El Ojo del Lago - April 2021

Saw you in the Ojo

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Saw you in the Ojo

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 DIRE C TOR Y  PUBLISHER David Tingen

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Victoria A Schmidt

Index...

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COVER STORY

The Daily Life of Jesus of Nazareth – Lorin Swinehart offers his view on the Daily life of Jesus.

EDITOR EMERITUS Alejandro Grattan-Dominguez Tel: (01376) 765 3676, 765 2877 Fax: (01376) 765 3528 Graphic Design Roberto C. Rojas Reyes Diana Parra Morales

12 Survivor’s Guilt: A reunion of fellow soldiers from the Vietnam War stirs painful memories. Reminders of the devastating and lingering effects of war. By Jack Estes 16 The President’s Cabinet: Tom Nussbaum offers a humorous view of a Hollywood Style Cabinet for the President.

18 Another Missed Opportunity: The futility of dwelling on the roads not taken in one’s life is replaced with the sweet opportunities each day brings. By Steve Parker

Photo by Ruben Varela

Special Events Editor Carol D. Bradley

22 Driving to Newfoundland: Life after retirement makes a U-turn when things go awry on a celebratory road trip. By Neil McKinnon.

Proofreader Sally Asante

24 Guadalupe Victoria: After years of self-exile, an unsuspecting hero becomes Mexico’s first president. A forward-looking leader, he served the country well following the long war for independence.

Theater Critic Michael Warren

26 Bad News – Good News: One woman’s journey from trauma to wellness. Faith or a miracle? Maybe both.

Book Review Panel Margaret Van Every Margaret Porter Clare Gearhart

28 Word Salad – Crazy English: A Collection of English which makes the English language seem crazy. Collected by Sally Asante.

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32 Just One More Temple Papa: A firsthand description of one of the Wonders of the World. Sure to wet your appetite for a trip to Cambodia Part One: by Carol Bowman

14 Vexations And Conundrums

Roving Correspondent Dr. Lorin Swinehart

Sales Manager Bruce Fraser Carmene Berner ADVERTISING OFFICE Av. Hidalgo # 223, Chapala Mon. thru Fri. 9 am - 5 pm Sat. 9 am - 1 pm Tel. 01 (376) 765 2877, 765 3676 Fax 01 (376) 765 3528 Send all correspondence, subscriptions or advertising to: El Ojo del Lago www.chapala.com elojodellago@gmail.com

36 To Promote the General Welfare: Science and reason come to the world’s assistance in the time of a pandemic. By Fred Mittag 38 Pseudo Sex: Eyebrows are raised at the end of a pilgrimage in Spain when comfort is offered to a friend in pain.

42 The Ana Matilda Whistlers Fan Club, Lakeside Chapter: Good advice about aging from . . . Whistler’s Mother? Absolutely by Don Beaudreau 46 How To Speak Mexican: Michael McLaughlin shares tips on how to have pleasant communications in Mexico.

48 Polio: An inside look at the polio epidemic, told by a survivor who experienced its ravaging horrors.

50 Questions: A look at the questions thoughtful people ask themselves. By Susan Q Miller

Ave. Hidalgo 223 (or Apartado 279), 45900 Chapala, Jalisco Tels.: 376 765 3676, Fax 376 765 3528 PRINTING: El Debate El Ojo del Lago aparece los primeros cinco días de cada mes. (Distributed over the first five days of each month) Certificado de Licitud de Título 3693 Certificado de Licitud de Contenido 3117.

Reserva al Título de Derechos de Autor 04-2011-103110024300-102 Control 14301.

Permisos otorgados por la Secretaría de Gobernación (EXP. 1/432 “88”/5651 de 2 de junio de 1993) y SEP (Reserva 171.94 control 14301) del 15 de enero de 1994.

Distribución: Hidalgo 223 Chapala, Jalisco, México.

All contents are fully protected by copyright and may not be reproduced without the written consent of El Ojo del Lago. Opinions expressed by the authors do not necessarily reflect the views of the Publisher or the Editor, nor are we responsible for the claims made by our advertisers. We welcome letters, which should include name, address and telephone number.

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COVER IMAGE

VOLUME 37 NUMBER 8

El Ojo del Lago / April 2021

COLUMNS THIS MONTH

06 Editorial

20 If Pets Could Talk 30 Lakeside Living 40 Profiling The Tepehua 44 Front Row Center

Saw you in the Ojo

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COLUMNIST

Editor’s Page

By Victoria A. Schmidt

Drive Safely

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s more people have moved to the Lakeside area, the traffic problem has grown worse. The most dangerous road here is the carretera. It doesn’t help that it is constantly under renovation.

The Walmart intersection has been increasingly confusing. Traffic has been bottled up as people try to figure out what lane they should drive in. And for those who are trying to access the businesses into the mall is nearly impossible.

Driving in Ajijic, the lane markings make it difficult to know which lane we are supposed to be driving in.

For me, over the past 15 years, I have watched Riberas blossom with many new businesses. But the problem is the accesses to and from the businesses are dangerous. There are too many people who don’t look for traffic before they enter the carretera. The maximum limit is 40 kph. But living right on the carretera, I can tell you that there are people who drive 80 kph. The area by the newest Pemex is especially dangerous.

There is no safe exit off the carretera, the road just drops off. So those people who are driving too fast come up to the back end of vehicles trying to make a slow and careful exit off the road.

I cannot over-emphasize how important it is for drivers to look BOTH

ways when entering traffic. A few weeks ago, I was involved in an accident where the driver pulled out right in front of me, and I didn’t have enough time to stop. I saw the driver start to pull out, head turned in the opposite direction, and I tried to warn my husband as I slammed on the brakes. I never finished my sentence. I am injured. My car is totaled. My dog had internal bleeding and spent the night in the hospital. His neck was hurt; an inch further and he would have been paralyzed. My husband had the fewest problems. I don’t know the status of the other driver. But I’d like to know if their next errand was worth the damage to my car, their car, and to the people involved. We know that is a difficult area to drive. Have we forgotten that this is Mexico? Take your time. Be cautious.

My thanks to all the people who stopped to help. Off-duty paramedics, people who called for help. I tried, but I was shaking so hard I could not call for help. The bomberos, the ambulance staff, the insurance adjusters, transito, the tow truck drivers . . . everyone was very professional.

But I digress, there is continuing work west of Ajijic as the ciclopista is reaching out through San Juan Cosalá and into Jocotepec. It is evident that the Mexican government is attempting to make this “highway” into a safe driving area. But you have to help them by paying attention and driving the legal limit and looking both ways and back again. Use signals and watch out for motorcycles. If you use a motorcycle, the ciclopista is out-of-bounds. And if you have to pass someone, pass on the right side. So many accidents happen when a motorcyclist is driving in and out of traffic, especially the small bikes.

Let’s all do our part to keep our roads safer.

Victoria Schmidt

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The Daily Life Of Jesus Of Nazareth Dr. Lorin Swinehart

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o often, he is portrayed as a white man, with blue eyes and shoulder length hair.

Contrary to such images, he would have had olive colored skin, rendered even darker by long days in the harsh Levantine sunlight. His eyes would have been dark, his hair of medium length and dark.

He was probably of average height. He would have had the hard callused hands of a working man because he labored in his earthly father’s woodworking shop during his younger days. He would not have exhibited the almost unisex appearance that centuries of artists have imagined. Rather, his appearance would have been that of a rugged individual who spent long periods alone in the Judaean Desert and aboard fishing boats bouncing about in the stormy Sea of Galilee.

Jesus is often depicted wearing an ankle length white robe. He would not have been so attired. Rather, his one piece tunic would have been perhaps knee length. His feet would have walked in sandals, and he would have worn a woolen mantel called a tallit with tassels called tzitzit at each corner.

The scriptures say that his first cousin John the Baptist, something of a wild man who risked death to warn members of the power structure and the heedless masses of the consequences of their cruel and greedy ways, fed upon locusts and wild honey. Jesus would have followed the typical diet of a Mediterranean peasant. He may not have eaten grasshop-

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pers like John, but his would have been mostly simple fare.

Jesus was raised by his mother Mary in the ways of Jewish orthodoxy, including dietary recommendations and restrictions. Bread baked from either wheat or barley would have formed the basis of most meals. While wheat was considered the staff of life and the king of grains, barley, regarded as poor people’s food, is far more nutritious, so much so that Roman gladiators were fed it in order to foster greater strength. Jesus used barley bread when he fed his hungry audience of 5000 members on that knoll overlooking the Sea of Galilee.

Anywhere from one to three loaves of bread would have typically been consumed by each person at mealtime in ancient Israel. The bread was usually darker and heavier than modern bread, consisting entirely of whole grains. Bread was generally baked on a flat rock, and it was rolled out and formed into a circle so that it would be larger than a pancake and thin like a tortilla or peta bread.

Fish was the most common source of protein in Jesus’s world. The Mediterranean Sea, Sea of Galilee, and the Jordan River were readily available sources of fish. Fishing was a major commercial enterprise. On any given day, there could have been as many as 500 small boats out fishing on the Sea of Galilee. Mosaic Law dictated that only fish with fins and scales could be consumed. Crustaceans or mollusks were forbidden, as would have been catfish.

El Ojo del Lago / April 2021

Except on special occasions like weddings and holidays, red meat would have been consumed only occasionally by Jesus, when, for instance, he was a guest in someone’s home. Beef would have been served rarely. Cattle were more valuable as beasts of burden. Any beef would have been free range and grain fed. All beef would have been Kosher, drained of blood. The consumption of either blood or fat was banned. Sheep and goats were more common sources of protein, but they, too, were more valuable as sources of wool and milk.

Pork remains forbidden to both Muslims and Jews. The taboo has more than one origin. Pigs lack sweat glands and so must cool themselves by wallowing in mud or water. In a part of the world where water is a scarce commodity, contamination of springs, creeks and waterholes by pigs would prove catastrophic.

Then, too, pigs are notorious for eating anything, including feces and garbage.

Such habits offended those peoples who sought purity in all things. Pigs, too, carry such menacing parasites as trichinella.

The issue of animal sacrifice in the ancient world raises its ugly head in any discussion of livestock during the time of Jesus. The practice largely ended among Jews when the Jerusalem Temple was demolished by the Romans in 70 AD. Some modern Jews believe that sacrifice will not be resumed until the Temple is restored.

Whether or not Jesus approved of animal sacrifice is unknown, but one can deduce that he did not. Christianity teaches that Jesus sanctified the people by the sacrifice of himself, rendering animal sacrifice irrelevant. Some Old Testament prophets, among them Jeremiah, Isaiah, Amos and Hosea, criticized the practice of animal sacrifice. Psalm 51:17, for instance, suggests that the most valued sacrifice can be a broken or contrite heart. The anonymously written New Testament Epistle to the Hebrews suggests that the Old Testament practice of animal sacrifice ended the death and resurrection of Jesus.

There is a theory among some Biblical scholars that when Jesus drove the money changers out of the Temple, he was more offended by their turning that sacred space Into a slaughter house than a commercialized pandemonium. Many of the offenders were in the business of selling sacrificial birds and other animals.

Whenever Jesus was invited for a meal at the home of a person of limited means, who had no sheep or goat or fatted calf to share, he may have been treated to red stew, consisting of beans and lentils boiled in garlic. Other vegetables such as leeks, onions, cucumbers, melons, beans and peas would have formed part of the diet of the average person in Jesus’s day.

There were fewer restrictions regard-

ing the consumption of fowl than there were for hoofed animals. Chickens, ducks and geese provided some of the menu of first century Jews, as did doves, quail, partridges, and pigeons. Eggs were an approved food source.

More than likely, dessert in Jesus’s time would have consisted of grapes, nuts, figs, apples, pomegranates, apricots and honey.

Would Jesus have drunk wine? Probably. There are sincere Christian denominations that encourage total abstinence.

Others are less strict. Some argue that the wine consumed at, for instance, the Last Supper was in actuality grape juice.

In the days of Jesus, wine was a regular and important part of the average diet.

Mosaic Law condemned drunkenness and over consumption of wine. While wine is an important part of a meal in such countries as France and Italy, some cultures, Americans, for instance, find it difficult to do much of anything with moderation. Jesus would not approve of either gluttony or intoxication. Because wine consumption is strictly regulated, alcoholism is very rare among Jewish people.

The most important liquid Jesus would have consumed is water. It is the most important nutrient for the human body, which consists of 2/3 water. Coffee came along later, a gift of the Arabs, and the Aztecs can be thanked for chocolate.

In Jesus’s time, tea was brewed from plants like mint.

As for exercise, Jesus walked nearly everywhere. On some occasions, he sailed upon the Sea of Galilee in fishing boats. In one or two instances, he rode a donkey. He led a simple, basic life, much as St. Francis and Henry David Thoreau advocated.

The diet of first century Palestine was a healthy one, approximate to such contemporarily promoted nutritional programs as the Japanese diet and the Mediterranean diet. A diet of whole grains, fish, nuts, vegetables and fruits is most likely to foster good health and a long life.

The accoutrements and dietary preferences of Jesus in first century Palestine may spark interest but in actuality tell us little of what the man was really like when he walked the earth among us. For a much deeper understanding, we need to consider his ministry of healing of mind, body and spirit, his condemnation of hard heartedness and hypocrisy, and his great wisdom that has been handed down to us in such beautiful parables as “The Prodigal Son” and “The Good Samaritan”.

Lorin Swinehart

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COLUMNIST

Mexican Grace This is a regular feature column inspired stories that manifest “Mexican Grace.”

El Ojo is looking for more anecdotes that relate the many encounters, initiated by expats or locals, that exemplify the special forms of mutual giving and receiving that define the Mexican Grace that brought us to this unique paradise--and that keep us here.

Please email articles of up to 900 words, with a Title and your name at the top to both victoriaAschmidt@gmail.com and loretta.downs@gmail.com.

Photos are welcome.

R-e-s-p-e-c-t

By Victoria Schmidt

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he morning rain was heavy, leaving the street gutters swollen with water. I was walking my normal Sunday morning route when I saw a pair of sweet young Mexican girls. One was about five years old, the other, about 18 months.

The older one was leading the younger around the puddles in the street. When they reached the rain swollen gutter, the older girl with what looked like all her strength, lifted her little sister perhaps all of five inches in the air, and placed her on the sidewalk so her feet wouldn’t get wet. My heart melted. So often I have seen the loving ways in which the Mexican family interacts. I never saw it in the families I saw in the United States. Not even my own.

Here, I have seen teenage sisters embrace in public, and hold hands as they walk to their destinations. I’ve watched teenage boys carrying a younger brother or sister, niece or nephew upon their shoulders—in front of their friends! I’ve seen mothers hold hands with their teenage sons, and grandmothers helped across the street by their grandchildren.

In Mexico, family matters.

Another thing I’ve witnessed has been the respect in Mexico for people.

Strangers seem to always smile and greet other strangers. Doors are held open, pathways are cleared, and there are rules of social interaction I have learned that would only improve interactions in the other cultures.

Take standing in line at a bank. No matter how long the line, elderly or handicapped people are often allowed to move ahead. When I first came to Mexico, I did not recognize it, and responded with my “hey, I was here first” attitude.

But then I began to understand and respect it. And, when I was injured, and found myself in line once, it was me who was the one they moved to the front. It didn’t matter that I was a “Gringa.”

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El Ojo del Lago / April 2021

In traffic, I have also seen Mexican drivers allowing people to merge into traffic, or go first at a stop sign. I guarentee that would not happen in Minnesota…even if it is rumored to be repleat with “Minnesota nice.” OK, once allowed into Mexican traffic, they may drive past you like a bat out of hades, but generally they are polite. I’ve never had a Mexican flip me the bird. (Can’t say the same for the guy with South Dakota plates a few weeks ago!)

I have even seen a few Mexicans on their “bad days.” I saw one very disturbed about a situation. I admit, my Spanish wasn’t good enough to understand everything he said, but he made his point and walked away. But even so, he did so with respect, and restraint.

I volunteer in a place that employs seven Mexicans. Each one of these people holds at least one other job. They work from very early in the morning to late at night six or seven days a week.

Their lives are not always easy. Yet their days are filled with laughter, hard work, and I often hear whistling, humming or singing while they work. In watching people wherever I go, I see the same.

Their lives are not easy, they deal with difficult living conditions; some of their homes have no windows, others have only dirt floors. Their homes often house many generations of family. Often you will find that they are dealing with health problems, in addition to economic problems, yet I see them approach their lives with openness, love and gratitude and grace.

Victoria Schmidt

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Survivor’s Guilt

By Jack Estes

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’ve always felt guilty for not getting shot in Vietnam. I used to think if I lost an arm or a leg it would justify my trouble inside. As I caught my flight out of Portland to San Diego, for a reunion with Bob and Doc, I wondered what they were feeling.

Were they seeing the same dead and wounded lying on the battlefield? I’ve seen Bob since he was awarded the Navy Cross. But neither of us had seen our Corpsman, Peter Hayman, since we loaded him on a chopper forty-one years ago.

In February of 1969, Bob and Doc and I were living in a village near Da Nang. We were part of a Combined Action Platoon of nine Marines, a Navy

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Corpsman and some ragtag villagers called Popular Force soldiers. The PF’s lived in the village and sometimes fought but scattered when things got really hot. During the day we ran patrols and held medical outreach so villagers could see Doc. At night we set ambushes for the enemy.

On February 23rd we were set in at a grass hut and the sun was high and hot in a blue sky. Flies lapped at our C-rations and buzzed at our eyes. Jack Walker, the dog handler, was watering King, his German Sheppard, while Jimmy Tyus, Charlie Young and Corporal Redden were cleaning weapons.

Two Black Marines named Hodges and Bingham were playing cards with Bob

El Ojo del Lago / April 2021

and me on a poncho spread out in the dirt, and Doc was reading. Suddenly, our squad leader, Corporal Colton, announced headquarters had radioed that other CAPs in the area were getting hit hard.

We picked up our weapons and left in single file, spread out with Jack and his dog on point, and I followed.

Bob was behind me and Doc behind him, then Jimmy and the rest. In the distance I could hear the crack of AK47s and M-16s and fighter jets as they roared above us. The villagers had run, the PFs were gone and the fields were empty.

Bob Gregory was a star running back at Notre Dame High School in Southern California. In the war he could fly and tumble and come up firing, just like John Wayne. A few days ago he met me at the airport with a big grin, limping hard, his leg in a brace and his left arm dead, swinging in the wind. He wore Marine Corps suspenders a matching necklace, and when you call his cell, the ringtone is the Marine Corps hymn. When I see him shuffling toward me I want to cry.

Later we met Doc in my hotel lobby. He wore a suit and tie and seemed a bit shy. I felt detached but Bob looked so pleased. Peter was in San Diego, attending the American Psychological Association’s annual meeting. He lives in Florida, has a PhD, and helps oversee vet centers for the Department of Veterans Affairs. He has spent his life assisting veterans. He’s soft-spoken and moved gingerly across the lobby.

When we sat down he helped Bob with his chair.

Our squad moved along a wide expanse of rice paddies. Suddenly the dog darted into the field pulling Jack.

When they crossed over a rice dike the tree-line erupted, Jack pivoted, and crumbled. Bullets struck my rifle and I dove to the ground. When Doc ran by me I yelled for him to get down, but he was determined to save Jack. A moment later he was hit and fell. Jimmy ran to the side firing but soon he too

was wounded. Rounds pounded the dike and whizzed overhead while Bob and I fired at the tree line. Bob crawled toward me at the same time Redden was hit, spun around and fell at my feet.

Between firing at the tree line we tended to the wounded. Doc was fading so Bob took off his belt and tied it above the spurting artery. I used the radio and called in gunships and a medevac while Bob hammered back with the machine-gun. No one else came out in the field and no one else fired and when the gunship finished, it was quiet.

Bob and I loaded Doc, Jimmy, Corporal Redden and Jack on the floor of the medevac. As I turned to leave, the tree line opened up again and rounds tore through the chopper killing Jimmy and the door gunner. Doc said he watched Jack’s blue eyes flicker. Two days later Bob was shot four times while we were moving another wounded corpsman and Corporal Colton was medevac’d for fatigue. A month later Charlie took one in the throat and Hodges too was hit and gone.

“I had a severed artery and cracked femur in my left leg and I was shot in the groin through my right leg,” Doc said as we sat at the table. “The bullet came out my backside and went through my wallet and a picture of my girlfriend. In 1985, I found Jack’s mother. When she opened the front door it was like looking in Jack’s blue eyes.

All these years later I still feel like I had failed, by not saving her son.”

We spent hours talking, sometimes with tears in our eyes, trying to suture our old memories together. We had dinner and then we were done.

There was sorrow when we left each other. We were happy to gather but we couldn’t recapture what we felt so many years ago.

On the plane home I wondered about the guilt some soldiers feel.

Guilt for surviving. Guilt for not saving someone. Guilt for being saved. I sat next to a fresh-faced Marine named Jordan Vicars from rural Colton, Oregon, in Clackamas County. He showed me a picture of his sweetheart and told me how his father cried when he graduated from boot camp. Someday soon Jordan will be in Afghanistan carrying a machine gun. He’ll be brave, I’m sure, but who knows what kind of guilt he may be bringing home.

Jack Estes is a writer and president of www.fallenwarriorsfoundation.com.

He lives in West Linn, Oregon, with his wife, Colleen O’Callaghan, who contributed to this article, and winters in Ajijic. He can be reached at jackestes@ comcast.net

Saw you in the Ojo 13

A Sterile Conscience

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inally. The highly awaited vaccines are slowly making their way into human arms.

The last year has felt like the longest of my life, longer even than the nine months when I was pregnant with my son, and I thought the delivery day was never going to come. Of course, it did.

And those vaccines are being delivered, just not as fast as we all hoped. Safety measures continue.

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I had a friend over for an outside visit recently and we discussed how we keep safe. She is a retired nurse and shared her history with masking and sanitizing practices in the operating rooms in which she had worked. She recalled the rigorous washing procedure the surgeons would complete prior to operations. Our twenty seconds of soapy, hot-water washing is amateurish compared to what doctors go through in

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preparation for cutting into the human body. She reminded me of that interesting way they hold their arms aloft after scrubbing and donning their surgical gear.

She sat up enthusiastically, looked at me and said, “You know we had a term to guide us in the O.R. We called it a sterile conscience.” I loved the phrase, the way it implied faultlessness, the high standard it inferred. She explained further that if anyone in the operating room witnessed someone who had already scrubbed down make a move that might contaminate them, they had an obligation to call out the behavior.

The person who had erred had to start over with their scrubbing and disinfecting. As an example, she explained, “So if the doctor scratched his or her nose, I would have to gently say that they had broken sterility.” This was what was meant by the term a sterile conscience.

I have thought much about this lately as we continue to wash frequently, mask and disinfect surface areas. My husband and I just became fully vaccinated and waited the two weeks to be immunized. We wanted to celebrate and go out to eat at a restaurant. To gently get back to civilization, we decided on a ridiculously early dinner, with another vaccinated couple. I reserved a table for 4:00 pm, knowing we would

have the place to ourselves.

As we entered the restaurant, my husband kindly held the door open for our party. I mentally registered that he touched the door handle with his bare hands. “Scrub time,” my inner voice stated. I whispered to him that he might want to wash up prior to our bread arriving, since he had opened the door for everyone. His grimace told me he did not feel rewarded for his courtesy. I mentally reminded myself to add portable alcohol wipes to my purse for such future moments.

We kept our masks handy so that when waitstaff approached we could don a mask to protect them. They all were masked. The evening was lovely and light. All of us felt like children at the carnival. The wine probably helped the festive sensation. The only thing missing was flashing carrousel lights and music. We all laughed at how much we appreciated our first dinner out in a year, offering toasts, as we admitted how much we had missed this simple pleasure.

We took a bit too long to eat, because suddenly other diners, not as careful as us, were arriving. Masks were removed before people had even been seated, and hugging was plentiful. My husband looked at me and said sotto voce, “Time to go.”

We have eaten outside twice at restaurants now, carefully selecting establishments with safety protocols. One Chinese restaurant sprayed Everclear (95% alcohol) on us, including the bottoms of our shoes, after first taking our temperatures. These steps were taken before entering the restaurant. No menus were distributed, and we read the offerings from a chalkboard. I was impressed.

I never anticipated I would give such consideration to safe dining measures. That was before I developed my sterile conscience.

Katina Pontikes

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The President’s Cabinet Hollywood-Style

By Tom Nussbaum

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t just wasn’t done. Movie stars and television personalities didn’t go into politics. But then Ronald Reagan became California’s governor and, eventually, president of the United States. Clint Eastwood, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Al Franken followed his lead. Minnesota even elected a pro wrestler, Jesse Ventura, as its governor.

More recently, before becoming president, Donald Trump was, among other things, the host of his own reality TV show, “The Apprentice.” He also milked guest appearances on “60 Minutes,” “The View,” and late-night talk shows as if they were cows.

Therefore, I recently found myself wondering what a presidential cabinet would look and sound like if

it, too, came from Hollywood. But, instead of filling the cabinet with actors, I’ve imagined it with the characters they played. Perhaps it would look like this: The president rises from his director’s chair at the end of the table. “The issue with the Chinese continues unresolved,” he begins. “We must find a solution before we leave. Secretary of Agriculture Lisa Douglas, from “Green Acres,” where do you stand on Red China?”

“Vel, dahlink, I am oppost to red

china. I vill not sit down at a table vit red china. Eet must be a neutral shade. Off-white, maybe. Vot do you tink, Secretary of Commerce Gordon Gecko?”

“Green! Green is good,” Gecko answers. “ It’s the color of money. You can’t have too much money. And greed is good. What do you think, Secretary Potter? You come from Bedford Falls, where people live a wonderful life.”

“Wonderful? Yes, if you like red bricks. They’re everywhere,” Secretary of Housing and Urban Affairs Potter grumbles. “They cover Bailey Brothers Building and Loan. They’re at Martini’s Bar. Even the ornaments on George Bailey’s Christmas tree are that damn red color.” His tone lightens. He smiles. “But green? Yes. Green. It’s a wonderful color.

Secretary of Defense Mr. T punches the air. “I pity da fool who wants green. I’m for a neutral color. Maybe a light gray. Yeah. I’m on the gray team.”

The president points at Potter.

“There were red bricks in Bedford Falls? I thought it was all black and white. But we’re not talking about red bricks. We’re discussing Red China.”

Secretary Douglas waves her hand with frustration. “I steel don’t tink red china vud be gud. Vat do you tink, Madame Secretary of State?

Didn’t you bake dat vunderful sheet cake all Mississippi vas talking about?

Even da help.”

“No, Secretary Douglas, it wasn’t a sheet cake,” Minny Jackson giggles. A tablespoon of evil runs through her laugh. “They thought it was a normal chocolate pie, but it was a pie made of shi—” “And that is why she is the Secretary of State,” the president interrupts. The cabinet laughs, halting the discussion.

An impatient Secretary of Homeland Security Barney Fife cuts short the levity. “What’s it gonna be? Red? Or green. Or neutral. Hmm? Hmm? Chop chop. I don’t have all day. I

have a country to keep secure. Right, Andy?”

Doogie Houser, M.D., Secretary of Health and Human Services, looks up. “Who’s Andy? And why are you so nervous?” His adolescent voice cracks on his final word.

“Wait!” The stern yet warm voice of Attorney General Atticus Finch fills the room. “Are we talking about Red China or red china? Because if we are discussing plate ware, we can’t be biased. We can’t treat the colored ones any different than the white ones.

That wouldn’t be fair or just.” Finch pauses and taps his pipe on the table. “I’m curious what you think.” He peered at the diminutive Secretary of Labor? “What should I call you, sir?

Charlie Chaplain or the Little Tramp?

Gosh, your work in the masterpiece “Modern Times” certainly qualifies you to head the Department of Labor.”

The Secretary of Labor shrugs his shoulders, shuffles his feet under his chair, and looks bewildered.

Attorney General Finch looks around the table and continues. “And why are we still calling it Red China?

Didn’t we stop doing that decades ago?” The cabinet members gaze around the room in silence, puzzled by the question.

Breaking the awkward silence, Secretary of Energy Alvy Singer blurts, “My ex-girlfriend Annie Hall and I cooked lobster once. Yeah.

Lobster. Oy, was that an ordeal! The pot. The bibs. The boiling. My shrieking. Anyway, I’m sure she served it on gray Chinet. And my mother used Chinet. She served gefilte fish, latkes, kreplach, everything on it. She would only use the red china for the Passover seder. ‘You don’t deserve the good china every day,’ she’d say.”

Singer’s posture sags “And you wonder why I’m so insecure. You have no idea the mother-baggage I carry.

It could fill an airport carousel.” He pounds the table with a fist. Frightened by the unexpected noise, Secretary of Labor Chaplin/Little Tramp tumbles from his chair. “So, if Chinet is good enough for Annie Hall, my mother, and a lobster, it should be good enough for our visitors from Red China. I mean China, I guess.”

The president raises his hand. “OK, then,” he says. “I’ve listened to your input and made a decision. Chinet it will be. Some red.

Some green. Some off-white. Maybe a few gray. Now, what about the wine?

Red?” Tom Nussbaum

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El Ojo del Lago / April 2021

Saw you in the Ojo 17

Another Missed Opportunity

By Steve Parker

W

e all, from time to time, take a backward, reflective look at life. We dwell on remembering and rehashing some major missed opportunities. “If I had just ...”

“Why didn’t I?”... “What if I had? ...”

What a terrible waste of time!

One of the major advantages of getting older, for me, has been less reflection on those so-called missed opportunities and a sharper focus on the opportunities to come. What good does it do to lament on a missed opportunity of twenty or thirty years ago? Can you reverse time and make a different choice? How can you possibly know what the outcome might have been if you made a different choice?

I choose to see those missed opportunities are what got me to where I am today. Who knows where I would be if I had taken a different path with my life? Am I happy? Is my life filled with excitement and daily challenges? Am I excited about getting up in the morning? The answer to all three is an emphatic “YES!” In the past, many of the opportunities I missed, I frankly didn’t even recognize until the opportunity had passed and my life had

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El Ojo del Lago / April 2021

already taken a different direction. How could I even know if that missed opportunity would have been a “hero or a zero.” I believe hindsight is highly overrated and I choose to not allow it to take up valuable brain space.

Without the clutter of “might have been” and “if only,” I am much more aware of seeing the opportunities that lie ahead, both large and small. Opportunities are waiting from the time I open my eyes in the morning until the time I lay my head on the pillow, taking a moment to reflect on the opportunities of the day. Awareness is the key. Being critically aware and in the present allows one to see the opportunities, big and small, in our daily lives. The opportunity to smile at the kid bagging your groceries, looking them in the eye and saying “Gracias, as well as a tip for their services. The opportunity to compliment Salvador who takes such pride in keeping the ciclopista clean every day near my home.

Waving a warm greeting to everyone I meet on my morning walk.

Even the opportunity to struggle with my Spanish at the market, showing the vendor respect and even laughing with them when my effort falls short.

I appreciate the opportunity to keep my mouth shut while encouraging others in my world to speak and express their thoughts without interrupting. Listening is a definite opportunity not to be missed.

Perhaps this is a reason why I look forward to my Thursday LCS Writing to a Prompt. What a wonderful opportunity to live vicariously, even for a moment, in the creative thoughts of others.

Opportunities both big and small are part of our everyday life and it is definitely more exciting to experience them every day and repress the desire to lament past opportunities.

Saw you in the Ojo 19

COLUMNIST

If Our Pets Could Talk

By Jackie Kellum

I

f your pet has had surgery or some type of procedure, request specific instructions from your veterinarian about how to care for your pet, as each pet and surgery is different. When you are talking with the vet, ask questions and if he or she does not give you any written instructions, make notes to help you remember.

If you are not told at the time your pet is taken home after surgery, ask about: (A) any change to diet/fluids, whether temporarily or going forward; (B) any medication(s), its name, purpose, dose, frequency, and duration; (C) if any activity restrictions, what kind and for how long; (D) what to look for at the surgical site and how often to check; what does “normal healing” look like and what are signs of problems, as well as what to do if you think there is a problem; (E) if sutures are present, are they absorbable and if not, when to return for their removal; and (F) how to prevent your pet from licking

20

or chewing at the incision if it should occur. Actually, all of these except F apply to a human who has had surgery and is getting surgical aftercare instructions from their surgeon at time of discharge.

These are general guidelines/suggestions. However, you should follow your vet’s specific instructions after your pet has had surgery. Each pet reacts to anesthesia differently. Most pets will be drowsy for several hours, sometimes a full day, so they should be kept in a quiet, non-stimulating environment where they cannot fall and hurt themselves. If they have pet-mates, it would be advisable to keep them apart until the surgery pet is fully awake and functioning normally. If their non-alert state remains

El Ojo del Lago / April 2021

for an extended or excessive amount of time, talk with your vet.

If your pet is fully awake or showing interest in eating, offer only a small amount of food initially. Sometimes the medications they have received may cause nausea and vomiting. Have fresh water available, but have the pet drink small amounts at a time, rather than guzzle a large amount at once. If the pet has multiple episodes of vomiting, diarrhea, or his appetite has not returned to his normal within a day or so, talk with your vet.

How much and how long you need to confine your pet will be determined by your vet. Confinement might mean being in a crate, in a room by itself, etc.

For dog confinement, this may include not letting your dog run free in the yard to do his business, but having him on a leash for this. This is also a good way to know if your dog is having his normal urination and defecation. Often pets will need to urinate more often than usual after a surgical procedure, especially if they were given IV fluids at the clinic. For cat confinement, it may be necessary to remain in a room by itself, away from his cat-mates, for a period of time, to avoid running, jumping, playing, chasing, etc.

You will need to check the status of the surgical incision at some stated schedule. Look at the incision while in

the vet’s office so in the event something is different during recovery, you can recognize the change/difference. These are some signs that should be brought to your vet’s immediate attention: excessive redness, oozing and swelling, hard to the touch, heat, lumpiness, unusual odor, pain, bright blood, missing sutures/staples, gaping wound, or self-inflicted damage.

The main suggestion is: Follow you vet’s advice, let your pet rest, and allow healing to occur.

Jackie Kellum

Saw you in the Ojo 21

Driving to Newfoundland

By Neil McKinnon

T

he dream had come true. We were retired, the kids were gone, the condo sold, our furniture in storage and we had a new-used camper van. Our leisure years would be spent savoring the delights of the open road—the first delight, a summer-long excursion across Canada ending in Newfoundland. We spread sleeping bags on the floor for our final night in our empty home.

“Good night, dear. Tomorrow we leave Calgary, outward-bound and fancy free.”

My wife, Mildred, is good at hiding enthusiasm. “I’m going to miss my studio,” she said. “There’s no room in the van to spread out my art.”

“You’re mistaken, precious. The whole outdoors will be your studio.

You’ll paint an airplane every day.”

“It’s plein aire, not airplane.”

“Nevertheless, you’ll love it.”

“I like it here. We can see the river, wildlife and birds from our living room.

It’s perfect.”

“Nonsense,” I replied. “Think of the freedom, camping, sitting by an open fire.”

She gave me a goodnight salute with her middle finger and went downstairs. *** I’d bought the van some weeks earlier. “Come and see,” I shouted from the driveway.

She came to the door. “What is it and how much?

I whispered the number.

“You spent half a year’s salary on that?”

“It’s a bargain, precious. No more mortgage. With this baby, we can live anywhere and all it costs is campground fees.”

Mildred had anticipated a retirement spent painting in her studio but I argued for making nature her work space. We’d had conversations where the temperature rose above what is considered safe on a hot day. Eventually, her resistance eroded and she agreed to “try it once.” *** We woke to a howling wind on the first morning of our new life. Our street resembled an outtake from Nanook of the North. Spring had disappeared beneath a carpet of frozen sleet.

Carolyn, the real estate agent arrived at ten to get the keys. We were fortunate

22

in our choice of realtors. “I love your condo,” she’d said. “I’ll buy it myself,” . . . and she had. She laughed at some private joke as we stepped into the screaming blizzard. “Good luck on your trip,” she chortled.

We stopped at a nearby greasy spoon for breakfast. I ordered for both of us and sipped lukewarm coffee while Mildred delved into the morning paper.

“We did it,” I said.

She stared through the window at the icy chaos. “Wonderful. I can’t wait to start using outdoor toilets.”

I detected a spot of resentment in the way she slammed her cup . . . and perhaps a tinge of indignation in the way her boot collided with my shin under the table. Eventually, a waitress scattered runny eggs and limp bacon in front of us, but the arrival of breakfast didn’t cheer my wife. “Oh, my God!” she said.

“It’s okay, precious. We’ll never have to eat here again.”

“It’s not that. Listen!” She read from the paper.

Alberta Man Wins Lottery Jeremy P., a local artist has become a multimillionaire courtesy of last night’s Lotto 649. Laughing at his good fortune, he commented, “In a few years, I was planning to retire to the South Seas to paint. Now I can do it immediately.”

“Someone hit the jackpot, so what?”

I asked.

“You don’t understand,” she said. “I went steady with Jeremy in art school.

He asked me to marry him and I said no.

I wonder if his offer still stands.”

“That was years ago, precious. He could never be as romantic as I. Who else would risk frostbite to escort you to such a fine establishment?”

Despite my flippancy, I realized that I had stumbled in the romance race. We were homeless on a morning that was unfit for polar bears while my wife’s exsuitor was a multimillionaire, an accomplished artist and heading to a warm

El Ojo del Lago / April 2021

climate. My interest in art is confined to Calvin and Hobbes cartoons, and the only warm climate I know is Saskatchewan in August.

We abandoned the eggs and left.

The roads were treacherous. I inched my way out of the city to a local campground. Mildred stared at the deserted site. “We gave up the house for this?”

“It’ll be fine. The van has a heater.

We’ll be warm and toasty while we’re waiting for the weather to clear.”

We parked and Mildred started an early lunch.

“Isn’t this great,” I said. “It’s our own little world.”

She began banging the stove.

“What’s the matter?” I asked.

She spoke slow, articulating each word. “The. Propane. Tank. Is. Empty.”

Our fare, that day, consisted of a bag of peanuts and a chocolate bar. Without propane, the heater didn’t work. Blankets and four layers of clothes made the temperature tolerable.

The sleet turned to snow and continued through the night. Next morning, I ripped slabs of ice off the van while Mildred spoke to herself in tongues. After a breakfast of leftover peanuts, we crept down the highway to buy propane.

Suddenly water appeared. It dripped on our clothes, soaked the groceries and ran on the floor. The pump had frozen and cracked. While it was being repaired, we checked into the nearest motel to wait for warm weather and dry roads. *** Our journey began on a bright morning in early May. The first revelation—prairie campgrounds don’t open until June—so water, electricity and sewer weren’t available. I pointed out that these were minor details compared to the joys of experiencing new vistas.

Mildred pointed out that we hadn’t left the province, so the vistas weren’t all that new.

Soon the rain started. Although not a blessing, it proved scriptural—continuing for forty days and forty nights.

“A higher power must be watching over us,” I joked and then ducked as a coffee cup detached itself from Mildred’s hand and made its way the length of the van.

She then recited a sermon composed entirely of words found only in the bible and on washroom walls.

We splashed through Saskatchewan and Manitoba, spending days in wet empty campgrounds. In northern Ontario, I left the van door open. We were invaded by thousands of black flies who squatted in every nook and most of the crannies. “They’ll eat us alive,” Mildred wailed.

“Don’t worry, precious. We’ll be okay under the blankets.” I downed a double scotch, pulled a sheet over my face and dozed off secure in the knowledge that I

was bite-proof.

One of the consequences of being my age and male is that I have started to grow. Like a new mushroom bursting from soil, a saucer-shaped expanse on the top of my skull has erupted from the surrounding hair. A friend of mine claims the bare spot is actually the solar panel that powers the sex machine. Mildred disagrees. She says the hair on my head has simply migrated to my ears. Unfortunately, the sheet wasn’t quite long enough and during my scotch-induced sleep the black flies chewed into my solar panel. That, a small hangover and Mildred opining that perhaps our visitors were actually termites did little to contribute to my morning equanimity.

However, my indestructible good nature prevailed. “Why don’t we spend a few days in the city while my head heals?” I suggested.

She jumped at the idea. I set the steering wheel toward Toronto. An hour down the road, the motor coughed and died. “We’ll have to call a tow truck,” I said. Mildred stared straight ahead and didn’t answer.

After an hour, the mechanic emerged from under the hood. “The bad news is that your van is a write-off,” he said. “The good news is that I can take it off your hands.”

He named a price which didn’t quite cover our bus ride back to Alberta. *** Days later, we were in Calgary perusing real estate ads. “Look!” Mildred exclaimed. “Our condo is listed and there’s an open-house this afternoon. Let’s go.”

“We want our place back,” she said as we came through the door.

Carolyn looked up in surprise. “You understand that house prices have skyrocketed since you left,” she said.

“I don’t care,” Mildred said. “I need my studio.”

To make a long story short, we used all of our savings on a down payment and took on a larger mortgage than we’d left behind a few weeks before.

Carolyn seemed happy—she left immediately on a Caribbean vacation. To make ends meet, I have returned to my old job but I’m not downhearted. My wife is happily painting and I’ve discovered why we failed to see eye to eye. Recently, I overheard her answer a friend who had enquired about the size of our van. “It had as much space as a small jail cell,” she stated.

My light bulb went on. I’m now setting money aside every payday. Mildred’s birthday is coming and I intend to surprise her with a larger van. Size really does matter. We’ll get to Newfoundland yet.

The End Neil McKinnon

Saw you in the Ojo 23

Guadalupe Victoria

By David Ellison

G

uadalupe Victoria’s story is one of redemption.

Born José Miguel Ramón Adaucto Fernández y Félix, during the war he changed his name to Guadalupe Victoria to honor Our Lady of Guadalupe, the insurgency’s symbol and patron, and to commit himself to winning independence for Mexico. He announced, “La Independencia se afianzará con mi sangre y la libertad se perderá con mi vida!” (“Independence will be reinforced with my blood and freedom will be lost with my life.”)

Victoria fought alongside Galeana, Matamoros, Guerrero, and Bravo.

During the siege of Oaxaca, he alone dared to cross the moat. He threw his sword to the other side and called out, “¡Va mi espada en prenda. Voy por ella!” (“There goes my sword as pledge. I’m going for it!”) He swam across, cut the rope holding up the drawbridge, and thus allowed the insurgents to breach the defenses and win the battle. He soon was leading his own forces on to many other victories.

But, as with the other insurgent commanders, his luck finally ran out.

After a series of crushing defeats, his soldiers abandoned him. Bereft, unable to accept the amnesty the Spanish viceroy had offered everyone, he fled into the jungle.

For four years, Victoria hid alone in the wilderness subsisting on roots, berries, and small game. Eventually, he developed epilepsy (the disease that would one day kill him). It is hard to imagine the depth of his despair.

Nonetheless, when Victoria emerged from the jungle after the

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war, he learned that he’d become legendary. Indeed, after Iturbide’s abdication, Victoria’s immense popularity led him to become Mexico’s first president.

He led the country well. Confronting both a Spanish embargo and imminent bankruptcy, Victoria won formal recognition from other nations including the United States and Great Britain, the latter of which loaned Mexico huge sums. Facing simmering domestic divisions, he appointed a diverse cabinet representing all points of view. He established a merchant marine which opened up international trade, a navy which succeeded in defeating the final Spanish outpost in Mexico, and multiple seaports for them both. He expelled the rest of the Spaniards, put down several plots and rebellions (including one by his own vice president, Nicolás Bravo), abolished slavery, promoted education . . . and became the only Mexican president during the country’s first thirty years to complete a full term of office.

Not bad for a man who’d, for four long, lonely years, cowered in the jungle, an apparent failure.

Saw you in the Ojo 25

Bad News-Good News

By Sydney Gay Kislevitz

F

or the last fifteen years in Ajijic people ask me what happened to your leg?

Why do you need crutches? By the time I was forty-five years old I had had two bone transplants, involving twelve surgeons and eight surgeries that failed, and this was happening in the peak of career that allowed me to travel the world. Each surgery required three months in bed, braces, crutches and a wheelchair. Twelve years of life, tucked to a wheelchair.

Doctors in Santa Barbara, Los Angeles and New York said I would need this wheelchair permanently.

My wonderful husband, a comedic generous-hearted sort of guy, set me in his art studio with a tv screen half the size of the wall. It felt being in a movie house. He gave me Moonwalker, a full-length movie of Michael Jackson singing and dancing. I began wheelchair dancing. One day as Michael was singing “Billie Jean,” something in my spirit changed. I stood and began to make tiny foot movements in rhythm to the music.

The next day I got braver and challenged myself to walk across the room, like a baby taking first steps, knowing I could fall any minute, I toddled twenty feet forward and twenty feet back to the wheelchair.

I held on to this miracle like a secret between me and Michael. Each day I got stronger. Then, a night came when I woke up at two in the morning and smelled something strange; the smell of death seemed to be coming out of my breath. Frozen with fear for myself and family— we had ten children, the youngest being three—I met with a trauma therapist who sent me to Saint Luke’s Limb Preservation Hospital, in Denver, Colorado, the last hurrah for patients when all else fails.

After being examined, I was told the bone in my right leg had completely disintegrated into a powdery substance and the smell I noticed was the dying femur bone. A ninth surgery was scheduled, hip to knee,

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the quadriceps for walking forward had also been permanently damaged. This information added fear and dread. That’s the bad news.

The good news is that before surgery number nine all my fear and anxiety disappeared in the most unexpected way. The surgeon informed me it was their practice to surround each patient with a onehour meditative prayer circle and they wanted both me and my husband to be in the center of the circle.

I never knew any doctors who did such a thing. What hospitals do this?

The circle—three surgeons, surgical nurses, anesthesiologists, and post-surgical rehab therapists— held hands praying for guidance, literally asking God to enter their hands, hearts and minds to perform with the highest intelligent care.

This is a reality that cannot be adequately put into words. Although my eyes were closed, an electrified sweetness entered the room, and as this energy passed person to person, a golden spiral surrounded us, I saw a golden spiral. I saw fear spiral out of my body, spiraling up and up and out until it completely vanished.

On the third day of recovery at Saint Luke’s, my husband went to Red Lobster restaurant and brought a dinner to my bedside, a huge lobster with butter and potatoes.

“Eat this,” he said. “You’ll get strong quicker.”

Somehow between the praying doctors and my fun husband, instead of failure, instead of three months in bed, I was walking in twelve days, back to work making breakfast, lunch and dinner for my family. I began to travel the world again. And here I am in Ajijic, walking one mile a day, making new friends, building houses. But that’s another story for another time.

Sydney Gay

Saw you in the Ojo 27

Word Salad

By Sally Asante

Crazy English [Directory blurb: More of the burning questions raised by our crazy English language.]

I

n what other language do they call the third hand on the clock the second hand?

Why do they call them apartments when they’re all together?

Why do we call them buildings when they’re already built? Why do we call them paintings when they’re already painted?

In stadiums, why are the seats called stands, when they’re made for sitting?

Why it is called a TV set when you get only one?

Why are movie coming attractions called trailers when they come before the main feature?

Why do we call a ship that pushes other ships a tugboat?

Why do we call that useful basket with the top on it a hamper?

Why is your finger called a thumb but your big toe doesn’t get a name of its own?

Why do they call food servers waiters, when it’s the customers who do the waiting?

Why is the person to whom you entrust your hard-earned life savings called a broker?

Why is phonetic not spelled phonetically? Why is it so hard to remember how to spell mnemonic? Why doesn’t onomatopoeia sound like what it is? Why is the word abbreviation so long? Why is diminutive so undiminutive? Why does the word monosyllabic consist of five syllables? Why is there no synonym for synonym or thesaurus? And why, pray tell, does lisp have an s in it?

English is crazy.

If adults commit adultery, do infants commit infantry? If olive oil is made from olives, corn oil from corn, and vegetable oil from vegetables, what do they make baby oil from? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian consume? If a television is a TV, shouldn’t a telephone be a TP? If a pronoun replaces a noun, does a proverb replace a verb? If pro and con are opposites, is congress the opposite of progress?

If we conceive a conception and receive at a reception, why don’t we grieve a greption and believe a beleption? If a firefighter fights fire, what does a freedom fighter fight? If a person who plays the piano called a pianist, shouldn’t a person who drives a race car be called a racist? If a horsehair mat is made from the hair of horses, from what is a mohair coat made?

If we get seasick on the sea, airsick in the air, and carsick in a car, then why don’t we get homesick in our home? And speaking of the home, why aren’t homework and housework the same thing?

Why can you call a woman a mouse but not a rat—a kitten but not a cat? Why is it that a woman can be a vision, but not a sight—unless your eyes hurt? Then she can be “a sight for sore eyes.”

A writer is someone who writes, and a stinger is something that stings. But fingers don’t fing, grocers don’t groce, hammers don’t ham, humdingers don’t humding, ushers don’t ush, and haberdashers do not haberdash.

If the plural of tooth is teeth, shouldn’t the plural of booth be beeth? One goose, two geese—so one moose, two meese?

One index, two indices—one Kleenex, two Kleenices? If people ring a bell today and rang a bell yesterday, why don’t we say that they flang a ball? If they wrote a letter, perhaps they also bote their tongue. If the teacher taught, why isn’t it also true that the preacher praught? Why is it that the sun shone yesterday while I shined my shoes, that I treaded water and then trod on the beach, and that I flew out to see a World Series game in which my favorite player flied out?

Why do we watch television but see a

movie. Why are we on television but in a movie?

A slim chance and a fat chance are the same, as are a caregiver and a caretaker, a bad licking and a good licking, and “What’s going on?” and “What’s coming off?” But a wise man and a wise guy are opposites.

How can sharp speech and blunt speech be the same and quite a lot and quite a few the same, while overlook and oversee are opposites? How can the weather be hot as hell one day and cold as hell the next?

If button and unbutton and tie and untie are opposites, why are loosen and unloosen and ravel and unravel the same?

If bad is the opposite of good, hard the opposite of soft, and up the opposite of down, why are badly and goodly, hardly and softly, and upright and downright not opposing pairs? If harmless actions are the opposite of harmful actions, why are shameful and shameless behavior the same and pricey objects less expensive than priceless ones? If appropriate and inappropriate remarks and passable and impassable mountain trails are opposites, why are flammable and inflammable materials, heritable and inheritable property, and passive and impassive people the same? How can valuable objects be less valuable than invaluable ones? If uplift is the same as lift up, why are upset and set up opposite in meaning? Why are pertinent and impertinent, canny and uncanny, and famous and infamous neither opposites nor the same? How can raise and raze and reckless and wreckless be opposites when the words in each pair contain the same sound?

Why is it that when the sun or the moon or the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible; that when I clip a coupon from a newspaper, I separate it, but when I clip a coupon to a newspaper, I fasten it; and that when I wind up my watch, I start it, but when I wind up this essay, I shall end it?

English is a crazy language.

How can expressions like “I’m mad about my flat,” “No football coaches allowed,” “I’ll come by in the morning and knock you up,” and “Keep your pecker up” convey such different messages in two countries that purport to speak the same English?

How can it be easier to assent than to dissent but harder to ascend than to descend? Why is it that a man with hair on his head has more hair than a man with hairs on his head; that if you decide to be bad forever, you choose to be bad for good; and that if you choose to wear only your left shoe, then your left one is right and your right one is left? Right?

(Reprinted with permission.)

Sally Asante

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Saw you in the Ojo 29

Carol D. Bradley

Email: cdbradleymex@gmail.com Phone: 33-2506-7525 “...who is the happier man, he who has braved the storm of life and lived or he who has stayed securely on shore and merely existed?”

-- Hunter S. Thompson The Lake Chapala Society hosts Open Circle every Sunday at 10AM, a popular community gathering in Ajijic, to enjoy a diverse range of presentations.

For more information and to make reservations, see their website: opencircleajijic. org.

In order to follow State of Jalisco safety precautions, attendance will be limited to 80 persons, reservations required, use of mask is mandatory and temperature checks on entry. During this period, we recommend bringing your own coffee or bottled water, and please remove containers upon departure. Open Circle video Consent. As a service to our audience and presenters, Open Circle will video-record presentations and upload them on the LCS YouTube channel.

Bare Stage Theatre public performances have been ‘hibernating’ for a year now, but we have not been totally asleep. In November, we offered a limited attendance and safely-distanced Meisner Workshop on site with a teacher who flew from England. Jo Romero brought her AGame and close to twenty locals (broken down into 2 sessions daily) learned what it meant to do REAL or authentic acting. It was a matter of “going deep”, as Jo would say.

From mid January to mid February, Bare Stage and BRAVO Theatre cosponsored a ‘Monologue Workshop’ led by Bernadette Jones. She has been a director and teacher since 1979 in Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, Calgary, Los Angeles and now here on Lake Chapala. The workshop was conducted on Zoom, where the performers were working ‘in a small box’.

Therefore, it was necessary to introduce specific techniques for acting on film, as well as developing tools to improve acting choices and their execution that can be applied to stage OR screen. Bernadette was able to bring her extensive experience working in both mediums, which made for a very, special learning experience for all who attended.

The local actors who participated in the presentation of their monologues on the final day of the workshop excelled beyond their expectations.

Everyone celebrated the skills developed in each person’s performance with applause.

Bare Stage will be presenting a Showcase of these monologues when we open our doors to the public once again. Hopefully, with vaccinations coming, that happy day will be sooner than expected. Keep your eye on the local entertainment calendar.

Bernadette is finalizing the details for her next workshop, one to benefit actors as well as directors. “Taking Direction” / “Giving Direction” will start mid April and run for eight weeks. All pertinent details will be posted on our FaceBook Page soon.

Go to https://www.facebook.com/barestagetheatre2018.

BACK TO BROADWAY Michael Reason, the conductor of the Lake Chapala Community Orchestra is certainly not one to sit around and wait for the pandemic to end. Although the orchestra has not rehearsed for a year, Reason was able to mount 2 chamber ensemble concerts last October and December using members of the orchestra. Presented in the virtually open-air venue of the Unitarian Church in Riberas, both so-

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cially distanced performances were completely sold out.

Reason believes that even during these Covid times the performing arts must find a way of adapting to the “new” normal of presenting live cultural events. To this end he has now created a Broadway revue show that will give Lakeside residents the opportunity to see and hear performances of songs from shows such as Wicked, A Chorus Line, Follies and Kiss Me Kate.

“The revue has a basic theme running through it and the choice of songs have been carefully chosen to reflect this,” says Reason.

With no space to place an orchestra for the show he is heavily involved in creating symphonic backing tracks for each number.

Reason is tight lipped about any further details, including the performers, but suffice it to say they will be well known to local citizens. More details about this production including performance dates and venues will be available in Lakeside Living’s May edition of El Ojo del Lago.

If you would like to be put on a mailing list for show details please send an email to mjrmusic01@gmail.com Covid restrictions have affected all of us over the past year, including the Feria Maestros del Arte, the annual gathering of talented artisans from all over the country.

After the 2020 cancellation of the Feria, this year the Feria will enjoy the gardens of the Lake Chapala Society in a pared down, but no less wonderful version, April 30 and May 1st starting at 10AM. Come and enjoy offerings of jewelry, textiles, celebrate Mother’s Day in the Lake Chapala Society gardens and support the gifted artisans who retain all of the proceeds from your purchases.

Here is a small sampling of the wonderful artisans displaying their work: We have broken the back of Covid-19. At print deadline, vaccines have arrived Lakeside. We here at Lakeside Living are excited to bring you more of our Lakeside arts community in the coming months. And thank you for continuing to support us all and El Ojo: the end is nigh.

Saw you in the Ojo 31

Just One More Temple, Papa

By Carol L. Bowman

Day One

O

ur English-speaking guide, 28-year-old Hang Hak, first name, last in Cambodian language, bowed reverently in Buddhist tradition to his elders, my husband, Ernie, and me.

Along with our tuk-tuk driver, Yang Chan, we set off on our private, twoday exploration of ancient Buddhist and Hindu temples that dot the landscape of Siem Reap, Cambodia. For decades the primeval site of Angkor Wat, the seventh Wonder of the World, had been on our bucket list. Excitement spilled from our open-air, fringed-roof cart, hitched to the back of Chan’s mo-

torbike.

Four kilometers from city center, we made the required stop at the Angkor Conservation area, the only venue to offer valid, government-issued tickets for the Angkor Wat Archaeological Zone, which covers 400 sq. kilometers and 1,000 temples. Local scam travel agencies sell reduced-price vouchers, but officials confiscate these illicit tickets at the first entrance point. Tourists filled the legitimate reception hall to obtain non-transferrable entry permits, with webcam I.D. photos attached. The $37* one-day pass limits exploration, but a $62 three-day pass, valid for one week,

or the economical $72 seven-day pass, valid for one month, help one avoid “temple fatigue.” Our weary bones and overloaded brains would soon understand that term, as time constraints required us to climb temples for two consecutive days.

Regular I.D. scrutiny to enter every temple made these flimsy paper stubs our most valuable possessions. They needed protection from the humidity and sweat dripping from our faces, and a convenient enough place to produce them at every turn. I tucked them into a small compartment of my day pack.

Hak cautioned, “You don’t want to know what happens if you lose your ticket.”

To ease gushes of anticipation, we shared snippets of our lives en route to Angkor Wat. I explained that I teach English to Mexican adults, and Hak bowed even lower with palms together than he had before. Buddhist tradition provides five levels of bowing, and the gesture when meeting a teacher ranks second behind bowing to Buddha. I felt honored by his respect.

His mother, 66, and his father, 69, live hours from Siem Reap, and still work their small rice field in rural Cambodia.

Hak looked off in the distance, as if reliving the joy of visits to them in between his tour guide duties. When he learned that his father and my husband were

the same age, a broad, comforted smile spread across his gentle, olive-skinned face. “Well, you could be my Papa for two days,” he beamed, “and I’ll have a Mama teacher. I will be so happy.”

From that moment on, Hak called Ernie, Papa. It rang with sweet tenderness, and I smiled every time the reference spilled from his lips. I watched as son and father walked side by side, Hak revealing his wealth of knowledge and Ernie soaking up the history. I felt endeared to this young man, so eager to please, so protective, so excited to share ancient secrets of his country.

Hak and his adopted parents alighted from the tuk-tuk and followed the throngs on the dirt road parallel to the wide moat that protected the ancient religious site from early invaders.

A single-file orange string of *Buddhist monks, wrapped in their swaddling bright saffron meditation cloths, with shaved heads and flip-flops, sprinted by on their pilgrimage to the temple.

Then I saw it. The reflection of five carved lotus-flower towers in the clear moat waters caught me unprepared.

This colossal structure, that had only been a photograph, a dream for decades, stood ready to astound. Wonderment and awe stirred within me.

As we maneuvered the 350-meter processional walkway, Hak explained

Continued on page 34

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El Ojo del Lago / April 2021

Saw you in the Ojo 33

From page 32 that most tourists mistakenly believe that Angkor Wat only refers to this massive three-tiered pyramid crowned by lotus bud-like towers, whose image appears on the Cambodian flag. “Actually,” he said, “Angkor Wat, means City of Temples and encompasses hundreds of structures. The main temple within that collection, the one that adventurers worldwide seek, was named Angkor Wat Temple.” The Cambodian constitution prohibits construction of any building taller than the highest 65-me-

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ter tower of this 900-year-old architectural masterpiece.

Originally built by Khmer King Suryavarman II in 1150 as a Hindu temple, it was converted to a Buddhist site at the end of the 12th century. Considered the largest religious monument in the world, Angkor Wat Temple was never abandoned as a religious center. In 1898, France reclaimed the buildings from the invasive jungle and in 1992 Angkor Wat City received recognition as an UNESCO Heritage Site. Over five million visitors invade the Angkor Wat Archaeological Park every year.

As we entered the sacred grounds,

El Ojo del Lago / April 2021

Hak advised that we should stay on marked paths. “Most of the landmines laid by the Khmer Rouge Pol Pot regime between 1975 and 1979 have been removed,” he said, “but you never know.”

We had seen many Cambodians missing arms or legs on our stroll through Siem Reap center the night before and these images flashed through my mind.

These reverent, respectful, and gentle people have been victims of such atrocities. I cringed at the thought of US bombings of this country from 1969 to 1973.

We struggled for nimble legs, as the task of temple exploration began.

We moved cautiously through uneven passageways, on which intricate carvings depicting ancestral daily life had been etched into the stone. Fighting warriors, kings riding elephants, multiheaded dancing nymphs called asparas, carvings of the female celestial being, DeVata, and the seven-headed, fan-like cobra, Naga, which protected Buddha from the rains, made for fascinating viewing. Every inch of this massive temple had been carved in basrelief and Hak explained each scene in excruciating detail. I felt brain overload already.

The narrow, steep, slippery, loose, uneven stones, of the temple’s ceremonial stairs to the second and third levels waited to be scaled. I had to dig deep for balance, courage and focus on each step. The scary ascent didn’t compare to the terrifying descent. Several staircases around the temple’s base had been closed off due to accidents. I prayed to Buddha all the way down.

Other temples beckoned. Chan drove us to adjoining Angkor Thom, the 105 sq. kilometer, 12th century capital city of the Khmer Empire. Bayon Temple, a massive structure of 54 stone towers emerged through the jungle.

Mysterious, three meter faces carved into the four sides of each tower gave the eerie sensation of 216 pairs of eyes watching me at every turn. I had never even heard of Bayon and yet this mystifying architectural style appeared more magnificent than Angkor Wat Temple.

It seemed a betrayal to even think this.

This structure dedicated to Khmer’s most prolific builder, Jayavarman VII, presented more climbing challenges to the central, circular third level tower.

And so it went, temple after temple.

With 1,000 structures, exploration never ends.

The oppressive humidity and late afternoon heat zapped our earlier excitement. Although each temple had its own individual significance, our brains could no longer decipher the differences. Who could remember the complicated names of these kings and by now who cared? We suffered a severe case of “temple fatigue.” We dragged

along, legs screaming, and clothes wringing wet. Ernie approached Hak and pleaded, “Hak, we’ve had enough for one day.”

Our “boy” looked dismayed, like he would be deprived of his greatest revelation. “Just one more temple, Papa; just one more and I promise, Papa, you will thank me for it,” Hak put his arm around Ernie’s shoulders to soften his request.

“Okay, one more,” relented Ernie, “but it had better be incredible.” Hak beamed.

Chan dropped us off at the entrance to Ta Prohm. The long walk deep into the jungle magically transformed cranky elders into eager children. The late afternoon shadows and the thick tangled forest lowered the temperature to bearable. Tourists not needing to cram 100 temples into two days were back at their hotels, relaxing by the pool. Sharing the space with only a few others, we cherished the sound of the jungle, birds and monkeys chattering, rather than the shouts and squeals from busloads of tourists. Ta Prohm unveiled itself as the best yet.

Intentionally left to the jungle, no reclaiming or restoring of this temple, we walked into an Indiana Jones movie set, with the roots of century-old banyan trees and silk cottonwoods encompassing entire structures. Entering the site through a narrow slit in the roots, we observed a 100-foot tree that secured the stones of the temple wall with its constricting tentacles.

Hak couldn’t wait to reveal his surprise. “Scenes from the movie, Lara Croft and the Tomb Raider, starring Angelina Jolie, were shot right here,” he said with pride that his country’s treasures backdropped an American film. I could see the action, through the truth of the jungle and actual ancient ruins.

The entire site, stone blocks tumbling, buildings crumbling, leaning, deteriorating, all held in suspension by virtual miles of thick roots. The jungle trees encased every structure, every passageway, every corner and crevice of this Buddhist temple built for the mother of Jayavarma VII. Nature preserved this site with natural strength. I loved every inch of Ta Prohm, more than Bayon, more than Angkor Wat. Hak wanted to end our first day of temple exploration at this awesome site. The next morning we would do it all over again and hear the same refrain, “Just one more temple, Papa.” __________ * Due to the high volume of foreign tourists to this area, all prices in Siem Reap are quoted and paid in US$.

Carol L. Bowman

Saw you in the Ojo 35

“To Promote the General Welfare”

By Fred Mittag

P

eople who have the facts, know the science, and think critically, should come up with the same conclusions. That’s the purpose of peer review. If other scientists can’t replicate an experiment, then it cannot be valid. The scientific method should also apply to social problems and government policy. There will, of course, be differences of opinion, but they should not be irreconcilable if science is the guide.

Our Founders were products of the Enlightenment, a period of history when dogma and ideology gave way to reason.

The Enlightenment was not a system but an attitude of open-mindedness and investigation. Several ideas dominated the

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Enlightenment, including rationalism, empiricism, progressivism, and cosmopolitanism.

Rationalism is the idea that humans are capable of using reason to gain knowledge. Learning became free from the belief that people need the authority of scripture and the Church.

Empiricism was the idea that knowledge comes from experiences and observation of the world.

Progressivism is the belief that through reason and observation, humans can make unlimited progress.

Cosmopolitanism was the Enlightenment thinkers’ view of themselves as citizens of the world instead of provincial and close-minded individuals. Benjamin

El Ojo del Lago / April 2021

Franklin wrote, for example, “Where liberty is, there is my country.” Thinkers from France, Prussia, Italy, Russia, England, and other regions, were in frequent contact to exchange ideas. Thomas Jefferson identified as cosmopolitan in contrast to Donald Trump’s nationalistic rhetoric.

Thomas Paine came from England to America as a product of the Enlightenment. He did everything he could to prevent the abuse of citizens’ rights by the rich and powerful. Paine believed citizens everywhere have a duty to care about the misfortunes of others. He was against misery in every form. He demanded respect for ordinary people, not just the nobility and the rich.

Thomas Paine was a major force in the American Revolution. His influential books included Common Sense (1776), Rights of Man (1791), and The Age of Reason (1794). He wanted a democratic government and was ahead of even Thomas Jefferson and John Adams in his thinking.

Because of Enlightenment thinking about government and eradicating social misery, the American Constitution has a Preamble in which the American government dedicates itself to “promote the general welfare.”

The American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 is true to the promise of America’s founding. It satisfies Thomas Paine’s concern for misery and the Constitution’s rationale of promoting the general welfare. The American Rescue Plan addresses the tragedy of over 536,000 lives lost to COVID-19 and 10 million unemployed. The pandemic and the economy are inseparable. Economic recovery depends on the elimination of COVID-19.

The American Rescue Plan achieves its moral duty by using knowledge gained from the scientific method, in this case, primarily medicine and economics. Medical science produced vaccines to combat the coronavirus. The science of economics will put people back to work and revive suffering small businesses. Many restaurants have died, never to return, so it is vital to save those

remaining from failing.

Some challenge the reliance on science, saying that Dr. Fauci is a fraud who changes his mind. Yes, he does, as all good scientists do. When the evidence changes, Dr. Fauci’s opinion changes.

That’s because science is self-correcting, while ideology is self-perpetuating. And some object that the cost of the American Rescue Plan is too great. The science of economics knows it is not.

Economists understand that the money to finance the American Rescue Plan will stay in America. It’s not going to China. In the case of the stimulus checks, needy recipients will spend it. That will increase demand, and employers will hire more workers to increase production. More workers with paychecks will spend more money, thus creating an upward spiral for the economy. The stimulus checks, which some call disaster relief, serve two purposes: immediate help and a jump start to an upward spiral in the economy. Ultimately, increased prosperity will create more significant revenue with which to pay the national debt.

Conservatives have veered from the Preamble’s rationale for creating a democratic government “to promote the general welfare.” Ronald Reagan said, “The most terrifying nine words of the English language are ‘I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.’” That quote was an attack on the very purpose of the Constitution. Its sentiment is even more tenacious today than when Reagan said it.

Democratic government to promote the general welfare is a moral statement.

Producing a vaccine and urging the population to wear a mask and practice social distancing are scientific statements.

Only backward people can challenge science and national ethics.

All Americans should applaud the passage of the American Rescue Plan of 2021.

Fred Mittag

Saw you in the Ojo 37

Pseudo Sex

By Lillian Norma Sookdeosingh

A

story from my camino blog. So there we were at the end of our seven-week-long trek across the top of Spain on El Camino Frances. Religious and nonreligious pilgrims alike travel this revered path annually. And now ours had ended in Santiago de Compostela. Ended here at the cathedral. Before I continue, let me recap one of the difficulties I had long before the beginning of this incredible journey.

For decades, I have suffered from lower back pain. Physiotherapy and the recommended at-home stretching exercises had helped somewhat but not enough to ensure this trek would be pain free. An incessant pain often travelled down my legs with

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an intensity that set my entire back on fire. But now here we were, pilgrims from all over the world, in this most magnificent of cathedrals, waiting to hear the name of our country being announced that signified we had completed the camino and had qualified for our compostelas. As luck should have it, we entered the city the same day that the final scene of the movie The Way was being filmed. Just as the five of us entered the square,

El Ojo del Lago / April 2021

we observed Martin Sheen walking into the office to collect his compostela. I mention this only because of the bonafumeiro; without it, I would not have been in a coveted seat in the cathedral. The bunafumeiro is a larger-than-life swinging incense burner and to see it in action, one has to pay a hefty fee due to the manpower and time it takes to operate it. And who, but the cast and crew of The Way, could afford such luxury?

Centuries ago the church deemed it necessary to burn incense to mask the stench of all the pilgrims who had entered the cathedral wanting to be blessed. Not having the means to cleanse themselves along the way made for quite the “aroma” at the end of their pilgrimage. Nor could the priest offer a wash station; hence, the burning of incense. Being fortunate enough to see it in action was only half the feat. Where to sit was also of utmost importance to fully appreciate its beauty. All pilgrims rushed to find the best seat in the church. “Try to be in the first few pews” was the travel guide’s advice. Feeling pleased with myself for having found the perfect spot, I settled in to await the show.

The Catholic church being what it is, there was a lot of sitting and standing and sitting and standing. And . . . well, you get the picture, there was a lot of sitting and standing. With only one day of rest, my back had not yet fully recovered from the trauma of a seven-week trek. I was still in a lot of pain. I sat and rose and sat and rose, out of respect for this place of worship, until eventually I couldn’t move.

My lower back was in total spasms.

Luckily for me, the next 15 minutes of a swinging bonafumeiro, the real highlight of this day, allowed me to sit still. Determined to witness this auspicious moment, I slid my painwracked body to the back of the pew and settled in to watch the show.

Once finished, the service continued and the congregation rose again.

But not me. Try as I might, I could

not stand up. I slid to the edge of the pew, held onto the back of the pew in front of me with both hands and willed myself to rise. Rocking back and forth a couple times seemed to release enough of the muscles to attempt an escape. Luckily, I had taken an aisle row seat which made for an easy if painful exit. As I began my long walk towards the side exit door, I saw my partner leaning against a pillar. I slid in behind it and out of sight of the main congregation, thinking I was out of view of everyone. That was my thought. Heaving a sigh of relief for having found some refuge, I began stretching. Hands on hips, bend backwards. Hands in front, bend body parallel to the floor. Hands on floor, bum in the air. Repeat several times.

A few of those stretches released the spasms enough to feel normal again.

Well, almost. My partner, more than aware of my health issues, moved behind me as I was about to finish my last “hands on the floor, bum in the air” exercise. To stop me from moving, he pressed his groin into my behind.

I accommodated by stepping back and nestling into him. Then he began.

Stroke up my back, stroke down my back. Stroke up my back, stroke down my back. Repeat. As with any good masseuse, he switched to another part of my body. Lifting my loose skirt a bit on either side, he ran his hands up and down my outer thighs, all the while keeping me in place with his groin. “How is that?” he whispered.

“Does that feel good?”

Finally feeling relief, I worked in unison with his movements and reacted with some interesting breathing noises. Totally lost in the euphoria of ridding my body of this excrutiating pain, I had allowed some very audible sounds to accompany my appreciation. “Yes! Oh my God, that feels soooo good. No, don’t stop. Yes, yes, right there, yes, that’s it!”

Then, out of nowhere a disgruntled sound startled both of us. Neither of us realized we were being observed from the other side of the pillar. Unbeknownst to us, there was a smaller door a few meters from the main side door where congregants could enter without being noticed.

As I was being massaged for my back spasms and moaning and groaning my appreciation, this somewhat obscured vantage view was being much misinterpreted by one very unimpressed gruff of a man making known his disapproval. From where we were standing—and moving—it must have looked like we were having a quickie. Or, as I called it when we reconnected with our three camino friends, Cathedral Pseudo Sex!

Saw you in the Ojo 39

COLUMNIST

PROFILING TEPEHUA

By Moonyeen King President of the Board for Tepehua

moonie1935@yahoo.com

W

hat a difference a Month makes! Last month’s article regarding portable toilets for the congested areas of Tepehua, where the inhabitants have no toilets and have to use open defecation, minimized a massive problem that has since driven the Tepehua Team back to the drawing board. Further survey through the month, and many letters from our readers to Moonie made us look harder at cost and maintenance. Thank you to our readers who took the time to contact the team, some to tell us where we were going wrong and others where we were on the right track, all constructive observations from first hand experiences.

The long term use of portables requires cleaning three times a day, and uses an abundance of chemicals, etc. The high cost of servicing made the price in the long run prohibitive and the problems of a health hazard still remained but in a different way. And it was still only a bandaid instead of a permanent solution.

The only good thing about it was that it saved water. If something interfered with the waste pick-up routine, which could certainly happen, the disgusting disaster left behind is unthinkable. And we are not talking just one portable but multiple.

The only way to solve this is solidbuilt communal toilets attached to sewers where the waste is properly treated and removed. The plan for Tepehua has entirely changed.

The New York Times-Sunday Review March, 2021 states: “America is not made for people who pee!” by Nicolas Kristof. ‘While America needs bridges and highways, its most disgraceful infrastructure failure is the lack of public toilets.’ unquote. If only that were just the problem here.

When Mexico’s poor find a place to build a home, the intent is to build a shelter from the elements first, and think about the luxury of toilets and kitchens later. Few homes are

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El Ojo del Lago / April 2021

built in the West without laying the plumbing first.

The following is the decision we have made to stop open defecation in the streets and save the health of our children. We are going to build a pilot program attached to the Tepehua Center, so we can monitor the safety and the sanitation aspect of a community shared bathroom. If this works for us in 2021, we then have the floor plan and the proof it can work to get the local Government involved in a plan to put one in all the congested areas. Plus help from the private sector. Our pilot toilet will be attached to the sewer system and the same water as the Center. We will be responsible for the maintenance, and the women who volunteer for the Center in return for help sending their children to school, free medical and dental, will make sure the sanitation meets all standards. We have a bodega at the back of the center attached to the medical unit that we can rehabilitate into a communal toilet with access to the street. The village of Tepehua has over 7,000 souls living there, 50% of whom have no toilets in their home. This is a massive problem and certainly one community toilet will be like a pee in the ocean...but everything starts with one. If this works for one area it can work for others, and because the area is so vast it is not something to be solved in one shot.

There are other solutions - make the tin roofs strong enough to hold tinacos (water tanks), then attach the home to the sewer and water; or raze the whole barrio to the ground and build tenements. A better class of slum like Government housing.

Toilets and paper and potable water are luxury items for the poor.

We will have them all, the impossible is just taking a little longer to solve. Keep your advice coming, it is invaluable. A pilot program is now written in stone. Your travel soap bars would be gratefully accepted.

Moonie

Saw you in the Ojo 41

THE ANNA MATILDA WHISTLER FAN CLUB, LAKESIDE CHAPTER How to Celebrate Your 76th Birthday

By Don Beaudreau

H

aving recently celebrated my 76th birthday, at Lakeside, and suffering an identity crisis because of it, I decided I had to do something to save my self-worth. So naturally, I decided to create a fan club for Whistler’s mother. A decision my own mother would have approved of.

You might be wondering why I chose to do this. And my answer would have to be in the form of a question back to you: What else could I have done to ameliorate my existential angst? I mean to say, my mother, who only had had her charcoal portrait done on the Boardwalk at Atlantic City in 1957 by some person called “Big Al” (if Big Al’s signature at the bottom of the portrait had really been the artist’s name), reminded me whenever I started complaining about my life: “You think you got it bad? Just think of….”

And then she would name the latest victim of life she knew about and go into lurid details concerning the ruthlessness of human existence and how lucky I was to have avoided the really bad stuff so far. Therefore, I’d just better shut up or my good luck might change at any minute, and she was the one to change it!

So by creating a fan club for Whistler’s mother, I was merely following my own mother’s advice/warning, and therefore I felt good about myself. After all, Ma Whistler’s 76 years of existence hadn’t exactly been a strut, but more like a skulk; whereas mine had been more like a hop, skip and a jump.

Consider the unfortunate fact that

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Anna Matilda (nee McNeill) Whistler already looked quite elderly in that famous portrait of hers—and she was only 67, a mere kid. But that was in 1871 before heart pacemakers, butt lifts, hair extensions, plastic surgery, self-medication, and Levis for women.

In other words, it was a time when everyone was forced to look their actual age . . . or worse. Especially the pietistic ones like Ma Whistler who were expected to suffer to prove their faith.

God knows what all those modern accoutrements would have done to her appearance. Or to her soul. Or to the value of the painting (which is currently estimated to be worth around US $140 million). But did she live to spend the money?

Actually, a number of satirists through the years have altered Ma Whistler’s image, and just my remembrance of seeing one of these depictions years ago, poured water on my burning identity crisis created by my recent birthday. “Ah!” I recalled, exclaiming to myself upon first viewing the satiric reproduction of her son’s Ar-

El Ojo del Lago / April 2021

rangement in Gray and Black No. 1, ((i.e.

Whistler’s Mother). “Ah! What is our little newspaper up to this morning? A bit of class?” Then I looked at the title of the article that appeared under the painting: “High-tech Hugs and Kisses.” Then I viewed the painting again, and much to my surprise, I saw Anna Matilda was not just sitting there in patient contemplation with her hands on her lap (as she was in the original painting), but had her laptop computer going full blazes on that famous lap of hers.

Talk about creating a new self-identity for the old gal; about re-branding her image. She became my personal goddess on the spot. And so, naturally on my anxiety-filled 76th birthday, she became my top pick to have a fan club.

Go Granny, go! And really, the woman deserves such an honor for having lived through the Victorian Age (in England, no less), and having to put up with that wisecracking, foppish, self-promoting son of hers with whom even his contemporary pal Oscar Wilde broke off a friendship. No wonder Anna looked so old, and undoubtedly would have even if she had had a butt lift.

Well, it is a world where the concept of the self is ever changing. Do any of us know who we are anymore?

The lines that gave us our self-identity have blurred, a reality I am feeling intensely these days. I have asked myself the question about the identity of self many times before, but now I ask the question with more gravitas than I had when I was young and hot to trot, instead of now old and ready to plop.

Now, we might choose to think that our modern life is strange—that there are just too many changes, too much input, too many choices, and too many hassles. We can believe the sense of self needs to be protected from outside forces; that we should hide away in our closed communities. Granted, some days that way of being in the world seems to be a pretty good thing to me. Still, modern technology brings the world to us, no matter where we are on the planet. Except at Lakeside when the Internet goes down and stays down for hours.

So can we be sure that we are the self we thought we once were? Well, no, we can’t. We have changed, even if we want to stay the same. Still, in amazement for having reached 76 years of age, I have come up with a list of how to create a self-identity in today’s world: 1. If you feel you must fight the changes, do so with equanimity of spirit, refusing to play the curmudgeon. Or if you must play the curmudgeon, learn to spell the word, and wear a mask when you are acting the part so nobody suspects it’s you.

2. Become friends with someone

with whom you never considered being friends before. Then after you have shared your deepest dreams, memories, and reflections, and before your new pal does that with you, drop the friendship or leave town forever.

3. Offer yourself as a mentor to others who are even more confused than you are about who their self is in today’s complex world. Or if they are beyond confusion and closer to madness, mirror this back to them, and, hopefully, they will just go away.

4, Learn, ever learn. You are not living in your grandmother’s time, so think on both sides of your brain. Or if you don’t understand neuroscience, just keep being who you are, but take up tap dancing and drinking at the same time.

5. Integrate the “what you were and knew” with “what you currently aren’t and don’t know yet.” Your life and mine are still stories being written—even if we don’t see a light at the end of the tunnel but, instead, see a sign that reads Dead End. 6. Stretch yourself. Why be bored or boring? Be new and daring! You are now at the age to do so. But if you really are too tight to stretch yourself, pay somebody else to do it to themselves, while you watch with sadistic glee as they suffer.

7. With the best effort you can make, get over the “age thing.” Don’t accept what others tell you about “acting your age.” Act as old as you want.

You deserve it. Crack, snapple, and pop your dry bones all over the rocky roads of Lakeside.

8. Cultivate your deep self, one that refuses to identify you as a mere bank account number, a hair color, a profession, or a golf score. So what if you really are superficial? Pretend you’re not.

Do you really believe anyone else is that deep?

9. Give yourself away. Practice the art of finding yourself by losing yourself through generous acts of kindness and charity. You can start by being generous with me. God knows I need the money at my age.

10. Never give up your freedom to ask questions about meaning and purpose in your life, but know that life is a mystery. Hell, I would be happy just knowing how to turn into Walmart’s parking lot from the carretera! That’s my life’s mystery.

So, just remember Anna Whistler and her updated image. Let her be a good example for all of us, but especially for the chronologically gifted.

After all, the only thing she had to do to be world famous was sit in a chair!

Anyone want to join my Anna Matilda Whistler Fan Club, Lakeside Chapter?

Just bring your own chair but don’t expect fame and fortune.

Saw you in the Ojo 43

COLUMNIST

FRONT ROW CENTER

By Michael Warren It’s My Party (And I’ll Die If I Want To)

by Elizabeth Coleman Directed by Liz O’Neill

A

fter a long pause due to COVID-19, Ajijic Readers Theatre (ART) has produced this comedy by Australian writer Elizabeth Coleman. There are some farcical elements, mainly the ridiculous situation of the play itself, but it mostly works as a comedy.

“Ron Patterson,” who is played with some vigor by Mark Heaton, has been given three months to live by his doctor. Because of his controlling and meticulous nature, he marks the day and the hour and invites his three children over to “celebrate” his death.

Let’s have a party and pass the salad and sausage rolls. This is not exactly funny; in fact, it is tasteless in the extreme, but never mind—it’s only a play. The adult kids show up, and immediately begin to bicker. It’s clear that they dislike each other, and also don’t much care for their father. The only sympathetic character is their mother “Dawn” who has very sensibly got a bit tipsy. Marsha Heaton has a lot of fun with this role, and reminds me of George’s mother in a Seinfeld sketch.

Son “Michael” has several secrets which he wants his father to hear.

He and his wife, Monique, are getting divorced, and also he needs to come out of the closet. He has fallen in love with his co-worker Andrew.

Mark Donaldson handles the part

well and his attempts to tell his father are brilliantly timed. Meanwhile the sisters “Karen” and “Debbie” do a lot of whining about each other and their Dad. This is a truly dysfunctional family. Karen has her wedding to plan, and Collette Clavadetscher plays her as needing to be the center of attention. She was always Dad’s favorite girl. Meanwhile Debbie, the eldest daughter, is a career woman and goes her own way. Lynn Gutstadt does a good job with a somewhat unrewarding part, with few funny lines.

And, by the way, Debbie is unmarried and pregnant.

So the old man gets more than he expected. He thought he was a wonderful dad, but they are telling him that he was self-centered and uncaring. This is supposed to be funny?

Anyway, in act two the funeral director shows up. Graham Miller is suitably somber as “Ted” and rolls his eyes in a funereal fashion. It’s a wonderful cameo part, and Graham makes the most of it. The funeral arrangements are discussed with the deceased-tobe, although no one seems to believe that Ron will actually die. He fools them all, and Michael in particular, by dying while Michael is revealing all to his father. Talk about not listening!

I think the author failed to decide whether she was writing a family drama with real characters or a comedy with crazy stereotypes. This confusion tends to affect the audience, who weren’t sure whether to laugh or not. In any event, Liz O’Neill did a great job in directing a strange play.

The pace was excellent and the cast got the most out of the timing of their lines.

I look forward to the next ART offering in April.

Michael Warren

44

El Ojo del Lago / April 2021

Saw you in the Ojo 45

How To Speak Mexican

By Michael G. McLaughlin

N

o, this is not an article on the passive tense of the Spanish verb ir or where to go to take Spanish language classes.

I have lived here 16 years and have known many people move to Mexico, stay for three years, and head home, usually because they cannot live in the culture. Why? Here is what you need to know and do to coexist in Mexico with—who else?—Mexicans.

First of all, like everywhere else sense of HUMOR is a must and especially the willingness to poke fun at yourself. You don’t have to be Shecky Green, cracking one-liners with every breath, but a sense of humor with “the locals” goes a long way. The Mexicans have an acute

46

sense of humor and appreciate someone who does. I would suggest no political jokes, even though, believe it or not, Mexicans are more cynical about their government than Americans or Canadians. Self-deprecating jokes will get you on a Mexican’s good side. If you do or say something stupid, smile and lament your mistake. I use the joke: “No soy ignorante, soy estúpido” (I’m not ignorant, I’m stupid.)

You have to have PATIENCE to live in Mexico. One of the first things you will hear from the old-timers is that Mexicans have a different sense of time.

What that means is when a Mexican announces what you want will be poco momentos, expect a wait just under an hour.

If a Mexican uses the phrase mas tarde,

El Ojo del Lago / April 2021

expect to wait more than two hours. If he says mañana, (tomorrow), come back in three days to be sure. This is normal.

Accept it. And why not remind yourself that you came to Mexico for the slower pace. Or, as they say in Spanish: “Aun no tienes alas y ya quieres volar” (You don’t have wings and already want to fly. Wait, be patient.

Do not have IMPATIENCE in Mexico.

A display of impatience is rude and anything else you might say will be meaningless to move that person to action.

If you are a person who says, “I demand to see the supervisor!” well, Mexico is NOT a demand-to-see-the-supervisor country. Like anywhere else, courtesy persuades. Calmly state your case and, again, explain your situation. Raising your voice here as anywhere else is considered rude and pushy. I will admit that a mature woman who can look defeated, desperate or forlorn will get more action (no, not that kind) and will be helped more readily. Life is not fair, guys.

When dealing with Mexicans you do not need to OVER EXPLAIN. Having nuevo language skills in Spanish can be dangerous when you wax eloquent about this or that and the Mexican listener gets lost in your three verb changes in one sentence.

Also, you affluent Spanish speaker types, do not show off your language

skills and sound like Cervantes.

Of course, as you learned in kindergarten, PLEASE por favor and THANK YOU gracias are the best start and finish of any social or business intercourse. A smile is universal; use it. And no bonecrusher handshakes because “That’s the way we do it.”

Mexico is generally a conservative country in many ways. They are not wildeyed revolutionaries. So any discussion of social issues that you feel strongly about are best kept to yourself. You can express an OPINION, but I would temper any provocative comment with a shrug of the shoulder and that you do it differently where you come from. I think we all get confused with good and bad AND different.

As mentioned before, the reason many people leave after a few years living in Mexico is they can’t stand the INEFFICIENCY, even though they don’t say that word, but that is what they mean.

As Norte Americanos, we are efficient people. Efficiency is our middle name.

We are always striving to be more efficient because (cliché coming) time is money. I don’t know how many times I have heard from gringos how inefficient Mexico is. And I have to agree that some things in Mexico are damned inefficient and could be improved on. Those thoughts I keep to myself and I’m always aware, again, knowing the difference between good and bad and different ways of doing things. Of course efficiency is relative. A number of years ago I was in Africa and if you want to see inefficiency . . . let’s put it this way, when I returned to Mexico I came to realize that the Mexicans were the Swiss of Latin America compared to most of Africa.

So, to sum up, speaking Mexican requires the same thing as any country: patience, manners, humor and wisdom, something we all Michael G. need to work on evMcLaughlin ery day.

Saw you in the Ojo 47

THE POLIO FIASCO

By Janice Kimball

This is an unedited version from Swoboda’s Hidden Women, a fourgenerational memoir now available on Amazon and Amazon Kindle. Go to my author’s page.

T

he Polio epidemic of the 1950s was but a glimpse in the memories of those who lived during that period of time; but for me, it has lodged in my heart with a heaviness that has never left. I have never spoken to anyone about my experiences of life-and-death decisions while I lay helpless in the hospital during the polio epidemic until just recently, when I wrote my memoir.

The incessant pushing of air into the lungs of helpless children, then sucking it back out, in mechanical, death-defying beats. ‘Phew-Whooh, Phew-Whooh” continued through the days and the nights when I was thirteen years old and lying on my back, feet strapped upright on a board at the foot of my bed in the University of Michigan’s gymnasium which served as the polio pediatric ward.

The heartbreaking cries of seemingly endless children housed in tight rows that filled the inside of the gymnasium echoed up the walls and pierced my soul. I internalized spatters of conversation from parents who lived in the northern part of the state, and those who lived in Upper Peninsula, saying goodbye to their children knowing it might be forever.

My adult-size bed was conspicuous among the cribs and junior beds that surrounded me. It sat near the entrance, next to where the bank of iron

48

lungs began. Mother came alone to visit me that first day, as she had every day since I had been admitted. Once wild, pretty and curvaceous, with the added weight of a hundred pounds, she became a doggedly unrelenting woman.

Her stoic gait, tough and indomitable, gave the effect of a tank rolling in ready to do battle.

I turned my head away. In a display of affection that I knew was the best mother could offer, she patted the back of my hand. At the same time, she furtively assessed the bleakness of the gymnasium setting. Even though I was on-guard because she was a master at making any situation worse, I did not blame her for my polio. “If I hadn’t let you go to Dearborn Pools you wouldn’t be here,” she confessed.

I tried to console her. “There were lots of children in the pool, lots of parents thought it was all right for them to be there.”

“We shouldn’t have taken that vacation. We should have stayed home.”

“But I’m the one who said we should go,” I said, hoping she wouldn’t be compelled to fix things.

“This is my daughter,” Mother barked at a passing nurse. “She doesn’t belong here! I want her transferred to an adult ward!”

“The doctors are gone for the day.”

“Then I want to speak to the head nurse.”

El Ojo del Lago / April 2021

“She’s at lunch.”

Mother paced up one aisle and down the other in a demand for attention. As her anger grew, the screaming of babies became louder. As if she were Godzilla, she shook a stack of sheeted metal partitions leaning against the back wall. She requisitioned them, and complying with her orders in a desperate attempt to keep the entire ward from turning into mayhem, the staff stopped what they were doing to construct a private wall around my bed.

I cringed each time the screen had to be clumsily unfolded then refolded.

The nurses would trip on the stand of my makeshift screen, almost knocking it over, as they scurried around in exhaustion taking care of the needs of suffering children. I had dreaded buzzing for a nurse. I felt their disgust as they lifted my limp body, feet trussed to the footboard, to change the sheets when I had waited too long.

The overhead lights had been dimmed to simulate darkness. I laid awake that first night in the pediatric ward, in spite of the sound of babies crying, not imagining what was to come next.

Crisp shadows backlit from the wall lights behind the iron lungs cast eerie, stencil-like images against the curtain that circled my bed. I listened to the sound of the night doctors’ shoes in blue paper wrappings as they softly shuffled against the gymnasium floor.

They were so close to me that if the soles of my own feet were not strapped down, I would have been able to reach out and touch them. I could hear the staff whisper on those dimly lit nights.

I felt a party to their hard decisions about which children should be left in the iron lungs and which should be taken out to die, to make room for another child who maybe had a better chance to survive.

My stiff neck kept my head flat on the pillow-less mattress; yet, I desperately needed to see what was happening in the tragedies taking place only a few feet away. I would peer at the

sheet room divider from the corners of my eyes, as if I could miraculously look through it. Soon, the discussion would end and I could hear the muffled feet of the doctors’ shuffle out, followed by a period of silence before the gurneys arrived.

The aides would bump against my curtain as they removed polio victims from their mechanical tombs. One less whooshing would be heard from the bank of iron lungs as a child pumped their last breath. I could hear the wheeling of a gurney leave the room as it was pushed down the long hall. I would strain to follow the sound of it and when I could no longer hear it, silently cry.

I supposed the gurney entered a room somewhere down the long hallway.

Maybe it had a delivery door, like the one through which I arrived. Maybe a hearse was waiting for the body. Maybe one had not been ordered; maybe the children weren’t dead before they reached that room. Maybe the hospital needed to wait until the child’s heartbeat stopped.

Maybe it still pumped after taking them off their breathing machine. Maybe they were conscious when they were rolled down the hallway, maybe... I thought.

I needed to share a tear, share the hopelessness of what I had heard. I needed to pay recognition to the children’s suffering, pay homage to their deaths. I needed to do something, anything, even if it was to cry out. But I was ashamed to call attention to myself in this secret midnight tryst that I had so much become a part of. Night after night, as I lay mute, this life-and-death scene played out.

Scorned by the staff for the extra attention mother had demanded they give me, no one said goodbye when I was released from the hospital. I heard their snickers and sighs of relief as I was wheeled out. I wished I could at least have had a paralyzed arm, or some other disability to alleviate my shame for leaving the other children behind crippled and suffering. Mother, through her most grand efforts, was never able to get me transferred to the adult ward.

Possibly it was in another building. For her, it was a bitter defeat.

I waited at the curb in the wheelchair for Mother to bring the car around. I breathed in the fresh moist air, felt it fill my lungs, a sensation I had never remembered feeling before. I sniffed the scent of grass being mowed for the last time before the frost set in. I heard the laughter of university students in the distance on their way to class. With anticipation, I faced an unknown future.

Janice Kimball

Saw you in the Ojo 49

Questions I Dare Not Ask

By Susan Q Miller

M

aybe it’s spending hours home alone during this pandemic that has freed my mind to wander through a history of unasked and unanswered questions that haunt me. I’ve always been an insatiably curious person and one of the greatest compliments I ever received was, “She asks the best questions.” Yes, I’ve been known for asking questions all my life about everything from “What is the essence of life?” to questions about all the whys and wherefores of just about anything I can think of. And yet, there are so many questions I dare not ask.

Perhaps it’s fear of the answer I’d receive.

Perhaps it’s concern that a deeper, wider chasm might occur between me and the person I’m asking for an answer.

As a psychotherapist, I was compen-

50

sated very well for asking the right questions. As a curious person, it allowed me the opportunity to gain deeper insight into the inner workings of the mind and the emotional states created by various people’s mind sets. It also became clear that we don’t always have the answer as to why we think the way we do, or do the things we do or say the things we say.

In my personal life, most people don’t appreciate the invasiveness my professional life afforded me. It’s taken me years to get used to that and to hold back asking intrusive questions or exposing the raw truth about my own life as a way of getting the other to open up to me. This isn’t just about satisfying my curiosity. Exploring the more personal stuff fosters a sense of connection, belonging, of being known, a clearer understanding

El Ojo del Lago / April 2021

of the other and of myself.

There are questions I feel I have the right to ask, questions about why a relationship, that seemed to be going extremely well, suddenly ends. I’ve had a couple of those experiences with women friends. Not knowing still bothers me even 30 years later. I’d also like to know how a healthy, active, love life turns into a cool platonic relationship. What changed? Who changed? Was it me? Yet, I don’t ask.

Over the past couple of years, and especially during this lockdown, most of my unanswered questions centered around the kind of thinking that elevated an inexperienced man into the White House. I’d like to explore the thinking of Evangelistic Christians, like my closest relatives, who overlooked his immorality, lies and deception, and voted for him a second time. I want to understand their fierce opposition to the Liberal Agenda.

If I could have an unemotional, intellectual conversation with them, I would ask if they thought that England, France, Germany or Canada are Socialist or Communist countries. If they said no, then I’d ask why they think nationalized public health insurance and other social programs available in most first world countries, would make the USA a socialist/ communist nation.

My relatives are generous, devoted Christians who freely tithe. Even when they inherited over a million dollars, they gave 10 percent away. So, I want to ask why they’d prefer to give money to feed the poor, but would vote against a minimum hourly wage increase, which might allow people to live a better life and perhaps feel better about themselves?

Before Obamacare, they complained about the cost of medical insurance.

With Obamacare, they said they saved $300 a month, but were opposed to the program.

Isabel Wilkerson, in her recently published book, Caste, stated that, compared to our counterparts in the developed world, the USA is a less benevolent society than other wealthy nations. It lags in major indicators of the quality of life.

There are more public mass shootings in the US, and it has one of the highest rates of gun deaths and owns more guns per capita than any other nation. Half the privately owned guns in the world are owned by US civilians. It has the highest incarceration rate, higher than Russia or China. American women are more likely to die during pregnancy and childbirth than women in other wealthy countries.

Life expectancy is the lowest among the 11 highest-income countries. Infant mortality is also the highest. American students score near the bottom in industrial nations in mathematics and reading.

Fifteen-year-olds scored well below students in peer nations on math literacy, below Latvia and the Slovak Republic.

The USA’s first woman major-party candidate ran for president in 2016, some 60 other countries had already had a woman head of state.

How can we call ourselves an advanced civilization? How can we become one? In an interview with Brian Williams, Edward Snowden said that in our fractured world, “It has become increasingly popular for your feelings to matter more than the facts.” He added that if we want to learn to live with people we disagree with, and direct our future as a nation, we have to be willing to look at the facts of where we are. How many of us want to know the facts?

It appears there are many levels of castes in the United States—women, blacks, browns, Arabs, poor, uneducated, Muslims, just to name a few. My upbringing in a Baptist church taught me that, “Red and yellow, black and white are precious in his sight, Jesus loves the little children of the world.” All the little children of the world. I don’t understand why anyone would want to support any leader set on dividing people. What is their thinking? Imagine what we could learn and how it might benefit all of us if we listened to each other and found similarities that bind us together.

According to the Bible, there are two great commandments: Love your neighbor as yourself and love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind. How can we condemn people who practice those commandments, but have a different religious belief system?

Do I dare bring this information and these questions to the attention of my family? Would I be inciting a riot? deepening the divide? Can people of different leanings come together to resolve the glaring inequalities and misunderstandings so apparent in our world today?

Will love and a world community ever be more sacred than one nation holding power over another? Will the US ever decide to do away with the arcane electoral college and accept the popular vote?

When will political parties be banned from intentionally creating barriers in an effort to block certain segments of the population from voting? Will political parties ever serve the people, all the people and the constitution rather than themselves and the money that re-elects them?

I wonder, are we willing, as a nation, to look at the facts and work together to create a more humane society? Or, are we resigned to the status quo? Can change start here at the ground level, between family members and friends who think differently, but want to build bridges?

Must we wait for the politicians? I suppose these more serious questions, the answers to which could literally change the face of humanity, are questions we all should ask. Who do we ask? Do we dare?

Saw you in the Ojo 51

The Ojo Crossword

52

El Ojo del Lago / April 2021

ACROSS

DOWN

1 5 10 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 22 24 26 27 30 32 37 38 40 41 43 44 45 46 48 49 52 53 54 56 58 63 67 68 70 71 72 73 74 75 76

1 Baby’s “ball” 2 Voiced 3 Mound 4 Synthetic fabric 5 Cajun 6 Crash Violently 7 Cain’s brother 8 Biblical tower 9 Czech 10 Bring up 11 Ca. University 12 Punk 13 Where a family lives 21 Heron 23 Environmental protection agency (abbr) 25 Fern seed 27 Building materials 28 Jack __ 29 Sarcastically 31 Abundance 33 Rio de Janeiro 34 Raise 35 Lessor 36 Pale 39 Laughing dog 42 Sun’s name 44 Asian islands 47 Oil producing region 50 Elver 51 Thingumabob 55 Plant Stem & Root 57 Fruit 58 Stuck up person 59 Skulk 60 Soon 61 Shortening 62 Skinny 64 Aged 65 Take 66 Harvard’s rival 69 S-E Asian

Danish physicist Mid-Eastern dwellers Baseball’s Babe Opera solo Secret Faction Reverberate Healing Cream Very tiny animal Short for aluminum Affiliated Crowbar result Aegis Kisser’s need Hallucinogen Knocks (2 wds.)

Waiter Rainy mo.

Cain’s eldest son Midwestern state Rendezvous Light Links Aura Swelling Determined Did hair Prune Test Goddess Eve’s husband Small onions Verve One of Columbus’ ships Triangle-shaped Greek letter Italian money Smell False name Opaque gem Curve Resign Northeast by east

Saw you in the Ojo 53

Service * ADVERTISING / DIRECTORY

* ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS

- CLINICA VETERINARIA SAN ANTONIO Pag: 07 Tel: 376 766-0808 - COLITAS - Pet Supply Pag: 47 - LAKESIDE FRIENDS OF THE ANIMALS AC Pag: 19 Tel: 376 765-5544 - MASKOTA’S LAKE Pag: 16 Tel: 376 766-0287, 33-3448-2507 - PET PLACE Pag: 08 - PET SITTING Pag: 49

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54

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- COSTALEGRE Tel: 376 108-1087, 33-1173-6144

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By Keira Morgan

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Pag: 49 Pag: 42 Pag: 43

* REAL ESTATE - AJIJIC HOME INSPECTIONS Tel: 33-3904-9573 Pag: 51 - AJIJIC REAL ESTATE Tel: 37 6766-2077 Pag: 17 - BAUERHOUSE PROPERTIES Tel: 33-264-5301 Pag: 19, 47 - BETTINA BERING Cell. 33-1210-7723 Pag: 21 - BEV COFELL Cell: 33-1193-1673 Pag: 38 - CIELOVISTA Tel: 33-2002-2400 Pag: 05 - COLDWELL BANKER CHAPALA REALTY Tel: 376 765-3676, 376 765-2877 Fax: 765-3528 Pag: 60 Tel: 376 766-1152, 376 766-3369 - CONTINENTAL REALTY Pag: 33 Tel: 376 766-1994 - CUMBRES Tel: 33-2002-2400 Pag: 05 - EAGER REALTY Tel: 333-137-8447, 376 766-1917 Pag: 10 - ESTHER WHITSELL Tel: 333-181-5717 Pag: 45 - FOR SALE BY OWNER

Tel: +1 720-984-2721, +52 33-1395-9062 Pag: 51 - FOR SALE BY OWNER Pag: 49 Cell: 331-352-1339, 376 766-4364 - JUDIT RAJHATHY Cell: 331-395-9849 Pag: 15 - LAKE CHAPALA REAL ESTATE Tel: 376 766-4530/40 Pag: 59 - MICHEL POMMIER Pag: 46 Cell: 331-399-8267 - RAUL GONZALEZ Cell: 33-1437-0925 Pag: 03 - ROSEMARY BUTTERFIELD Cell: (332) 204-1011, (919) 349-3902 Pag: 41 - SANTANA RENTALS AND REAL ESTATE Tel: 315-351-5167, 315-108-3425 Pag: 47 - VISTA ALEGRE Tel: 33-2002-2400 Pag: 05

* TREE SERVICE - CHAPALA TREE SERVICE Tel: 376 762-0602, Cell: 33-1411-0242

Pag: 20

* TOURS - CHARTER CLUB TOURS Tel: 376-766-1777

Pag: 07

* WATER - TECNO AQUA Tel: 376 766-3731, 376 688-1038

Pag: 44

* RENTALS/PROPERTY MANAGEMENT - COLDWELLBANKER CHAPALA REALTY Pag: 52 Tel: 376 766-1152 - FOR RENT Pag: 38 Cell: 333-667-6554 - FOR RENT Pag: 48 Cell: 33-1115-6584 - FOR RENT Pag: 57 Cell: 332-608-7128 - SANTANA RENTALS AND REAL ESTATE Tel: 315-351-5167, 315-108-3425 Pag: 47 - VILLAS DEL SOL Pag: 51 Tel: 376 766-1152

* RESTAURANTS / CAFES /BAR - AJIJIC TANGO Tel: 376 766-2458 - CASA LINDA Tel: 376 108-0887 - GO BISTRO Cell: 33-3502-6555 - LA TAVERNA Tel: 376-766-2848 - MOM’S DELI & RESTAURANT Tel: 376 765-5719 - YVES Tel: 376 766-3565 - ZARANDEADO PERO FELIZ

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* RETIREMENT/REST/NURSING HOMES - ALICIA’S CONVALESCENT Tel: 376 766-1194, 376 766-2999 - CASA LA VIDA REAL Cell: 33-2174-1180, 33-1629-9219 - CASA ANASTASIA - Care Home Tel: 376 765-5680 - CASA NOSTRA-Nursing Home Tel: 376 765-3824, 376765-4187 - NURSING HOME LAKE CHAPALA S.C. Tel: 376 766-0404 - SACRED HEART - Nursing Home Tel: 331-027-1501 - VIDA BELLA SEÑIOR RESIDENCE Tel: 376-765-4000

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* SATELLITES/ T.V. - AJIJIC ELECTRONICS S.A. DE C.V. Tel: 376 766-1117, 376 766-3371 - SHAW SATELLITE SERVICES Tel: 33-1402-4223

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* SCHOOL - INSTITUTO INTERNACIONAL Tel: 376 688-0004

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* SOCIAL ORGANIZATIONS - LA OLA - Casa Hogar Tel: 33-1520-8766 - LOS NIÑOS DE CHAPALA Y AJIJIC Tel: 376 765-7032

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* SPA / MASSAGE - GANESHA SPA Tel: 376 766-5653, Cell: 331-385-9839

Pag: 43

* SOLAR ENERGY - SUN QUEST ENERGY Tel: 376 766-6156, Cell: 333-117-9126

Pag: 49

* TAXI / TRANSPORTATION - OMAR MEDINA Cell: 33-1281-2818 - TAXI-Arturo Fernandez Cell: 333-954-3813

Pag: 52 Pag: 28

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CARS WANTED: I can buy it under $50,000 pesos. Call: 333-955-8594 tony FOR SALE: 2016 Honda HR-V Epic. White with black interior. 55,000 K, mostly highway driven. High 30’s mpg.

Door edge guards, front bug deflector, all weather floor mats, auto-dimming mirror. $235,000. Available April. Call: 766-4716.

FOR SALE: White 2013 CX-9, Grand Touring, tan leather, navigation, all the usual options. Approximately 110,000 km, new tires recently, regularly serviced by Mazda, excellent condition. $235,000 pesos. Call 331-787-8252.

WANTED: Looking to buy older model VW Beetle (Vocho). Must be in good condition. Please contact. Email: tomstewart@live.com.

WANTED: Cargo Trailer Good Condition. Please advise. Minimum 6 x 10. Email: monrio1@yahoo.com.

WANTED: I live in San Antonio, Texas. But visit my brother in Chapala couple times a year. I am looking to purchase a u.s. Plated vehicle for my daughter. I will consider all offers. Please write me or call: 210-374-5641. Email: Elijo707@yahoo.com.

FOR SALE: AUTOMOTIVE 2019 Mazda CX-3. Selling car - had to move back to the States. Car has sunroof and 18 inch wheels. Perfect condition. Contact USA Cell 772-485-0783. $15,000 USD 3000 miles on it.

FOR SALE: 1973 volkswagen thing, good running, condition motor and transmission rebuilt, new paint, driven every day. Asking $3500.00 us dollars obo. phone Frank 332-954-3206.

COMPUTERS FOR SALE: HP 46 Printer Cartridg-

es - 3 color & 4 black. All can be yours for $700 pesos. Regular price at Office Depot is $259 pesos each. Call Donna at 766-4636 if interested.

FOR SALE: two 952xl black for hp office pro 8710. Bought at Costco was over $900 pesos for two works on USA 8710 printer. $400 pesos for both.

Wayne 766-1860.

PETS & SUPPLIES FREE: Neutered 2-year old, handsome and affectionate gray and white male cat needs a forever home. His name is Boomer. He is feline leukemia free and has had shots with paper health certificate from his vet. This guy adopted me last year. Unfortunately, my cranky old lady cat wants nothing to do with him, my house is on the market, I will be leaving in six weeks and cannot take him with me. My two options: find him a home or put him down. I don’t like the second one.

Email: slickrock39@yahoo.com.

FOR SALE: Pet Crate. 24” fits dog 6 kilos to 11 kilos (13 lbs. to 24 lbs) Black metal wire w/2 doors. Total visibility on all sides. New condition. Paid $1000 pesos. Purchased @ Lakeside Friends of Animals. Has carry handle. Dimensions in cm: 62 X 44 X 51. Price: $750 pesos.

Email: patriciahemigway@gmail.com.

GENERAL MERCHANDISE WANTED: I am interested in purchasing wood working tools and machinery. All things considered, drills, clamps, drill press, table saw etc. Please call or Whatsapp 331-751-7520.

FOR SALE: Extension ladder 6 meters in length. It sells for $4,190.00 pesos. I will sell it for half price. Contact Louise 376-766-1127.

FOR SALE: Men’s XL & XXL Cloth-

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ing. 50 pesos each for shirts, pants, warm up suits, dress pants & jackets, outdoor shorts. Call: 331-765-3163.

FOR SALE: Shaw Arris 800 receiver like new with remote, power cord and HDMI cable. Free and clear to be activated. Price: $3000 pesos. Call: 376766-4032.

WANTED: I’m looking for display easels for showing art work at the LCS monthly event. These need not be complicated, just suitable to hold a 24 inch square framed art work. Email: vamostwo@yahoo.com.

FOR SALE: Side by side refrigerator freezer. In good working condition even the door ice maker! Not a beauty on the outside but would be great for a garage or casita. $5000 or best offer. Email: laura1108@comcast.net.

FOR SALE: Corner cabinet 32 inches on the diagonal, 22 inches front to corner, 76 inches high. Top door has glass insert and one shelf. Bottom 2 doors open to one shelf. $2500 pesos.

376-766-4032.

FOR SALE: 2 wooden nightstands with 3 drawers - $1500 pesos each. 2 Arizona Kokopeli chairs - $800 pesos each. Cartop cargo carrier - 53 x 36 x 13 inches - fits most cars with roof rails $2000 pesos. Paper shredder - one year old - $500 pesos. Vitamix blender - 2 years old - $3000 pesos.

Electrical ceramic heater - $500 pesos. Humidifier - $300 pesos. Electronic translator - 40+ languages (incl Spanish to English) - $100 pesos. Kokopeli wall hanging - three pieces - ceramic - $800 pesos. artandgail@yahoo.com.

FOR SALE: Shaw 60E dish never used. Complete dish but has the ku lnb. $300 pesos. 376-766-4032.

FOR SALE: Farberware 20 piece knife set in wood block. Brand new in box $1200 pesos. 766-4032.

FOR SALE: I have beautiful Cathy Chalvignac and Javier Zaragoza paintings for sale. I am moving and cannot take them. Sadly parting with fine art.

Contact: rdiamond99@live.com.

FOR SALE: Portable G2 Oxygen Concentrator. Has 5 levels of oxygen.

Call Helen at 766-1072 if you have questions. It is an inigen One Machine. 2 4 1/2 hour batteries. Carrying case. pull trolley with wheels. Manual instruction. I have the receipt the cost was $49,9000 pesos. Bought in October and used for a week, your price is only $30,000p.

Email: julieywayne@yahoo.com.

FOR SALE: Ceiling fans with lights, Whirlpool refrigerator, wrought iron and glass round tables, double bed with two nightstands, Ariston electric front-loading dryer, wooden 4-shelf book case, sofa, dining room table with leaf and 8 padded chairs, 5-drawer cabinet, wood and glass hutch, treadmill and Nautilus exercise bike, 2-car metal carport, Shaw Direct satellite dish and 2 receivers, Casio CTK-496 keyboard, 2 stepladders, two padded rotating bar stools, GM air compressor and hoses. Email jim@fdaweb. com or U.S. telephone 623-239-7725, Mex. 331-709-0901 – or browse in per-

son at 712-D Carretera Chapala a Mezcala, Tlachichilco, San Juan Tecomatlan.

FOR SALE: counter-top dishwasher with manual. needs no plumbing or carpentry. Quite new call 766-2489.

FOR SALE: We have two single beds for sale - they have matching, basic, sturdy, wooden frames and very comfortable “comfort plus” mattresses. $1500 pesos for the pair. Contact me at stephanie@le-st-hilaire.com if you are interested.

FOR SALE: Wheelchair never used, Heavy duty, paid $7000 pesos, Make offer 376-763-5664.

FOR SALE: BH FITNESS MULTIGYM, Good as new. $300 pesos. To pick up in Ajijic Centro. Cel 333-3949770. Email: malecone@cloud.com.

FOR SALE: Gently used men’s clothing. Lucky enough to wear man’s size 38. 2 pairs jeans, 1 slacks, 1 denim shorts, 4 shirts, lg. 100mx each. Thermals, joggers, bathing suit. 60 Mx each.

Gently wor. Email: Doted4474@gmail. com.

FOR SALE: Over 50 paintings for small and very large all sizes, price right to sell, some you can canvas you can paint over to may to post pictures. Todo Bueno Resale Shop. Email: rvhowardrenz@aol.com.

FOR SALE: Please pm me for more info if you’re interested in Warren Hardy Workbook #2, plus audio . In good condition, no writing in the workbook. 500 pesos. Includes audio. Email: v.v.kaskow@ gmail.com.

FOR SALE: 2 identical red 4 wheeler SKYWAY expandable carry ons. Pull up handle. 21 inches x 13 x 8. Good condition. All zippers work. $400 pesos each or 2 for $700 pesos. Call: 766-4032.

FOR SALE: Dog crate: Guliver #6, 92 cm X 64 cm X 66 cm h, with wheels, good for Husky, Labrador, Boxer, etc.

Price: $1,800. www.stefanplast.it for more details. Call: 331-785-7185 – 376765-6161. Email: ejndrjnsn@gmail.com.

FOR SALE: A rear mounted carrier that will carry one motorbike or small motorcycle. Up to 500 pounds, fits into a class 2 hitch. Is located in Roca Azul RV park. $5000 pesos, price is firm. Text or call 332-726-5718. I am posting for a friend, please contact him, Larry.

FOR SALE: Grey Micro plush blanket 90 inches x 88. 10 hour auto off. 10 heat settings. $2000 pesos. 376-7664032.

FOR SALE: 1500 Litre LP tank, no rust w/ remaining gas. Must be willing to move it. Call Phil 331-340-8115 or email preitano@netzero.net.

FOR SALE: We’re selling 2 really nice, swiveling metal bar stools that have never been used. The measurements are: ht fm ground to top of backrest: 66.5cm/38in. ht fm ground to base of stool: 54cm/21.5in. cushions: 41cm/16in. cushion thickness: 4.5cm/1.75in. Please note that we’re selling these as a package (both) for $800mxn. 376-765-5085 or 332-617-3588.

FOR SALE: Lipitor 800 mg #90. Not outdated. 25% off best Lakeside price.

Email: 1988jeopardychampion@gmail. com.

FOR SALE: Selling my 52-bottle Magic Chef wine fridge for $2,000 MXN. Cost about $10,000 MXN new. Dual zone cooling, easy to read internal thermometer. Works great. I built a wine cellar so no longer need the fridge. Contact Randy at randy4475@ hotmail.com.

WANTED: Juicer new or used. 7660660.

WANTED: I am looking for a large used hot tub. Cell: 331-942-9321 John.

FOR SALE: 2 - Oversized Mexican chair, excellent condition. Changing furniture out. $4000 or B/O. Call Phil 331340-8115 or email: preitano@netzero. net.

FOR SALE: I have an almost new 88 key Casio piano. The keys are weighted and it sounds great. Casio CDP S100 digital piano. I am in town February 6-11.

Price is $300 US or equivalent pesos.

Call or text Danny at 208-938-7966. US number.

FREE: I have a used US doctor ordered back brace available for FREE!.

It is especially designed for post spinal fusion surgery but also for anyone with lumbar pain. You can contact me at 331746-1288.

WANTED: I have recently lost my VA connection for CPAP supplies and will need to begin sourcing them locally. If you have unused supplies you would like to pass on for cheap or free to a needy Vet, please message me with what you have. I use a Resmed S9 with humidifier, but some things like hoses and masks and nose pillows may be universal.

Yes, I know of the many online sources, but my budget is tight and I prefer this method as many people buy CPAPs and end up not using them. There’s no sense wasting good medical supplies. Email: carlabuchanan1@gmail.com.

FOR SALE: WANTED Gas BBQ Grill. In good condition. Email: sunnyvogler@yahoo.com.

FOR SALE: Looking for a 6 drawer dresser (no mirror), buffet or sideboard preferably in ivory or light color finish. I appreciate any help. Email: silkfleurs@ outlook.com.

WANTED: Small chest freezer.

Email: sunnyvogler@yahoo.com.

WANTED: I am a piano student and am looking for a keyboard to practice on for the month of February or any part thereof. I know the Arts Centre offers rental time on their pianos, but I am looking to borrow or rent for more intense practice. I’ll be located in central Ajijic

and would appreciate any leads. Email: jszostak46@gmail.com.

FOR SALE: Dinnerware set, Napoli pattern, hand painted, dishwasher, microwave safe. 1 large platter, 8 dinner plates, 8 salad plates, 8 coffee cups, 7 cereal/soup bowls, 2 dip bowls. $350.

USD. Call 331-065-9193.

WANTED: 2 matching end tables or nightstands. Trying to finish off a living room and we need 2 smallish tables.

Condition = acceptable, there’s always magic in a can of spray paint. Email: kimanjo@gmail.com.

WANTED: We need a comfy occasional chair for an empty corner of our living room. Neutral color or pattern, style not very important as long as it’s not plaid Herculon from the 1970s.

Email: kimanjo@gmail.com.

FOR SALE: Stained glass panel. 10” W x 31” H. Needs to be cleaned up a bit, hangers soldered on the top or can install as is $300 MX. Call: 331-857-0798.

FOR SALE: Moving and selling mattress and wooden base for just $2,500 pesos. Please contact me at patricktimothymullikin@hotmail.com. Located in Guadalajara centro.

FOR SALE: An on-demand 5 litre per minute water heater. Cal-o-Rex. Lightly used one year, in great condition. Decid-

ed to get bigger one for the whole house, saving gas. $2,750 mx obo. Email: mike 4v@mac.com.

FOR SALE: Original Prada Shoes, size 24.5 Mexican, Only 1 time was used, price $3000 pesos. Call to Alma 331005-3109.

FOR SALE: Individual Brass Headboard, Price $2,200.00 pesos. Call to Alma 331-005-3109.

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