The bouquet, the cake, the handcuffs...

 This morning I read in Expreso, my favorite Sonora newspaper, that May 31 is Worldwide Day Without Smoking (Día Mundial Sin Fumar). Next to the article is an ad for three new columnists at the paper, including one Señor Marín, who must have thought a scrim of smoke would lend panache to his image. 


There was another article about an undocumented Mexican in San Diego who suffered brain damage by electrical discharge after being subdued by 20 border patrol officers. NOT funny. But since it's June, the Wedding Month,  here's a tidbit gleaned from the article that tickled me: I learned that esposas are not only wives but handcuffs.

Learning to read, talk, think, dream and sing in Spanish

 Art Goddess Angela Hayden created this "Spanish Brainstorming Poster" which has inspired me to start working on one of my own, using the words I get online everyday via email. Of course, I have to also use each new word. "Use it or lose it," they say...

So I'm out in my little garden this morning trimming back the pink oleander hedge which threatens to take over, and translating in my mind how I'll explain to the Jorge the gardener (who'd prune to the ground if I let him)  that I want it to grow taller (quiero más alta el seto vivo)  instead of wider (menos ancho) because I like the shade of a tall hedge but don't want to sacrifice lateral space where I could be growing shade-loving plants.


I do a lot of mental translating, whether it has a purpose, like talking to Jorge, or just playing around in my mind. It's good for the little gray cells, and has become such a habit after five years I couldn't stop if I wanted to. Sometimes I dream in Spanish! The payoff is that I'm finding it easier to make myself understood, and make small talk, which sometimes leads to in-depth conversations with really patient amigos. When I'm on a roll I  just open my mouth and out it comes, más o menos. But it doesn't take long to get stuck, and then I'm left tongue-tied.


My favorite Spanish-language blogger, Alejandra, has stopped posting for the past few months (I miss you, Ale!) But today someone I'd never encountered before commented on my Facebook page and when I followed back to his blog I found that Josepipino62 is bilingual and apparently, like me, appreciates a good cup of coffee. His blog is brand new and I'm only his second follower. Being an hombre muy guapo, I'm sure he'll collect more very soon, mostly female. Reading Spanish blogs is a great exercise in comprehension, plus a chance to write comments that I can only hope will be understood and not be too misleading in their meaning.  I don't mind providing a good laugh, but it would be helpful if they set me straight, once they recover from their hilarity. I'd like to learn something from it.


This afternoon our friend the Mexican guitarist, D, is coming over to play with the Capt and me, and I'm hoping to persuade the guys to help me record a backing track for a Spanish song I'm learning, called "Vivir Sin Aire." The chords are simple and they can make it sound a lot better than I do with my wooden fingers. Once I have it on a disk, I can play rhythm and sing with it. Learning Spanish lyrics is challenge enough without trying to play fancy licks at the same time.


So the Capt is going to bake a batch of cookies and I'll a pitcher of jamaica tea for our guest. But now I've got to go find Jorge and ask him to bring over his carretilla (wheelbarrow) to cart away all these oleander clippings. My yard is looking bigger already!

Adios, Dennis Hopper

"Like all artists I want to cheat death a little and contribute something to the next generation."(Dennis Hopper, 1997)


Today actor Hopper died at age 74 in Venice, CA. He probably wouldn't appreciate this, but I always thought his best role was in Easy Rider.

At a loss for words

What is there to blog about, when the most excitement to be had around here is the opening of the new Sam's Cloob 20 minutes away? Guaymas has hit the big time now. Seriously, in the three days since it opened they've had mobs of shoppers, mostly Mexican. I'm not sure how much buying was being done by private individuals, considering the restaurant-size containers much of the food came in.

To avoid the crowds we went to investigate Sam's at opening time, 7:30am, when it's a lot cooler and quieter, and the building casts a nice shadow over the front parking spaces so we could take the dogs with us. I did get a new electric pencil sharpener, something I've wanted for months. Sacapuntas electricos, is what you look for if you want to buy one: from sacar, to bring out, and punto or point. The Capt was thrilled with his giant bag of pancake mix. But syrup came in a bottle that would probably have served the whole neighborhood for a month, so we passed on that.

The Capt has installed a new door on the music room, so all that's left is glass brick and surface finishing. It was a long hard job, made more complicated when we bought the wrong size door and had to take it back, but he learned a lot in the process and it's going to look splendid when it's finished.

In other news, my tomato plants are all blooming and I'm hoping to start seeing fruit in another couple of weeks. Grape tomatoes, jelly bean tomatoes, sweet and intense. I don't try to grow the big beefsteak ones since I'm using containers. 

Our local exchange library, where I volunteer every Friday, has lost another staff member after she sold her house and packed up to move to Yuma. The upside was that she gave me four houseplants, which I'm going to try to keep alive and flourishing. The day she announced she was leaving, another woman came in and volunteered, a sign our enterprise is blessed by a higher power, wouldn't you say? We'll try to keep it open at least through July, then close until October when the snowbirds start returning.

I've been striking gold at the library in terms of book finds. Just finished the newest Elmore Leonard, found a Cormack McCarthy and a Tony Hillerman I hadn't read, and discovered an early edition of a little-known memoir by a gringa journalist from Boston who married a Mexican, lived in Monterrey and later in Cuernavaca. Elizabeth Borton de Treviño's "My Heart Lies South" is one of a series of three memoirs, well worth the read for its details about Mexican culture and values in the 1940s and 50s. Some of the standards and rules are recognizable and still apply, others are only a memory, but many times I found myself beginning to understand concepts that had previously baffled me. Her daunting experience with the 40's-era post office when she was trying to receive a gift package mailed to her from the States made me glad some things have changed.

Hurricane season doesn't begin in earnest for another few weeks, but the first tropical storm advisory for the Pacific was issued last night, but Mark at Ocean Camp, the local weather oracles, is trying to organize a "community-wide education program" so we can learn some emergency preparedness skills from our experience with Tropical Storm Jimena, the worst storm this area has experienced in 40 years. Usually our town doesn't even get rain when it's forecast; we can see clouds and lightning in the distance but precipitation goes elsewhere. We get lulled into thinking nothing can happen here, we go out and enjoy the quickening storm winds and the last thing on our minds is preparedness. "Bring it on," I joked last year as I watched the waves that preceded Jimena's 36 hours of rain.

A little raptor rapture

It all started with a pair of red-tailed hawks doing what came naturally, only instead of settling in some sylvan Oregon country treetop, these tough little guys built their nest on the fire escape of a building in Portland. And Big Brother in the form of the WBG-Audobon webcam trained an electronic eye on them from the moment their three chicks were born.

My Oregon antique dealer friend Sue sent me the link, and invited me to watch this little family grow up, at least to the point where the chicks were ready to fly out of the nest. Right, I thought, this is interesting but checking in on them every day would be a lot like watching grass grow. I'm a busy woman, you know. So I didn't see them squabbling over a bit of food when they were fuzzy chick-like creatures.

But then a few days ago Sue let me know that the runt of the nest had died, as we suspected he might because the parents were definitely favoring his two more robust sibs.  I was surprised at how sad I felt, even though the littlest hawk probably had Trichomoniasis, a bird disease common among pigeons that would have shortened his life anyway. The parents, being the practical unemotional type, promptly fed him to his nestmates.


Already almost the size of the parents, the two survivors, Sue reports, are now very busy preening their flight feathers for the big day, when they're going to get their first flying lesson. Big Brother won't be catching all their aerial antics, only their tentative takeoffs and breathless "Woo hoo, I made it!" landings, but it should still be interesting. Sue might be away from her computer on the big day, so I promised to keep an eye on them and let her know how it went. Here's the link for the live webcam feed, if you'd like to join me.


The webcam also won't be able to follow the babies when they adapt to flight, learn to hunt and survive. The first year is the hardest, according to the Audubon Society, and around 60% of red-tail fledglings don't make it.


All this brought back a song I remember my long-departed friend Kate Wolf sing years ago, and when I looked it up, there it was.

Cheers for my home town

This is for those who are curious about Guaymas and San Carlos (which is actually considered a 'burb of Guaymas). Local videographer Abraham Castro has produced a video that presents the Guaymas area at its absolute best. It was created as a marketing tool to encourage more cruise ships, and if anything can accomplish that, Abraham has done it.  Watching it gave me a thrill, made me want to cheer...hey, folks, this is my home town!


Move over Mazatlan!  If I'd never been here, this vid would have been enough to get me on my way. Makes me want to go out and make fuller use of the facilities. Horses galloping on the beach, Carnivale parades, yummy food, bikinis, folklorico, crafts, dolphins, beach sunsets, boating...it's all here. They even caught the golf course when it was green!



I've seen a Mazatlan video, supplied by Nancy, also hugely impressive. Anybody else got one for their area that really shows it off? Wanna share?

What goes around...

A new Arizona law, SB 1070, requires police officers to detain anyone they suspect of being in the US illegally, and makes it a misdemeanor to be without proper identification papers when detained by law enforcers.

AZ governor Janet Brewer then followed up this week by signing a bill banning ethnic studies, specifically classes designed for students of particular ethnic groups.

Protests from San Francisco to Boston, include most recently a boycott by Los Angeles city council on business with Arizona. Concerned about the economic fallout, both Tucson and Flagstaff city councils are suing the state.  But at the same time nine other state legislatures are considering similar laws cracking down on illegal immigrants.

And in downtown Guaymas this banner has been displayed by PAN, one of the two major political parties, calling for Guaymas residents not to visit Arizona, and to rebuff the anti-immigration law.

In honor of Lena Horne

...who left this world yesterday, May 9, at 92. This is her sassy interpretation of "I'm Glad I'm Not Young Anymore."


And so am I.

Happy Mother's Day, Mom.

 I

"Someday he'll come along..."

See the star-crossed gecko lovers' tragic tale at theinspirationroom.com 

There it is again, a peeping that seems to be coming from the ceiling over my computer desk. Do we have a trapped bird here? Is someone twying to tweet me on Twitter? Nope, turns out it's my lovelorn pet gecko, longing for a mate.


Love isn't all that crucial for a gecko. Wikipedia says some species of this particular lizard are parthenogenic: they don't need mates to produce babies. The female can do the whole reproduction process by herself. But in order to preserve genetic variation she is given this urge to merge with a male, thus the five little chirps I sometimes hear at night. A sort of five-chirp-blues. There's no evidence so far that any males have heard her, but then she's not very insistent. A shy little thing. She may have to resort to do-it-herself reproduction. 


There she goes again! Eight chirps this time. Maybe she's been working on her seduction routine. But she'd be far wiser to creep back outside where she'd more likely find other geckos. I'm pretty sure she's the only one in here.


I've yet to come up with a name for my visitor, who's pinkish gray, under six inches long. In Latin, it's Hemidactylus frenatus, or "Common House Gecko."  A rather uninspired name, sort of like being a "Lesser Egret."

She's not the tame sort who'd climb onto my finger if I invited her, though she might be more friendly if I offered her fruit, baby crickets or cockroaches, her favorite foods. She's welcome to all the cockroaches she can eat, though I'm a little concerned that my anti-cockroach potion—boric acid mixed with milk, dabbed on a bit of aluminum foil—might give her indigestion.


Every night she makes the same effortless trek up the same wall, always stopping halfway up to watch me for a few minutes before disappearing behind the air conditioner. Having read how they defend themselves, by spraying the offender with feces, I'm glad I did my homework before trying to touch her. All I need is gecko poop on my keyboard!