pieces of adventure. Having long ago adopted the advise of the Sondheim song that “I Never Do Anything Twice,” I decided I had to try almost everything once.

My friend dropped off the ziplock bag you see in the photograph at the top of this post. Anyone who has lived in Mexico very long will recognize the gift: chapulines. Grasshoppers.

Well, a very specific grasshopper prepared in a very special way. Grasshoppers from Oaxaca Collected when they are young and tender. Toasted in clay ovens. And flavored with chili and lime. (Of course, chili and lime. They are Mexican snacks. No pickled onion crisp flavors here.)

I took the bag. Examined the oddly-red corpses of the grasshoppers. And decided there was only one thing to do in a situation like this. I grabbed the fattest bit of my new fast food. Took a quick look at it. And into my mouth it went.

I can now say I have eaten a grasshopper. It was soft on the inside. But without much flavor other than the overwhelming taste of chili powder. And crunchy on the outside. Just a bit too crunchy. Like eating bougainvillea twigs. And just a bit stale. After all, the grasshoppers are gathered fresh in the summer.

The rest of the afternoon and evening, I did my best to act as a chapulin pusher. To a person, Canadians, Americans, and Mexicans refused my very kind offer. The young Mexican woman who cooks at the restaurant around the corner had never seen them before and was shocked that anyone would even think of eating them.

I think I now know how some of the cooking show hosts feel when they try to get people to try something new.

I understand that chapulines can be (and are) used as fillings in other foods. So, who knows how many of us have actually tried them in Mexico?

Maybe I actually do some things twice.

But that is the end of the story. You can now head off and talk to that far more interesting woman by the punch bowl. I think she has a few food tips of her own.

pushing my luck

2012-02-02T22:46:00.000-06:00

When I moved to Mexico, I chose the beach because I like to live by the water. Just near it; not in it.

But I had several friends who love to snorkel and swim. So, I had this dream of hosting guests while they enjoyed the wetter pleasures of our local beaches.

And pleasures we have. One of the nicest is beach in front of the little village of Custacomate -- just over the hill from Melaque. But its beach seems as if it borders on a different ocean.

Navidad Bay is large enough that its beaches present enough faces to please Sybil. But none of them are as calm and idyllic as Custacomate.

The waves are almost Caribbean. The waves near my house pound the sand. In Cuastacomate, they lap. Best of all, the beach is usually free of the usual tourist crowd.

For snorkeling, it is next to perfect. Shallow incline. Mixtures of sand and rock. And a small coral reef.

My friends, Lou and Wynn, arranged to my house guest and me at the beach this morning. I was looking forward to joining them in the water. But an odd sleepless night and an unusually persistent cough kept me on shore with Lou.

But it was nice just to sit in the shade and watch while the snorkelers have a good time. Even though the water was cold and the fish were few. (Probably not a coincidence of circumstances. On the other hand, the fish may have been in mourning for the bodies of their comrades littering the beach.)

It was a nice last day in Mexico for a couple of weeks.

As I write, it is nearly 11 PM and I still have not done much packing for my flight tomorrow. So, I best turn my attention from pen to packing.

Next entry -- San Francisco. Maybe.

death on the beach

2012-02-01T19:46:00.000-06:00

Nope. Not mine.

In fact, I am doing quite well, thank you. My throat does not ache. The sneezing has stopped. My sinuses are clear. A dry cough intrudes now and then. But I feel almost normal.

And my doctor agrees. My blood pressure and heart rate are back within the acceptable range. If a bit high. However, it was good enough for her to wish me a great trip to China.

But not before I took my house guest to one of Melaque’s beach restaurants. I confess that I am rather tired of beach restaurant food. This one was not a terrible experience.

The real reason for the outing, though, was to see what I have been reading about on our local message board. For the past week or so, large numbers of fish have been washing up on the Melaque beach. It is as if an eleventh plague was being served up on Egypt, and the target went a bit astray.

And fish there were. Of several varieties. Most of them small.

There are probably as many theories as there are inactive minds around here. I would not have been surprised if the Knights Templar (the imaginary ones in Europe, not the rather nasty real ones in these parts) had been blamed for the kill.

The more rational theories are red tide, temperature changes in the ocean, or simply the residue of garbage fish discarded from a trawler’s nets.

I am rather partial to it being another of the Maya 2012 end of the world omens. Not as dramatic as Exodus quail falling from the sky. At least, it would be good for tourism. For a few more months.

But the solution will require the services of another Hercule Poirot. Because this particular one has a bit of trip preparation to complete before Friday.

shocking

2012-01-31T18:28:00.000-06:00

One of the joys of Mexican electricity is the opportunity to meet it up close and personal.

I am not talking about the usual Gordian knot of power lines seen on many Mexican electrical poles -- even though they would make an interesting post.

What I am talking about is the almost universal lack of grounding in Mexican electrical systems. Now, I know that sentence is not scientifically accurate. After all, electrical current is always grounded at one point. And that point, in an Mexican home, is likely to be you.

It certainly has been me recently.

I have a computer station in my living room where all of my computer gear is hooked up to one extension cord that runs through both a surge protector, and a combined voltage regulator and battery backup.

It looks quite impressive. Maybe a bit too many bare cords for the feminine eye. But it appeals to my testosterone-driven sense of technology

But like most apparently impressive systems, it is an illusion. Because the electrical system to my house has no built-in grounding, touching any metal part on my computer table will give me a bigger jolt than Newt Gingrich endorsing Barak Obama.

And I have discovered the same problem with my new notebook computer. Having taken to my sick bed, I brought it along for a bit of diversion. A few moments ago, I stood up while holding it. A radio falling into a bath tub could not have given me a larger jolt.

Well, I suppose it could have. But the distinction was academic while it was happening. Apparently, my bed was not a very good electrical conductor. But the moment my foot hit the tile floor, resistance was no longer futile.

The problem is hardly exclusive to Mexico. I remember when I was growing up, there was at least one table or floor lamp that offered a shocking experience when turning it off and on.

But I am certain that the random electricity running through my computer systems cannot be good for them. And my constant nomination to be the next Reddy Kilowatt is probably doing nothing for me, either.

There are some things about Mexico I am happy to keep impersonal.

turn your life -- and cough

2012-01-30T16:22:00.000-06:00

This cold is really frustrating.

Usually Nyquil will do the trick and knock me out to stay in bed and allow my body to take the time it needs to fight off the virus.

But Nyquil has not come to my aid with this cold. I tossed and turned most of last night, and each turn resulted in another racking cough. And you do not want to know any more about productivity.

So, this morning, I drove to my doctor to discover I am one of many people with the same condition in town. She wrote a prescription for two drugs. But, before I left, she wanted to check my blood pressure.

I thought that was the least of my worries. But the readings were 110 over 95. She did not like that. Too close together.

As all good doctors do, she then checked my pulse. I drew to a pair with my systolic reading. Usually, it never gets higher than 80.

She grabbed my prescriptions, removed one of the drugs, and told me to come back tomorrow.

And I will.

There is nothing to be alarmed about. I will stop taking the Nyquil and take the one drug she gave. I already feel a bit better after taking a short nap.

But it is a rather awkward time to have guests in the house.

the cold front sets in

2012-01-29T12:50:00.000-06:00

I am feeling a bit puny today, as my dear old pappy used to say.

Actually, I am not certain he said any such thing. But that is how I am feeling.

A head cold, I suspect. Stuffy sinuses. A bit of fever. And a cough just one notch down from tuberculosis patient. What doctors call unproductive coughs. Better known to we lay people as the sound equivalent of dry heaves.

When I went to Oregon in early December, I took a variety of the cold with me and suffered a couple of weeks with it. Having won, or at least placed in, each annual hubris award, I was smug at the possibility of returning to Melaque during the cold season and walking through the hackers with the certainty of The Inoculated.

Of course, my pride was better than my science. Catching the flu immunizes you from the same strain. Colds, like love, are forever.

And so mine is. I have resorted to nuclear warfare: Nyquil during the daylight hours. That made church a bit of a nod this morning. And that is too bad because it was a great service.

But I am now in my bed. Drinking hot liquids. And hoping that this will all pass before I climb on that airplane to San Francisco on Friday.

Until then, feeling puny will have to do.

food on the sand

2012-01-28T10:11:00.003-06:00

A visitor is in town.

And when visitors come to Melaque, one of the first things I do is toss them in the truck, and we head out over the hills to La Manzanilla. For beach, crocodiles, and good food.

On each trip, I think the Shiftless Escape is going to lie down and tell me: “No more.” But, just as it did last summer with multiple trips to the Mexican highlands, it kept on ticking.

I suppose I like going to La Manzanilla to offer my visitors some context to the tale of how I managed to end up living in Melaque. After all, it was La Manzanilla’s real estate page that drew me to the area. To see a house that still has not sold.

So, that was stop number one. I wandered through the hills on the outskirts of the village to show my visitor the houses I looked at -- and why I choose not to buy.

Ejido land. Difficult transfers. Not to mention months of rain where the road up the hill looks more like a stream than an avenue.

But there is no denying that the view in La Manzanilla is one of the best on the Mexico Pacific coast. I suspect I would have rented there, rather than buying, if it had not been for the difficulty of getting gasoline and groceries.

And money. There is neither a bank nor an ATM in La Manzanilla. It is as if someone designed the perfect place for people to visit for a two week vacation without being bothered by the daily needs of life.

Having completed the grand tour of homes and majestic vistas portion of the trip, we headed down the hill to the mangrove swamp to see what was once La Manzanilla’s greatest attraction -- its crocodiles.

When I first visited La Manzanilla, the area had suffered a rain storm large enough to take the swamp right up to the tables of the beach restaurants. And along with the swamp came the crocodiles. One of my favorite photographs from that trip was a large crocodile sunning himself near a table with a Louisiana Heron within dining reach -- of the crocodile.

The loss of a series of Gringo dogs to canine-chowing crocodiles roaming the streets near the swamp caused the ejido fathers to construct a fence, an observation tower, and a rickety suspension bridge right out of a Tarzan movie -- complete with hungry crocodiles awaiting a misstep.

The local worthies knew there was an opportunity to separate tourists from their pesos by offering a wild adventure on the cheap.

Unfortunately, in the process, the crocodiles have become dependent on food from people. A recipe that can lead to crocodiles confusing the provider with the provision.

And, just like humans beings who become accustomed to someone else’s labor, they have become lethargic, and worse: uninteresting. With the exception of the occasional fight over a good sunning spot, the site is about as wild as a Presbyterian potluck.

Not to be outdone by the crocodiles, we decided to enjoy the good life by stopping by Lora Loka, my favorite Mexico spot for chicken enchiladas with salsa verde.

As always, the food was delicious. But that is only one measure of a beach restaurant. The day was about as good as a Mexican beach day can be.

Warm, not hot, temperatures. A slight breeze. Moderate humidity. And plenty of people enjoying a day at the beach -- including what appeared to be a waifish French fashion model with her own security guard.

Say what you will about La Manzanilla, as often as I visit it, there is always something that makes the day just a little bit better.

And that is certainly worth sharing with a visitor.

chewing the tropical scenery

2012-01-27T20:58:00.000-06:00

Mexpatriate has hit the big time.

Of, at least, the small pond variety.

Last week, my pastor, Ron, and his wife, Nancy stopped by my table at a local restaurant -- to welcome me back to Melaque. Nancy asked if I was aware that one of my posts had been quoted in the regional English-language newspaper.

I hadn't. During blog staff cuts, the first to go are always the publicists. I see The Guadaljara Reporter when I am in town, but I had missed the 6 January 2012 edition with its headline: "Melaque expats shocked by murder of Canadian."

The story, of course was about the death of Robin Wood -- a loss we discussed in death in the family.

The newspaper recited the now-familiar facts of Mr. Wood's tragic death. And then noted that many foreign residents had been frightened by it.

That is where Mexpatriate comes in. The story continued:

In one well-written blog – steveinmexico.blogspot.com – Steve Cotton of Villa Obregon noted that many people posted comments saying they were evacuating Melaque because of the incident.

Cotton, however, won’t be one of them. “I hope the murderers are caught. I hope justice is done. But leaving Melaque will not accomplish any of those ends,” he writes defiantly. “I am not leaving. In fact, I will soon be flying back home to Melaque in a few days. And I intend to bring as many people as I can.”

OK. I confess I am a sucker for praise. The "well-written" compliment and hyphen homage were enough to make my day.

From the people I have talked to in the last two weeks, their attitude seems to be every bit as "defiant" as my own. And here I was thinking I was simply plucky.

As far as I am concerned, the article is better than a golden globe award. (But, then, what isn't?)

heroes, idols, and mortals

2012-01-26T23:15:00.006-06:00

Pancho Villa.

His name is emblematic of recent Mexican history. To Mexicans, he is an unblemished hero of the Revolution. To Americans, he is a precursor of Osama bin Ladin terrorism.

Like most men, the truth of his life hides in the shadows -- somewhere between the public extremes. But the truth died with him as a martyr to The Cause in a fusillade of assassin bullets.

Our group ended its tour in Chihuahua on Wednesday afternoon -- a city of almost one million people, and the capital of the state of Chihuahua.

Our only lengthy stop (and that was for only a half hour) was the house Pancho Villa gave to his only legal wife. (He had 24 of the not-so-legal variety.)

She lived there from the 1920s until her death in the 1980s. Having no heirs, she left the house to the state.

It is now a museum to Pancho Villa’s life. Or, at least, the life that the state chooses to portray. The early years of banditry are given short shrift. But we do get to see some of his more-admired life in detail.

As a local Chihuahua patron before the Revolution. As an organizing political and military force in the Revolution. As a brilliant general fighting Porfirio Diaz and then his former friends in the Revolution. As a wily fox avoiding “Black Jack” Pershing’s attempt to punish Villa’s destruction of Columbus, New Mexico. And as a retired hero awaiting his death at the hands of a president he helped put in power.

There are photographs. Lots of them -- with bilingual labels. And enough uniforms, cannons, saddles, pistols, and swords to titillate the 12-year old boy in all of us.

All of them telling a tale of what happened around the man, but revealing very little of who he was. But that is the concurrent strength and weakness of hagiography.

The most poignant exhibit is the car Pancho Villa was driving when he was assassinated by presidential agents. Governments may have no idea on how to do almost anything well, but they know how to use their monopoly on violence.

Leaving nothing to chance, the group of assassins shot Villa sixteen times. Reuniting him with his Revolution friends and enemies who had died at the hands of assassins. And were thus rescued from a balanced view of their lives.

The museum is well worth a half day visit. It is a good opportunity to learn some details about the Revolution. From a certain point of view.

With day fading, we stopped for fifteen minutes at the Chihuahua Governmental Palace to see one of the most sacred places in secular Mexico. The site where the Spanish executed Miguel Hidalgo -- the putative father of the Mexican War of Independence.

The building is one of those ornate Porfirio-era piles of stone that are more stunning than beautiful. In its courtyard, the powers-that-be have designated a corner room as a shrine on the alleged spot where Hidalgo was shot.

It may be my cynicism, but these secular altars have the contrived feel of their religious cousins -- such as the Church of the Nativity. They commemorate real events, but the exact spot always seems a bit too convenient in their location.

The lower level of the courtyard is adorned with one of those monumental murals that are characteristically Mexican. Historical in scope and socialist in tone. One of the corners is anchored with the portraits of Juarez, Lincoln, and Bolivar -- a combination that is far more political than historical.

As most of you know, I love murals. This one is rather mediocre in its artistic value, but it would be well worth a day’s study. Once again, if I ever come back this way.

And I should plan on a return trip. This tour was designed merely to be a sampler of some of the attractions in northern Mexico. It met its goal. Mex-eco Tours did a great job of putting it together.

Take a look at their web site. If you live in or visit the Melaque area, they have some great offerings.

And, now, to plan for China.

y.m.creel.a.

2012-01-25T23:27:00.000-06:00

I discovered what happened to The Village People.

At least, I think I have. In Creel. But it appears four of them are now dressing as cowboys.

This sculpture group (constructed of discarded mechanical parts) is a grace note in an otherwise-dull railroad town.

As you know from yesterday’s post, we arrived in Creel in the afternoon. And we were quick to discover that the town does not have much to offer the weary tourist.

The plaza has a rather plain new church and a slightly more ornate old church. But both were locked tight.

The plaza does have a saving grace. It hosts the quintet of car part musicians at the top of this post. Other than that, Creel would look at home in almost any John Ford western. With the exception of the well-paved and heavily-carred streets.

We stayed at the Best Western in town. Do not be fooled by the brand name. The complex is made up of a series of comfortable cabins -- all of them equipped with gas stoves. "Charming" is a cliche. These cabins are functional and homey.

And, as some readers of this blog warned me, the stoves were a blessing. This part of Mexico can get chilly in the winter.

The low this morning was 18 degrees. (In Fahrenheit, the preferred temperature measurement on these pages). My sweater was put to good use. I have to confess, though, the chill felt refreshing. Even though I felt sorry for the Tarahumara women and children who stopped by to sell their wares.

After breakfast, we climbed aboard the bus to visit a Mennonite community. The first stop was an outlet to buy the local cheese. Even though the cheese is excellent for cooking, it is not to my taste as an eating cheese.

The second stop was more interesting: the Mennonite Community Museum. The community has done a good job of recreating the agricultural and home life of the original Mennonite immigrants (who left Canada as conscientious objectors) during the First World War.

I have seen some of the implements in operation when I was young in southern Oregon. But, by the time I showed up, most of them were antiques treasured by my great aunts. And I am a sucker for machinery that bears a striking resemblance to living creatures.

The road between the Mennonite communities and Chihuahua is a combination of flat plain fringed by rolling hills. Cattle. Apples. Baseball. They are all there.

And the view was plain enough to allow the odd traveler to contemplate his place in this world. One of the luxuries of travel when the scenery is not constantly clamoring for attention.

Being forced out of a routine not only opens our eyes to new places, but gives us an opportunity to think about who we are. And I have been through several of those moments on this trip.

What I have concluded matters little.

But I can tell you I will not be dunning cowboy gear to join the metal quintet of Creel.

shadow and light

2012-01-24T19:52:00.003-06:00

This is the way to start a day. Any day.

The sun rising over Copper Canyon. Watching the morning light play over the canyon walls was worth the price of this trip. I could have stayed in our hotel for a week -- just to indulge in photography. I have always wanted to be Monet at Rouen.

This was another travel day with various stops along the way. But our first choice of travel was a change of pace. A cable car that takes gawking tourists from the canyon rim on a 1.8 mile cable to a platform about 6600 feet lower.

The views, of course, are amazing. Being suspended over the canyon helps tourists to realize just how magnificent this site is. What took Nature millions of years to dig, we take in within an hour or two and are on our way.

Of course, this is what I would have preferred.

The combination of ziplines at Copper Canyon is the longest and fastest in Mexico. Those superlatives were enough to tweak my adrenalin and quiet my better sense. Unfortunately, we did not have time to complete a full run and make it to Creel on time. So, there was no sense in starting.

Maybe next trip.

I did get to put some of my adrenalin to good use, though. On each tour, the guide climbs out onto balancing rock that rests at the end of a narrow cliff shelf. He then rocks back and forth to the applause of the tour group.

Well, I had to have a piece of that. I wandered out onto the shelf, but I did not climb up on the balancing rock because of the wind gusts. (I do have some sense.)

But it was a thrill. What you cannot see is that the three of us are standing inches away from a precipitous drop of thousands of feet.

My adrenaline having been sufficiently burned, our group climbed into two vans for a trip to Creel.

Along the way we stopped at a lake, an eighteenth century mission church (Mision San Ignacio), and two rock formations (Valley of the Mushrooms and Valley of the Frogs). At each stopped we were greeted by Tarahumara women and children selling hand-made crafts.

Yesterday, Kathe suggested a lunch place in Creel. I love birria. She said there was a small restaurant one block from the train station. Our guide recommended the same place.

And a good suggestion it was. The name of the place is El Tungar. Two young women serve up every imaginable dish that a working Mexican might enjoy. Some I have never heard of.

Tonight we will rest in Creel. Then we are off to the Mennonite Camp in the morning with an overnight stay In Chihuahua.

For some reason, I suspect my sunrise in Creel will not match the one I watched this morning.

But isn’t that just a theme and variation on life in general?

cliffhanger

2012-01-23T19:48:00.002-06:00

This is Copper Canyon.

As you know from my last post, there are nine canyons that make up the Copper Canyon system. But this is the canyon that lent its name to the entire system.

In this canyon’s depths, the ore-obsessed Spanish thought they had discovered the very navel of copper deposits. But they had merely discovered lichen-covered cliffs. And lots of very rugged -- and beautiful country.

But that is how today’s journey ends I need to get us back to the top of the day.

It started in the little mountain village of Cerocahui with a tour of a boarding school for Tarahumara girls. A charitable Catholic school that also serves village boys and girls.

I must confess that I am rather sensitive to these tours. Where tourists traipse through operating institutions flashing cameras in children’s faces. But that may simply be my dislike of having cameras pointed at me -- and watching tourist activity at the Indian school in Pinal Villa.

Our guide, Francisco, who is well-versed in Mexican history and anthropology, presented a very thorough lecture on the history of the Tarahumara people. How they were once a town-dwelling people before the Apache chased them into the canyons. Where most of them now live in isolated houses in the mountains and carry on their unique mixture of tradition and Christianity.

I should mention that our night in the Hotel Mision in Cerocahui was pleasant, but cold. But, with a fire in the room, it could have been a comfortable 40 degrees outside.

A quick van drive to the train station and we were off on a short two-hour ride to Divisadero -- with a quick stop to a little on-train shopping.

In Divisadero, we booked into the 5-star Posada Barrancas Mirador. The photograph at the top of the post is from my hotel room. Every room has a similar view.

And I suppose the hotel thinks that visitors should be looking at the view rather than the internet. That may explain why internet service costs $100 (Mx) an hour and is available only in the lobby.

After we got settled in, we walked down a cliff trail behind the hotel to a small Tarahumara settlement that looked like the Indian equivalent of Jamestown. Created culture for tourists interested in souvenirs.

The hotel runs an incredible zipline. I was prepared to sign up to test my left ankle’s fortitude, but we will not have enough time tomorrow to fit it into the schedule. Too bad. It would be fun to slip on the line once more.

For those in our tour group who are not neurotic bloggers, the evening was spent socializing, dining, and listening to an adequate guitarist. But what else does one do when the sun goes down on the scenery?

Today is the end of the train and canyons. But there are still three days of adventure ahead: Creel, Mennonite Camps, and Chihuahua.

And I hope more ubiquitous and available internet.

likin’ the lichen

2012-01-22T23:40:00.000-06:00

[We did not have internet at the hotel in Cerocahui. This should have been Sunday night’s post.]

When we greybeards start reminiscing about the golden age of transportation, we often forget a salient detail Travel was slower black then .

But that may be lone of the reason we undertake journeys. To rediscover the bit of our lives we have bartered for a bowl of multi-tasking porridge.

We discussed the Ferrocarril Chihuahua al Pacifico yesterday --
– the rail service that runs along one of the canyons that makes up the Copper Canyon system.

Copper Canyon (or Barranca del Cobre in Spanish) is a misnomer in two senses.

First, it is not one canyon. There are about nine canyons carved by six rivers, converging into a single river -- Rio Fuerte. Mexicans love to point out that the canyon system covers more territory than the Grand Canyon.

The second misnomer is the tem “copper.” There are plenty of ores in these mountains, but no copper. And the name does not come from the occasional reddish stone in the canyons.

Instead, think patina. The greenish growth that covers many a copper-roof. When the Spanish first came to the canyons, they thought they saw copper ore exposed on the cliffs.

They were wrong. What they saw was lichen. But the name stuck long after the Spanish discovered their error. After all, Lichen Canyon sounds like something out of a Disney animated film.

But that has nothing to do with the leisurely pace I discussed at te top of this post. Our train ride did, though.

The first class carriage on the Copper Canyon run is just that -- first class. But the speed was slow. Just as trains once were. Even in the dry desert that would have felt at home outside of Tucson, there was plenty of time to see everything. And to enjoy it.

But the slow speed became a true asset once we entered Chihuahua state -- where the canyon system begins.

The rail line follows the Septentrion River up the Septentrion Canyon. At its deepest, the canyon is 5250 feet deep. Part of the fun of the trip is the number of bridges, tunnels, and switchbacks the Mexican engineers used to defeat the canyon’s barriers while allowing the passengers to enjoy views where the next is more spectacular than the last.

We left the train at Bachuichivo and took a long bus drive (the drive was long, not the bus) to our hotel (Mision) in the mountain village of Cerocahui.

After checking in, we got back on the bus for another hour drive over steep mountain roads that could have qualified as log truck roads in Oregon. Most of us were wondering what could be worth the tedious drive through scrub pine woods.

But the destination was worth the trip -- and more. We came around a tight corner, and this was what we saw.

Urique Canyon. The deepest Canyon in the Copper Canyon system and in Mexico. Deeper than the Grand Canyon.

But the photograph above is not the deepest part of the canyon. This is.

It is too bad we did not have ore time to enjoy the subtleties of the view. Like too many group trips, this was a long ride followed by a brief photo opportunity.

Had I been traveling alone, I most likely would have stayed two days at the Hotel Mision. getting up early enough to watch the light play over the canyon as the day progressed.

But “what ifs” are for another day. Now, it is time to get to bed to head to get ready for another train ride.

bus, airplane, and bus

2012-01-21T22:39:00.001-06:00

Today is what we tourists call a travel day.

And a travel day it was.

Up at 3:30 AM to catch a chartered ETN bus (one of Mexico's premier services) in Melaque. A five hour drive to Guadalajara where we caught a one and a half hour flight to Culiacan. And then onto a tourist-style bus for a three hour drive to Los Mochis.

The Los Mochis stop was for lunch. At 4 PM. And we were then off for another hour or two bus ride to El Fuerte.

The adventurous traveler should enjoy journeys no matter how mundane. But I must have missed the merit badge for that skill. The day was merely something to be endured. As a Catholic friend on the trip said: “Endured as we must endure life as a Christian.”

I read something similar about the local Tarahumara Indians. Their religion teaches that good deeds are a moral end in themselves. To improve life on earth without regard to an afterlife. Funny. I thought that was also Christ's teaching.

But I am wandering. We are now in our 5-star hotel (Posada del Hidalgo) in El Fuerte. A few of us walked around the town this evening and rehashed a bit of Mexican history -- in this farming country that is now experiencing its ninth year of drought. With no Joseph on the horizon.

Tomorrow, we will board the train that will take us up Copper Canyon.

The railroad we will travel still bears some of the historical burden that often weighs down Mexican progress. Railroad men in The United States and Mexico planned an intricate web of rail lines that would carry goods between the Pacific and Gulf coasts.

The Copper Canyon rail line was part of that web. Construction began in the 1860s. But internal wars and other Mexican priorities slowed construction until it stopped in 1906 -- partly due to the opening of the Panama Canal. Construction eventually resumed in 1949 and the line was completed in 1961.

It had a short-lived career, like much of Mexican rail, until it was relegated to the task of hauling tourists trough one of the Mexico’s most spectacular sights.

A ride I am looking forward to -- tomorrow.

launch minus one

2012-01-20T16:34:00.000-06:00

I am on my way to pick up my laundry for the tour to Copper Canyon. The last item in my task-oriented two days before we head to northern Mexico.

There are plenty of tales about Mexican banks fouling up balances. And I suspect I may have incorporated far too many of those concerns into my own thinking.

Last night I transferred funds from The Sates to my Mexican bank. When I stopped by the bank this morning, I was prepared to discover the funds were not yet available. But they were.

So, I punched out a wad of pesos from the ATM and wandered over to the tour office to pay the balance for the trip.

Once I have my laundry in hand, I will toss a couple of clothing items into my carry-on bag (as a dress rehearsal for the China trip) -- and be ready for my 3 AM call tomorrow. To catch a bus to Guadalajara and then an air flight to El Fuerte.

At some point, I will be back with you.

lonely swinger

2012-01-19T21:00:00.006-06:00

I stepped into my garden this morning and discovered a new hammock. A veritable Joseph’s coat stretched between two trees.

As inviting as it looked, I forewent its somnolent tranquility for a list of tasks that would have pleased any neurotic still clutching his leather-bound Day-Timer.

I leave for Copper Canyon early on Saturday morning. And I mean early. So early I won’t be able to find a rooster stirring.

But I have a list of things that must (or should) be done before I head to northern Mexico with my friends-not-yet-met tour group. So, early on Thursday, I mounted my steed and set forth to seek Dulcinea.

Early last week, I tried to transfer dollars to pesos from my bank account up north. The transfer was rejected. So, I waited until today to go talk to my local branch bank manager to get the correct transfer codes. By the end of the day, the pesos were supposedly in my account. I have not yet checked with my bank.
I needed the pesos to pay for my trip to Copper Canyon. I had enough to pay about 60% before my stash ran out. I will check with the bank tomorrow to settle up the balance.
My other urgent payment was for my postal box. With $300 (Mx), I bought the right to use my little piece of postal Mexico. And I collected six weeks worth of letters, bills, magazines, newspapers, and Christmas cards (an anachronistic experience in its own right.)
Manzanillo was the next stop. My former mail service had received some mail after I closed out my box. The mail turned out to be two advertisements from my credit union and a calendar from my cruise consultant. I have to admit it was nice to talk with the new owner. I have now known him for three years. I miss catching up on Manzanillo news with him.
One of the things I wanted to buy before I left Oregon was a Bluetooth mouse for my new notebook. But I forgot to buy one before I left. I find most laptop mouse pads to be far too skittish for my rather brutish typing style. Office Depot had just what I needed. Anyone who thinks Mexico is technologically backward has not been shopping in electronic stores lately.
My next stop was playing the ATM. My first try ended up with the machine thinking and spinning for about three minutes before it denied my transaction. Not a hopeful sign. I tried again and pesos started flowing. Not as many as I would have received in November, but more than I would have received in July.

Not bad for a day in Mexico. I accomplished almost everything I needed to do. Now all I need to do on Friday is visit the ATM for traveling money, check with the bank that my pesos were really transferred, and pay the balance on my trip.

At times, I feel as if I have a place in Melaque merely to get things done for my next trip.

Colorful hammock or not.

yoknapatawpha county comes to oregon

2012-01-18T08:07:00.000-06:00

No one had ever called her beautiful -- or even pretty.

Except maybe her father. But fathers are required to see what the world cannot see. And, in her case, the world didn’t.

She was right out of a Faulkner novel. In her 40s, but looking as if Social Security retirement checks had blessed her checking account for years.

Looking uncomfortable, she joined the middle class crowd on the HUT shuttle to the Portland Airport. They were not her crowd. As far as she was concerned, they were all part of the Jay Gatsby set.

She had built a cushion of weight and words to protect herself from their judgment. And they then judged her for both.

Three in the morning is a time for bus silence. Even the electronic crowd snoozes at that time of the morning.

But not her. She had boarded the bus with a boyfriend. Both of them trailing a scent cloud of cat urine. The telltale sign of veteran methamphetamine users.

And that may have explained the constant flow of words. Like a silk worm building its defensive cocoon.

For some reason, people who seem to be unable to control their urge to speak also seem to have volume issues. What we often call drunk deafness.

The bus had barely pulled out of the hotel when she started her soliloquy to her almost unconscious boyfriend. The trip was too long for her. Her feet hurt. Her sister did not understand her. And countless other topics that her unwilling audience on the bus could not understand because of her tendency to squawk out syllables.

At her most tragic, she took out her mobile telephone, activated the GPS, and then carried on a conversation with it. The GPS bested her.

Her little drama ended in tears at the airport when she could not find her shooooooe --– pronounced as if she had turned herself into a Patriot missile.

As irritating as she was, I started thinking about what had brought her to this place. Nature had not imbued her with natural beauty. And she had then created a personality to avoid any other hurt.

She was one of God’s creatures -- a member of the human race -- deserving of respect. But I suspect she found the world to be a dangerous place. Not a place to be enjoyed.

And that thought saddened me. Here I am on my way back to Mexico -- fully looking forward to my time there as another moment to be enjoyed to its fullest.

For that, I am thankful this morning.

day zero

2012-01-17T15:53:00.001-06:00

Every trip comes to an end.

Even trips that last weeks longer than originally scheduled.

And that is the case with this journey north. I originally planned to stay just long enough to pick up a couple of books for a friend and my China visa. I had both of them before Christmas.

But I decided to spend more time with family and friends. And to hunt out some good food. The relationships were great. The food? Not so much. Even though the scales say otherwise.

Tomorrow I will be on an airplane headed back to Manzanillo. But, before I go, there is the inevitable packing.

Usually, that takes me no more than 15 minutes. Today it is taking a bit longer. Simply because I acquired a few more items than I planned to take back to Mexico.

The biggest purchase was my Z series Sony notebook. The notebook is small. But its sheet battery, docking station, and two power adapters take up a lot of space. And they should present great targets for the TSA people in Portland. I can feel performance art in the offing.

I am also taking back some warm clothes for my Copper Canyon and Red China trips. Clothes that will have absolutely no utility in Melaque.

Then there are the usual arrays of printer cartridges, pudding packages, shampoo, spice drops, and assorted dry goods that I either cannot buy in Manzanillo -- or that are expensive.

This afternoon some people stopped by the house to take a look at it -- as a potential purchase. Here’s hoping.

Now I just need to wait until 2:30 tomorrow morning when I climb aboard the shuttle to Portland -- and I will be back in Melaque in the afternoon.

Ready to start my next two trips.

a prophet in the morning

2012-01-16T12:58:00.001-06:00

Odd weekend this.

Mother Nature decided on Saturday night to remind me that Oregon is not Melaque. For two days, she has sprinkled snow on Salem. Not the kind of snow that the good folks of Buffalo know. This was a mere dusting of confectioner's sugar. As if we lived inside a bundt cake.

The kind of snow that makes the hot tub feel like a hot spring in the Cascades, rather than a mere good investment.

When it snows in western Oregon, traffic disappears. They may be good rain drivers, but snow seems to paralyze Willamette Valley drivers.

My house is on one of Salem's major streets. Usually, I wake up in the morning to an olio of traffic noise and pedestrian commuter chatter. Weekends are a bit quieter, but I expected the symphony of commerce to resume on Monday.

It hasn't. Very few cars. The sound of the morning Amtrak passing through. No state workers hustling by on the sidewalk.

Then it hit me. It is 16 January. Martin Luther King Day. (And my friend Daurel Colony's birthday. Happy birthday, Daurel.)

Like most American holidays (and I suspect most world holidays) established to honor people whose principles we strive to imitate, Martin Luther King Day has simply become another three-day holiday for people to sleep in or to lure shoppers into stores for sales.

But sitting here in bed, I started considering what we have done to the good Dr. King. Like most heroes, we have slipped him through the myth machine stripping him of his humanity -- or, at least, the flaws that make all of us human.

What we have left is an icon that various politicians trot out for their own use. As if a prophet has no value other than as a prop in a political French farce.

Nothing symbolizes that better than the controversy over one of the inscriptions on the Martin Luther King Memorial in Washington, DC. A memorial that was dedicated just this last year.

You undoubtedly know the details, but they deserve repeating.

Two months before he was assassinated, Dr. King delivered a sermon at Atlanta's Ebenezer Baptist Church. Some people had referred to him as a drum major of the civil rights movement. Like most people, he was subject to self-aggrandizement. But, in that sermon, he took a course more in line with the teachings of the God he served.

"If you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice, say that I was a drum major for peace. I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter."

A very powerful statement.

But the memorial architect had limited space on the memorial. In a desire to include a portion of the sermon that Dr. King thought summed up his life, the architect edited the quotation to: "I was a drum major for justice, peace, and righteousness."

You don't need to be a writer to realize the truncated version does violence to the original. The very tone changes.

But isn't that what we have done to Dr. King's dream? To create a country where race does not matter?

Before I start sounding like an ego-bloated New York Times editor (and I may be 60-some years too late for that), I will simply suggest we might be a whole lot better off trying to live our lives as individuals rather than sinking into the politics of groups.

Now I need to get out of bed and get on with my day. Maybe living up to a few of the principles we honor in American society.

Even if only in the breach.

the tin lady

2012-01-15T02:41:00.005-06:00

I wanted to do something special for my birthday.

Not that it is one of those big birthdays. Unless celebrating prime numbers is a secret American tradition.

So, special it was going to be. And it was.

I headed north to the Cinetopia (the theater with the great projection and sound I wrote about in tinker, tailor, soldier, bore) to see The Iron Lady. Meryl Streep’s uncanny portrayal of Margaret Thatcher.

Margaret Thatcher is admired by a lot of people. Even those who were not particularly fond of some (or all) of her policies.

That is why it is easy for everyone to enjoy this film. It is not about policy. In fact, it is often very difficult, based on this film, to figure out why this middle class woman was able to successfully navigate the reefs of grandee politics in the Conservative Party.

One reason, of course, is that she stood for something -- and the Conservative elite stood for very little. Or as one wag put it in the 1970s: the Socialists stood for everything and the Tories stood for nothing.

Any screenwriter who attempts to reduce a political life to the confines of a film is faced with a very real problem. How do you find the subject’s center? Where is its bottom? And how do you tell the tale in two hours?

It appeared that Abi Morgan had found that center in a little monologue put into Lady Thatcher’s mouth when her doctor tells her he understands how she feels about giving away her dead husband’s possessions.

People don’t ‘think’ any more. They ‘feel’. ‘How are you feeling?’ ‘Oh I don’t feel comfortable with that.’ ‘Oh, I’m so sorry but we, the group were feeling...’

D’you know, one of the great problems of our age is that we are governed by people who care more about feelings than thoughts and ideas.

Now thoughts and ideas. That interests me.

The problem is there are no ideas in the film at all. Just feelings. It is as if Meryl Streep stopped by to give an acting workshop on how to portray an ambitious woman. In the same vein as Helen Mirren’s Elizabeth II in The Queen.

And it is obvious the screenwriter simply gave up on trying to find the center of her subject. Much in the same way that Edmund Morris gave up on trying to write a straight biography of Ronald Reagan. Morris invented a fictional character (himself) to act as narrator.

Abi Morgan wanders down a similar path by allowing the long-dead Denis, Lady Thatcher’s husband, to act as an hallucinatory Greek chorus to carry along the narrative. The fact that the ghost bears almost no psychological relationship to the real Denis Thatcher does not matter. He is a convenient device to mouth the screenwriter’s thoughts.

But he doesn’t. There is no explanation of why the British people entrusted their nation to the Iron Lady -- or why her party eventually played Brutus to her Caesar. Well, other than the fact that their feelings were hurt.

But Meryl Streep can really act. As can the male British cast of male actors that surround her.

Like Churchill, who was chucked out by the British voters at the end of World War Two, Margaret Thatcher was jettisoned by the grandees on the very night she was celebrating the end of the Cold War.

Of course, this film tells us little about that. Instead, we get the vaguest of outlines on what was one of the most interesting political periods in British history.

It is a film worth seeing. But you will leave with the feeling that there must be something else to the woman portrayed.

tossing my pills

2012-01-14T04:45:00.008-06:00

I hate my rants.

My usual rule is that if I do not have the semblance of an answer to the complaints I raise, I should just keep my mouth (or pen) shut. It is one reason I do not blog much about politics.

But I cannot help myself when it comes to American medicine.

Within a few days of arriving in Oregon, I ran out of my blood pressure medicine. In Melaque, I would have simply walked to the pharmacy with my empty prescription box, and the pharmacist would have sold me a refill.

Not so in The States. I thought I might have had one refill on my last prescription. I did. But it was over a year old. And the doctor’s office would not authorize it without setting an appointment to see a doctor.

So I did. A few days later, I stopped by the doctor’s office at the appointed time. She took my blood pressure and wrote out a new prescription. I paid $140 for 5 minutes of her time -- and I was on my way.

Let me stop right there. That was $140 in legal tender American dollars.

For those of you who see American medical bills on a regular basis, $140 may not sound like much. But I was astounded.

This is what happens in Melaque. When I need to see my doctor, I walk over to her office. No appointment required. She will sit and chat with me about all sorts of topics for about half an hour. She will then take my blood pressure and we will laugh about the effects of Mexican food and how good life is.

When I leave, I give her $200 (Mx) -- about $14.60 (US). And, if I need to see her again on the same topic, there is no additional charge.

I really do not understand it. What has happened to increase the cost of medical care in The States? I know everybody has an opinion --– depending on their respective ideologies. But we are not talking about expensive treatment here. This was a visit to renew a prescription.

I have read article after article trying to explain health care costs. But they make no more sense to me than the equally baffling outrageous increase in college tuition.

But none of the articles even come close to explaining to me why my Mexican doctor, who lives in a nice home a block from the beach, can perform the same medical procedures for me while donating a large portion of her time to the local Indian school, and then charge me only $14.60.

I guess I don’t need to understand. I just need to enjoy the benefit of low medical costs while I am in Mexico.

Where even cremation is cheaper than it is in Oregon.

tinker, tailor, soldier, bore

2012-01-13T00:07:00.000-06:00

My return to Mexico is at hand. Five days. That seems soon to me.

Before I leave, I am trying to shoehorn as many movies as I can into my schedule. On Wednesday night it was Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy -- based on John Le Carré’s 1974 novel.

Anyone who knows Le Carré’s novels will immediately see the problem of bringing a Cold War thriller about Soviet infiltration of MI6 to the screen in 2012. For most filmgoers, the plot seems no more immediate than the Tudor succession.

But a stale plot line is not the greatest hurdle in translating what was a good read to the screen. Le Carré’s novels are like chess matches. Intricate. Cerebral. Inevitable.

There are no explosions. Or car chases. Only the most subtle of gun play. All quite British.

But they are far more suited for legitimate theater than the cinema. Like all thrillers, the enjoyment is trying to figure out where the plot is going before the author tells us explicitly. And what we will learn about the human condition on the trip.

And that is one of Le Carré’s weaknesses. He is still peddling his moral relativism to whoever will listen to him. The west is no more moral than the Soviets. Or the Iranians. Or the [fill in whatever nation you like]. The same type of world weariness that led British aristocrats and American Ivy Leaguers to sign up on the KGB payroll.

That is not to say that the film is not worth seeing. The cast is filled with some of Britain’s best actors: John Hurt, Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, Mark Strong, Kathy Burke.

Watching Oldman bring George Smiley to life is worth the price of admission. Like a chess master, he compartmentalizes professional shame and cuckoldry with a slight tic.

But more than anything, the film is boring. Piecing together the plot is every bit as easy as figuring out an Agatha Christie thriller (at least those where she did not withhold all of the clues until the inevitable parlor scene).

And admiring the acting can only go so far with Le Carré repeatedly serenading us with his “We all deserve to die” aria.

What made the experience a pleasure was the theater we chose. Cinetopia in Beaverton. A local attorney had a dream of building a multi-plex theater with high quality sound and the type of special experience people recall from the golden era of movie theaters.

And it works. The theaters range from giant auditoriums to small movie parlors with sofas and club chairs.

But the true quality is in the sound systems. I have never heard such natural sound in a movie house. Once I thought I heard water running behind me. It was merely a strategically placed speaker reproducing well-engineered sound.

Plus the films are digitally projected in amazing high definition. Tied together, the full experience was better than IMAX.

So good that we are planning to make a return visit on Saturday to see The Iron Lady. That should just about wring the Cold War out of me before I head off to Melaque.

dogging the bus

2012-01-12T02:49:00.000-06:00

Yesterday I signed off with sounded like a toss-off line: “So, back on the shuttle bus I will go. And wish that it could be half as nice as a first class Mexican bus.”

Yesterday morning while I waited for the shuttle bus to take me back to Salem, my mother entertained my brother and me with her Mexican bus ride story. It was the late 1960s. She had headed south with my father and her cousin, Rachel.

I will not go into the details. Suffice it to say, she rode one of the chicken buses that now seems to be stuck in the American psyche whenever the term? Mexican bus” comes up.

Well, my shuttle bus was not a “chicken bus,” as you can see from the photograph at the top of the blog. The Valley Retriever runs from Newport through Salem to Bend -- and then back in the same day.

Greyhound once provided regional bus service in Oregon. No more. The market responded to fill that void in the form of shuttle services.

The Valley Retriever's equipment is the type of shuttle you often find in an airport parking lot. Twenty-two fixed seats that are adequate for the three-hour trip from Bend to Salem. Tough I suspect they get mighty hard on the final leg to Newport.

But they certainly are not what you receive on the premier bus lines in Mexico. Seats that rival first class airline seats. Food. Toilet. And the inevitable movies playing on the overhead television monitors.

I must confess that I have never set foot on one of those buses. But I really need to give them a try. If I can only get over my need to have a car at my ultimate destination.

I guess,though, that will be a story for another day. Perhaps when I return to Mexico in just under a week.

But I bet the Mexican bus will not have this type of cool logo.

my mountain kin

2012-01-11T04:09:00.002-06:00

For the past four days, I have been in Bend visiting my mother, my brother, his wife, and their daughter.

I really like my family. They are clever, witty, caring, and just a joy to be around. It makes me wonder why I do not spend more time with them.

If things had gone just a bit differently, I would have spent a lot of time with them. My brother has lived in the Bend area for several decades. My mother bought a house and moved to Bend just as I was getting ready to retire.

You may recall that my entire family was planning on heading south to Mexico at one point. But those plans did not quite work out for the rest of my family.

If I had not committed myself to retiring in Mexico, I most likely would have ended up in Bend with the rest of the family. The winters are a bit cool for me. I actually came within hours of putting deposit money down on a new house when my mother bought hers.

Instead, I headed south, and they stayed here.

I would have come over to Bend earlier on this trip, but my brother was in Virginia until early January, and I wanted a chance for all of us to get together.

And get together we did. On Sunday I caught a shuttle bus over the Cascades and spent three days in true Cotton fashion celebrating Thanksgiving, Christmas, and birthdays (inducing mine) at a series of Bend restaurants. To meet and not eat is to not be a Cotton.

My brother and I spent most of our time trying to transfer information from my old laptop to my new notebook. And then to get my telephone to synchronize with the notebook. It still has one glitch, but I will survive.

Other than that, we watched movies and basketball games, talked politics, and caught up on local folklore.

I wish I could have spent more time with them, but I still have several projects to complete in Salem before I head Souths again -- probably on 18 January.

So, back on the shuttle bus I will go. And wish that it could be half as nice as a first class Mexican bus.

polling the public

2012-01-10T02:05:00.003-06:00

There are all sorts of political polls in the American newspapers these days. And this blog has not sponsored a poll of any sort since acquiring its "mexpatriate" moniker a year ago.

So, in the spirit of the season, I offer the year's first mexpatriate poll.

The page has a new design. But, depending on your browser, you may be getting a completely different experience.

If you are using Internet Explorer, you will most likely see a green, white, and red banner flash on the screen, to be replaced by.

If you are using Chrome or Firefox, you will see the banner I originally intended to show.

I concluded there was a problem when several comments referred to the simple look of the banner. Even though the background is new, it is not that much different than the banner it replaced.

There appears to be no way to remedy the issue with Internet Explorer. It simply will not show the background. Rather than merely nuking it, let me ask your opinion. Which would you prefer?

Let diversity reign. Readers can choose their own view by choosing the appropriate browser.

Fix it. Let everyone share in the simplicity of black and white journalism.

The poll is to the right. You have until Thursday to register an opinion.

Until then, the world will simply roll along.

Note: Not surprisingly, 89% of the readers who voted in the poll chose to leave the banner as it is. That is what I was incllined to do. At some point, the banner will be revised. It is inevitable.

senior señor

2012-01-09T04:59:00.001-06:00

We all react to age in different ways.

I take the denial route. Each morning in the mirror I see a 22-year old Steve. The same Steve who seems to operate the attitude controls in the cockpit of my head.

That attitude makes some of my other observations a bit disconcerting. Like when I balance myself while climbing down from chairs. Or when I try to run and find my body about a half block behind my mind.

But those variegations in my life are easily reconciled. I usually just ignore that they exist.

Until yesterday morning. I decided to take the shuttle bus from Salem to Bend to visit my mother and brother. When I got to the front of the line to buy my ticket, I said, “One adult. One way. Bend.” The clerk looked me straight in the face and asked: “Senior?”

Now, there is absolutely nothing wrong with the question. After all, by some standards, I am a senior. AARP has tried to include me in joining them at the trough of government benefits for well over a decade. Even though I do not yet qualify for the more traditional 65+ category. At least, for a few years.

Even so, it is a bit jarring to hear the first time. Doubly so because I have long been agnostic about senior discounts. The reasons are not important. Suffice it to say I do not use them.

This time, I did, though. To have declined the offer would have seemed a bit mean spirited on my part. After all, the clerk had no trouble seeing that my brain may not have developed past 22, but the rest of me has been showing the mileage for years.

Who knows? When it is time for me to head back over the Cascades, I may sidle up to the ticket counter, identify myself as a senior, and nap all the way back to Salem.

After all, nothing says senior like a good nap.

falling off the electronic wagon

2012-01-08T03:45:00.002-06:00

My name is Steve. And I am an electronics addict.

Several years ago I surrendered in the electronics wars. Before then, I was what the trade calls “an early adopter.” If there was a new gadget about to be released I was at the front of the line to buy the latest toy.

Somewhere along the line, though, all of those big-screen televisions, laser disc players, DVDs, CD players, PDAs, and Blackberries lost their allure. I tied a low-tech pocket silk to my Mont Blanc fountain pen -- and left the battlefield.

Moving to Mexico helped. Electronics tended to be rare and expensive. But during the past year, market forces and middle class aspirations have made some electronic gear plentiful and affordable. A trip through the high definition television aisle in any Mexico Costco bears out the evolution.

But what I shunned in Mexico is exactly what I fell prey to in Oregon.

One of my first stops when I came up here was Fry’s Electronics. To men, Fry’s is as seductive as shoe stores are to some women. I could -- and did -- spend hours. Just looking at the new gadgets.

I made the mistake of some recovering addicts. I thought looking would not be a problem. And there was no reason that it should have mattered.

However, one item called out to me. A Z series Sony Vaio notebook. When I moved to Mexico, I took my first Z series notebook with me. You may recall how much I loved that computer. It was sleek and light. My constant companion on trips around the village.

But such love burns bright -- and brief. At the time, I lived on the beach. The wind would bring brine into the house. Sensitive electronics and salt water are a volatile mixture. Within four months I had a dead computer on my hands.

I no longer live on the beach. And Sony has produced its second generation of notebooks. Lighter. Sexier. And for a price that is almost six months of rent at my duplex.

But I gave into the siren call yesterday. I will not bore you with the specifications. Let’s just say that will meet all of my walkabout blogging needs when I get back to Mexico -- and in Red China.

Later today I head over to Bend to talk with my brother the computer expert -- to divide up some tasks between the new notebook and my old lap top.

He can also counsel me on giving in to these urges.

cheap chips

2012-01-07T03:20:00.013-06:00

I love modern conveniences -- except when they aren’t.

The first week I was in Oregon, I threw a light load of laundry into my washing machine. When I pulled out the clothes, they were as wet as pool cleanup towels. Sopping.

I have been around washing machines long enough to diagnose the problem. Something was amiss with the spin cycle -- either a belt, a clutch or a gear. I felt smug in my acquired knowledge.

Until the repairman arrived.

I had forgotten this was the computer age. The repairman informed me the equivalent of the washer’s motherboard was dead. Maytag seems to have an engineering defect. So much for the lonely repairman image.

He installed a used board, ordered a new one, and I was ready to finish up my laundry. A few days later, he returned to install the new part.

$425.95 (US) later, I was back in the laundry business.

Having lived in Mexico for the past three years, the bill astounded me. For one-tenth of that, a local repairman in Melaque would fully overhaul the washer. Of course, the washing machine would operate on pure mechanical power rather than enough computer memory to run the Apollo program.

The comparison is a bit academic, though. I do not use the washing machine at my duplex in Melaque. I rely on the services of my local laundress with her own bank of washing machines and dryers.

And for what it cost me to repair my washer in Oregon, I could have Anita wash about 106 loads. Almost nine years of dirty shirts that she returns to me folded, bagged, and smelling like my grandmother’s sachet drawer.

That is a modern convenience I can live with.

cut scenes

2012-01-06T02:19:00.000-06:00

I love movies.

But you know that already from my posts about Netflix in Mexico.

I reopened my Netflix account in the hope that I could find new and classic films to watch at home. But Latin America Netflix was a bust. A limited inventory with quirky offerings.

So limited, I almost cancelled my subscription. Instead, I fooled the internet system into believing I was somewhere in The States.

Otherwise, I was left to the offerings that show up at the Manzanillo multi-screen theater with its modern stadium seating and rather primitive sound system -- showing primarily American blockbusters.

My visit to Oregon has reminded me how much I miss good films with high projection quality and outstanding speaker systems.

The monarch of cinemas, of course, are the IMAX theaters with their crystal clear pictures and pristine sound. So far, we have been to two different IMAX theaters. That is me, in the midst of the theater, watching the credits roll by. I almost felt like an executive at an editing session.

I doubt I will ever get the same feeling in Manzanillo.

rockabye kindle

2012-01-05T13:08:00.000-06:00

I have a new Kindle baby.

I have been a member of the Kindle family since July of 2010 -- when I decided to buy the second generation Kindle reader to feed my book jonesing in Mexico.

And a good buy it was. I have been able to purchase books electronically as soon as they are available -- or to find editions that are no longer in book stores.

That is, assuming that the book is available on Kindle. Now and then I have been frustrated that both new and old editions are not available electronically. But, overall, the experience has been great.

I have had only one problem with my Kindle. The letters on the tiny keyboard are starting to rub off. I don’t know if my fingers are the culprits -- or if the letters are rubbing on the cover when it is closed. Either way, I am starting to play a game of “guess the letter.”

But Amazon has come to my rescue. Just before Christmas Amazon issued two new Kindles. A touch version -- where all navigation is done on the screen. And a Fire -- a small backlit tablet designed to take on the iPad.

I was almost seduced by the Fire. It is nearly as sexy as the iPad. But the backlit screen makes it impractical for reading in the Mexican sun.

So, I bought the touch version. I like the touch commands. But I need to learn how best to navigate. The shortcuts I learned on my old Kindle are not as intuitive. I suspect all of that will change over time.

One thing I have discovered is that I enjoy reading on the Kindle. I thought I would miss the feel of the books. If I do, it has been eclipsed by the Kindle’s light weight and the convenience of buying books whenever the mood hits me.

Here is a sampling of my reading for 2011 -- several of which I have reviewed in posts during the year.

American Emperor: Aaron Burr’s Challenge to Jefferson’s America by David O. Stewart

Sondheim on Music: Minor Details and Major Decisions by Mark Eden Horowitz

New Light on the Difficult Words of Jesus: Insights from His Jewish Context by David Bivin

1493: Uncovering the World Columbus Created by Charles C. Mann

The Hebrew Yeshua vs. the Greek Jesus by Nehemia Gordon

1491 (Second Edition): New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann

A World on Fire: Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War by Amanda Foreman

In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin by Erik Larson

Manana Forever? by Jorge G. Castaneda

Restoring The Jewishness of the Gospel: A Message for Christians Condensed from Messianic Judaism by David H. Stern

Ballistics: Poems by Billy Collins

Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of FDR by H. W. Brands and Mark Deakins

You can tell a lot about people by what they read. I have looked at several book lists posted by fellow bloggers and realized that we each read entirely different books. That sounds like a great strength to me. Especially if we are willing to share what we have read.

So, what was on your 2011 book list?

death in the family

2012-01-04T15:16:00.001-06:00

My village is in turmoil. There has been a murder in the family.

Whenever violence visits, facts get a bit muddled. There are plenty of rumors, but this much is generally accepted as being factual.

Robin Wood was a 67-year old Canadian from Salt Spring Island – one of the spots my sailing buddies and I visit during our summer excursions to British Columbia. He came south to vacation with a Canadian realtor.

Two young men came over the roof of the realtor’s home in Villa Obregon. They appeared to be intent on robbery, other than mere burglary, because one arrived armed with a pistol.

One robber grabbed a bag. Mr. Wood resisted. The armed robber shot him. Mr. Wood died before his host could get him to the hospital in Cihuatlán – about 15 minutes away.

A very sad tale (undoubtedly, where we know little of what actually happened). And one that could – and does – happen in large and small towns around the world.

I have been monitoring the reaction of the tourist and expatriate communities on the Melaque electronic message board – TomZap. And I am a bit surprised at what I have been reading.

There are the usual (and appropriate) sympathy wishes for Mr. Wood’s family. But those entries are dwarfed by the number of people who say they are evacuating Melaque because of the incident.

At times like these, logic is not a sought handmaiden. As far as I know, very few people talked about shunning Melaque when three young men died during the past three years in allegedly drug-related assassinations. Or when any of the local love triangle murders happened.

The difference, of course, is the unstated. Those deaths involved locals. This death was one of us.

And I am not talking about skin color. I will leave that topic for someone who wants to beat the tom-tom of tribalism that lurks in some of the TomZap posts.

For too long, visitors to Melaque have idealized it as a paradise. It isn’t. If it is Eden, the serpent of reality has long been coiled there.

Part of that reality is that a small portion of the local community, just like any community, is composed of thieves. The bars on our windows and doors are not merely quaint architectural artifacts of the Spanish occupation.

To our neighbors, we are part of the world’s wealthy ruling class. With our bottomless ATM accounts, fancy computers, and café lifestyles. To the thieves, we are targets as lucrative as any Mexican CEO.

Does that make this murder is our fault? Of course, not. We will undoubtedly eventually discover some fact that results in an aha moment. There is simply a risk that comes along with our worship of material goods.

Unfortunately, for Robin Wood, he evidenced that love far too clearly when he reflexively (but not reflectively) grabbed for a bag that was no longer his. And paid for it with his life.

I hope the murderers are caught. I hope justice is done. But leaving Melaque will not accomplish any of those ends.

I am not leaving. In fact, I will soon be flying back home to Melaque in a few days. And I intend to bring as many people as I can.

taking out the trash

2012-01-03T18:30:00.000-06:00

Tuesday is trash day on my street in Salem.

That means that I need to remember to take out the green compost container and the gray trash container on Monday night. And the blue recycling container every other week.

It is even a bit more complex than that. There are some additional baskets for glass and other objects. I know nothing about those baskets. After three containers, my recycling mood started channeling Mr. Burns from The Simpsons: “Yes, well, it does sound delightful! I can't wait to start pawing through my garbage like some starving raccoon!”

Our relationship with our garbage adds a bottom to cultures.

We Oregonians do not hide our rather neurotic holier (or, at least. greener) than thou attitude when it comes to recycling. A Freudian would undoubtedly diagnose the condition as anal retentive. Lots of neat little piles that eventually end up in a big hole in the ground.

My Mexican neighbors tend to live on the other extreme. Garbage collection can vary regionally far more than cuisines.

In Pátzcuaro, the garbage truck seems to arrive on some sort of astral schedule. (At least, I could never divine any regularity in the truck’s appearance.) When I filled a trash bag, I had to wait for the sound of the tell-tale cow bell -- and then dash like Jesse Owens to hand off the bag and a gratuity to the trash hauler.

Garbage in Melaque is a bit simpler. Whenever I have a full trash bag, I simply put it in the raised brazier in front of my gate. The truck will pick it up on one of its regular routes -- five days a week. Efficient and simple. No pretense of recycling.

As I watched the Salem garbage men arrive in their separate trucks this morning to empty out the color-coded containers and baskets, I started to think about whether I preferred the Melaque or the Salem version. And then realized it was a silly question.

Both systems work well within their own context.

And that may just be another hint about my own life.

making a hat

2012-01-02T19:15:00.001-06:00

It was inevitable. Here we are -- the second day of the new year -- and I am fretting about the old.

Having failed to take Kim’s sage advice to dump my house in 2008, I am now stuck with the equivalent of a white elephant.

It is a great house. The artistic result of craftsman hands in the 1920s. And plenty of character that comes with age.

But it is no longer my home. It is merely a piece of property. And like an aging dowager, it needs a bit of care to keep it drifting through the equivalent of Petrograd salons.

The big decision is windows. When I came north in 2010 to work as a trainer for six months, I intended to save enough money to purchase new windows. The current house windows are a potpourri of 1920s double hungs and 1950s metal cranks.

They need to be replaced. But replacing them will start an avalanche of repairs. New wall paint and paper. Refurbished hardwood floors. Updated carpet.

Ideally, I would do that only when I am ready to sell the house. Because any additional living in the house will inevitably lead to wear and tear.

But these are not the days to put a house on the market in Salem. And, looking at the housing market recovery figures, that day may be well south of my entry into the Medicare system. Or crypt. Whichever comes first.

The only reason to start the work now is to borrow the $40K or so I will need at a record low interest rate. Oh, yeah, I forgot to tell you that my work session last year did not result in a pirate’s treasure of doubloons. Somehow, it went to cruises and a lot of visits to El Gaucho.

Like most things in life, this one is a false choice. Either repairing the windows or letting them be will most likely lead to the same result.

That is one lesson I learned long ago. Simply picking a path is the choice we are given. There are no guaranteed outcomes.

And I wish a certain group of politicians would realize it.

2011 writ large

2012-01-01T17:09:00.001-06:00

This is the season for newspapers to run articles on the top 10 news stories of the year. Well, stories that a group of editors think are the top stories.

But we live in a populist era. No elite editors for the pages of mexpatriate. We let the people have their say.

Blogger (the server that hosts my blog) gives me a bit of help with that task. If we count page hits as popularity.

And why not? It makes as much sense as fear and greed as a measure of populism.

So, here they are. The top eight pages of the people for 2011. Starting with the most popular.

she cleans up right purdy (October 14) -- A tale of how quickly my Mexican neighbors cleaned up from the slight wind and greater flooding damage of hurricane Jova. Some American readers took umbrage at the tone of comments that implied Mexicans are tied less to their material goods than are Canadians or Americans. One of those posts that took an unintended turn.
laundress to the stars (October 17) -- Another Jova post. This one about a small idea with far wider consequences. My land lady, Christine, volunteered to pick up mud-soaked clothes from homes that had been flooded. And to then spray off the mud and launder the clothes. Selflessness at its best.
reporting for duty (October 12) -- My first post-Jova post. I wandered around the neighborhood verifying that the wind had not been as much problem as the rain. And managed to slip and tear open my right leg -- a fact I did not bother reporting at the time. Some things are best left unreported. (And, yes, I can appreciate the irony of that last sentence.)
a few pre-storm tidbits (October 11) -- The day before the storm hit, I walked around Melaque to see how well prepared the village was. My neighbors were convinced the hurricane would not hit our bay, but the Mexican government brought in enough resources to fight back an invasion. As it turned out, my neighbors were correct, but having all of the disaster assets at hand got the place up and running in hours.
two worlds -- one me (October 25) -- My musings on how people in Canada and The States reacted to the storm. To a person, they seemed to think it was far worse than those of us who experienced it. And that may be why my friends and family react far more emotionally than I do about crime stories in Mexico.
harvey the croc (September 20) -- The only pre-Jova post that made the hit list. I found my small crocodile on the walkway around the laguna. She was more surprised than I was. But it was a reminder that I live in a wild place. Somehow I worked Jimmie Stewart into the tale.
the croc is back (November 8) -- Another crocodile post. After cleaning out my inlet portion of the laguna, the small crocodile returned to start sunning on her perch. Before I left in late November, two crocodiles had taken up night residence.
in the swim (October 1) -- Another non-Jova post. This one was about the swim meet across the bay from Barra de Navidad to Melaque. Who can resist young people in swim suits?

You might notice something about those posts. All but one were written in a 6-week period. The graph at the top of the page shows the effect that Jova had on the readership of this blog. Lots of people were interested in that storm.

But I also skewed the numbers. I started posting some of the posts on my Facebook page. However, the biggest impact came when I included those posts on our local electronic message board (TomZap) in Melaque. I used the same techniqiue network executives used during sweeps week. And I got to meet a lot of new people that way.

But it is an odd skewing of my year. Where I visited the butterfly sanctuary, Morelia, Pátzcuaro, Guanajuato, San Miguel de Allende, and Mexico City; took a cruise from Fort Lauderdale to Rome; entertained Salvation Army guests from California; helped out with the Indian school; watched our inter-denominational congregation build a new worship palapa; spent time with new and old acquaintances; and simply enjoyed my life in my little fishing village by the sea.

Another great year waiting to be topped by the one that began today.

my best

2011-12-31T14:05:00.000-06:00

I have no particular plans for this evening. Such are the vagaries of aging.

So, I will pass along my wishes to all of you for a nice new year.

Even though we live in a world where each of us live within our own envelope of conditioning and we are each affected by different circumstances, we are moral agents who have the ability to choose our own path.

May we choose wisely.

rim shots in the swamp

2011-12-30T21:13:00.000-06:00

G.K. Chesterton tells us "the past is not what it was."

And he may have something there. Our ability to recall the past sometimes bears only a slight resemblance to what happened years ago.

But not always. Sometimes we are lucky enough to have witnesses to our best stories.

Such was today’s lunch.

Jordan and I met up with two of my friends from law school (Ken and Patti), their daughter (Kimberly), and her boyfriend (Conan). We tried our hand at American consumerism at Clackamas Town Center until we lost interest. And our thoughts turned to the greater joy of food.

I always enjoy eating with old friends. There is something about slicing chicken with people who know not only your background, but who share a part of your soul.

Today we started to share stories. I have known both Ken and Patti since 1976. During the 1980s and 1990s, I stayed with them when I performed reserve duty in Washington.

I effectively turned into a brother to both of them. At least that is my perception. We went to plays and movies, looked for used cars, frequented fundraisers, attended baseball games, walked through open houses, and, of course, dined out -- a lot. Doing our best Niles and Fraser routines around western Washington

Because Kimberly, Conan, and Jordan were a fresh audience, all three of us took our turn on stage to tell tales of some of our more humorous adventures. Ken was the easy winner -- with what has to be one of his best lines.

In 1982 the three of us and another friend (Susan, who I was dating at the time) went to see Victor Victoria, one of Blake Edwards’s better films. One of the biggest surprises was Lesley Ann Warren. She almost stole the show.

So, the next year, when Night in Heaven was released starring her, the three of us trundled off to the theater to see it. Somehow we missed that her co-star was Christopher Atkins. The Justin Bieber of the 1980s. We should have known better.

We settled into a theater that was sparsely populated with teenage girls. The opening scene should have given us plenty of warning. The movie opened on a wide shot of a space shuttle on its launch gantry.

Taking into account the intelligence of the focus audience, a caption appeared informing us we were at Cape Canaveral -- Florida. Apparently, for those of us who thought we were looking at the Washington Monument in Montana.

We should have left because the movie went into a death spiral from there.

Here is the plot. Lesley Ann Warren is a community college instructor. Christopher Atkins is one of her students. A rather unintelligent student. Because she is having trouble with her marriage, some friends take her to a male strip club where the headliner is -- wait for it -- Christopher Atkins. Dropping his trousers to cover his tuition.

Because things happen that way in this type of movie, the two of them have a torrid love affair. Husband finds out, and kidnaps kid at gunpoint and takes him deep into a swamp in a fishing boat with a small boat in tow.

Husband stops the boat, tells kid he is aware of what has been going on, and orders him to strip and climb into the smaller boat where the kid cowers waiting for the inevitable blow.

As husband raises the gun, Ken exclaims in something more than a stage whisper: “He’s going to shoot him in the dinghy.”

Patti and I nearly slipped out of our chairs laughing. And Ken got the the fisheye from the teenage girls in front of us for demeaning their bit of teen meat.

It is one of those stories that just gets better with the telling.

If G.K. Chesterton sounds too much like Yogi Berra for you, Sondheim’s bit of lyrical fluff may capture the joy of old friends better.

Hey, old friend
Are you okay, old friend?
What do you say, old friend
Are we or are we unique?
Time goes by, everything else keeps changing
You and I we get continued next week.

living in tilted windmills

2011-12-29T14:40:00.002-06:00

Life is filled with surprises. Some large. Some small.

Last night was one of the smaller delights.

My friend Jordan suggested that we watch a movie. The Next Three Days. A 2010 release.

It was new to me. But that is not surprising. I do not get to see many trailers in Mexico where I have no television and where I get to the cinema about twice a year.

The description sounded as if it could be an interesting diversion for the evening. “With no legal means left to him, a community college instructor devises a daring plan to rescue his imprisoned wife from jail.”

I thought it was going to be another jail break film opening with the break and the subsequent car chases and fist fights that make up most films of the genre. But I was really wrong.

It is a film about character development. In this case, how a husband (Russell Crowe), who believes so strongly in the innocence of his wife that he will not allow a rational legal system that results in lies to destroy his (or her) life.

If you notice a whiff of Miguel Cervantes in the air, you know exactly what this script is about. Dulcinea is in distress. And the screenwrights tip their hand early on when the husband decides to take action.

In a lecture to his class on Don Quixote, he tells us not only what Don Quixote means, but what this film is all about:

The Life and Times of Don Quixote. What is it about?

Could it be about how rational thought destroys your soul? Could it be about the triumph of irrationality, and the power that's in it?

You know, we spend a lot of time trying to organize the world. We build clocks and calendars. And we try to predict the weather. What part of our life is truly under our control?

What if we choose to exist in a reality of our own making? Does that render us insane? If it does, isn't that better than a life of despair?

Anyone who has lived in Mexico (or southern Europe) knows why Don Quixote is the quintessential Spanish novel and why the English love the rationality of Milton and Locke. (I have no idea where Barbara Cartland falls in that mix.)

For three years I have been trying to find some documentary proof of a connection between the name of our central village (San Patricio) and veterans of the San Patricio Battalion of the Mexican-American war. I find all kinds of people who believe there is a connection, but they have no evidence. Whenever I ask why they believe it, the most common answer is: “Because I want to believe it is so.”

Whether the strain comes from the Spanish or the various Indian cultures, Mexico comfortably “exists in a reality of its own making.” Comfortable with the delight of living in Don Quixote’s rusty armor -- and ignoring the “realism” of the Knight of the Mirrors.

checking it twice

2011-12-28T19:13:00.000-06:00

I had a number of items on my checklist to accomplish on this trip north.

One is in a hold pattern -- and likely not to develop as I had hoped. But I have successfully accomplished two of them. And a third will soon be done.

My visa for the trip to Red China arrived just before Christmas. Resplendent with its red star of approval. I have stared at it to remove all thoughts of political prisoners from my not-too-translucent political meter. There is no need for me to play Winston Smith at this stage of my life.

I also received two books a doctor friend in Mexico requested me to buy. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s On Death and Dying and On Grief and Grieving. He found it difficult to find both books in Mexico. Now, I just need to find a good way to get them to his office in Leon. Maybe a road trip when I return to Mexico.

The third task is dependent on my brother’s return from Virginia the first week in January. We have been talking about a new laptop for my trip to China. I have eliminated the possibility of a tablet. It simply will not work as a blog tool -- for me. But a Z series Sony Vaio (yes, the same model that died an untimely death in 2009 when I lived on the beach) may be practically perfect in every way.

And with that purchase, I should be ready to head down to Mexico for my trip to Copper Canyon.

my traveling rhythm method

2011-12-27T20:02:00.000-06:00

“Everything is ruined by repetition -- even Paris.”

That line from one of my favorite movies drifted through my mind this afternoon as I slipped into the hot tub in the back yard of my Salem house. With my Kindle, of course.

I have spent the full month of December acting the part of the prodigal son, neighbor, and friend. Dinners. Lunches. Movies. Parties. Christmas celebrations. All of them as a visitor to Oregon.

During the last three years, I have noticed that each place I have lived or visited requires some time to catch the rhythm of that place. Almost like catching a wave while surfing. And until you fit into that circle of life, you are merely passing through. Just an observer.

When I headed to Mexico in 2009, it took me several months to feel comfortable in Melaque. Of course, I was decompressing from five decades of work. Getting up each morning to a schedule that was my own, rather than my clients’, was a novelty. And one I quickly learned to appreciate.

When I returned to work for six months, it took almost as long to see the world as my former colleagues did. Issues that seemed profound to them struck me as being, at best, trivial. What I had developed was a jeweler's eye for cant. An eye that is not highly valued in the professional world.

Getting back into the Melaque cycle took me about a month when I returned to Mexico. My visit to San Miguel de Allende took about three weeks. Pátzcuaro a week.

So, I should not be too surprised that I found myself this afternoon feeling as if I had reinserted myself into my former life in Salem. Well, that is, a retired life in Salem. Slipping into the hot tub not only felt natural, it felt as if that swirl of hot water was where I was supposed to be.

When I lived in Greece and England in the early 1970s, I never quite fell into the local rhythms. Probably because my focus was on my eventual return to law school in The States.

I have said several times on these pages that I am not a person of place. I think that is still accurate. But I have now learned the joy of simply enjoying where I am and treating it as a temporary home before I wander off to my next rendezvous in this circle of life we inhabit.

And some repetitions -- even Paris -- are worth enduring. And savoring.

freedom crashes

2011-12-26T15:38:00.001-06:00

Email is a thing of joy.

This morning my sainted brother forwarded an article to me. From a fellow named Mark Bonokoski.

I don’t know him. Not surprisingly -- because he writes for a Canadian newspaper. But he appears to be a soul mate on at least one issue. The neoteny of North Americans.

Well, not neoteny in its classic Betty Boop form. But in the all-too-familiar guise of the nanny state.

What set him off was Nova Scotia’s decision to mandate helmets for skiers and snowboarders. Even though, the number of injuries has been almost statistically insignificant.

He then recounts how it must be a miracle he ever made it to his current age. Lead paint on his crib. Bicycling sans helmet. No seat belts in cars. Riding in the back of pickups. Unsupervised swimming in a quarry. Starting work at 12 on a dangerous tractor. At 16 in construction with no safety boots.

That list is extremely familiar because I was just recounting a similar version with a good friend. By attempting to reduce life’s risks to zero, the best parts of childhood are being sacrificed.

Almost all of the wonders of my childhood would make regulators quail. Walking the railroad trestle in hope that a train would not show up before the other side did. Swimming the Willamette River to our own pirate island to spend the afternoon. Or pellet gun wars in the woods.

Those, of course, were the adventures kept secret from parents (as if they didn’t really know what was going on).

But parents could be accomplices in fun. My mother accompanied my brother and me in walking around our neighborhood at the height of Oregon's largest wind storm. You gain a lot more respect for a parent who will walk with you while trees and power lines are falling around you in an Irwin Allen-ish adventure.

Or the time she joined us on our bicycles to deliver newspaper during a silver thaw. All three of us would crash in a tangled mess at the bottom of hills. Helmets would have been as incongruous as a tap dancer in Swan Lake.

One of my favorite scripture verses is Ecclesiastes 7:10. “Don't ask why the old days were better than now, because that is a foolish question.”

Nostalgia for its own sake is just that. Foolish.

What is important is to realize why we think so fondly of those activities. Because they were days where freedom was valued. Before we decided to sell our birthright for the pot of porridge that is safety and security. A pot that is merely a mirage.

Bonokoski sums it up well: “The motorcycle I rode as a teenager could also be ridden without a helmet, and no freedom exists today can match that feeling of wind blowing through your hair at 100 miles per hour, not kilometres, as you put the throttle to a 650 Triumph Bonneville on an open stretch of highway.”

Insert Norton Commando, and Bonokoski and I could be experiential twins.

I thoroughly enjoy the age in which I live. Especially the technology. But it could do with a bigger dose of freedom. Before we forget what we can accomplish as a free people, rather than as a secure blob.

Thanks, Darrel, for the reminder.

all-weather friends

2011-12-15T15:46:00.001-06:00

This morning the weather shifted.

That sentence sounds as if it came out of one of those screenwriter worshops.

You know the type. Where the celebrated writer with one credit to his name doles out helpful advice like Geoffrey Rush on valium.

Choose a block of the human condition. Stuff it into a metaphor vehicle. Reduce everything to a recognizable cliché. And sprinkle with symbols.

Because we all know when a writer talks about weather shifting, there is a subtext just rollin’ along like Ol’ Man River.

But let’s pretend that subtext is for The New Yorker and I am simply talking about the weather. Because the weather has shifted.

During the past two weeks I have been in Oregon, the weather has been extremely pleasant. Blue skies. And temperatures brisk and crisp – right on the cusp of needing a coat and gloves.

The type of weather that could seduce the naïve argonaut into believing that this is what late fall in Oregon is all about. It isn’t. This is October Portland weather. Mid-December is short days filled with drizzle, gray skies, and 50 degree temperatures. Some of my favorite days.

And that is what this morning brought. A bit of rain. A lot of gray. And the feeling Christmas is on its way.

Those nice days have made me feel a bit like an alien. I guess I am. I have thoroughly enjoyed living in Mexico.

During the past two weeks, I have dined with family, a friend from my old work, two former prosecutors, an ex-girlfriend and current good friend, my local Salvation Army board, and a close friend and his extended family. Each get-together has reminded me how much I enjoy this network that has taken six decades to weave. And just how much the people around me mean to my life.

But that is where the climax of this little screenplay arises. Would these visits be so special if I was surrounded by them every day? If every moment was of moment, would I ever know I had one? Or are they special because I am take them in annual doses?

I don’t know. And I don’t care. I am simply going to enjoy my time here as long as it lasts. Living each moment as it arises.

Let the symbols speak for themselves.

less than 60 minutes

2011-12-11T15:18:00.000-06:00

I feel like Andy Rooney this morning.

Not dead. Just a bit cranky.

One of the sybaritic joys of visiting Oregon is to sit in the hot tub during frosty mornings reading The Sunday Oregonian on my Kindle while eating leftover Chinese. At my age, my pleasures are simple.

But newspapers have their own special way of flying joys right into the ground. And it happened this morning.

The headline was simple enough. “Spare the scribbles and leave those pages pristine.” The topic was books. Writing in books.

We have heard that drill before. No dog ears. No notes on pages. No highlighting. Anyone who has ever bought a used textbook knows the danger of annotations. The prior owner always seems to be aiming high for a C. All the wrong sentences tend to be highlighted.

But the Christmas advice we get from Douglas Yocom is a bit more prissy. He is not writing about mutilating books. Instead, he warns us against those little gift greetings written on a book’s endpaper.

Let me give you a taste.

”Unless you authored the books, don't ruin them by writing pithy little messages such as ‘To my lovely grandson, with all my ....’

“Chances are, the books will pass through the grandson's hands. The next owner -- if anyone else will accept the book -- won't want the personal message.

“Give a volume to friends on their wedding, anniversary or birthday. Fine. But write any inscription on an accompanying card, not on an endpaper or on the half-title page.”

There it is. Writing in a book that it is passed along to someone with love, ruins the entire book.

Well, Mr. Yocom, I happen to believe that relationships and the joy of books is more important than the future value of a book. And I have a bit of experience that tells me he is simply wrong.

One of my favorite books is Amigo: Circus Horse. “The adventures of a circus boy and his horse.” OK. It is a piece of fluff. But for a 6-year old boy, it was a fascinating tale about circuses. And a boy-horse friendship. I even learned an appropriate ceremony for burying a dead parakeet.

But the story is not why I keep this book on my shelf 56 years after I received it. It was a Christmas gift in 1955.

I know that only by the inscription on the endpaper. “Christmas 1955. To Stevie. With love. From Karen.”

Karen was my half-sister who died in childbirth in 1972. The book is my only physical contact with her. She knew how much I loved books. Nothing could have shown her love better than that book -- or its inscription.

If Karen had followed Mr. Yocom’s advice about a note card, I would long ago have lost it. And probably have forgotten how the book happened to be resting on my shelf.

Now and then I buy a used book that has similar gift inscriptions written on the endpaper. They always make me wonder who the people are behind the names -- and if they had a similar relationship like Karen’s and mine.

To be fair to Mr. Yokom, he is a seller of antiquarian books. The buyers of his wares may have little concern about who owned a book before it came to them. And that is a bit sad. Believing that a stack of bound paper has more value than the people associated with it.

Well, Mr. Yokom, I think you are dead wrong. I encourage people to buy books as gifts to be fully inscribed with sentiments as rank as can be. Because that is the spirit of Christmas. Our expressed love for one another.

Rant done. And I feel a lot better.

the gritty life

2011-12-07T01:31:00.003-06:00

Travel has its own tales.

My absence from these pages would indicate the contrary. But I have had an interesting week away from Mexico.

The trip north was the usual morphing from Mexico to The States. Los Angeles International Airport is a fine point to step from one world into another. LAX is usually a well-run place. Right down to the liberty-eroding performance art that passes for security.

But this trip I discovered LAX’s efficiency is as shallow as Tinseltown itself. By now, you have already read about the winds that stripped areas of southern California of their civilization-blood: electricity.

I had just sat down to dinner with two acquaintances from Melaque when the power went out. Fortunately, the waiter had already served us. But the restaurant had no idea how to accommodate its darkened customers.

And the airport itself was no better. I had no idea what had happened until I read the newspaper the next morning.

When I finally arrived in Oregon, the weathermen predicted sunny skies at the Oregon coast for the weekend. So, off we went to stay at the same boutique hotel I stayed in during my last visit. For the daily equivalent of my monthly rent in Mexico. Worth every penny.

The room was nice. But the real show was outside. The weather was so nice it disinterred long-buried plans about retiring on the Oregon coast.

Of course, everything over the weekend was an exception. Gray is the Oregon coast’s natural color. Along with a constant drizzle. But the exceptions are always attractive. As were the three days in the sand.

On Wednesday I will mail my application for my Red China visa. If all goes well, I will have it back in hand in about two weeks or so.

But the visa was only one reason for coming north. I have spent the past week reveling in old friendships. And shuffling through several ideas of what I want to do with my life.

More on that later.

living my life

2011-11-28T23:59:00.014-06:00

Socrates may have believed that the unexamined life is not worth living.

But what about the unlived life? Is it worth examining?

Such parallel cul-de-sacs are inevitable these days. I spent the day sitting on a broad beige beach on Banderas Bay. It is a long way from perfect, but it is exactly the mixture that initially drew me to Mexico.

A mock paradise for people from around the world to set aside their busy lives and come to the beach to depressurize by doing nothing.

When I decided to retire in Mexico, Puerto Vallarta is what I had in mind. It was the place that banked my best vacation memories.

But that was a mistake. I was retiring in Mexico, not moving there as a tourist. I figured that out early in my planning -- and Puerto Vallarta slipped from my list.

As a tourist, I valued that odd mix of sitting in the sand with no plans – interrupted only by manic bouts of ziplining, parasailing, waverunner racing, and dancing.

As a retiree, I needed to find a place to live a daily life. And, for now, I have found it in Melaque.

And that is where the unlived life comes in.

This visit from my German pal Hollito came at just the right time. I had fallen into the philosophical trap of believing that doing stuff gives meaning to life. I know better than that. Worth is not derived from great projects.

In fact, it is often the smallest things in life that give us purpose.

Last night and today, I sat with Hollito, his Mexican-born wife, her mother and step-father, her sister and the sister’s two children, and her friend from Argentina and the friend’s son. People I have never met before.

And everything worked fine. While driving north, I had visions of re-living a Lucy episode -- where everything would flow from Spanish to German to English and back again.

It did not turn out that way. English was the general choice of communication. And talk we did. I felt as if I was part of one of those Mexican family groups I see so often gathered at the beach.

Politics. Crime. Economics. Globalization. Relatives. Taxation. The philosophy of death (there were two physicians amongst us, and it is by far one of my favorite topics). Customs officials. Souvenirs.

One of the most humorous conversations were when Hollito and his wife described how his Mexican wife has become more German than he is, and how he has become more Mexican.

I am glad I had the opportunity to simply sit and talk with a new group of interesting people. That was certainly worth the four-hour drive north. I have Hollito and his friends to thank for that.

I know it is not an entirely new lesson. But unless I am willing to get out there and live my life through something other than mere activity, there will not be much to examine.

And now -- on to Oregon.

breaching the bore-dam

2011-11-27T04:30:00.000-06:00

The next time I complain about being bored, I will bookmark this post.

I keep thinking I have written about my plans for the next two or so months. But several people have told me I am wrong.

So here goes.

Today I am driving up to Nuevo Vallarta to meet one of my readers from Germany -- and his Mexican wife. Some of you know him as Hollito. He started commenting on my blog before I moved to Mexico.

We had planned to meet two winters ago. But those plans fell through when I flew to Oregon for a Cotton Thanksgiving-Christmas-birthdays all-in-one inclusive holiday celebration.

I will spend a few days with Hollito and his wife on the beach -- and I hope at a nice eatery. We have been talking about a German restaurant a bit further north.

On Tuesday I will drive back to Melaque to board a flight to Oregon on Wednesday.

The trip north is to take care of some additional travel business. I am heading off to Red China in February But that visit will not take place until I get a visa for my passport.

While I am waiting for the courier service and the Chinese consulate in San Francisco to returned my engrossed passport, I will spend a week or two with family and friends. And I hope to slip some good food into the agenda. You may notice a certain culinary itch that has gone unscratched in Melaque.

Sometime before Christmas, I will fly back to Melaque. With a trip to Copper Canyon in January.

And I will then be off to Red China to inquire about political prisoners. Just kidding. About the political prisoners, that is. I do not need to play a character role in the next Tom Clancy novel.

So, there you have it. I am heading out on the road again. Which means my report will be sporadic for a bit.

At least, I am not going to be bored.

“I like to be in america”

2011-11-26T04:42:00.005-06:00

So, there I was. Sitting in a Melaque café explaining to one of my readers why I use the term”Indian” by relating the Billie story to her.

No teller of tales, no parlayer of parables could have been more in the zone. I was in the sweet spot of stories.

And just as I thought I had Babe Ruthed one out of the park with “What should I be called? I am happy with American. Oregonian. Indian ---,” she interrupted with: “Well, there’s the problem, isn’t it? He’s not an American. He’s a citizen of the United States of America -- or however they say it in Spanish.”

What flashed through my mind will not appear on these pages. I suspect I looked as if someone had just ballpeened me in the back of the head.

For some reason, “American” has reduced a number of tourists and expatriates in Mexico to the level of English professors bemoaning the demise of the subjunctive. But, like most discussions of this nature, this one has a long history.

First, let me confess I value accuracy in word choice. The distinction between “oral” and “verbal” matters. They mean two distinct things. Or they once did.

”America” presents the reverse difficulty. A word that means several different things depending on its context. Such ambiguities are the bane of people who like clear cut rules.

But English defeats the urge to build such castles in the clouds. Any language where a homophone (raise/raze) can be its own antonym is not easily reduced to legalism.

”America” is not a word crafted in the New World. It is an Old World import.

By the time the Europeans figured out they were utterly lost and that South America, at least, was a continent separate from Asia, a German cartographer labeled the continent “America” in honor of the Latin form of Amerigo Vespucci. The Florentine explorer credited with starting to realize the land mass was a tope on the road to China.

The term stuck. Miffing the Spanish who wanted a Columbine name for the New World. In fact, they were so angry that Spain refused to use the term for two centuries. The name was not off to a good start -- even though the English loved it. Partly because it irritated the Spanish.

For most Europeans, the term started as The Americas. A reference to the new continent.

Ironically, the term took on national tones when Mexico and the other Spanish colonies in America started their wars of independence. The Spanish born in the New World called themselves “Americans” to distinguish themselves from the hated, privileged elite born in Spain.

By the end of those wars, most of he Spanish-born heads were either missing or shipped back to Spain, and each of the newly independent countries went on to referring to themselves by their new names. Mexican. Chilean. Argentine.

But nothing can be that easy. A group of liberty-loving colonists rose up against the British lion in 1776, and in 1777 decided to christen their nation “The United States of America.” All of a sudden the name “America” referred to a specific country and “American” to a specific group of citizens. And, generally, the world started using the terms that way.

We now have terms with national and continental implications. But any ambiguities are easily resolved by context. Sometimes America still means the full continent. Such as, corn, sweet potatoes, and tomatoes were developed in America. That obviously means on the continent -- and not in Detroit.

On the other hand, references to American foreign policy can only mean the policy of The United States. There is no other political entity with that name.

And that is why I usually refer to myself as an American. There is no reasonable alternative. The tongue-twisting estadounidense is understood. But, around here, so is americano.

Norteamericano is what my Mexican neighbors call me. Well, they usually make the mistake of first calling me Canadian. That is the default in these here parts for elderly white folks.

I might even change what I call myself. As soon as I hear people stop saying “you Americans” and start saying “we Americans.” Then I will start practicing my tongue twisters.

And if someone born in Mexico City wants to call herself an American, I will say: "You certainly are."

In the end, of course, all of this is rather silly. Jonna hit the nail on the head in yesterday’s comments: “As to the British distinction between Indians. I have 2 friends who are a couple, one is an American Indian (how's that for non PC? but it is what he calls himself) and the other is a Hindu. They refer to themselves as the 'dot and feather' couple.”

Billie, my American Indian co-worker, would have chuckled and approved. As he got into his Honda with the “Buy American” placard in the back window.

the name game

2011-11-25T04:17:00.002-06:00

“A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”

Sometimes Shakespeare can be dead wrong. Well, at least, when it comes to political labels in the 21st century.

This past month I hit two of those speed bumps. With the use of “Indian” and “American.”

We all know that the people Columbus encountered in the New World were not inhabitants of the East Indies -- as he thought. And, despite popular myth, Columbus’s use of the word “Indian” had nothing to do with the subcontinent of India.

Columbus was simply lost. And like a lot of men, he was not going to let a little lack of knowledge get in the way of his conclusions. To him, the residents lived on the islands of the East Indies and were thus Indians. And China was just around the corner.

The term survived for many reasons. The primary reason is that the “Indians” had no word for the people who then populated North and South America -- as they would come to be called.

They were Inca, Maya, Sioux, Olmec, Crow, and numerous other groupings. The concept that they were part of some collective was as foreign to them as the term "European" would have been to the Spanish.

”Indian” was nothing more than a short-hand term for all of the tribes who had preceded the wave of invading European tribes.

I stumbled into this naming game with my reference to the work I do with the school for the children of migrant workers (party on). I wrote: “The party was to celebrate the opening of the Indian school where I donate a bit of my time.”

A couple of readers asked (politely) if I was being insensitive using the word “Indian.” Not really, I replied. I was using a term that most of my readers would recognize. We call it communication.

I must confess that I have seriously flirted with using some of the alternative politically correct phrases. After all, none of us want to purposely give offense. But none of the alternatives are an improvement. At least, for a writer.

”Native American” sounded like a possibility. Until, I realized it was even more nonsensical than "Indian.” Anyone born in either North or South America is a native American. And that could not possibly be what people wanted the term to mean.

”Indigenous peoples” is another popular candidate. Probably because it sounds so Latin. But it is as flawed as “Native American.”

“Indigenous” means “produced, growing, living, or occurring naturally in a particular region or environment.” No one is indigenous to the Americas. Every person came from somewhere else. And, even as anthropologists cannot answer the question of which tribes replaced other tribes, no one has any idea who arrived first.

The Canadians have an option that is very seductive and clever. “First Nations.” It recognizes primacy and diversity while building a progressive historical bridge. And I was almost convinced to use it. Until I tried to apply it.

The term works well as an abstraction. But try using it as a personal label. What do you call a person from one of the First Nations? A First National. All of a sudden we sound as if we are talking about banks.

And what about the fact that many of the “First Nations” were not first at all. They conquered other tribes. Would they then be “Not-Quite-First Nations?” Or simply "The Nations That Got Here Before You Did?"

The problem is all of these terms are merely Euro-centric concoctions that carry their own political baggage.

Most Indians I have encountered seem to prefer being recognized by their tribal names. But that can be problematic, as well.

The Indians at the migrant worker school are primarily Mixtec. And they like that name. But there are also Purépecha at the school. And neither tribe wants to be labeled as the other.

I suppose I could refer to the school as "The Mixtec and Some Purépecha School." But most of my readers are not familiar with those terms. "Indian" they know.

Between my first and second years of law school, I worked in a lumber mill. The guy who worked beside me, Billie, was one of our labor negotiators. He was also an Indian.

One day he told me a story that happened during the last contract negotiations. He needed to establish a power position. So, he used liberal guilt as his ally.

He told the lawyers who were representing the employer that he was tired of them referring to him as an Indian. During his lecture, he repeatedly referred to Russel Means and AIM.

I started laughing along with him because the Ivy League-educated lawyers were so intimidated by an enraged minority that they completely missed his joke. AIM, of course, stands for American INDIAN Movement.

When he stopped laughing, he said: "Look. I'm a Cherokee from Oklahoma. My ancestors probably cut trees in Georgia. Before then, who knows where they came from? I now work with timber in Oregon. What should I be called? I am happy with American. Oregonian. Indian. Because we all know what those words mean. Simple."

I thought of Billie when my readers asked about my sensitivity.

Until someone comes up with a term that makes more sense, I am satisfied to use the simple term my readers will most likely recognize.

Tomorrow. Who is an American?

little pleasures

2011-11-24T00:21:00.000-06:00

A fairy visited me this morning.

I had wended my way through the leading stories in The Oregonian (another blessing from my Kindle). The usual lamentations about political missteps. Trouble in the Middle East. Economic expectations dashed.

The fare that has enlivened newspaper stories for the past century -- and before.

Earl Warren once said that he turned to the sports pages to see human accomplishments before he read of human failings on the front page. But even the sports pages these days read more like rap sheets than the carols of angels.

I was in a funk. For the past week I have been mumbling under my breath how I am bored. The symptoms were all there. Staying up until 5 AM only to sleep in until 11. And then hanging around the house all day reading a bit. Watching a film now and then.

It may be the natural result of several action-packed months. Trips to the highlands. A hurricane. A new church building.

Maybe I was simply befuddled by the lack of activity. A void of projects.

But before I could venture down self-pity lane, I was distracted by my visitor. A dragonfly. Which type, I am not certain. I once knew quite a bit about insects, but that arcana took leave, along with the names of the 1959 Dodgers starting lineup, several years ago.

A dragonfly it was, though. Enjoying the shade from its high speed dog fights with mosquitoes. Perhaps, a lunch break.

It could not possibly know the risk of landing there on that shrubbery. Lacking speed to kill mosquitoes, I rely upon the Ypres solution -- gas warfare. My little patio is regularly saturated with bursts of Raid. It works. But there are always collateral victims.

Whether it intuited the danger or not, it waited patiently on the perimeter of danger.

What was odd is that it was there. The laguna is no stranger to dragonflies. Because it is the breeding ground for mosquitoes. And the dragonflies regularly zoom through my garden, where the mosquito population is only marginally less than the crocodile haven.

But I have never seen one rest as long as this one did. Probably no more than a minute. Not disturbed in the least when I slipped inside to retrieve my camera.

Brief though the encounter was, I realized it had taken my mind off of my self-imposed boredom. The very sight of it was enough to remind me that life truly is made of moments.

And if we live within the moment we have, it is excitement enough to shoo off those little negative tendrils that slip into our lives.

strangers in the garden

2011-11-23T00:01:00.003-06:00

This is a view I see almost every day. It is my garden as seen from the andador.

But today I saw it a bit differently. I have just finished reading Charles Mann’s 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created. His 1491 dealt with the culture of the Americas before Columbus arrived.

1493 details what has come to be known as the Columbian Exchange -- how American products (such as, tomatoes, sweet potatoes, and corn) spread throughout the world and how Old World products ended up in the New.

Mann is one of those journalists who is easily beguiled by eccentric scholarly theories. The kind of guy who has never met an iconoclast he does not like. But he presents a good argument why the term “indigenous” is an almost meaningless term. All people (and lots of plants) came to the Americas from somewhere else. And we now live in a world that has been somewhat homogenized over the past 500 years.

My garden is a perfect example. Almost nothing in the photograph at the top of this post is native to Mexico. Coconut palms? From The Philippines. The Flamboyant tree? Madagascar. The banana? South Asia. Limes? Persia. Tamarind? Sudan. Even most of the grasses are from other continents.

Just as all the people in Mexico came from somewhere else, my garden is populated with trees and plants that were not to be found in the Americas in 1492. Globalization is nothing new.

And I am happy with that end result. After all, even though I am a native American, I too am an import. Enjoying my retirement in a garden filled with other sojourners.

more than palms

2011-11-21T11:39:00.000-06:00

This weekend falls into one of those “Mission Accomplished” categories. Well, without the political baggage of that phrase.

Ever since our church palapa burned last spring, the church members have been planning for this weekend. Between board meetings, building plans, and the usual list of construction woes, the community has watched our little building grow from a pile of construction materials to an eye-pleasing worship hut -- as Kim so wittily put it.

On Saturday, the transition began. Over the summer we met in the space where the restaurant Maya serves up some of the best food in Melaque. But we needed to move our few belongings from the restaurant to the new property now that the northern tourist season has begun.

Several church members showed up with vehicles and aging backs. In went our chairs and other worship accessories, and off we went to the new site.

Like all dreams, plenty of sweat went into its realization. My friend, Lou, who is co-chair of the church board, took on the burden of acting as the brain and hands of the project. He planned. Coordinated. Built.

In every organization there is a person of action. For us, it is Lou -- the guy in the yellow shirt and farmer hat.

After we stored the items we moved, several of the men stayed behind to assist Lou in leveling and tamping the dirt that forms the base of our new floor.

And here is the result. Our first Sunday morning service in our new building.

It is larger than our old worship space. During the height of the tourist season, we had to hold two services to accommodate Sunday worshipers.

No more. The new space should give us plenty of space to hold a single service.

This week, a brick floor will be installed, and we will all soon participate in creating a garden around the edges of the palapa.

But that is just the building. Ron, our pastor, reiterated that point on Sunday. As nice as the building is, it is just a building. The church is the people. And it is their hands outreached to the community that will show whether it is a house of love.

open the door and see all the people

2011-11-18T16:22:00.000-06:00

I grew up in a couple of church buildings that were financed on the “build as we get it” plan.

That may be why I have always been attracted to the unadorned walls of Quaker meeting houses. I wonder if a resident of Reims in the thirteenth century would have felt the same?

Well, I am back to my roots. As you know, our church palapa burned down last year. We have been meeting in a closed-for-the-summer restaurant. But it is no longer summer and the restaurant needs to deal with meals for the stomach. As a result, our soul meals on wheels needs to trundle off to a new location.

And a new location we have. Over the past few months, our new location has been transformed from a weedy lot to a bare lot to a construction site to an almost completed palapa.

By this Sunday, it will be complete enough for the congregation to move in. Not completed. A work in progress.

But what better symbol for the Christian experience? Because none of us are complete. As for me, I fit in the half-baked category.

On Saturday, we will meet as a work party to move chairs, books, and other service paraphernalia to the new site.

As you can see, the floor will be a bit primitive. But not quite the circus tent primitive in the photographs. A soil compacter is on its way to form a nice bed for an icing layer of gravel. And soon, we will have a beautiful brick floor to complement our thatched roof.

So, if you would like to join us on Sunday at 10:30 AM, stop on by. You will be welcome.

And, as far as I am concerned worshiping here will be every bit as real as worshiping inside the stone edifice of Reims.

one glorious life

2011-11-17T00:01:00.002-06:00

“My mother was a fairy princess.”

So said Winston Churchill of his American-born mother.

This afternoon I was relying on Netflix to bring a bit of popular culture into my life. The venue -- Avery Fisher Hall. The event -- a concert to celebrate Stephen Sondheim’s 80th birthday.

Audra McDonald was singing “The Glamorous Life” from A Little Night Music. A daughter’s bittersweet anthem comparing her actreess mother to “ordinary mothers.”

Her execution was perfect. Somewhere in the middle of the song, I felt an odd emotional connection with the lyrics.

Which ordinary mothers can't do
Being ordinary mothers all day
Mine’s away in a play
And she’s realer than they

Then it hit me.

The song is a salute to my mother.

I need to explain. Unlike Desiree Armfeldt, my mother is not an actress. But she could have been. I have little doubt she could have been whatever she wanted to be.

Her career is varied. Model instructor. Small business owner. Realtor. Counselor to politicians. Woman of faith. Hers is a glamorous life.

I have heard her say wistfully that she was a “stay at home” mom. Something she desired above everything else. But that is not entirely true.

It is true that being a mother was her prime role in this play we call life. She was always there whever my brother or I needed her.

But she was no helicopter mom. We were raised to be independent and self-reliant. Knowing full well that Mom (and Dad) would be there in the background if we needed them. Like the Flying Wallendas.

Had she put her mind to it, she could easily have been one of those Manhattan socialites who float from party to fuindraiser to the theater.

Instead, she was one of the women who blazed the path of balancing family and career. And who could teach, by example, what it was to be virtuous, filled with grace, and practical -- while being glamorous.

I have probably heard the song at least a dozen times But it really hit a chord today.

And isn’t that just like life? We often take for granted what most matters in our lives -- until we receive these little pricks of the heart.

So, Mom, thank you for who you are and for what you have helped me be.

This song’s for you.

sailing off into the sunset

2011-11-16T00:16:00.000-06:00

Every time I think that my next stage of adventure may be elsewhere, something like this happens.

There is a sunset every night. But I have not managed to walk the four blocks to the beach to see one since I returned from the highlands. There is no good reason. I just didn’t do it.

Last night that changed. Just as I had no good reason to go before that night, I had no good reason that night, either. Well, other than the outcome.

I think the old girl still has a lot of sex appeal in her.

The heavens declare the glory of God,
the dome of the sky speaks the work of his hands.
Every day it utters speech,
every night it reveals knowledge.

Psalm 19

swinging death

2011-11-15T11:51:00.000-06:00

I barely knew it. This new hammock.

Or, at least, new to me.

When my last hammock died, my landlady graciously donated this one from a house she had just purchased.

We never quite bonded. The hammock and me, that is. It was smaller than the previous hammock and the mosquitoes kept driving me away from its more sybaritic pleasures.

It is now no more. One morning I discovered that six of its ropes had snapped. Theories abound. At least my corpulence was not the major contributing cause.

The hammock is easily replaceable. Vendors ply the playa as thick as fallen women in The Bowery. And I will buy another.

Its unraveling death is just another symbol of how life changes. When I moved to Melaque, I spent a good portion of my life in a hammock. Watching the ocean. Reading. Sleeping. Even learning the skills of dining while swinging.

When the new hammock arrives, I will most likely not use it very much. I suspect my retirement has marched on past the hammock stage.

Before I get bored with life, I need to seek out something new. I am on the prowl for a new hammock, but for something far less sedentary, as well.

seine memories

2011-11-14T19:51:00.000-06:00

I love food. Good food.

That is one reason living in Melaque is a bit frustrating. Most food here falls into two categories.

Category # 1: Boring. Even the best of Mexican foods is handicapped by a reliance on three basic ingredients. And you can only recombine them in so many ways.

Category #2: Bad. I have had more mediocre meals in the Melaque area than anywhere else I have lived. And that includes eating in Air Force mess halls -- the unusual happenstance of a bureaucracy using a meaningful term.

About two weeks ago, I overheard a fellow diner talking about a new restaurant in town. Chez Cedric.

The name sent me spiraling into gastronomic fantasies. Pig foot with a pomegranate reduction. Veal topped with a mango-pablano-onion salsa. Lamb wrapped in sage and apricots.

How could be bad? It is Gallic.

But my fantasies were Pearl Harbored back to reality when I heard the place had one specialty: pizza.

I love pizza. I could live most of my life on pizza. But it easily falls into both the bad and boring categories here.

There are plenty of pizza joints. But they are all summed up in an expatriate’s misplaced comment: “It is almost as good as Domino’s.” And the quality descends from there.

With that in mind I headed over to Chez Cedric. And I was pleasantly surprised by the décor. I have come to expect pizza parlors north of the border to look either like bordellos or western trading posts.

Not Chez Cedric. It is spacious. Covered by an elegant palapa. And the linen-bedecked tables are spaced sufficient for the most discreet of conversations. Manned by liveried waiters clothed distinctly from the uniformed kitchen staff.

And get this. Customers are welcomed by the appropriately-attired chef-owner at the door. Charlie Trotter could not have played the role better.

The old adage that no one leaves a Broadway show humming the scenery applies just as well to restaurant ambiance. I may have chewed the scenery a bit in my life, but I was at Chez Cedric to see if his pizza could survive the Melaque curse.

The menu courses fall into three areas. Salads. Crêpes. Pizzas.

But not just any pizza. Wood-fired oven pizza. And that was what I had.

Pepperoni pizza. With a bit of a test. I have found that most pizza restaurants here are a bit distrustful when a customer asks for an additional item. Onions were mine. My waiter simply responded “certainly.” An attentiveness that would continue throughout the rental of my table.

The crust was perfect -- avoiding the usual Hobson’s choice of cardboard or congealed library paste. It was light and just crisp enough to complement an amazingly tasty and peppery pepperoni. It was not Boar’s Head. But it is the best pepperoni I have tasted in town.

And the tomato sauce was superb. As if it had been freshly made from sautéed tomatoes.

But the selling point was the cheese. Creamy without being greasy. And it had none of that chemical after-taste that haunts other pizzas.

The pizza was neither boring nor bad. Making Chez Cedric part of a short list.

party on

2011-11-12T20:25:00.001-06:00

Mexico knows how to celebrate. How to party. How to indulge the senses.

After three years, I tend to not notice the parties that make the neighborhood throb each weekend.

But this Friday was a little different. My doctor invited me to attend a party. My first reaction was to accept the invitation, and then use the Mexican option of simply not showing up.

The party was to celebrate the opening of the Indian school where I donate a bit of my time. Because it is a cause that matters to me, I decided to attend.

Let me refresh your memory. The school is in the agricultural village of Pinal Villa. Just a bit inland from Melaque.

And “school” is a rather inexact term. There are three classrooms. But the small complex is a support system for some of the migrant workers (most of them Mixtec Indians from Guerrero and Oaxaca) who come north to plant and harvest.

Following Spain’s conquest of Mexico, the crown outlawed Indian slavery. In its place, the encomienda was established. A feudal transplant from the Iberian peninsula, where the king granted large tracts of land to an “owner,” who could demand a specific period of work from the Indians he also “owned.” It was merely slavery in white face.

In theory, that system died with Mexico’s independence from Spain. But it still echoes in Mexico”s fields (as well as the fields of other nations).

The Mixtec leave their ancestral lands to come north with their entire families to do work that the locals will not do. I complain about the heat here. But I do not have to spend my day planting bananas or weeding watermelon or harvesting mangoes.

The Mixtec do. Single men. Fathers. Mothers. And children. Lots of children.

It was for the children that the school was started. To give them an opportunity to break out of the cycle. To give them enough literacy and mathematic skills that they (and their children) can join Mexico’s growing middle class. Instead of being stuck in the poverty that characterizes 40% of Mexican families.

Having returned home at the start of summer, the Mixtec are returning. That means it is time for the school to reopen. To learn. To get well-balanced meals. And for 16 families, to have a comfortable place to live.

Friday was a welcome back party. Filled with the type of events one would expect.

These are the teachers. I apologize for the blurriness. But I wanted you to see how young they are. What I cannot show you is their dedication and their energy.

And there were awards for the outstanding students. All of them extremely shy. They have not learned the bright student syndrome that exists above the border -- to be the center of everyone's attention. But they are the core that we hope will reach escape velocity.

At all of these events, there is a skit that melts hearts. This was an homage to the vowels. As for the dog, he insisted on being part of everything.

And no decent Mexican party can exist without music. This singing group of students is from another school. And they have learned the rule of getting attention. Lots of music. And I mean lots.

The school had invited a group of Americans and Canadians who have volunteered their time to work with the school. But they were merely guests. The fiesta was for people like this little guy who spent the entire evening batting a balloon. This was the only photograph I managed to get that was not a complete blur.

These migrant workers lead a very rough life. But the dedication of the children is what amazes me. After a full day in the fields, they attend classes in the evening.

To me, that is the message of hope.

11.11.11

2011-11-11T01:11:00.000-06:00

I admit it. I am fascinated by that set of numbers.

Not in the crystal-minded numerologist sense. After all, today's date is merely derived from a starting date for the western calendar based on a wild (and incorrect) guess.

We all know the tale how the cease-fire for the First World War went into effect on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month. Or so goes the myth. And Armistice Day was born.

Because the United States managed to get involved in a series of wars that were more efficient in killing young men, the day morphed into Veterans Day. A day that seems to have attracted a bit more notice this year because of that additional "11" -- our binary salute to the men and women who served in the cause of liberty.

The United States is one of the few countries not built on a national identity. To be American is to be in favor of an idea -- liberty. The ability to be as good as you choose and to learn lesson s from both failures and successes. That all men are created equal. That they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights. That among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

I watched Leni Riefenstahl's The Triumph of the Will this week. Leni's 1934 valentine to Adolf Hitler, fresh from his bloody extermination of the SA leadership.

Of course, watching the film now, my analysis suffers from presentism. But I found myself wondering how could Germans voluntarily trade their social, personal, and religious freedoms to a totalitarian state? Can any pot of porridge be worth that sacrifice?

Since I have started writing this blog, two of my uncles have died. Both of them heroes of the Second World War that ushered Hitler into Hell's ante room. But it is a generation that will soon be gone. Just are the veterans who gave us Armistice Day.

But there are young veterans today returning from wars to a military that will inevitably be down-sized. Just as my uncles deserved a salute, so do these young men and women.

More than that, they deserve jobs in a resurgent economy in the nation for which they staked their lives.

That would be the best Veterans Day appreciation of all.

To those of you who served in the cause of liberty, I salute you.

users may experience --

2011-11-10T15:13:00.002-06:00

I was turning into one of those side effect warnings you hear at the end of drug commercials.

You know the ones I mean. Always delivered in a Gilbert and Sullivan patter song tempo.

Headache. Nausea. Fatigue. Drowsiness. Swollen feet.

Just before I moved to Mexico, my health had taken a severe downturn. My blood pressure was high. I had put on an incredible amount of weight. And I had just been diagnosed as diabetic (even though I was in the category formerly known as “pre-diabetic”).

Three months in Mexico with a new diet (or rather the inaccessibility of not-so-healthy foods) and lots of walking had an amazing effect. I lost 30 pounds. My blood sugar levels were the envy of a 22 year-old. And my blood pressure was well within normal limits -- normal enough that my doctor reduced my medication dosage.

That was 2009. While I was in the highlands this summer, I ran out of my usual medication. I stopped to see a doctor, who prescribed something different. I researched it on the internet -- and it was in the same category as my old medication.

When I returned to Melaque in September, the heat seemed to be harder to bear than when I left. I attributed it to a lack of acclimation. But things did not get better over the next two months. I started getting severe headaches. And I slept. Often 12 hours a night. But I was still exhausted during the day.

My doctor also works with the Indian school -- a project I support. I needed to talk with her yesterday about some donations. While I was there, I told her I was not feeling as well as I usually do.

Her first instinct was to check my blood pressure. But I wanted her to check my blood sugar. I had convinced myself that the diabetes had returned.

Out came the needle and the little testing machine. It was fine.

I wish I could have said the same for the blood pressure test result. I am a mediocre bowler. But I would have been happy with both readings if they were projected above a lane. But they were a bit distressing as blood pressure results.

That was easily resolved. She put me back on my old medication -- with the proviso that I buy it that afternoon.

Oh, and there was one additional complaint. In July, I awoke with fresh blood in my left ear. Even though it felt as if there might be an infection in the ear canal, I ignored it. (I must confess, though, I imagined the leaf cutter ants seeking revenge by setting up a nest in my ear.) I also ignored another smaller discharge about three weeks later.

OK. I am not a very good patient.

It turns out there is still an infection in the ear canal -- that could have contributed to the headaches. Another pill and some ear drops are destined to clear it up.

The result? Oddly, I could not sleep last night. I fell asleep for about an hour and stayed up reading until about 7 AM -- and then slept until 10.

But I feel great. And my feet slip easily into my sandals.

I had hoped to get off of all medications while living here in Mexico. Even though the doctor fees are quite reasonable (less than $15 USD), my prescriptions cost more here than they do in The States. (That is not always the case. Most prescription drugs cost less here than they do above the Rio Bravo.)

The hope of going drug-free is probably not to be.

I am just glad that I had other business with my doctor. She has made me a new man.

It is still hot here. But I no longer feel like I am a walking side effect warning.

the croc is back

2011-11-08T11:07:00.001-06:00

With all of my aquatic landscaping, some benefits arise. The small croc has returned to his (or her) sunning perch.

Some tasks are worth the effort.

on the street

2011-11-07T16:42:00.001-06:00

I may as well have been Lieutenant Sunderstrom ashore in San Diego in On the Beach.

But it was main street in San Patricio. At 2 in the afternoon. On a Monday.

Where was the traffic trying to wend its way through double-parked pickups? Where were the local residents finishing up their daily shopping? Or the gaggles of Canadians looking for a rumored bottle of HP sauce?

I almost expected zombies to stagger out of the open, but uncustomered shops. But that would be too easy to confuse with one of the tourist bars.

As colorful as the possibilities were, reality, as is the usual case, was far more prosaic. No life-ending radiation. No zombies. No enchanting witches (well, maybe in the aforesaid tourist bars).

The non-poetic truth: it was clean up day for the San Patricio streets.

The firemen were there with their powerful hoses to assist local volunteers in clearing the hardened flood mud off of the streets. And even though the sun was stomach-churning hot (hot enough to make me dream of a ski vacation), the volunteers were doing yeoman work in washing the mud off the streets.

And a good idea it is. Every time I drive through any of the triplet villages, whether in town or on the highway, it looks as if Charles Schulz could find a life model for Pig-Pen. Just like Pig-Pen, we are surrounded by the dust of ancient civilizations.

But today, the volunteers were attempting to emphasize the noun and soften the adjective.

I think they did a rather good job.

that gnawing feeling

2011-11-06T15:02:00.000-06:00

Rasping. Periodic rasping.

There was no other word for it. As if a pachyderm pedicurist had opened shop next door.

Not really an annoying sound. Just regular. And persistent. Something was trying very hard to get at something.

It did not take long to find the culprit. We call our surroundings a jungle here, That is merely a high-falutin’ word for a lot of shrubs and trees. But the wildlife in our trees are not hidden very well -- as you can see.

The culprit was a squirrel. Probably, a Colima tree squirrel. Intent on having a coconut lunch.

And he was well on his way to success. Having gnawed away the husk, he was at what would be his next challenge -- the coconut shell. The required accessory for every production of South Pacific.

Anyone who has ever tried to get a coconut to give up its milk or meat has to give this little critter a good deal of credit. My neighbors use muscle and machete. This guy is using enamel and a good deal of heart.

But it solves one mystery for me. I regularly find empty coconuts with an odd hole in the top -- but empty inside. The detritus of a squirrel cooking show, I guess.

My admiration only goes so far. Coconut just happens to be on the list of things that I do not care to eat. Something I inherited from my father.

As far as I am concerned, the squirrel is welcome to the lot.

it’s a small world -- no more

2011-11-05T17:34:00.000-06:00

Dora’s tale starts with her arrival. An arrival so unexplained -- so miraculous -- it could only have begun in Mexico.

Dora is a turtle. A Mexican mud turtle. A title so bland it could be borne solely by the most dignified of animals.

My friend Anne discovered Dora in a fountain at her house. That does not sound very miraculous. After all, where else would you find an amphibian other than in a water place?

The miraculous part is Dora is no more than two inches long. And the fountain walls are about two feet high. Lined with tile. Escaping Alcatraz would be a piece of cake compared to Dora’s appearance in the fountain.

Of course, there were all of the usual theories of human and avian agency. But we will stick with the magical appearance theory. After all, it is Mexico.

Anne rescued Dora -- named, I suspect, for explorer fame -- and kept her in a special tub outfitted with a brick, lettuce, and fancy imported turtle food.

But, all good things must end. Anne flew north this afternoon and dropped off Dora at my place – tub and all – with instructions to do as I saw fit.

Now and then, I am lucky to face issues we have already worked through in my mind. When Gary of the mexile left Mexico to return to England, he was faced with the problem of finding homes for his turtles. At the time, I suggested my laguna would be a good home. After all, quite a few turtles live in and around it.

I let Dora wait in the garden for a few hours while I completed some other tasks. We then walked shell and hand to the edge of the laguna where I placed her on a rock. She poked her head out once or twice. Probably trying to get a sense of the huge world that stretched to her horizon.

And then with one push, she was off into the water. Putting her natural Dora exploring skills to good use.

I suspect her life outlook is the same as most animals. Woody Allen said it best: “To me nature is … big fish eating little fish, and plants eating plans, and animals eating … It's like an enormous restaurant, that's the way I see it.”

Well, I hope Dora can enjoying more years of eating than being eaten.

in my speedo

2011-11-04T16:46:00.000-06:00

My laguna is tamed.

So I believe in my most fevered moments. At least, it looks a bit domesticated.

When I returned to Melaque from my summer highland adventure, the water lettuce I had been battling to clear had returned with a vengeance. The photograph at the top of this post was my first view of my work undone.

Just as I was getting ready to clear my version of the Augean stables, the laguna was drained in anticipation of the hurricane that did not happen -- but the flooding that did.

The water lettuce simply settled on its bed of muck. I was tempted to wade in and start forking it out. That plan came to a quick end when I discovered the muck was at least knee-deep. A year’s inventory for The National Enquirer.

Instead, I waited for the day when the laguna would start filling, and, like some supply side dream, all lettuce would be lifted by the rising tide.

And I was correct. At least, about the water lettuce. Up from its grave it arose.

I say “grave,” because much of it had gone on to vegetable heaven (where rutabagas torment vegetarians). The effect was artistically interesting. Almost as if a topographical map of North America had melted on the surface of the inlet.

Schools of mysterious minnows went to work on the dead. But there were still plenty of green candidates waiting to be harvested.

When I moved down here three years ago, my brother convinced me to purchase a pair of Speedos. Not the swim suit. Water sport shoes.

After sitting in the closet unused all this time, I slipped them on, grabbed my pitch fork, and kept a sharp (but myopic) eye out for the return of my small crocodile, who has been prowling the inlet every night.

After almost a week of clearances, this is the result.

Not bad, if I do say so myself. There is still the odd plant here and there. As there should be.

Clearing the vegetation is a journey, not simply a one-shot project. Like Candide, the best I can hope to do is to tend my garden.

I suspect my Speedos will never dry.

pulling on the versatility chain

2011-11-03T10:54:00.001-06:00

Bernie Madoff must have come up with one final scheme before being trundled off to white collar confinement.

The Versatility Blogger Award.

Here is how it works. A blogger will nominate a fellow blogger for the award. More on the number nominated in a moment. But the criteria for nomination seem to be a bit vague.

It is an award, so we can assume that the nominator finds something interesting in the nominated blogs.

And there is reference to versatility, so we can also assume the blogs should show some form of flexibility. Unless, it is an inside joke and the adjective modifies the second noun, rather than the first. Sardonic irony in a postmodern world.

Well, I am a nominee. My pal blogger, Kelly, over at A Canuck in Cancun, saw fit to nominate me for the award. I thank her. I think.

A couple of years ago, fellow blogger Felipe tried a little experiment. He wrote about the obviously false statistic that there are one million Americans (or foreigners or left-handed dwarfs -- take your pick) living in Mexico. He then made up an equally false number and posted it on his blog to see if it gained currency on the internet. It did.

In that spirit, I accept this award.

The rules are simple. If nominated, the nominee must tell seven things that readers may not know about the blogger. And, having then bared his soul, the nominee must nominate 15 other blogs for the great honor of the playing confession on the web.

We once called these things chain letters. But this is the age of full frontal social networks. So, here goes.

Because we are discussing secrets, I thought I would open my old FBI file, and pass on some of that information. Of course, if you have read this blog for very long, you will know how to complete the sentences.

Subject:

1. Has been married X times. When asked by his then-girlfriend, X XX: "When the leaders of your planet sent you here, did they tell you people had feelings?," his answer was: "XX."

2. Was assigned as an XXXXX of the XXXXXXXXXXX XX XXX XXX XXXXX between 1973 and 1974 while living in Greece.

3. Became a member of the XXXXXXXXXX Party in 1967.

4. Was placed on an IRA watch list by MI5 in 1976. The accusation was XXXXX.

5. Will not eat any foods beginning with the letter X – unless he does.

6. Would like to write with the XXX of P.J. O’Rourke, but ends up sounding like the XXXXX XXXXXX of Andrea Dworkin.

7. Owns a favorite t-shirt with the slogan: “I make stuff up.”

So, there are the secrets.

And now, for my nominees for the Versatility Blogger Award. Kelly chose less than 15. Because there are no criteria for nomination, I am simply going to make stuff up as I go along. (You may have already caught that.)

I was simply going to nominate all of the blogs in my roll on the right. And there would have been nothing wrong with that. After all, they are there for a reason.

But I will stick with two:

honduras gumbo -- When Mexico gets me down, I realize I could be living in Honduras. Laurie’s faith always makes it better.

the unseen moon -- Felipe writes ten times better than most of us. And I know he will not allow himself to get sucked into this.

Please note, we are all “nominees.” Not “winners.”

I suspect it is a bit like everyone getting a little trophy in Third Grade soccer.

a shot in the dark

2011-11-02T20:15:00.000-06:00

dog days of death

2011-11-02T14:26:00.000-06:00

Christine -- my landlady, my friend, and sainted laundress -- told me this morning that she would be building a remembrance altar for two of her pets as part of the local Day of the Dead celebrations.

I will not bore you with the background of Day of the Dead. You can find far more interesting pieces elsewhere on the internet.

Because the grave of Luna, one of her pets, is in my courtyard, she wondered if I wanted to remember Professor Jiggs, as well. I took her up on her very kind offer.

So, there he is. In the snow. Where he was far more comfortable than here in Mexico. And I can relate to that. The tropical heat of the coast is not my favorite thing about spending a bit of time in Mexico.

But this is not about me. It is about Jiggs and his favorite hedgehog.

What I like most about the Day of the Dead is that it is a ritual that helps us to remember what is far too easy to forget. The people and pets who made us what we are today on our journey towards death.

And who have left their hand prints -- and paw prints -- on our hearts.

making stuff up

2011-10-31T12:02:00.000-06:00

Sleepless nights lead to late mornings.

I am sitting at my favorite table in La Rana (The Frog) waiting for a serviceable version of heuvos rancheros.

La Rana tends to be a hangout for Canadians – and the few Americans who venture to Melaque. (I was tempted to use “gringo,” but I am simply not in a mood to start another debate on whether the appellation applies to Canadians, or whether a gringo should ever use as term that the sensitive find derisive.)

But things are different this morning. The Frog is hosting Mexican diners. A realtor and his three children. And an older family of four. From Autlán. Famous as the home town of Juan Corona – the serial killer, not the inventor of Mexican beer.

I like the change. Despite the owner’s well-intentioned, but vaguely apartheidish, attempts to use flags to lure northern tourists, The Frog has a distinctly local flavor this morning. Instead of the usual leaden and flat consonants, the conversation is filled with a torrent of soft vowels. A language far more fitted to gossip and seduction than accounting and financial journals.

But accounting was under way. At least, with the realtor’s children. The oldest boy was cross-examining his father on the sweeter aspects of Halloween -- and wondering why such a blissful custom did not happen here.

It does. At least, a beachhead has been taken.

I see a few Halloween decorations about. Some children will show up at my gate tonight asking for candy (or money) in the few words of English they have learned. Never with costumes. As if they were government agents.

And the purists need not decry the loss of local customs. My little village does not indulge itself in many of the highland customs that entrance northern tourists -- such as, Day of the Dead. So, it is prime pickings for a holiday steeped in Celtic, rather than Hispanic, traditions.

While I listened to the boy Perry Mason his dad, I started thinking about what I would be doing if I still lived up north. To start with, I would not be eating breakfast at 10:30.

Had I not left Salem, I would have been at work for three hours. Probably in my second meeting of the day. Dispensing sage advice. And believing that all of it actually added up to something meaningful. An existentialist void wearing a Yankee mask of purpose.

But there would also be people. Friends. Acquaintances. Ready to share dinner at El Gaucho. With a good story or two. Or, even better, a lie.

But my self-indulgent reverie has come to an end.

My plate is empty, the bill has arrived -- and the laguna is still filled with water cabbage.

My Sisyphean attentions are needed elsewhere.

clocking my time

2011-10-30T02:01:00.004-06:00

My word to myself is not very good.

I told myself I was not going to waste space by writing about the end of Mexican daylight saving time. After all, it is not very blogworthy, it happens every year.

But here I am, at the official 2 AM changing point, just itching to switch my bedside clock back one hour. Of course, I am up at this time almost every night. And, yes I know, I can do it anytime. But you know -- I am a sucker for official acts.

The only news is the same as last October. Mexico gets its hour back tonight. Canada and The States will not get theirs for another week. So, my contacts up north will once again be time challenged.

OK. I changed the clock. Now I am going to sleep for an extra hour.

dogs and fairies

2011-10-29T08:08:00.002-05:00

Once upon a time --

A beautiful princess named -- oh, let’s call her Diane -- lived in a kingdom far away in The Great Frozen North. Beautiful, that is, in a biker bar waitress sense.

She was destined to live a life as happily ever after as any princess could live in a land where birds helped with the housework and dogs were wise counselors.

But, as in all tales of this sort, an older woman showed up. Miffed about a misdirected party invitation or upset about ingenue beauty, we will never know.

What we do know is that poor Princess Diane found herself waking up in a tropical land where she could not speak the language. And where, what she called “those people,” did not treat animals as she knew they should be treated.

What had seemed to be sensitivity in The Great Frozen North, in her exile, suddenly seemed like self-righteousness. She alone needed to set right the imbalance between people who were not nice to animals.

So, the princess who would have tossed in bed with the presence of a pea, changed herself into a thief. Someone is threatening a dog with a stick? Steal it. Or what appears to be a starving puppy? Steal it. Or someone is training a fighting cock? Buy it.

Pretty soon she was a princess with a menagerie of animals -- none of whom could help her with her chores or advise her on her next step. So, she started doling out animals to people she hoped were as sensitive as she thought herself to be.

Of course, they weren’t. It is one of the delusions of self-righteousness. Being nice is nowhere near the same thing as being good.

And she knew things had come full circle when she stole two kittens and had to leave them stuffed in a box at the front door of a woman who did know the difference between being nice and being good -- and doing the right thing.

When last seen, poor Princess Diane was dressed in a black cloak carrying an apple looking for Snow White.

Because today’s princess is merely tomorrow’s sorceress.

Note: The photograph at the top of this post was shot by Nancy Dardarian and posted on her blog: Countdown to Mexico. It has set on my desktop for months waiting for just the right story. And here it is.

languid laguna

2011-10-28T00:43:00.006-05:00

The laguna is starting to fill.

And it is its own performance art.

Not the type that upsets taxpayers when they discover their hard-earned money has been shelled out to a woman smeared in chocolate syrup reciting her own poetry translated into Urdu.

Nope. The natural kind.

This year the laguna was opened to the sea to mitigate the flood damage that was expected from the recent tropical storm. It worked. To a degree. If it had breached on its own, the flooding would have been far worse.

As a result of The Great Flush, the laguna’s character took on a Jekyll-Hyde switch. Though it is hard to tell which is which.

With the water went the water hyacinth and water cabbage in the main channel. And all sorts of garbage, snakes, spiders, crabs, and fish. Maybe even the odd crocodile.

For the crocodiles, the drain was a boon. They had their own beach free from human bother.

But that is all gone. The water is rising. And things are returning to normal. The crocodiles are now destined to skulk through the tule.

Without its hyacinth-cabbage cover, the water surface reflects the natural beauty parade around its shore.

And the wildlife is returning. Some of them new to me, like this ringed Kingfisher doing a credible Woody Woodpecker impersonation. A shot that somehow reminds me of my friend Howard Platt and how much I miss him at moments like this.

Or this great Egret. The Norma Desmond of the waders.

Even this Everglades Kite is new. I am accustomed to seeing the male, but I think this is the first time I noticed the female. Maybe I was wrong about him being a rogue loner. He may not be the compatriot I thought he was.

Even my little inlet is coming back to life. With a little more water, I may be able to gather up the dead cabbage and snag the living rafts.

It would be nice to start a new cycle with a clean surface. Before my friend the crocodile returns in full residence.

eve should have tried this

2011-10-27T16:45:00.000-05:00

Sour.

Odd word that.

On its own, it smacks of pinch-nosed Puritans clunking their way through Plymouth Colony in their not-so-comfortable shoes constantly worried about the state of their salvation while condemning anyone who was having the semblance of a good time.

It is no coincidence that dour and sour are one consonant away from being Castor and Pollux.

But marry up that word with a tasty noun, and the little tug boat adjective pushes its noun into the heart of hedonism.

Sour cream, for instance. (For a recent take on that union take a look at Felipe's Avocados and sour cream.) The very essence of ambrosia.

But some marriages are far more complex than others -- the Windsors spring to mind. As does sour orange.

I have one. A sour orange tree, that is. It is rather stunted due to the shade thrown by the paternalistic Flamboyant tree. But it survives to throw its fruit.

When unripe, the oranges could be substituted for limes. They are that acidic. When ripe, they have a bit of sweetness. Not much. About the same measure you would expect to find in Joan Crawford's maternal well.

For the past two seasons, the oranges have gone to waste. And that is too bad. When I was in Oregon, I used them in my Cuban dishes. There was no reason to let the harvest rot.

Making a Cuban marinade is easy. Sour oranges. Garlic (lots of garlic). A bit of vinegar. And a nice mixture of fresh ground black pepper, oregano, and cumin. Swooshed together in an overnight bath for the chosen meat.

The marinade is not very particular. Beef. Pork. Chicken. They all work well with a marinade that is not the least bit subtle.

Baking is the preferred method for most recipes. But I was in a fusion mood the other night. Stir fried chicken Cubano sounded just about right.

One reason I like stir fry is that I get to grab fresh vegetables at the market. Tomatoes. Carrots. Little zucchini. Onion. Serrano peppers.

Somewhere along the line I heard the voice of my friend Carrol. She once told me that men have a tendency to misread the effect of ingredients on each other. To that I plead guilty. I once made a salad dressing with mint and basil. The combination was a disaster. I would have been better using essence of lawn grass.

In this instance, the combination was not bad -- even though the acid in the marinade and the acid in the tomatoes did create an interesting taste choreography.

Poured over the top of multicolored farfalle, there was nothing understated for either the tongue or the eye. One of those experiments that could have easily ended up in the trash can as on the dinner platter. In this case, it was a success -- rather than a learning experience.

two worlds -- one me

2011-10-25T18:24:00.000-05:00

Reality is not absolute. It is relative.

Or so I have come to believe from leading my life -- and then reading about that life as perceived by people who are not here.

Despite what you may be thinking, I am not about to launch into the relationship between time and quantum physics. Michael Crichton already did that -- to the cost of his reputation.

Almost every expatriate in Mexico has a local computer message board. Ours is called TomZap. And an active board it is. Made up of Mexican citizens, full-time expatriates, part-time visitors, and people who wish they could be counted amongst any of the other three groups.

The big topic recently, of course, has been hurricane Jova, its effects, and aftermath.

As you know from reading my posts, I am very pleased with how quickly the residents of Melaque shook off the effects of the flooding the town experienced. Within days, the shops and streets in the business districts were clean. And everything was about as normal as things can be in our little village once the usual stream of commerce was reconnected.

But to read the comments on TomZap, you would be inclined to believe that a large portion of our town had suffered devastating, unrecoverable damage.

Now, I know much of that comes from the feeling of helplessness that people feel when things or people they like are facing what seems to be tragedy of Shakespearean proportions. I understand the sentiments. Our congregation felt the same way about our pastor’s family and the other people who were battered and baptized by the Red River earlier this year.

Today I decided to try a little experiment. I drove out to the Manzanillo airport to imagine I was one of the winter crowd arriving after my departure last March. What I knew about the flood was what I read on TomZap.

I would not have been shocked by anything at the airport. There are a few missing tiles on the front of the airport's overhang. But work is underway. Nothing even noteworthy.

On the 2 mile drive to the highway, everything looked as it should. It is a natural wetland -- and it is wet. But about halfway to the highway, this field appears.

To the uninitiated eye, it looks like an empty field. But it is supposed to be (and was before the flood) filled with truck farm crops. Usually peppers. It now looks as out of place as a missing tooth in Kate Moss’s smile.

And then, almost to the intersection, things start looking a bit more Irwin Allen-ish. Where there was once a cloverleaf intersection, there is now a collapsed highway ramp. That is the photograph at the top of this post.

The river that lost the construction-wrenching water is over a mile away from the ramp. Not surprisingly, there was plenty of flood damage the closer I got to the river.

This jumble of flotsam was once an Army checkpoint on the river border to Jalisco. Where surly young soldiers once asked for papers. there are toppled trees.

Repair teams have done a marvelous job of cleaning up the area and repairing the several hundred feet or road that was simply washed away.

And this is where all of that water was supposed to stay -- the river between the states of Jalisco and Colima. I apologize for the “airplane window” view, but I was driving and shooting at the same time.

Much to my surprise, Cihuatlan, the equivalent of our county seat, was open for business. It was a surprise because even with our normal summer rains, Cihuatlan’s streets are choked with sand.

Cihuatlan suffers the same issue as New Orleans. Its geography recurringly argues against a city being there. In Cihuatlan’s case, it is its presence on a narrow floodplain below steep hills and above a wandering river.

In the Jova flood, tons of sand washed down the hills choking the streets while the river rose flooding the city. What the river did not wash away was buried in a combination of sand and silt that needed to be removed before it hardened into an almost concrete formation.

And removed it was. Actually, the sand gets removed every time there is a rain -- right back to the top of the hill from whence it came. President Obama may want to take note. Cihuatlan has its own seasonal stimulus built into its sand heaps.

But our recently arrived visitors would see none of that. What they would see are the same piles of sand (though they are a bit higher and more numerous) awaiting transport to the top of the hill -- just like any other year.

Once I left town on the way to Melaque, it was possible to see what the river did on the Jalisco side of the floodplain. There are hectares of coconut plantations. And under the palms are banana plants. A very clever use of Mexico’s scarce agricultural space.

The problem is that most of the banana plants are now gone. Snapped off by the flow of the flood water.

So, if the new arrivals are looking for signs of bad weather, they will find them.

On the other hand, they will also discover that Melaque is ready for them. The San Patricio plaza was under water and covered by mud just a few days ago. It is now ready to receive its winter visitors.

Was the flood bad? You bet it was. And once the grand gesture of immediate charity is done, people will start forgetting that there is an ongoing economic issue.

This area lives off of tourists and agriculture. The flood just stripped the area of a full cycle of crops. They are gone. And so is the revenue that would have come from those crops.

Like most middle income nations, Mexico’s revenue flow is lightly balanced. It will take some time to get back into a regular cycle.

And that is why the tourists that come to Melaque offer some of the best opportunities to help make up some of that revenue. I intend to eat out more often and to leave a bit more folding money on the table as tips.

After all, 20% is a real easy calculation for my ever-aging mind. A small price to pay for a view like this.

sweat on the sand

2011-10-22T15:06:00.000-05:00

It is hot in Melaque.

No. That's not correct. It should be hot in Melaque. This is October.

Melaque has two seasons. Hot and unbearably hot.

Hot runs from October through April. Unbearably hot from May through September -- with moments of just hot when the rains arrive.

The calendar says the hot season should be here. The arrival of northern short-term tourists underlines the expectation. It is October and the voice of the Canadian is heard throughout the land.

But it is still unbearably hot. As I draft this post, the temperature is 90 degrees. The humidity is 70%. There are enough drops of sweat on my reporter’s notepad to confuse it with a tween girl’s diary.

One of the benefits of our recent storm was a period of cool weather. But the price for comfort was far too high. I have already written about the flooding and the laundry project Christine initiated (laundress to the stars). The reappearance of the sun has helped us get loads of laundry dry and back to their owners. It appears that project is drawing to an end.

While picking up laundry, I noticed most of the homes had not yet been cleared of mud. That got me to thinking of the neighbors of our new church palapa (which is looking more and more like a finished building). They suffered some of the worst flooding -- at least, from the force of the water.

Tom, our summer pastor, and I decided to survey the neighbors to see if they needed any help cleaning out their homes. Actually, Tom did the talking. His Spanish and sensitivity for Mexican culture made him the obvious spokesman.

It turned out that all of them had cleaned up their places and were back to normal. Well, as normal as they could be with the loss of refrigerators and stoves.

We did discover, though, just how lightly balanced the Melaque economy is. Most of the families had work. But they could not work during the flood. As a result, most of them were running short of food for their families.

Tom arranged to purchase food from a local wholesaler. To get as many food bags as possible, he cut a couple of items off of the list. The wholesaler volunteered to put the bags together for us -- and then donated the items that we had removed from our list.

That is Tom (at the top of this post) standing next to the Shiftless Escape with the bounty we were about to distribute. I took the photograph near the food wholesaler warehouse. But, If you look closely on the right, you will see a woman on a direct course to ask for one of the food bags.

Tom, Rosa (a Spanish-speaking member of our congregation), and I distributed a bag each to the neighbors of our church building. The moment the truck showed up in the neighborhood, people were in the streets asking for bags. But we requested them to return to their homes. It was easier for us to be certain we had placed at least one bag at each home that way.

The laundry and food bag projects got me thinking about my dislike of hot weather. For me, a perfect day is 55 degrees, overcast, with a nice light drizzle. But I can tolerate a lot when it comes to the weather.

And then I felt rather petty when I remembered my neighbors. They had lost almost everything when their homes were flooded. But they accepted the fact that the flood was over and they now needed to return to their lives. All they needed was a bit of food to get on with it.

Between laundry deliveries today, I stopped for lunch at Señor Froy’s -- one of my favorite beach restaurants. Froy lost part of his palapa in the wind storm. But it is fixed, and he is back in operation.

As I sat there looking at his new roof and the cleaned-up beach, I realized just how nice it is to simply sit and enjoy this beautiful part of Mexico.

And weather is not going to get in my way of doing that.

back for a moment

2011-10-19T19:19:00.000-05:00

I took a short break from laundry today to work with my church canvassing our new neighbors to determine how they were doing after the flooding of their homes.

To my surprise, they had all moved back in. Cleaning up with the few resources they had available.

I was surprised because the neighborhood where we have been picking up laundry is still steeped in mud. Part of that is due to the topography. The mud has settled in low-lying areas.

But the neighborhood behind our new church palapa received some of the most forceful flooding. Even so, they were up and running -- with one exception. Food.

The President of the Municipality (some compare the office to a mayor, but it seems more like the chairman of a county board of commissioners to me) came through the neighborhood along with the Army -- handing out Red Cross food boxes. But the contents were rather limited.

The church will put together food boxes tomorrow to get more food into the hands -- and stomachs -- of our neighbors.

Overall, Melaque seems to be on its feet again. But there are nagging symbols that remind us not everything is quite operating as it should.

Wednesday is tianguis day in Melaque. The traveling open-air market that always reminds me of a garage sale on steroids.

On a normal Wednesday, the tables stretch for five continuous blocks in the street -- with a tarp covering to provide shade from what is still a relentless sun.

But, not today. There were a few lone tables. Some under tarps. Some in the sun.

And there is an irony there. The tianguis provide exactly the type of items that people who have been through a flood need. But there were no shoppers. When you cannot afford to buy food, you cannot afford to buy clothes. Even used clothes.

And thus the laundry project continues.

But there was one symbol of change. The palms are being laid on the palapa roof. Even though the road in front of the new building is still a bit difficult to traverse (see the photograph at the top of the post), it appears the roof on the palapa will soon be completed.

I hope when it is, our neighbors will also be back on their feet. With full bellies and laundered clothes.

washed up

2011-10-18T14:06:00.000-05:00

I will probably be off line for a couple of days.

I say "probably" because I have no idea how long the recovery projects are going to take. And I simply do not feel very comfortable photographing people's homes when they are not at their best.

So, just talk amongst yourself until I get back.

laundress to the stars

2011-10-17T16:07:00.000-05:00

Small gestures often have big consequences.

Even though Melaque did not suffer much wind or surf damage, it did take a water hit. For a day, Melaque was an island. We had our own moat between us and the world. Great for a siege. Lousy for life.

But that moat turned people from neighbors to refugees. Even one of the hurricane shelters was flooded out.

I have been really proud of the Mexican authorities when my utilities were quickly restored. To a degree, I was feeling rather smug until I discovered that over 100 people (half of them children) from the flooded area were still living in a shelter. Without food.

I believe the food situation is under control. But we are not back to normal.

The reason the families are still in the shelter is the condition of their homes. The flood took their possessions and exchanged them for rooms filled with mud.

During these crises it is very easy to get overwhelmed with the amount of help that is needed and where to extend assistance.

My landlady Christine is not a woman to get overwhelmed. She is manages property and has the problem-solving skills of a Fortune 500 CEO.

Four years ago, Melaque was hit with a similar flood. She volunteered to pick up and launder clothes and bedding from people who had been flooded out of their homes. It relieved the families of one thing. But a very meaningful thing. Mexicans are one of the neatest people I know.

Last week Christine immediately drove to the flooded area and started taking bundle after bundle of clothes to her house where she rinsed off mud, washed the clothes, dried them, folded them, and returned them to the owners. When I say she rinsed off mud, it was as if she had created an alluvial flood plain in her driveway.

The need was so great, she enlisted a few volunteers to assist her.

I accompanied her today to return laundry and to pick up more dirty clothes. I started this post with the line: “Small gestures often have big consequences.” That is not rank sentimentality. It is reality.

When Christine returned the clothes, the young wife receiving them was fighting back tears of gratitude. But she did not hold back on thanks. As a rule, Mexicans do not indulge in the torrent of formulaic thanks that we expect up north. But this young woman -- and her husband --- allowed her heart to flow.

While we were standing there, an elderly woman with a crude walking staff rushed up to us and with great animation asked for our help. It was easy to see why. She had a huge pile of laundry that she could not clean because her house still needed to be demudded.

Even as we drove away we had to stop because people came running behind us asking if we could help.

Christine is one of those people who seldom sees credit for the work she does, And that is fine with her. What she does, she does out of love for her community and her neighbors.

And she does not do it for the thanks. But it would have taken a rather cold heart not be moved by the relief and gratitude that Christine’s small gesture created in that neighborhood.

She may only be doing laundry. But she is doing it for the survivors -- the stars -- of this storm.

And what more could any of us ask?

braking up is hard to do

2011-10-15T14:51:00.000-05:00

I have been laying rubber.

Not like we once did in the 60s. With traffic signals acting as drag lights.

Nope. This rubber is being laid right in my courtyard. And my truck is going nowhere.

Whenever I think I have cataloged all of the things that happened around here in the hurricane, I find something new. After all, it took me over a year to realize I had lost a tool kit during my first truck break-in.

Yesterday I went out to the truck to drive over to Jaluco to have breakfast with my friend John. I did the usual routine. Unlocked and opened the gate. Started the engine. Disengaged the parking brake.

I shifted the transmission into drive and barely moved the accelerator. Getting through the gate is a tight squeeze. Warp drive is not recommended when leaving the space port.

Nothing. No movement. I gave the truck more gas. Nothing. It was as if a log was blocking me.

Into reverse went the truck. Same thing. Of course, my first impression was that the transmission had expired in its sleep -- rather than on a steep and winding road.

But, this is the age of hope where change is touted. So, I looked under the truck half expecting to find a body. But nothing.

Back into the truck I went. The obvious solution was the force of the wind on the brakes had forced them into a temporary lock mode.

I revved the engine in drive. And the truck moved. Or, rather, it dragged. The front wheels were moving. But the rear was being dragged along. It reminded me of poor Professor Jiggs when his back legs were atrophying.

Moving forward did not break loose the brakes. Neither did backing up. I tried the same maneuver twice to no avail. And, rather than wear the rear tires through, I gave up.

I walked up to my mechanic’s shop to explain the problem. He said he could help and would stop by the house as soon as he finished painting a large tanker trailer. But he would be there before dark.

He wasn’t.

I just talked with him. The trailer is only about half painted. But he will be at the house around five or six this afternoon.

I have nowhere to go in particular. The highway to Manzanillo is still washed out, but a temporary road is being built. Even so, who needs to go to Manzanillo?

Mentioning Jiggs reminds me how I waited too long to relieve him of his suffering. Maybe it is about time to make the hard decision on behalf of the Shiftless Escape.

After all, falling coconut palms did not turn out to be a very good (or successful) way to dispatch it.

she cleans up right purdy

2011-10-14T00:06:00.002-05:00

On Thursday afternoon I took a swing through Villa Obregon and San Patricio to see how the cleanup effort is going.

Quite well.

Over the years, I have noticed that my north of the border colleagues seem to have fallen into a rather neurotic state whenever nature gets a bit rough. Maybe most Americans and Canadians are not as emotionally distraught as the people interviewed on the nightly news.

I know that is not how my Mexican neighbors react. The areas of town that flooded were lined with household furnishings that families had brought out to discard or to dry in the sun.

No theatrics. No drama queens. Just people getting on with their lives.

And, no, I do not have any photographs. They may not be showing much emotion, but I was not there to document personal losses.

What I did photograph is the street in front of the new church palapa. You may recall it was a river just a day ago. It is dry now. But the force of the rain stripped the street down to the sewer and water lines. Our palapa may be done by early November. But it will be a bit tough getting there.

But everywhere I went, the cleanup was well under way.

Basic building supplies were delivered to this house near Ava’s to repair a damaged roof.

I stopped by Hawaii (my favorite grocery store) because I heard a lot of water had entered the premises. It had. Alex and his crew were mopping up mud and water. But he had the forethought to get some of the merchandise off of the bottom shelves before it was damaged.

The Oxxo did not do that. They taped their windows against the wind (an absolutely ineffective method to prevent breakage), but failed to move their merchandise. A good example of how local business owners often have better street sense.

This is the mud in front of the Oxxo store. It is everywhere. Fortunately, the sun is out to dry the mud and turn it into new layers to be dusted out of homes. Unfortunately, the sun is out and the humidity has returned. At least, the storm brought two or three cool evenings to us.

Not even the Catholic church in San Patricio escaped the flooding. The church still had a couple inches of water in it when I took this photograph.

And the sea. The Pacific Ocean is doing its best impression of Lake Pátzcuaro. The water is so murky it looks as if it is just one step away from being shilled by Bill Cosby.

And then there are the inadvertent moments that make me laugh loud enough that the neighbors of this sign looked over and started laughing along with me. They knew exactly what was funny.

If you look beyond the sign, what was once the laguna at the north end of Villa Obregon is now a gully of sand, gravel, and various trash items. Nary a crocodile to be seen.

Speaking of crocodiles, I received a couple of emails asking if I had seen my local guy (or gal). I hadn’t. My inlet is still dry. But as I walked along the main channel, I spotted a crocodile. Then two. Three. Four. That is the most I have ever seen in such a small area.

But, they are out there. Watching us.

you light up my life

2011-10-13T17:15:00.000-05:00

Hi. My name is Steve. And I’m an addict.

An electronic addict -- that is.

I have seen studies that show we moderns can get as much thrill out of hearing a “you’ve got email notice” as they do from cocaine and sex. I am rather skeptical of this type of study. There is usually something untoward going on with my tax dollars. But the scientists may be on to something here.

At least two days before the hurricane was predicted to set its landing gear in Melaque, CFE (the power company) turned off our electricity. No lights. No computer. No internet.

I was stuck in the dark with the bit of power my batteries would provide to my Kindle, mobile telephone, and flashlight.

It was an odd feeling. As if I had been cut from the world -- because I could not get immediate electronic gratification.

I have been here before. In the early 1970s I lived in Greece. The only communication I had with family and friends was the mail. (It may be one reason I still get excited just walking into a post office.) But the mail was adequate – even when it took a week or two to receive a letter or package.

But we now live in a far more immediate world. Even though I knew the power was going to go out, I felt a chill when suddenly everything went dark and still. Almost as if I had died. And then the power came back on. Went off. Back on. And then off. Finally off.

What was once a bright little living womb was now black. I read a brief chapter on my Kindle. Rationing out the battery for -- I had no idea how long.

The refrigerator became the Especially Holy Place -- to be entered only once a day. And because there was no power to pump water to the roof, the toilet played its part as a much-used reservoir and the shower a desert.

I assumed the worst. That power would be out for at least a week.

I was wrong. As you already know. In the early evening (less than 20 hours later), the lamp I had left turned on to herald our reentry into the modern world came on.

And the refrigerator. And the water pump. And my blessed computer and its priest the internet.

I have had some pleasant experiences in my life (in fact, my life has been almost nothing but pleasant experiences). But hearing the whir of electric motors is near the top of my list.

I am an addict.

And the CFE workers are my suppliers.

At least, I have made it to the first step.

reporting for duty

2011-10-12T20:04:00.000-05:00

OK. I'm back.

Well, I never went anywhere -- as you know. But the electricity was just restored. And that puts me back in contact with the rest of you.

As it turned out, Jova is right up there in the Irene category. Lots of hype (for our area). Not much wind. But lots of water.

We lost power last night around 10 or so. The rumor is that the electrical company turned it off to avoid injuries when lines started dropping. I don’t know if that is true or not. It is just what I heard.

Apparently, the storm passed north of us. Giving us a few gusts of wind. When I got up this morning, this is what my garden looked like. Some debris, but not as much damage as I had expected.

I took a quick walk around the neighborhood. Not everyone was as lucky as I. Some good-sized trees were toppled. Taking power lines (fortunately, dead) with them. And often on top of cars. (Who parks their car under a tree when a wind storm is on the way?)

But today’s theme was not wind. It was water.

Between the main highway and the beach, there is a very noticeable dip. A dip that water seeks out with a vengeance.

I walked up that way to see how the church palapa frame fared. It seems to have survived without noticeable damage. But the street in front of the property had turned into a chocolate pudding river. I should add, a very fast-moving pudding.

Most of the houses in that area were flooded. I retreated only when we received another torrent of rain. Rain that is still falling this evening.

Kim of Boston asked me to post a post-hurricane photograph of the beach from the same spot as two days ago. That spot is no longer there.

Here is my best attempt.

a few pre-storm tidbits

2011-10-11T15:11:00.000-05:00

I drove around the village this morning to see how the storm preparations were proceeding -- and in the hopes I could accomplish a few last minute chores.

What I most wanted was a grilled chicken. Actually, four. One for me. One for the tenants upstairs. And one each for my neighbors next to me and across the street. I thought we could all do with a bit of animal protein to comfort ourselves.

It was a nice idea. But it was not to be. My favorite chicken stand was closed. As you can see in the photograph at the top of this post. As were all of the other restaurants around town. I guess they thought their patrons would be dealing with their own food this afternoon.

If you look at the bicycle in the photograph, you can see that we have been getting a bit of rain. Enough to saturate the ground.

In some places, that could be bad. I drove through one of the poorest areas of Villa Obregon. The roads there are almost impassable. Just a little more water will flood those homes.

Even though the restaurants were closed, the pharmacies were open. So, I stocked up on a month’s worth of blood pressure medicine.

But it is good that I took care of my mobile telephone issues yesterday. The Telcel shop is closed -- along with its neighbors.

If you need a few food items, our local Kiosko is doubly prepared. With plywood to protect the windows -- and with an open sign to welcome shoppers.

I mentioned earlier that Melaque is filled with emergency vehicles. I took this shot of trucks filled with emergency supplies, and a police vehicle and San Patricio’s emergency warning system in the background.

Due to the road construction, there is only one good road left to travel between Villa Obregon and San Patricio. When I left the house, a tree had fallen across it. That seemed ironic. No wind, yet. But trees are falling. I assume from too much surface water.

When I returned, this is what I found. People who make fun of Mexican efficiency need to see more examples like this. In less than an hour, the tree was cut up, the debris cleared, and traffic was flowing again. (And, yes, the left side of the photograph is “the good road.”)

When I got up this morning, the water in my inlet was gone. Someone must have breached the dunes to the ocean. Or the waves did it. They have been quite active.

When I went to the beach, I took the photograph below in about the same position as yesterday. You can see all of the water hyacinth that has washed up on shore. Otherwise, we just wait for the sea and the wind to sculpt our lives.