Saw you in the Ojo
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El Ojo del Lago May 2010
Saw you in the Ojo
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Richard Tingen
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Alejandro Grattan-Domínguez Tel: (01376) 765 3676, 765 2877 Fax: (01376) 765 3528 Associate Publisher David Tingen Graphic Design Roberto C. Rojas Jazmin Eliosa Special Events Editor Kay Davis Associate Editor Jim Tipton Contributing Editors Paul Jackson Henri Loridans Feature Editor Jim Tuck (Honorary) Staff Photographer Xill Fessenden Staff Writers Mildred Boyd Ilse Hoffmann Floyd Dalton Sales Manager Tania Medina (045) 33 1140 3570 ojodelago@gmail.com Office Secretary Iliana Oregel ADVERTISING OFFICE Av. Hidalgo # 223, Chapala Mon. thru Fri. 9am - 5pm Sat. 9am - 1pm Tel. 01 (376) 765 2877, 765 3676 Fax 01 (376) 765 3528 Send all correspondence, subscriptions or advertising to: El Ojo del Lago http://www.chapala.com ojodellago@prodigy.net.mx Ave. Hidalgo 223 (or Apartado 279), 45900 Chapala, Jalisco Tels.: (376) 765 3676, Fax 765 3528 PRINTING: Quadrimag S.A. de C.V. El Ojo del Lago aparece los primeros cinco días de cada mes. (Out over the first five days of each month) Certificado de Licitud de Título 3693 Certificado de Licitud de Contenido 3117.
FEATURE ARTICLES
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The redoubtable Mildred Boyd writes about Rigoberta Menchu, one of the modern-day heroines of Guatemala, a woman who has been fighting for the rights of the indigenous people in that country for most of her life.
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15 LITERARY CRITICISM Martin Levin writes about the savagery that exists between writers when it comes to evaluating the work of other writers. It seems that these normally sophisticated, urbane and humane types drop all pretense to civility when discussing their own kind.
17 LAKESIDE PROFILE Kay Davis profiles Stanley Unger, a long-time member of the Ajijic Writers’ Group.
24 MATING HABITS Gail Nott looks at the touchy subject of “dating at Lakeside,” and decides we have two options: either laugh or cry.
32 TRAVEL Carol Bowman, travel writer extraordinaire, files the fourth part of her series “Journey to the End of the World,” a series avidly followed by many of our readers.
48 LANGUAGE Dilia Suriel writes about something have often asked: how can I best learn to speak Spanish?
54 BOOK REVIEW Jim Tipton reviews Geo-Mexico, a book written by two current or former Lakesiders—Richard Rhoda and Tony Burton—and concludes that the book is a “must-have” for those of us hooked on this magnificent country.
Reserva al Título de Derechos de Autor 04-2007-111412131300-102 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 STORY
COVER STORY
PUBLISHER
Index...
El Ojo del Lago May 2010
COLUMNS THIS MONTH 6 Editor’s Page 7 Balloon in Cactus 10 Bridge by Lake 12 Uncommon Sense 13 Joyful Musings 14 Ask Carolyn 16 Thunder on Right 18 Wondrous Wildlife 20 Faith & Fables 22 Tilly/Tommy Report 26 Animal Shelter 28 Stay Healthy 34 Lakeside Living 44 World of Ours 46 Notes from Nestipac 52 Child of Month 57 Feathered Friends 58 Front Row Center 59 Hearts at Work 64 Welcome to Mexico 65 New Lease on Life 66 LCS Newsletter
LAKESIDE LIVING
D IRE C TOR Y
34 MAGNIFICENT MEXICO
VOLUME 26 NUMBER 9
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By Alejandro Grattan-Dominguez
The Church at the Crossroads
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or more than three decades, the Catholic Church has been battered by scandals, many having to do with child-molestation offences—but not all. The full extent of some of the other problems was outlined in a book called In God’s Name, which was written by David A. Yallop, a one-time investigative reporter for The New York Times. In that searing, 1984 international best-seller, (five million copies sold) Yallop made the case that John Paul I was murdered by high-ranking officials in the Vatican itself. John Paul I had come into office only after many, many votes had been taken by the assembled “Princes of the Catholic Church,” i.e., the Cardinals. The new Pope, relatively young, and in excellent heath, had died some 31 days later. There was no autopsy, nor even an official medical report. Simply a statement that he had died of “natural causes.” Yallop’s book made a compelling case that the Pope had been dispatched for four reasons: he was convinced that the Church’s attitude toward divorce was both cruel and illogical. The Church excommunicates those who divorce their spouses but not those who murder their spouses; the Pope regarded the policy on birth control outmoded and economically disastrous; he also felt that the image and heritage of Jesus Christ had been lost in all the pomp and power of the Church; and most damming of all, he had discovered that the Vatican Bank was deeply involved with the Mafia. Unfortunately, Pope John Paul I made known all of the above to several very important officials, including the head of the Vatican Bank and the Vatican Secretary of State. Thirty one days later the Pope was dead. Since then, the Church has weathered a blizzard of child-molestation lawsuits that have cost the Vatican hundreds of millions of dollars. Now the scandal has reached all the way up to the current Pope, Joseph Ratzinger, who allegedly often refused to defrock priests who sexually abused children. It would seem that when conducting its affairs, the Church regards the despoiling of innocent children as nothing more than “collateral damage,” that heartless euphemism once employed to describe the killing
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of innocent women and children by the US during the Vietnam War. The current bunker mentality and belligerent paranoia of the Church must change if it is to weather this latest avalanche of problems. 1. Change the divorce laws. Pope John Paul I was right. The laws make no sense and needlessly toss aside what otherwise might be devout Catholics. 2. Change the laws governing birth control. Even in Mexico, Catholics are not obeying them, instead following what might be called “Catholicism —Cafeteria Style.” 3. Change the sign, “Priests Wanted: Only Males Need Apply.” With the number of priests at a critically low level, this seems nothing more than common sense. Further, how can the Church revere Mary, the Mother of Christ, even while discriminating against those of her gender? 4. Eliminate the ban against marriage for priests. First initiated so as to keep “outsiders” from inheriting anything from priests, it now seems callous and greedy. 5. Eliminate the demand for celibacy. Freud could have given the Vatican an earful about the many harmful effects that come when the sexual drive is totally throttled, especially in younger men. 6. Establish iron-clad regulations by which all those accused of sexual molestation of children are immediately reported to the police. By the way, should anyone wonder about my own religious affiliation, I am a Roman Catholic. As the son of a Mexican mother and an Irish father, my religious options were, to put it mildly, extremely limited.
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A BALLOON IN CACTUS By Maggie Van Ostrand Reprinted by Permission of Maggie Van Ostrand http://www.maggievanostrand.com
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d. Note: As with the late Mildred Boyd, it seems our readers do not want to let go of Maggie so we plan to indefinitely run some of the columns she wrote for us several years ago. Dear Dr. Freud, I heard you were a pretty smart guy, but even you couldn’t answer your own question: “What does a woman want?” Some say men and women should live on different continents and procreate by getting together once a year in a neutral country like, say, Switzerland. However, Sigmund, I think you men still have hope, so I’m gonna tell you what we used to want, how we wrested much of it from you, and what we want today, in the 21st Century. Waaaay back when we collected nuts and berries and you were having contests of who had the longest loin cloth, we didn’t ask for much. Little things, like you should bring home a steak to go with the salad. And we wanted you to invent fire for the barbeque. Nothing big. After that, we allowed you to put our bustled and petticoated selves on that pedestal and treat us as dainty flowers who only accepted gifts of candy, cracked our Gibsoned heads against steel ceilings, suffered mightily for the vote, investigated cold sodas at the corner drugstore and hot jazz al the speakeasies, bobbed our hair and our skirts, and Charlestoned our way into F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Gatsby. When you went off to fight wars, we wanted you to notice how well we performed the jobs you had left behind, how well we raised the kids all alone, and how well we hid our loneliness without you. Then we wanted you to take the bra-burning seriously and not object if we chose to return to the workforce. We wanted you to volunteer to do some of the grocery shopping and childcare, without our asking. We wanted you to retain your masculinity while cooking and diapering. We wanted to be like you, but
not. We wanted you to be like us, but not. Having gone through all that and lived to see the solid steel ceiling converted to breakable glass, Hillary Clinton turns out to be a counterfeit feminist, and Martha Stewart seduces us back into the kitchen. It seems that we got much of what we wanted, but don’t quite know what to do with it. Perhaps the point all along was just to get it. So here’s the skinny on what we want now: We want you to be stronger than we are but in a gentle and tender way. We want you to respect our whims of iron. We want you to open doors, light cigarettes, and never accept our offer to pay the restaurant check. We want you to take yes for an answer. We want you to take no for an answer. We want you to leave us alone. We want you to pay us attention. We want you well-bred, wellread, and underfed. We want other men to look at us. We do not want you to look at other women. We want you to be sensitive as well as rugged. We want you to break broncos if you care to, but don’t try to break us. We want you to ignore our frailties and praise our strengths. We want to be partners, with one of us holding 51 % of the stock. We’ll decide which one. We want your loyalty, devotion, love, care, time, and attention; we’ll give the same to you. These things are pretty much written, maybe not in stone but in clay, so we can change our minds. Only two constants remain through the ages: (1) Be there when we need you and (2) take out the garbage. Just tryin’ to help, Sig. Sincerely, Marge
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Lady With a Lance By Mildred Boyd
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n her photographs she looks like any pleasingly plump, gentle but nonetoo-bright Mayan matron wearing traditional native clothing and a winning smile. That appearance is a lie. This woman is no ignorant peasant. By rights she should be shown in full armor with a banner on her lance reading “Peace at Any Price” She has been the driving force of an ongoing battle for indigenous rights for most of her 60 years and is certainly not yet prepared to yield the field. Rigoberta Menchú was born on January 9th, 1959 to a K’iche’ Maya peasant family in war-torn Guatemala. Although she received her education up to the 8th grade in Catholic schools she was also taught the culture of her ancestors. In her early years she helped on the family work, either the northern highlands farm where they eked out a bare existence, or picking coffee on the big plantations along the coast for a little cash. Seeing and experiencing the gross injustices suffered by her people, Rigoberta soon became involved in social reform activities through the Catholic Church. She was an ardent and highly visible activist for women’s rights while still a teenager. Such reforms were not popular with the ruling class and when, during the early days of the Guatemalan Civil War (19601996), a guerilla organization became active in the area, she and her family were immediately suspect. Rigoberta’s father, Vicente, was imprisoned and tortured for allegedly having participated in the execution of a local plantation owner. After his release, he became a member of the recently founded Committee of the Peasant Union (CUC). In 1979, Rigoberta, too, joined the CUC. That same year her brother was arrested, and tortured to death by the army. The following year, her father was killed when security forces in the capital stormed the Spanish Embassy where he and other peasants were staying. Shortly afterwards, her mother died after having been arrested, tortured and raped. Bereft and embittered as she was by the loss of her whole family, Rigoberta did not retreat. Instead, she became even more actively rebellious.
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She figured prominently in a strike for better conditions for farm workers on the Pacific coast and was active in large demonstrations in the capital. She joined the radical 31st of January Popular Front, in which, since she had taught herself Spanish as well as other Mayan languages, her main role was in teaching the Indios how to resist military oppression. In 1981, these radical activities forced her into hiding in Guatemala, and shortly thereafter into exile in Mexico one step ahead of government pursuit. That flight marked the beginning of a new phase in her life: as the organizer abroad of resistance to oppression in Guatemala and the struggle for indigenous peoples’ rights. In 1982, she took part in the founding of the joint opposition body, The United Representation of the Guatemalan Opposition (RUOG). In 1986, Rigoberta Menchú became a member of the National Coordinating Committee of the CUC, and the following year she performed as the narrator in a powerful film about the struggles and sufferings of the Maya people. It was called When the Mountains Tremble. On at least three occasions, Rigoberta Menchú has returned to Guatemala to plead the cause of the Indian peasants, but death threats have forced her to return into exile each time. Over the years, Rigoberta Menchú has become widely known as a leading advocate of Indian rights and ethno-cultural reconciliation, not only in Guatemala but in the Western Hemisphere generally, and her work has earned her several international awards. In 1991, Menchú participated in the UN preparation of its Declaration of the
Rights of Indigenous Peoples. In 1992 she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her work on behalf of native Guatemalans. Her biography, I, Rigoberta Menchú, had already brought her international acclaim in human rights and academic circles, but the Peace Prize and the Prince of Asturias Award won in 1998 made her a full-fledged hero for oppressed people everywhere. Later, she wrote an autobiography called Crossing Borders In 2006, she and sister Nobel Peace Laureates Jody Williams, Shirin Ebadi, Wangari Maathai, Betty Williams and Mairead Corrigan Maguire decided to combine their experience and skills. It is the goal of the Nobel Women’s Initiative to help strengthen and support the cause of women’s rights around the world. Since the Civil War ended, Menchú has campaigned to have members of the Guatemalan political and military establishment tried and punished. In 1999 she filed a complaint before a Spanish court because prosecutions of such crimes are practically impossible in Guatemala. In 2006, after many delays, Spain’s highest court ruled that cases of genocide committed
abroad could be judged in Spain, even if no Spanish citizens have been involved. Spain then called for the extradition of seven former members of Guatemala’s government on charges of genocide and torture against the Mayan people. In 2007 Menchú announced both the formation of an indigenous Guatemalan political party and her own candidacy as their nominee in that year’s presidential election. Since she could not even enter the country to campaign, this was surely only a symbolic gesture of defiance. Several of her supporters were threatened and two of them were actually killed. Needless to say, on September 9, 2007, Menchú received only a miserable 3% of the vote. Menchú is currently traveling all over the world as a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador. In her spare time she runs the Mexican pharmaceutical company Salud para Todos, dedicated to providing lowcost generic medicines for everyone and acts as goodwill ambassador for Mexico. If all else fails she is not above grabbing her lance and riding full tilt against any minor windmill that happens by. If I were you, I wouldn’t bet on the windmill.
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BRIDGE BY THE LAKE By Ken Masson
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t the duplicate bridge table, it is sometimes advantageous to know the habits of your adversaries in order to garner the maximum number of tricks. In this month’s hand, West was a notoriously light opener who often rushed in where more conservative players feared to tread, causing confusion among his opponents and resulting in lucrative gains for his side. In this case, however, South and North were herself and myself respectively and we had played often enough against West to be able to use his aggressive bidding for our own benefit. West opened proceedings with a bid of 2 spades, ostensibly showing a 6 card suit and between 6 and 10 points. North had an immediate problem as the hand, even though it contained 15 high card points, didn’t seem quite right for a take-out double (balanced distribution, only 3 hearts) or a 1 no trump overcall (no sure stopper in spades). However, I had also been the victim of West’s machinations in the past so I didn’t feel pass was right and ventured the slightly flawed double. East passed and herself had an easy jump to 3 no trump to end the auction. West led the 8 of clubs and South paused to count her winners: 4 clubs, 3 diamonds, 2 hearts and 1 spade for a total of 10 tricks. Even though the North and South hands contained a total of 31 high card points, the mirror distribution worked against the promotion of additional overtricks. However, declarer did have one extra piece of information to guide her, namely West’s opening bid. Declarer won the opening lead on the board with the Ace and cashed the King and Queen noting that West
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followed to all 3 rounds. Next South cashed her three diamond tricks and two heart winners as West obediently followed suit all the way. Summarizing events to date, South knew that West had only 5 cards in spades, not the 6 that his opening bid implied, and even this wild bidder would need to have the King and Queen in his suit to justify his opening bid as the only other high card he had shown up with was the Jack of diamonds. Declarer was now ready for her coup de grace. Coming to hand with the Jack of clubs, South played a low spade towards the dummy and West was caught in a neat trap. Holding nothing but spades, he was forced to play an honor and return a spade into South’s Ace 10 holding, providing a second overtrick for declarer and a high matchpoint result. This time West was well and truly done in by his own impetuosity. This was a particularly gratifying outcome for herself and myself but variations on this theme occur quite frequently at the bridge table. It is just a question of watching and counting the opponents’ cards as they play. And if you know your opponents’ idiosyncrasies, so much the better! Questions or comments: email: masson.ken@gmail.com
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By David A. Harper
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f I hear one more politician say he is doing what the American people want I think I may vomit. What hideous hypocrisy. They are elected to do what is right, not what some phony poll says the people in the street think is best. Anyone who has seen Jay Leno’s “Jay Walking” segments knows there are idiots walking our streets; the best we can hope for is that they don’t vote. H.L. Mencken said no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public. But now in the age of the world wide web some people think they understand complex issues and that is very dangerous because plainly and simply, unless they happen to have been particularly well educated in and also experienced and up to date on the specific issue, they don’t. Not long ago we had the usual suspects on TV discussing whether a military surge in Iraq could succeed. None of them had high level military briefings but those on the left were against it for no other reason than if it succeeded it might make an unpopular President look better and those on the right were for it for the same reason. Retired military men (also without briefings) were brought in to opine in favor or against it depending on what the network employing them wanted us to believe. Polls then told us what the people thought about this strategic military proposal as if anyone polled had any more knowledge than the clueless TV commentators. Have we forgotten what democracy means? Does anyone really think that “Government for the people by the people” means that we the people should be directly involved in the details of running the nation? That type of theoretical democracy does not exist and it never has existed. Sometimes people like to point to Athenian Democracy, as if that had any relevance today, but even then Thucydides tells us that “though in name [Athens] was a democracy, in fact it was a government administered by the first man”. So what does democracy mean? It means that it is the duty of the people to elect “capable” men and women who can govern, and to control them by means of the ballot box. In his Principles of Economics, Harvard Professor Frank W. Taussig wrote, “Government is not the busi-
ness of the people; they have not, and never will have the time, opportunity, training, and ability for it. The responsibility that rests upon them is to choose and control the few who can govern, and democratic nations will stand or fall according to the manner in which they discharge it. The best Constitution in the world will not save us from decline or disaster if the people are too ignorant or too perverse to choose and support capable and reliable leaders and reject mere irresponsible talkers and vote hunters.” Taussig wrote that in 1911 and gradually we have sunk to the level he warned us against. As we drift towards ochlocracy (government by the mob) our ability to be governed effectively disappears and our systems are breaking down. Our executive has been enfeebled by the ever growing excessive and often politically manufactured criticism by the media as well as interference from organized public opinion within the electorate. Very few able men and women want their lives and the lives of their families destroyed by entering politics and because of this we now have people who are barely able, or perhaps not able at all, in important positions. These are dangerous times in the USA both on the financial front and in the war against extremists seeking to destroy our way of life. Now more than ever it is the duty of citizens in our democracy to ensure we have the most capable people in leadership positions and to end the service of those who have shown they are lacking. Some of them will be replaced in November and if we in turn vote for able replacements we will be doing our democratic duty. As Taussig said “we must reject the irresponsible talkers and vote getters, be they from one side or the other.”
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UNCOMMON COMMON SENSE By Bill Frayer billfrayer@gmail.com
What’s Right? What’s Wrong?
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ere is a famous ethical dilemma: A shipwrecked crew is stranded on a deserted island with limited food and drinkable water. They must strictly ration them to assure that they survive long enough to be rescued. As a group, they decide that if anyone is caught taking more than their share, he will be hanged. One night, two men are caught stealing food. The next morning, everyone agrees that they should be hanged. The first man is hung, and as they are preparing the next man for hanging, a ship appears on the horizon to rescue them. Should they hang the second man? You can make a case either way, but how you decide might reveal your own ethical framework. Emanual Kant, the 18th century German philosopher, developed an important framework for deciding ethical issues. His moral philosophy was centered on a concept he called the categorical imperative. “Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.” He believed that we should develop moral “rules” which are so obvious and powerful that most everyone could agree that they are good moral practices, and that as moral beings we have a duty to follow them. Contrary to what many believed at the time, he viewed moral rules to be absolute; they should never be violated. He specifically formulated ethical rules prohibiting lying, theft, suicide, and laziness. He believed these were absolutes. Individuals, once they developed these rules, should never violate them. So, back to our dilemma. Kant would likely suggest that because the rule prohibiting theft of food or water was deemed punishable by death, that the other survivors were morally obligated to hang the second man. The fact that the ship was about to rescue them was irrelevant. The rule accepted by all the survivors had to be upheld. Some people would disagree, arguing that the circumstances had
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Bill Frayer
changed; therefore, there was no longer any need to hang the man. But in Kant’s view, the moral reasoning which led the others to develop the rule, using the universal logic developed in his categorical imperative, still held true. It’s an absolutist way of looking at ethics, but it is, to this day, an important concept. How Kantian ethics is applied today? The most obvious example is religion. Many religions have applied absolute prohibitions as part of their creed. The Ten Commandments may be the most well-known set of absolute moral rules. They were absolute because they were from God. The commandment does not say, “Thou shalt not steal, except when the circumstances justify it.” The commandments were absolute. “Thou shalt not steal.” Period. Today, many people who adhere to strict fundamentalist religions view moral rules as absolute. No abortion. No homosexuality. No graven images of God. These are non-negotiable for people who believe in the absolute truth of their religious doctrine. But we have other examples. For example, crime must be punished. So even in those cases in which the crime might seem justifiable, such as mercy killing or stealing to feed one’s family, our society uses Kantian logic which has established sentencing rules which require that the guilty party be punished. We have absolute rules today about patient autonomy; it’s wrong to treat an adult, competent patient without her consent. Of course, there are problems with looking at ethics through such a black and white filter. There are circumstances which can mitigate crimes. We believe that its wrong to lie, but we can conceive of circumstances in which it might be permissible. This is what I’ll examine next month as we consider Utilitarian ethics.
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Joyful Musings By Joy Birnbach Dunstan, MA, LPC, MAC
The Eternal Maternal Legacy
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s May arrives and brings another Mother’s Day, I’d like to send a thank you to all the mothers in the world for helping to provide a steady stream of therapy clients. The motherchild relationship is powerful for both daughters and sons, and more problems presented in the therapy office trace back to Mom than any other source. We all begin our life within Mother. Perhaps because of this, she lives within us all of our lives thereafter. Through her strengths and kindnesses, she taught us how to live and how to love. Through her shortcomings and pain, she taught us how not to live, as much as how to live. Our particular mother may have helped us build our own lives with confidence and wisdom or driven us to spend our lives striving to survive and overcome her difficult legacy. Messages repeated to us by our mothers tend to repeat in our heads ever-after. Many messages received from Mother are so ubiquitous, we’ve all heard them. Some of my most memorable “momilies” include: “I’m only doing this for your own good.” “I don’t care if everybody else is doing it. You’re not everybody else.” “If you swallow the seeds, you’ll grow a watermelon in your belly.” “Be sure to wear good underwear when you go out in case you get run over by a bus.” And of course, everybody’s favorite . . . “Because I said so, that’s why!” Not everything Mother taught us was so benign. While some of us had pretty good moms who, for the most part, steered us through childhood with a warm heart and loving guidance, an unfortunate too-many were born to moms steeped in their own emotional torment. Their kids were ignored and neglected or drenched with cruelty and abuse. Some kids were raised by Jeckyll-
and-Hyde moms whose kids never knew what to expect next. Our first vision of ourselves was through our mother’s eyes, and our relationship with her shapes our relationships with ourselves and everyone around us. How our mothers responded to or rejected our attempts to connect with her, and later our attempts to separate from her, shape how we connect (or not) with other people. Whatever kind of mother raised you, you’re an adult now. It’s too late to blame mom for your troubles anymore. She may have planted the seeds, but it’s up to you to choose what to continue to reap and sow. Paula Caplan, author of Don’t Blame Mother: Mending the Mother-Daughter Relationship, says, “Blaming our mothers is destructive to ourselves because what we believe about our mothers, we often suspect about ourselves.” As this Mother’s Day approaches, ask yourself the following questions: • What was your relationship with your mother like when you were a child? • How about your relationship with your mother as an adult? • How do you see your mother’s traits and characteristics showing up in you? In your relationships? In your parenting? How do you feel about these similarities? • What do you most value about your mother? • What do you most dislike about your mother? Many of us today are at a stage of life when roles are reversing; children become the caregivers for their aging parents. If the time comes for you, will you be the kind of parent you had or the one you wish you had? Editor’s Note: Joy is a practicing psychotherapist in Riberas. She can be contacted at joy@dunstan. org or 765-4988.
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Ask Carolyn
of bed with my feet. He hit the floor with all the blankets wrapped around him, rolled over and never missed a beat. I spent the rest of the night shivering while he serenaded me from beneath the bed. I’ve heard that men snore when they have a guilty conscience. Is this true? TIRED
By Carolyn Comedo
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EAR CAROLYN: To say my husband snores is an understatement. He simultaneously sounds like a motorcycle, a runaway train, a fighter jet in full flight and a tom cat in heat. All the while he whistles, moans, groans, jerks, mumbles and grinds his teeth.
I’ve tried everything but nothing stops him. Last night I put my back against the wall and pushed him out
DEAR TIRED: It might be. Your letter hints that he may be asleep, which is one of the two states where men do exhibit symptoms of a guilty conscience. DEAR CAROLYN: My husband’s mother died recently. She was afraid of the dark. Consequently, he has installed floodlights around her grave so she will not have to be frightened at night. He has also purchased a burial place for himself and installed a telephone between his mother’s gravesite and his plot. I think he expects me to pay the telephone and electricity bills after he passes on. Is this fair? WAITING DEAR WAITING: No, it’s not. Have him buried with stationery and stamps. Then get the telephone disconnected.
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DEAR CAROLYN: Two women from our drama group are best friends. They go everywhere and do everything together. I just heard they share an apartment. Do you think they are Lebanese? WONDERING DEAR WONDERING: No, I think they are thespians. DEAR CAROLYN: I am an eleven-year-old girl. My sister is going to have a baby she got by sitting beside a boy on the bus. I sit behind a boy in my class. Will I get a baby by sitting behind a boy or do you have to sit beside him? WORRIED KID DEAR WORRIED: Don’t worry. You won’t get a baby as long as you keep sitting. CONFIDENTIAL TO ONCE ENGAGED: Your situation is unusual. It’s rare for one to be simultaneously laid low by malaria, rendered legless from frostbite, abandoned by one’s parents, kicked by a horse, evicted from one’s apartment, lost at sea and deserted by a fiance. These situations do not often occur together. Yes, you should return the engagement ring.
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YOU SUCK AND SO DOES YOUR WRIT ING! By Martin Levin
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n the annals of literature, the progress of friends and rivals has often been a matter of consuming interest to writers. The thoughts – often more the spewings – of those sufficiently in the grips of the greeneyed monster to go on record are the subject of Poisoned Pens: Literary Invective from Amis to Zola, edited by Gary Dexter (Francis Lincoln, 240 pages, $21.50). It’s a delicious concoction of dismissals, disappointments, re-evaluations (direction: firmly downward) and outright rants. Writers have apparently always loathed and envied other members of the tribe: more famous, better paid, more fawning reviews, undeserved canonization. So the bilious range extends from the Greeks – Aristophanes’s entire play The Clouds is an attack on Socrates, and Martin Luther called Aristotle a “histrionic mountebank” – to J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books, whose celebration in The New York Times highbrow critic Harold Bloom condemned as “confirmation of the dumbing-down it leads and exemplifies,” thus potting two cultural birds with one stoning. Mark Twain: A “hack writer who would not have been considered fourth rate in Europe.” In his savagely funny essay Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offences, Mark Twain wrote of the once immensely popular novelist: “There are nineteen rules governing literary art in the domain of romantic fiction. … In Deerslayer, Cooper violated eighteen of them.” Twain himself took it on the chin from fellow Southerner William Faulkner, who called him a “hack writer who would not have been considered fourth rate in Europe, who tricked out a few of the old proven ‘sure fire’ literary skeletons with sufficient local color to intrigue the superficial and the lazy.” Nor is the invective always strictly literary. Virginia Woolf saw Somerset Maugham as “a grim figure; rat-eyed, dead-man-cheeked, unshaven; a criminal I should have said had I met him in a bus.” Charles Lamb wrote of Shelley: “His voice was the most obnoxious
J.K. Rowling
squeak I ever was tormented with,” and James Dickey, poet and novelist, said of an iconic New England poet: “If it were thought that anything I wrote were influenced by Robert Frost, I would take that particular work of mine, shred it, and flush it down the toilet, hoping not to clog the pipes.” Robert Frost: a “sententious holding-forth old bore, who expected every hero-worshipping adenoidal twerp of a student-poet to hang on his every word.” Bile of that intensity you just don’t encounter every day. But lest it be thought that the art of invective is a dying one in an age that regards offending anyone as the gravest of sins, I refer you to three recent instances of its continued liveliness. Finally, there was Tom Wolfe, referring to heavyweight novelists John Irving, John Updike and Norman Mailer as “the three stooges,” fellow aging men who, unlike him, were out of touch with contemporary life and who belittled Wolfe’s own fiction ( A Man in Full, which Mailer called “a 742-page work that reads as if it is fifteen hundred pages long”) because they were simply jealous of his success. It pains me, though, that Canadian writers have fallen invectively short. Are we too nice? Too deferential? Sure, there’s no shortage of private whining, resentments and jealousies, but wouldn’t it be a treat to have, say, Alice Munro opine of Robertson Davies something along the lines of: “The man was a blowhard. All that cloudy, mystical Jungianism hung on the slenderest of twigs; and never a character you could faintly believe in.” Ah well, I can dream, can’t I?
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THUNDER ON THE RIGHT By Paul Jackson paulconradjackson@gmail.com
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resident Richard Nixon declared importing 20% of the oil America needs was economically unsustainable and a threat to national security. That was in the early 1970s and Nixon planned to do something about it, but Watergate came along, and now four decades and seven presidents later, the U.S.A. imports almost 70% of its oil needs, mainly from nations that would love to cut America’s throat. That imported oil means a staggering $500 billion a year of America’s wealth is shipped out of the country, which is somewhat akin to handing over your retirement savings to a bunch of scoundrels who simply want to rip you off. I’ve said in previous columns the developing ‘tar sands’ in northern Alberta contain the second largest supply of oil after Saudi Arabia, yet some analysts believe that the undeveloped ‘oil shales’ in the geological Green River Formation— basically in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming—may actually contain five times the reserves of Saudi Arabia. If the shale reserves and the USA’s offshore reserves were fully developed, America would never have to import another single barrel of oil. Why aren’t these vast domestic resources being developed? Because the pseudo-environmental movement and some elements of the Liberal-Left have blocked development. That’s also why, as incredible as it seems, not
Paul Jackson
a single new refinery has been built in the USA for 25 years. And that’s one reason oil prices suddenly soar due to lack of refining capability. Nope, the oil companies are not villains. They make less profit on a gallon of gas than Starbucks makes on a cup of coffee. A number of countries have developed their offshore reserves to great advantage —Norway, Britain, Canada to name three—and none have suffered any environmental damage. In Canada, which supplies 18% of America’s imported oil needs, offshore development off Newfoundland is starting to make the province fabulously rich, just like Alberta, and soon there is likely to be offshore development in the Gulf of St. Lawrence with the Province of Quebec picking up the riches. Coincidentally, President Barack Obama campaigned vigorously against offshore development but in March announced he would lift the moratorium on some offshore drilling and development. But, sadly it was more a sop to get Republican support on other issues than anything else, and will do virtually nothing to ease the USA’s suicidal dependence on foreign oil. The big bonanzas remain locked in—or locked out to our peril. The world oil giants, reputable companies all, and mainly American, would develop the USA’s shale oil reserves and expand offshore drilling at a breakneck speed—and build new refineries—if federal and state governments would only let them. Scratch your heads at the insanity of why we have a blockade against our own domestic oil salvation. Maybe common sense will prevail one day, but until then the likes of the Arab oil producing countries, the dictatorship in Nigeria, and Marxist Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, have the U.S. by the delicates. A frightening situation—and they can squeeze those delicates whenever they like. paulconradjackson@gmail.com
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STANLEY UNGER – Carney Man A Profile by Kay Davis
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right up, folks. “ S tep That’s it, right up
here.” A circus barker draws us to see the curious or challenges us to play the odds and win a prize. Remember The Music Man? A popular movie, it gave us songs like “76 Trombones” and whether we sang along or simply tapped our feet, we became part of the show. His enthusiasm had won us over. Along came Stan, young and raring to go. It was the 1950s, and a clean cut Jewish boy from Brooklyn decided to join the circus. What did he have to offer? Well, he had been successful in sales. He had charm and a disarming style that got him invited into people’s homes, and once in, he worked hard to meet customer needs while entertaining them with his wit. The carnival needed that charisma and quick thinking, and the carnival was a far more exciting life, after all. Quick to learn, he worked for 60 years as a “carney man.” Besides the hard slogging work of raising tents or driving all around the US, Stan could “guess” many things, for instance someone’s age or profession. There is no magic to the job, he told me. It’s hard work. You learn to read people. And there were days when a barker could rake in $500 an hour, nothing to sneeze at. These days, Stan spends his winters in a tree house in Guatemala. There he lives close to nature with others who find the unusual lifestyle refreshing. He returns to the north shore when the weather
in Central America gets too hot. While living alongside the lake, Stan writes poetry and some short stories, which he reads at the Ajijic Writers Group. One poem was called “Ravioli.” I shook my head at that one, but the point of view wasn’t so much the pasta as it was of the one eating it and it was rather fun. His creativity and point of view are slightly off-beat, and that is one of Stan’s strengths. He is like a mirror reflecting a side of us we may not have considered.
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Wondrous Wildlife By Vern and Lori Gieger
wildlifemexico@wildtravellers.org
Medicinal Venoms
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s many of us have found out the hard way, a scorpion sting is painful, to say the least. However, scorpion venom may be used as an alternative to dangerous and addictive painkillers like morphine, according to researchers. Scientists are investigating new ways for developing a novel painkiller based on natural compounds found in the venom of scorpions. These compounds have gone through millions of years of evolution and some show high efficacy and specificity for certain components of the body with no side effects. The Gila monster is one of only two species of venomous lizards. It is native to southwestern United States and northern Mexico. But unlike other
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poisonous critters, they don’t inject venom directly into their victims. Instead, poison drips from the lizard’s teeth into the open wound, while it is chewing. Because of this, human fatalities from Gila monster bites are rare. None the less a bite can cause intense pain, nausea; swelling, dizziness, etc. – none of which is particularly fun. But In addition to those nasty side
effects, Gila monster venom stimulates insulin production and slows down glucose production, which is great news for diabetics. A common drug used to treat Type 2 diabetes uses a manufactured form of Gila monster venom as its main ingredient. Approved by the FDA in April of 2005, Byetta is injected before meals to help their bodies produce the right amount of insulin at the right time. The best is it doesn’t cause mood swings often associated with traditional insulin regimens. Copperhead Snake Venom for Breast Cancer? A health report has created a flurry of attention about a controversial approach to treating breast cancer, snake venom. Recently Bill Haast, a 90-year-old researcher was interviewed; he has spent his career studying venoms from some of the world’s most poisonous snakes. As a result, he helped develop many medicines that are used today to treat the disease. He cites articles by the hundreds and stories where people were miraculously improving. Copperhead snake venom contains a specific protein that may indeed have an impact on tumor growth. In studies the venom when injected into mice implanted with human breast cancer cells, revealed a 60-70 percent reduction in the growth rate of the
breast tumors and a 90 percent reduction in tumor metastases (spread) to the lungs. Not all snake venom is the same; time and again scientists encounter unusual new structures. The goal of researchers is to find out why individual components of venom act in a particular way and what they may have to offer to the pharmaceutical industry. Another study underway is how snake venom fights strokes. It is designed for people who suffer an acute ischemic stroke, the most common type. It occurs when blood flow to an area of the brain is compromised by a blood clot. But it must be administered in the first three hours after symptoms strike. It packs a triple punch against stroke, preventing new clots from forming, breaking down existing clots, and thinning out the blood, thereby improving blood flow to the brain. It doesn’t stop there; it is also being tested for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease. Many common venoms are being studied, from snakes to honey bees, each unique, perhaps holding a cure to many common health issues. Deliberately administered venoms in the right amount can actually be beneficial to human health. The list of diseases and disorders that may be treated with venoms continues to grow.
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OF O F FAITH FAITH A AND ND F FABLES ABLES By Bob Haynes bzhaynes@gmail.com
Oh, It’s Hard To Be Humble
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ave you ever had the feeling that the words in the song described you? What song you ask? “Oh, it’s hard to be humble when you’re perfect in every way.” I’ve been there a few times… not often but, to be honest, more than once. And boy was I wrong. Let me illustrate how we sometimes find ourselves thinking one thing only to find out that we’re way off base. There’s a charming story that Thomas Wheeler, one-time CEO of the Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company, tells on himself: He and his wife were driving along an interstate highway when he noticed that their car was low on gas. Wheeler got off the highway at the next exit and soon found a rundown gas station with just one gas pump. He asked the lone attendant to fill the tank and check the oil; then went for a little walk around the station to stretch his legs. As he was returning to the car, he noticed that the attendant and his wife were engaged in an animated conversation. The conversation stopped as he paid the attendant. But as he was getting back into the car, he saw the attendant wave and heard him say, “It was great talking to you.” As they drove out of the station, Wheeler asked his wife if
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she knew the man. She readily admitted she did. They had gone to high school together and had dated steadily for about a year. “Boy, were you lucky that I came along,” bragged Wheeler. “If you had married him, you’d be the wife of a gas station attendant instead of the wife of a chief executive officer.” “My dear,” replied his wife, “if I had married him, he’d be the chief executive officer and you’d be the gas station attendant.” There are times in our lives when we have a real perception problem. We think we have the proper perspective on something when in fact we’re way off. I’m sure the CEO had also thought he fit the song: “Oh it’s hard to be humble, when you’re perfect in every way.” Then, boom! His wife’s comment brought him back to reality. And she did so, in a loving way. Yes, it may be hard to be humble… but humbleness gets God’s attention because it means that you realize that He has given you all you have. Sometimes we forget that it’s not all about us. Isaiah 66:2 points out this truth about humility: “This is the one I esteem: he who is humble and contrite in spirit, and trembles at my word.” Shalom!
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THE TILLY & TOMMY REPORT By “Rebecca”
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just read your column and am delighted to hear the Tilly and Tommy got good “forever” home. I currently have 4 dogs, one of which I rescued here in Mexico. But a few weeks ago I got a call from a friend asking for help with a litter of puppies whose mother had been poisoned. They were 10-12 days old and couldn’t possibly survive without bottle feeding and a lot of love. My partner and I agreed to foster 2 of them. Alice and Ralph are now in need of permanent homes (or better yet one home). They are 8 weeks old, have been raised with 4 dogs and 2 cats and lots of love and attention. They will be approximately 60 lbs (according to my vet) and they are very confident, social and smart. Ralph is a short haired funny charmer colored like a German Shepherd with an adorable clown face. Alice is a glamorous furry bunny and a cud-
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dler with a coat the color and feel of a Keeshound, black mask and all. They are very smart...are learning to “come” and are starting to understand “no!” They only poop in the yard and have very few pee accidents in the house. They know what grass is for and can use the doggy door. They sleep from sundown to 7:30AM with nary a peep out of them. That might change if they are separated, so they would make a very good low maintenance pair if someone wants 2 dogs. They keep each other busy and out of trouble. If anyone would like to take a look, please ask them to call Diane or Ellen at 766-1395. Thanks Diane Goldstein
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grumpypotato@gmail.com DEAR TIMMY AND TOMMY (Addressed to your “parents”) What may be good for you--is not fine for your cat or dog. By Jackie Kellum Most pet owners love their cats and dogs and there are very few who would want to do anything to their pet that would cause them harm. However, there are some people, who, out of lack of knowledge or out of misplaced love, tend to feed their pets almost everything that they eat themselves. If you are a pet owner, keep in mind that the food you eat which might be good and nutritious, may not necessarily be good for your cat or dog. In fact, feeding your pet the wrong “people food” can be disastrous. The metabolism of cats and dogs are quite different than those of humans. There are some foods that could end up being toxic for your beloved pet. Being informed about the foods that are bad for pets and avoiding those foods, is one of the best ways that you can show how much you love them. The easiest way to avoid any food errors is to truly feed your cat, cat food and your dog, dog food. As there is limited space for this column, I will not go into any details explaining the specifics of how or why the food has a negative effect on the animals – sufficient to say, depending on the size of the animals and the quantity of the food item ingested, it could prove fatal. Common human foods poisonous for cats and dogs: Chocolate, cocoa, coffee, items with caffeine, spices: garlic, onion and nutmeg fresh, cooked, powder, or as a food item ingredient, salty foods, pits or seeds of most fruits, nuts, raisins and grapes, avocados/guacamole, raw mushrooms, potatoes that are raw or green, tomatoes: raw, green
and the plant itself, raw eggs, turkey skin, uncooked bread or cookie dough, alcohol beverages especially beer, sugarless items with Xylitol—this is a sugar substitute found in many types of sugarless candy, chewable vitamins, baked goods, and in sugarless gums like “Trident” and “Orbit.” As little as three grams (5 five pieces of gum) can kill a 65pound dog, with smaller dogs succumbing to just one or two sticks. Human medications such as pain medications, including Voltarin for arthritis that are left out on a counter in reach of a dog can be fatal. Human vitamins with iron are harmful to pets. For some adult dogs and cats that do not have sufficient amounts of the enzyme lactase, milk can cause severe digestive problems. Cooked bones can be very hazardous for your cat or dog. Cooking bones causes them to become brittle and splinter with sharp edges when broken. These can become stuck in the mouth, caught in the throat, or cause a rupture or puncture of the stomach lining or intestinal tract. Bones especially bad are turkey and chicken legs, ham, pork chop, and veal. Cigarettes and cigarette butts, nicotine patches or gum, cigars, pipe tobacco, etc. can be fatal if ingested. Since many of the signs of toxicity are similar, consult your veterinarian without delay if your pet appears distressed, listless or in pain. Bloody stools or vomiting are also possible signs of toxic poisoning. Gastro-intestinal problems can lead to gas build-up, causing distension or bloating and pain that can cause the stomach to burst if not treated. The good news is that in most cases, treatment for toxic poisoning can be successful if veterinary help is sought in a timely manner. The best action is prevention, and feeding your pet appropriately.
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GRINGAS G RIN NGAS & G GUACAMOLE UACAMOLE By Gail Nott
Dating at Lakeside
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ome invasions and car thefts don’t generate as much conversation in our small Mexican village of Ajijic as the arrival of a single man or woman who is not accompanied by a full-time nurse. Dating, for those of us who live here, is rather like going fishing. We rummage through our tackle box looking for the best lure or fly to ensure a catch. The problem is the “fishin’ hole” ain’t well-stocked! Philosophically, you should apply the 50-50-90 rule; anytime you have a 50-50 chance of meeting Mr. or Ms. Right, there’s a 90% probability they will be wrong. I arrived in Ajijic, Mexico believing I had seen it all, and done it all on the single scene in Florida. Fortunately, I can’t remember most of it. My first few dates were not without misunderstandings. My dates were calling me a bitch like it was a bad thing. Sarcasm was one of my better conversational traits. “No, I am not always this disagreeable, I’ve just been in a very bad mood for 30 years.” After age 50, the guidelines for dating change significantly. Personal appearance and style take on new meaning. Perfume and aftershave are nice, but don’t marinate in them. A leisure suit with a clean T-shirt can create tacky appearance. I understand you are retired, but please say yes to stockings and shoes. Look on the bright side, things you buy now, at this age, can’t wear out. Go ahead and buy some new clothes.
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Engaging that prospective date in conversation can be tricky. Did you know that light travels faster than sound? This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak. Sharing that, if you had found the “right person,” you would not have married five times is not a good idea. A heated argument about pension plans won’t insure a dinner companion for the next evening. A blank stare doesn’t mean they aren’t interested. It could mean they are lost in thought and that is unfamiliar territory. Even though most of us are farsighted as hell, physical attraction is the essence of dating. Don’t despair, I started out with nothing and still have most of it. The only difference between a girlfriend and an ex-wife is 45 pounds. Does it really matter if his ears are hairier than his head? Gentlemen, a few suggestions, should you get lucky. If you have to vacuum the bed, it’s time to change the sheets and safe sex is not a padded headboard. Ok, you agreed to meet for dinner; 4:00 pm is not acceptable. Checking your watch every few minutes asking, “Is it time for your medication or mine?” will put a damper on the evening. After you have unscrewed the cap, make sure you tilt the paper cup and pour slowly so as not to “bruise” the fruit of the wine. Dating at any age is a gut-wrenching experience. It is important to remember, “You can’t have everything. What would you do with it?”
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UP-DATES U P-DATES F FROM ROM T THE HE A ANIMAL NIMAL S SHELTER HELTER By Thetis Reeves
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pril 6, 2010, a Tuesday, dawned like any other day at our Cat Center: contented cats snoozing, playful ones teasing each other, fastidious ones grooming themselves in preparation for public appearances, and Barb, our cats’ majordomo, keeping a watchful eye and hoping for at least one adoption before day’s end. And then—all heaven broke loose. Before the day was over, nine cats and kittens were adopted, making it one of the happiest and most rewarding times in our history. Nine cats and kittens, some individually, others in pairs, were tenderly plucked off their pillows and carried out in loving arms. For the record, they were Chelsea and Diego (went together), Geraldine and Jackson (together), Tanya and Tiffany (sisters, together), and Maureen, Buster, and Susanna. Best of all was that all the beautiful longterm residents who were getting a bit down-hearted were among them. Barb reports that people actually had to wait their turn for all the paper work to be accomplished. Now what brought all these fine people to our door that day? Who’s looking for an answer? Not us. We think of Oscar Hammerstein’s wonderful lyric, “Who can explain it, who can tell us why? Fools give you reasons; wise men never try.” Wisely, we simply say thank you to those who adopted on April 6, have adopted in the past or will adopt in the future. You make our day. And of course our “stock” has not been depleted. All sizes, colors, and interesting personalities still available. Across the way at the Dog Center, however, they were singing the blues when I called to check. Some
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dogs had come down with a respiratory virus going around, while many of the puppies were in treatment for amoebas. All were expected to get well, but caution always rules at our place and so the Center was temporarily under quarantine. Mainly this means we don’t take a new dog in but we can adopt out providing the dog is doubled-checked by our vet before it leaves and the adopters are informed that if the dog comes down with something in the next few days, they can bring it back to us for treatment. I know all of us associated with the Animal Shelter are proud and, as animal lovers ourselves, grateful that we can maintain these high health standards for our cats and dogs. Not every adoption facility chooses—or maybe can’t afford or maybe just doesn’t care—to make sure their animals are in good health before being adopted out. But we see heartbreak in the making when a sick animal is adopted out—hurtful to the animal, potentially hurtful to the pets already in residence at its new home and upsetting for the adopter. Everyone is welcome to visit our dog and cat adoption centers as well as our lovely sanctuary for exotic birds. And don’t forget Our Store for the best prices on pet food. We’re a one-stop shop-and-adopt animal center. How smart.
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STAY HEALTHY! By J. Manuel Cordova, M. D. mdjmcordova1204@yahoo.com
Internal Medicine & Geriatric Specialist (Edited by Maria Montenegro)
Gmo - Genetically Modified Organism Part 3
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hank you all for the emails and questions about GMO from the previous articles. Some people are quite knowledgeable about GMO and want to learn more, while many others have never heard of it. Regardless of where you are in the learning process, we can all learn more and do more to help educate others. How do you know if the food you’re eating contains GMO or not? It is important for all of us to become more knowledgeable about what goes into our bodies. The short and long term effects of chemicals, hormones, pesticides, antibiotics, toxins and other products that are in the foods and liquids you consume
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have a major impact on your overall health. Most food companies are driven by profits. It’s a multi-billion dollar industry. Several reasons ‘additives’ are used are to a) make vegetables and animals grow faster b) make vegetables stay fresherlooking longer c) make foods and drinks taste better. Vegetarians also have problems with GMO products. One reader said she cannot find non-GMO soy milk or soy beans in the Lakeside area. The current ‘Big 5’ GMO problem products are corn, soy, cottonseed, canola oil and rice. A few months ago Monsanto came into Mexico with corn GMO. Also U.S. producers recently sent contaminated Rice to Mexico that did not pass the International standards for food consumption in Europe and Asian Markets. These products are being sold in local stores. (Check the Greenpeace website listed below for additional information.) There were numerous protests by Greenpeace and others about these products being sent to Mexico, but they’re still here. Once GMO has been used on corn fields, it is unknown how long the effects will last even if the process is terminated. Of course, one of our major foods impacted is Corn tortillas. Organic food and products that contain no GMO are best to achieve your long term good health. There are hundreds of books and internet sites that provide information about diets and nutrition. Each person is different based on past nutrition and fitness, as well as your genetic and environmental exposure. ‘Everyone’ can benefit from healthy eating and good fitness habits. Many people make the mistake of attributing ‘wellness and good health’ as to how they feel. Every adult, particularly over the age of 50, should consider annual laboratory and diagnostic studies to determine
what’s going on ‘inside’ the body. Early detection of certain problems or serious disease can make the difference of life and death if treatment is started sooner, rather than waiting for visible symptoms to occur. The most common examples (there are many) I give for which the patient will feel ‘no’ early signs of illness are: 1. toxins and metals in the body that will destroy organ function which can be prevented with detox methods and chelation. 2. breast cancer 3. colon polyps can lead to cancer and is usually 100% curable if diagnosed early 4. memory loss/dementia which is misdiagnosed in many patients and can be cured or treated with proper diagnosis and early detection. 5. osteoporosis and arthritis can make a dramatic difference in the long term mobility of the patient. 6. side effects of drug reactions to medications or diet that lead to other problems. (‘All’ medications should be properly evaluated by a qualified physician to make sure you’re not suffering from adverse affects of one in reaction to another.)
Please send your comments and suggestions to my email address mdjmcordova1204@yahoo.com Review the following sites for more information: www.greenpeace.org www.cornucopia.org www.responsibletechnology.org www.centerforfoodsafety.org www.healthiereating.org http://www.imdb.com/title/ tt1286537/ (Food Inc.) http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/ the-world-according-to-monsanto (The World According to Monsanto)
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The Continuing Adventures of Mildred and Suzet te… By Katie B. Goode
Hopping On The Wisdom Train
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ildred hurried up the steps to the restaurant, late for her weekly lunch with Suzette. “Problem?” Suzette asked as Mildred plopped into her chair. “You know, you give your all raising your kids, think you’ve done a good job, then at least one of them turns out to have pickles for brains.” “Ahhhh,” Suzette said, rolling her eyes and thinking about her own pickle-brained one. Mildred glanced around the nearly empty terrace as Eduardo delivered her usual margarita, on the rocks, with salt, and set it on the green tablecloth. “Muchas gracias, Eduardo!” Mildred said. “Usted es magnifico.” Eduardo smiled, happy to see his favorite gringas. Mildred raised her glass. “To
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convent life.” Suzette hesitated, then clinked her glass with Mildred’s. Without conviction. Mildred studied a woman a few tables away, her white mane streaming over her shoulders like Moses on a good hair day. She sighed and looked back at Suzette. “That’s a wise woman. You can just tell by looking.” Suzette squinted at the woman,
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who truly did look like she had all the answers. Mildred leaned back in her wraparound chair. “I always thought that someday, when I was older, I would become wise.” . “Nice thought.” “Yes, in my fantasies, I would be a wise woman, loved and admired by all,” Mildred said. “A sultanette of sagacity whose devoted children would run to her for advice and direction. Whose grandchildren would revere her as the source of all that was perspicacious.” “And it hasn’t turned out that way?” Mildred studied the lake, as gray and roiled as she felt today. “I keep waiting.” “Yeah. Me, too,” Suzette said as they rose to forage at the salad bar. “Remember I told you about my newspaper days?” “Sure,” Suzette said, picking up a chilled plate. “Well, about the time things were really cooking, I discovered my brilliant rocket scientist fiancé was a psycho-in-disguise. Certifiable.” “What happened?” “I escaped. Literally. Quit my job, moved in the middle of the night. Then I asked myself why I hadn’t seen it — and why on earth I kept making one rotten choice after another.” “Did you get an answer?” Suzette asked, spooning marinated mushrooms over her tomatoes. “Better. I had an epiphany! Almost like a voice broke through the clouds. Seek wisdom from your elders.” “And…?” “So I did! Off I went, reporter’s notebook in hand, to seek enlightenment from the wise ones at a local retirement home .” “What’d they say?” “They said… I don’t want to be old.” Suzette laughed, topping her en-
salada with shredded carrots. “Here’s to that!” “They said other deep stuff, too. Lillian’s a farty old lady. Children are ingrates.” “That’s it?” Mildred arranged her jicama slices into a pyramid as she thought back. “Well, there was one handsome old gentlemen sitting in a corner looking like he was pondering some deep philosophical conundrum. When I asked him about wisdom, he took my hand, looked deep into my eyes, and said… “You seen my teeth, honey?” “Noooo.” “Yes! Where was the sage counsel, the luscious philosophical plums, the astounding acumen that would change my life forever?” “They gave you nothing?” “Nothing,” Mildred said. “I’d hoped to walk away with pearls of wisdom that I could string into a necklace of brilliant insights.” Suzette giggled. “Instead, you learned that although gas may increase with age, wisdom is not a natural byproduct?” “Exactly! Some of us are born with wisdom, some of us achieve wisdom… and, some of us have no hope.” “Not you,” Suzette said, trying to be supportive. Mildred sighed, grinding pepper on top of her edible work-of-art. “Well, I don’t have a clue how to get through to that son of mine.” “But you can’t give up.” “Yeah, so maybe I’ll wake up one of these mornings and find I’ve hopped aboard the wisdom train without even knowing it?” “Or maybe someday, if we chase down the tracks long enough, we’ll eventually catch a ride,” Suzette said, hopeful. The two friends looked at one another, then burst into laughter as they sat down to enjoy their salads. “Nah!”
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JOURNEY TO THE END OF THE WORLD Part 4
By Carol L. Bowman
Straits of Magellan and Beagle Channel
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ith the clang of anchors dropping, we witnessed our first view of the magnificent Darwin Mountain Range Ice Field. Ainsworth Island, where a colony of elephant seals gathers every spring to birth their pups, waited in the distance. We The small ship Via Australis weaves its way headed to the stern of the through the Straits of Magellan ship, clunked in rubber We pulled up anchor, heading boots down three slippery flights to for Beagle Channel, named for Darthe lower deck, grabbed the hand of win’s ship on which he embarked the Zodiac team expert and jumped on his five year voyage to South the leap of faith into the bobbing America in 1831. With the angst of rubber boat. We would repeat this maneuvering zodiacs over, we eased harrowing process-ship to zodiac, into life aboard an expedition veszodiac to land, land to zodiac, zodisel. Discovery lectures offered by ac to ship-four more times over the the naturalist team and history lesnext 3 days. sons about Magellan, Darwin and Disembarking on the island, masShackleton, filled down time while sive male seals raised their backs, sailing. barking with annoyance at our inThe next morning, we gaped at trusion. Skirting their territory, we huge chunks of floating ice, which hiked through a sub Antarctic rain the boatman dodged enroute to our forest, as a splendor of delicate lilanding site. He turned into an area chens, moss and frozen droplets of resembling a gigantic, outdoor ammist unfolded. phitheater and jaws dropped at the During the hike, ship staffers sight of the Pia Glacier. The group, transported hot chocolate, bottles of now trained in proper ‘viewing beRed Label Scotch, crystal glasses and havior’, stood mesmerized, like statcrates of glacial ice collected from ues, staring. The glacier’s soundsthe bergs for ‘rocks’ to the island via moans like that of an old man’s zodiacs. We sipped liquor laced comovements, the rush of glacial melt coa with the Marinelli Glacier as a flowing within the ice pack and the back drop. Staff supplied the ship’s thunderous clap of compacted ice freezer with pure untouched glacial plunging into the water, replaced ice for onboard cocktails during the drones of human voice. Solitude these land excursions. broken, the crew landed with the hot The afternoon’s zodiac run took chocolate and scotch. us to Tucker Island, a fragile ecoBack on board, the captain orsystem in Whiteside Channel, which dered everyone to the 4th deck, glass serves as a spring breeding ground lined, cocktail lounge at 5pm. “Bring for Magellanic Penquins and permabinoculars and a hearty appetite,” he nent nesting for Cormorants, Dolannounced. The Via Australis would phin Gulls and Chimango Caracaras. sail through the Avenue of the GlaThe penquins’ antics stole the show. ciers, five distinct ice masses, each named for a country, during the next two hours. The Romania Glacier appeared. While onlookers spewed expletives, waiters darted about serving Russian Caviar topped crackers and shots of vodka. ‘Happy Hour with a View’ began. As we passed the Italy Glacier; waiters served goblets of red wine and slices of pepperoni pizza, This star has obviously posed for while an avalanche of snow broke pictures before. from the mass, ice crystals flying in
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The Pia Glacier in Beagle channel the air. The captain directed us to the France Glacier. Waiters trays filled with champagne flutes and brie pranced to the tables. The German Glacier brought out mugs of Grolsh beer and sausages, and finally, the Holland Glacier—what else—bottles of Heineken and potato balls. Nature’s parade, with its combination of feast for the eyes and the stomach, ranks as the most spectacular procession I have witnessed. After all this merriment, it was time to get down to business, Cape Horn business, End of the World business. The captain prepared us for the unthinkable. At next day’s dawn we would sail into the channel of mythical Cape Horn at 55 degrees 56 minutes South and 67 degrees 19 minutes West between the Atlantic
and Pacific Oceans. Atmospheric conditions here can be so intense, the seas so rough, the danger so great, that landing with Zodiacs at Cape Horn has been prohibitive on several past expeditions. Conversely, if the weather and sea gods were on our side, we would experience a privilege like no other. The zodiac team held one last briefing on instructions for a 7AM Cape Horn landing. The captain encouraged the excited bunch to get a good night’s rest. Was he kidding? We were like wired kids on Christmas Eve.
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Phone: (376) 766-4774 or 765-3676 to leave messages Email: kdavis987@gmail.com How we read books is changing these days. The latest are the ebook readers, the most popular being the Amazon Kindle and recently released Apple iPad. You can even download these electronic books and read them on your PC without having to purchase any ebook device. The choice of books exceeds 480,000 and is growing at a rate of 55% per quarter. Why am I telling you this? Among those are two books by Alejandro Grattan, editor of El Ojo del Lago. Hollywood & Vine is a murder mystery. The haunting story focuses on Timmy, a one-time child star but a hasbeen at age nine and now in his 30s, trying to make a comeback. The book’s subtitle tells it all: A Tragic Success Story. Whereabouts Unknown is the second book. It centers on two men, a middle-aged mute and a young man of nineteen, imprisoned by the Nazis. Embittered and without prospects when released at the end of WWII, they are easily recruited to find run-away Nazis in South America. So who are the good guys and who are the bad? Who will survive? Who deserves to? It is a fascinating morality story. If you enjoy the books, post your brief comments on amazon/Kindle. Grattan’s novels will appear along with those of authors like James Patterson, Mary Higgins Clark and David Baldacci. Downloads cost about $5-$7 or about a third the cost of a quality paperback. PAST EVENTS: In March CASA, the Culinary Society of Ajijic, prepared their best in main dishes and desserts. In the first category, Monica Malloy won first place for her Stuffed Roasted Poblanos with Walnut Sauce while Cheryl Davis won second place for her Aubergine Beggar’s Purse, and Hazel Tash won third for her Queso Azul Farfalle. In desserts Pat Carroll won first place for his Fruit Pizza Pie; Helena Feldstein won second place for her Passover Chocolate Torte, and Diane Pretty won third place for her Marti Hurley, Monica Malloy, La Bete Noir (Black Beast). It was a three-way tie for Cheryl Davis People’s Choice in the main dish category, with Monica Malloy and Cheryl Davis for their dishes, and Marti Hurly for her Portobello Mushroom and Swiss Chard Lasagna. In the dessert category, Chris Bublin won for her Pistachio Layer Cake. All who would like to join in learning about and enjoying good food are encouraged to call Patrick Winn at 766-4842. He can also be reached by email at patriciowinn@ hotmail.com and would be delighted to invite those interested to come as his guest. At the end of March, the Music Appreciation Society (MAS) ended its season with a roundly successful Guitar Duo, Juanito Pascual and Grisha Goryachev. They presented classical Spanish guitar pieces well known to guitar lovers, some original pieces, the traditional and more modern “evolved” flamenco. Juanito added some explanation of the different forms of flamenco (Sevillanas, Bulerias, etc.), giving history of the influence from the Moors, Jews, Spanish and Gypsy forms, adding more recent influences from the Caribbean and Latin America. He views flamenco as a constantly
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evolving form, in which 20 years ago he set out to excel. He has achieved his goal with a flair and artistry rarely seen. Grisha demonstrated blinding speed with his fingers flashing around the strings. On March 28, St. Andrew’s Church presented cheques to the following Lakeside charities: UVA Scholarships, Cruz Roja, Villa Infantil, Centro de Desarollo, and Operation Feed. St. Andrew’s Outreach Committee thanks all Church members and many members of the community who worked so hard at the annual Regalorama (bazaar) plus those who made personal donations. In April Phyllis Rauch, translator and editor of her husband Georg’s Juanito Pascual, Bev Denton and memoir, The Jew with the Iron Cross, A Record of Survival in Grisha Goryachev WWII Russia signed books at the Los Angles Times Book Festival. Said Kirkus Discoveries: “Thrilling memoir tells about one who survived the German Eastern Front retreat and a Russian POW camp while his mother hid Jews in their Viennese attic....(An) experience as amazing as it is valuable to those seeking to understand a soldier’s experience. A compelling and unique perspective on World War II.” EVENTS TO COME: On May 5, 6 – 9 p.m. at La Nueva Posada, the Rotary Club of Ajijic will hold its annual Cinco de Mayo fundraiser. Proceeds go to Rotary’s community projects to support needy children. Ajijic Rotarians work tirelessly on projects ranging from scholarships, potable water, computers, and library books to teaching children self support skills. Come and enjoy a fun evening and help support Lakeside’s needy Madre Maria de Jesús receives a children. Admission is $350 and donation for Villa Infantil from includes a delicious dinner, one free Don Snell (Outreach Committee) drink, live music and dancing, along with silent auction. Tickets are available at and Father Michael Percival (St. aDiana Pearl Colecciones, Salvador’s Andrews) Restaurant, Hotel La Nueva Posada, and Lake Chapala Real Estate. For info and group reservations, please call 766-3302. See the web page at rotaryajijic.com Mulitple Events: The American Legion post #7 schedule for May: Sundays: 12 – 3 p.m. Legion grill burgers May 5 – 9:30 – 11:30 a.m.: US Consulate (no Social Security) May 13 – 5 p.m. 3rd Annual Wing Ding Event May 31 – 1:30 p.m. Memorial Day Ceremony at the Post May 31 – 2:30 p.m. Roasted Pig in the Pit picnic lunch Cruz Roja Chapala (cruzrojachapala.com) finished a strong 2009 with a net income of about $100,000 pesos. They thank their regular donors, event attendees and the cadre of International Volunteers. About 50% of the income is from recovery of costs in offering medical assistance to patients. Another 30% comes from activities and events sponsored by the Cruz Roja International Volunteers, and the remaining 15% comes from various individual donations. Major events include a Fashion Show and Golf Jose Cuervo tequila – one Tournament. Special events are also sponsored, of the tours
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F
rom 1999 to 2004 an unexpected series of discoveries in the excavation beneath the Pyramid of the Moon provided critical clues in reconstructing a 2,000-year-old history still mysteriously missing from the ruins of the ancient master-planned metropolis. Though archaeologists have long been fascinated with the site, Teoti-
huacan’s culture and history are still largely unknown. The civilization left massive ruins, but no trace of a writing system and very little is known for sure about its inhabitants, who were succeeded first by the Toltec and then by the Aztecs who never occupied the city but gave it and its major structures their current names. They considered it the “Place of the Gods” -- a place where, they believed, the current world was created. It is sometimes assumed by the layman that the religion of the people of Teotihuacan was less savagely demanding of human life than that of its successors, the Aztecs. To some extent, this is true. It was not, however, until the reign of Ce Atl, in his form, as Quetzalcoatl, God of the Wind, that human sacrifice was forbidden. He allowed only the blood of small animals, fruit and flowers on his altars. So, it must have been something of a shock to find that the lovely Temple of the Moon complex, the
very birthplace of the Ce Atl Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl cult, was once a veritable slaughterhouse where humans and animals were buried alive, decapitated or beaten to death. Excavations reveal the remains of sacrifices once witnessed by thousands of spectators. The latest discovery, found by a team of archaeologists led by Saburo Sugiyama and Ruben Cabrera, is a tomb containing four human skeletons, animal bones, large conch shells, jewelry, obsidian blades and a wide variety of other offerings, apparently dedicating the fifth phase of construction. The find provides clues that help describe an active period in Teotihuacan’s history. Both the tomb and offerings differ in important ways from another dedicatory tomb found a year earlier. That tomb, clearly associated with the pyramid’s fourth stage of development, contained only one human male —a bound, sacrificial victim—as well as wolf, jaguar, puma, serpent and bird skeletons, and more than 400 other offerings, including large greenstone and obsidian figurines, ceremonial
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knives, and spear points. The new discovery more closely resembles one found ten years earlier among the tombs under the Feathered Serpent Pyramid. Of particular interest is the presence of many green obsidian blades, —a color not found in the tomb in pyramid four, but common in the Feathered Serpent burials—a greenstone “butterfly” nose pendent that is the same style as those found there, plus over 130 human skeletons, most of them clearly soldiers and possibly war captives. “…we find explicit signs of a larger number of human sacrifices, both of which are reminiscent of the Feathered Serpent burials, where they found militarism in the culture since its early periods,” said Sugiyama. The current find appears to be connected to the phase in the pyramid’s development that followed the building of pyramid four—a distinct stage in the structure’s history that has not been recognized until now. The inhabitants of Teotihuacan built successively larger pyramids on top of the previous monuments every 52 years, often partially deconstructing the previous pyramid in the process. From past research, there were thought to have been five phases to the Pyramid of the Moon, oldest major monument, with phase one dated in the 1st Century A.D. Excavations show a major jump
in size and complexity occurring with the construction of pyramid four and a change in orientation that puts it in line with the unique and precise city grid structure that we see today in the city’s vast area of ruins. Evidence indicating that a significant remodeling of pyramid four—a fifth period of construction—occurred before the pyramid received its final addition. This new fifth stage, which includes the recent discovery, appears to be a significant modification of the fourth structure’s architecture, position and size. Part of the remodeling involved the first use on the Pyramid of the Moon of the “talud-tablero” architectural style that dominates the structures we see today, including the Feathered Serpent Pyramid and the Pyramid of the Sun, in its “Adosada” portion. Evidence in the differences in the ceremonial offerings between pyramid four and its remodeled version, thus suggest an important shift in culture that may also be reflected in the construction of the Feathered Serpent Pyramid and the Pyramid of the Sun. Both of these pyramids were constructed largely at one time and are newer than the earlier phases of the Pyramid of the Moon. According to Sugiyama, “There’s not enough data yet to draw any large conclusions, but one thing
that’s fascinating is that the mythic images that we see in the war-like murals from late periods—jaguars, coyotes and eagles with shells and head dresses —are made up of elements that we see literally present in these much older burials. What was going on here seems to have had a lasting effect.” The current excavation under the Pyramid of the Moon is a joint project of the Arizona State Department of Anthropology and Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History. Protected from archaeologists and treasure seekers by its primitive loose rock covering, this discovery may provide the key to unraveling the secrets of this mysterious city. Oh, Magnificent Mexico, your mysteries challenge us all … to wonder, to revel, to engage your secrets and to live our lives to the fullest.
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including bus trips to Guadalajara and the Tequila area; sales at the LCS Cruz Roja Table, Raffles, and participation in the Annual Chili-Cook-off and the National Colecta. A backup generator, donated by a local resident and installed at CRC expense, is now in place and electrical service continues uninterrupted. Current priorities include funding a replacement x-ray machine, cofunding a new ambulance and modernizing other equipment. Particular thanks are due to the hard work by volunteers. Lake Chapala Society announces an agreement between LCS, Lakeside School for the Deaf, and Have Hammers Will Travel. All three non-profit groups will share in the operation and profits of the Casi Nuevo Thrift Shop at Hidalgo #95, Riberas del Pilar (across from the 7-Eleven). The LCS share of proceeds will go to support LCS’ Community Education Programs: Student Aid, Computer Training, Children’s Art, English as a Second Language, Remedial Learning, and others. Also, there will be a drop box near the Video Rental office. You need not be a member to support this new venture. Bring surplus clothing, household and electrical items to the drop box. For larger household items and furniture, call Richard Williams at 766 – 1303 to make arrangements for pick up from your home. Volunteers are needed to help in the Thrift Shop. If you have retail or thrift shop experience or just like meeting people, we want you! The Thrift Shop is open Monday through Saturday, 10:30 – 3:00. We will work around your schedule. Have Hammers, Will Travel teaches local youth vocational skills in carpentry twice a week at LCS and will soon open a shop in Chapala. Lakeside School for the Deaf provides hearing aids, testing, speech therapy and more through the school in Jocotepec, which has 100 children. Lakeside Little Theatre news: LLT invites all members who volunteered in any capacity during the 2009 – 2010 Season to our annual Applause Party on Saturday, April 17 from 5 – 7 p.m. at the Theatre. Lakeside Little Theatre thanks all of its enthusiastic and generous volunteers, members and patrons for another successful season. Season 46 plays and directors (2010 – 2011) in order of production: 1. Our Lady of the Tortilla by Luís Santeir, directed by Sally Jo Barlett, scheduled to run October 2 – 10, 2010 2. Blithe Spirit by Noel Coward, directed by Shirley Appelbaum, scheduled for November 6 – 14, 2010 3. Lend Me a Tenor by Ken Ludwig, directed by Roger Tredway, running December 11 – 19, 2010 4. Tribute by Bernard Slade, directed by Allen McGill, playing January 15 – 23, 2011 5. The Pajama Game by Richard & Eleanor Stromberg, choreography by Alexis Hoff, scheduled for February 26 – March 8, 2011 6. The Foreigner by Larry Shue, directed by Robert Coull will show April 2 – 10, 2011 Season tickets are $800 pesos per reserved seat for six plays from October 2010 through April 2011, including LLT Membership. Individual tickets are $150 pesos. Love in Action announces the appointment of David Hoogenberg as the new Director of Programs. He understands the importance of communications and in providing information so that people can be effective in their roles. David’s career spans different areas, like the 20 years spent in the Canadian military (air force) where he was an instructor in the avionics and electronics areas. He was also a senior supervisor in the areas of Quality Assurance and Flight Safety. Later he started his own Information Technology business before deciding to live in Mexico. A recent volunteer to the Comida (lunch) Project, Johnny Phillips has experience operating professional kitchens. He and his team provide Thursday Comida at LIA. Johnny also has plans for training older girls at the Center to organize a kitchen and to prepare this noonday meal. The skills could come in handy in their future lives and careers. Open Circle at LCS on Sunday mornings at 10:30 a.m.: May 9 RosemaryDineen - new beginnings May 18 Tim Shubert May 25 Not known as yet Jun 2 Not known as yet Says Todd Stong, Open Circle speaker for April 18, there are five priorities he wants
Upcoming play scheduled for the LLT
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to work on for Lakeside’s near future: 1. Build a sample wetland at the Jocotepec end of the lake, providing a tertiary (third level) backup for water treatment by filtering lake water through the sand at the base of the wetland; an engineer is needed to head up this project 2. Build a beach, a real beach with all the facilities, in the immediate area south of the pier in Ajijic to about La Nueva Posada 3. Install greenhouses for hydroponic growth of vegetables, employing about 50 people 4. See a ferry start up between the north shore and Tuxcueca on the south shore, places with food, Todd Stong entertainment and vendors on both ends, plus perhaps connecting vehicles, like buses, taxis VIVA! La Musica summer schedule starts with the Philharmonic. The orchestra will play all the Beethoven symphonies; bus trips depart: Jun 6, 10:30 – Beethoven symphony No. 5, Tedesco guitar concerto Jun 11, 4: 30 – Brahms piano concerto No. 1, Beethoven symphony No. 2 Jun 20, 10:30 – Beethoven violin concerto, Beethoven symphony No. 7 Jun 25, 4:30 – Mozart clarinet concerto, Beethoven symphony No. 4 Jul 2, 10:30 – Beethoven symphony No. 6 and No. 8 Jul 9, 4:30 – De Falla, Reineke flute concerto, Beethoven No. 3 Jul 18, 10:30 – Beethoven symphonies No. 9 and No. 1 Please call Marshall Krantz at 766 – 2834. Your reservation is not confirmed until payment is received. Tickets are $200 pesos for members and $300 pesos for non-members. The bus will stop for dinner at a good restaurant in Guadalajara before Friday evening concerts. Season tickets go on sale at LCS June 1 – Opera Rigoletto June 17: members $1,100 pesos. Single tickets are $250 pesos for members and $300 pesos for the opera. Non-members pay more. Mark your calendars for these events: Jun 17 Piano Trio: Joel Juan Qui, Chris Wilshere, Igor Konstantin Jul 15 Jalisco State Chorus Aug. 19 Issac Ramirez, cello; Andres Sarre, piano Sep. 14 Ensemble Filarmonica: Luciano Perez; soprano, Dolores Moreno Oct. 21 Rigoletto, a fully staged opera, directed by Luís Rodriquez VIVA is proud to announce the group has awarded Manuel Castillo $1,000 USD in support of his upcoming trip to Rome, Italy, to sing Alfred, the leading role in Die Fledermaus in July. For more information, see our web site at ajijicviva.org. A few weeks ago as we were returning from a bit of social time, we paused to watch a local worker emerge from a shop, newspaper in hand. He paused under the street light to open the pages and read. We hear so many concerns about Mexicans reading. They boast a 97% literacy rate at or above the minimum sixth grade education. Clearly, they read. What we want to encourage is education at jobs that are just now evolving in their growing economy, like hydroponic greenhouse growing of vegetables and fruits or computer skills for a whole raft of uses in business and elsewhere.
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THIS WORLD of OURS By Bob Harwood bharwoodb@hotmail.com
The World We Now Share
T
o better understand the world we now share one must take into account the transformed meaning of time and space. Our earth centric species is no longer at the center of the universe as explorers in space share experiences with us in live time. In 1775 my ancestors risked hazardous weeks on the ocean for a fresh start in the New World as anxious family wondered if they had even survived the voyage. Now reassurance is given by cell phone the moment the plane touches the tarmac. When I see couples strolling, each talking on their phone, I know not if they are speaking to one another or to the other side of the world. But our species is slow to adapt to such changes. Empires come and go at an ever accelerating pace. In 1776 Edward Gibbon noted in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire the central role played by “the gradual disintegration of their economy”. What would he have to say of America’s decline today? Buffered by oceans in two world wars the USA, the reigning superpower for almost a century, has in today’s meaning of time already long outlasted Rome’s glory days. Now it is the turn of China and others. In 2007 I experienced at first hand how China transformed itself in just three decades as the fetters of communism were shed to embrace a free market economy. Now they must learn to embrace free access to information in a world with a growing dependence on what China has
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to offer. China, India, Brazil, Russia and others do not seek to ‘replace America’ at the helm. They simply seek respect and a meaningful voice in world forums. May this herald a long overdue shift from imperial concepts of one nation’s supremacy to respectful engagement among equals and increasing roles for the UN and other international organizations. Nowhere is this disconnect with today’s meaning of time more apparent than in the intellectual property field. 20 years was a reasonable life for a patent 200 years ago when inventors worked in isolation oceans apart. Today at the click of a key they read peer reviews, gather in professional forums, build on each other’s work. Decades-long patents tweaked minutely to win unending extensions now inhibit rather than encourage innovation as inventors are forced to design around, rather than build on, others work. Patent drugs are a major element in out of control health care costs as the industry spends more on advertising than on research and Washington has more lobbyists than congressmen. More affordable generic drugs could save millions of lives in the Third World. Now all of language, music, and imagery can be digitalized and instantly shared via the Internet. The
incremental cost of one more copy is literally zero. Google’s vision of an on line library of all the world’s great literature is simply a 21st century counterpart to Andrew Carnegie’s vision to endow libraries throughout the English speaking world that the poor might read. Facebook has replaced the backyard fence as a place where people socialize, perhaps exchange a book or a favorite DVD. In an age when six or seven strategically positioned satellites could enable communication with literally every person on earth, and help transform the lives of billions, what vastly shorter period would be appropriate for patents and for copyright respectively—and be realistically enforceable? Innovation and creativity must and should be rewarded, but for how long? When not reading breaking news or weighty non-fiction on these matters I may turn to the mysteries of Robin Paige set in stately British country homes of the Victorian era. Interwoven into the plots are the esoteric lives of the privileged above stairs gentry and their legions of below stairs servants. Significant social themes emerge,- the benefits and burdens of primogeniture, the struggle of women to be recognized
as something more than social appendages, the exploitation of poor children in work houses. Any attempt to change the status quo was often attacked as Socialism or Anarchy. Victor Hugo observed , There is always more misery among the lower classes than there is humanity in the higher. I hear echoes of that same ethos in America’s raging debates on health care and financial regulation as the privileged wealthy use similar labels to attack health care reform. Trade unions were essential to address gross injustices in an earlier time. But today well paid unionists have joined the privileged middle class, the above stairs set. Enlightened social policy would better focus on raising the minimum wage and addressing Third World poverty. Cries for protectionism are a cry to cling to our above stairs privileges compared to the below stairs plight of so much of humanity both within and beyond our national borders. In our irretrievably integrated global village all are my neighbors. May we learn to live accordingly. Bob Harwood
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Notes From Nestipac
By Phyllis Rauch rauchlosdos@yahoo.com
I Love a Parade
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oving parades, I am lucky to live in Mexico. But if you see large groups of people on the streets, with floats, dancers and music it could be for a wide variety of reasons, with Spanish words to indicate the differences. Desfiles, such as the one on November 20, Revolution Day, usually feature students of all ages in sport uniforms, turning somersaults and forming complicated pyramids. Desfiles may be political or for other secular reasons. A peregrinacion, however, occurs to honor the villages’ patron saint. Music, dancing, and floats with religious themes are dedicated to the sacred event, and a different mood prevails.. The festival culminates with the procession, candlelit, and quiet except for the murmuring of rosaries.
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Those with a manda (promise) complete the route of the procession on their knees, friends and family running to place rugs in front of their painful paths. Finally, the acompañamiento includes long lines of family and friends following a casket to the
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graveyard. I have been a sideline participant in all of Jocotepec’s desfiles, peregrinaciones and procesiones. Taking photos, tapping my foot to the Indian drumbeats, running blocks ahead to catch a second view of something like the Penachos (enormous headdresses) from Sahuayo and quietly following the January procession honoring our Señor del Monte, - always on the curb, never in the street. Recently I was invited to a celebration in honor of the Reyna de la Tercera Edad. (Roughly translated: Golden Age Queen). Recovering from a minor operation and still bound up with a fractured rib, I hadn’t been out of the house for two weeks and felt wobbly and fragile. I snapped a few photos of our special Nextipac float, featuring a painted Chapala landscape, a traditional fishing canoe with nets, and a large, papier mache flower, centered with a chair for our candidate. Then I chauffeured my Nextipac family to town, driving with just one arm. Mari said, “I’ve already reserved a chair for you Señora, on the plaza, in front of the stage.” It was early, and I went to check out the competition. Our float was by far the best. I was distracted however,
when I spied a donkey (now so rare in our town) with flowers between his ears, pulling a little wooden cart. The owner, a mustached Señor with sombrero wandered over. After admiring and petting the burro, I discovered that they were from Potrerillos. “Aha, I should have known,” I said. “This is the way we are,” the Señor grinned. “Why should we pretend to be anything different?” The candidates were now mounting the floats. Nextipac’s slim Doña Luz dressed in a white knit with seed pearls, her long hair swept up into an elegant style looked exquisite. Seated in the middle of her large blossom, she was every inch a queen. The Nextipac contingent was the largest present, carrying balloons, felt butterflies, tin cans with coins and wooden matracas as noisemakers. Suddenly I said to Mari, “I’m not going back to sit down, I’m going to walk in the desfile.” I was thinking this is perhaps the craziest thing I’ve ever done, recuperating and with a fractured rib. But so long just a witness, I suddenly had to become a participant. With my barrio, the lovely Doña Luz , and old enough to be a candidate myself…. if
not now, when? We marched, yelled porros (cheers) waved balloons and butterflies, rattled noisemakers, sang Cielito Lindo. I was wearing a large visor and sunglasses, and fancied myself invisible. Not so. Richard, my mechanic, spied me, as did many others who know me well. Others asked, “Who was the gringa in the Nextipac delegation singing Cielito Lindo?� At first I was embarrassed, but then proud and happy. It was high time I finally joined the parade, and suspect this one won’t be my last.
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By Dilia Suriel
I
witnessed a ladyy struggling to expresss herself in Spanish;; despite my Latin featuress k she asked: “Do you speak English?” “Exquisitely.” I responded. She was a retired Eng-lish Literature professor. Shee loved words and longed too express herself in Spanish.. We embarked in a too famil-iar discussion, “What shouldd I do to become fluent in Span-ish?” Communication is whatt allows us to impart thoughts, opinions, or information. It is the process by which we arrive at understanding each other or reach an emotional connection. Communication is what defines the quality of our relationships, what deepens our sense of influence, what provides options as to which artisans, which professionals we can retain and which friends to hold. I speak beyond intellectual deafness that keeps us from the richness of another culture. I speak of the en-
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foldment that a new language affords us. To truly be fluent in Spanish you would empathize with Octavio Paz’s nostalgia and a search for community, with Isabel Allende’s relationships between past and present, family and nation, spiritual and political values. You would journey into Carlos Fuentes’s humor, erudition and then arrive at Pablo Neruda’s surrealistic passion. Fluency is galaxies beyond mechanistic translations, it is the journey of mastery, a journey of allowance, a
willingness to be a child once again, and sound foolish and give up all facade and labels. It is to be born again into a new set of values. As we age we become set in our way and like cement it is a brutal, tedious, and rigorous task to be dis-encrusted. Children have never savored the beauty of an insightful sentence; never brought light into an obscure idea, or through language connected to a matched level of consciousness. They have no attachment to what it is that they must temporarily forfeit in order to arrive at fluency. So what would it mean if you master Spanish? The inquiry is not a trivial question. And to what level? The first is reading. Here we translate words and intellectually put them into a conceptual jigsaw pieces into our language. The second level is hearing, the primary channel through which our brains carry a wealth of emotional and cognitive structure that fires up our imagination. Language is the mind’s opposable thumbs. The challenge is that most native speakers talk at machine gun speed. So master the phrase: Yo entiendo español pero no a la velocidad de una metralladora. The third level is speaking. Here there are multiple challenges. As a beginner speaker we tend to select the word closest in sound to what we would like to say. But we quickly find that embarrassed is not embarazada (pregnant), pie is not pie (foot), soap is not sopa (soup or pasta), and exit is not éxito (success) In speaking there is also the challenge of the muscular biases of each language. For the native English speaker, the double r sound needs to be intentionally developed. The other challenge is the preponderancy of English speakers to contract sounds that in Spanish are distinct syllables, Bu-e-nos A-i-res versus Bue-no Aires. It has been stated that the short-
est distance between two people is laughter. The fourth level is getting the humor as it is where one unearths not only individual preferences but the inherent values of a culture. The fifth level of fluency is discerning distinctions. There is a spectrum of subtleties within words that Roget grouped as synonyms. It took me years after I “spoke” English, to laugh at jokes, to learn that honor is not reputation, a soldier is not a warrior, a snake is not necessary a serpent. The sixth level of fluency is identifying with the values of the society. The Japanese have nine words for honor. The French have no word for fair-play. The Germans have 11 adjectives that denote precision. Subtleties in words betray the values of the society. The seven and final level of fluency is the Jungian encapsulation of the society’s consciousness, its art, music, literature, in short its expression. The Japanese value the ineffable quality that has to do with great refinement underlying commonplace appearances, the concept of Shibumi. In contrast Latin American consciousness is about connections, brilliance, intensity and bold expression.
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LETTER FOR THE EDITOR
D
ear Sir: I read your editor’s page article on Monte Cassino and just wanted to add a few more words about it. Anyone familiar with that battle (and there is plenty about it on the web) knows that the battle went on in four stages and certainly I admire the Mexican American unit who were forced to do the unspeakable at the end, but the whole battle was a big mess up with huge loss of life. To start it in the middle of winter was crazy to begin with. The Allied forcers were British, French (including Morrocans and Algerians), Polish (who lost a huge number of their forces), South Africans, Canadians and New Zealanders. I am a New Zealander and there were 1600 of them wounded and killed in the crazy skirmishes. The soldiers from India
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lost 3000 troops. I hate war, but at one stage I read the whole New Zealand war history, and for those who are interested in strategy, these battles can be interesting. The US General disobeyed orders and the Germans got away (they were a crack force) but Rome was liberated and the Pope got all the precious artifacts of the Monte Cassino monastery! Claire le Normand, El Chante, MX.
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CHILD
of the month
By Rich Petersen
Mayra Lizeth Márquez López
H
ard to believe that this healthy-looking little sweetheart has just had heart surgery! This is 5-year-old Mayra Márquez López. Mayra lives in Chapala with her mother Yolanda who is a housewife, and her father Rafael who works in both construction and as a gardener depending on the season of the year. Mayra is an only child—for now. By the time you read this article, her mother will have given birth to the family’s second child. Mayra was born with defect in her heart—a small hole that was allowing unoxigenated blood to circulate. According to her doctors this defect could have brought about further problems as Mayra grew older, but fortunately the only symptoms she had prior to surgery was shortness of breath when she would exert herself playing. For this she was taking two medications while the doctors monitored her status, awaiting the appropriate time in her development to perform surgery. The surgery (in early April) involved covering the small hole with a special seal to allow the blood to flow normally. This procedure was the least invasive and the least dangerous according to the surgeons. She came through it all wonderfully well, and they don’t believe she will need any further surgical intervention. Look carefully in the photo and you can see the upper part of her scar. Interestingly, while monitoring Mayra’s condition over the past year, her doctors were of course able to see
this small ll hhole l bby means off speciali l ized X-ray techniques; but during surgery they were surprised to find that the hole had become quite a bit more enlarged. Thus, it was “perfect timing” so to speak for the surgery. Mayra is in preschool and will start kindergarten next year. She loves to jump and run, but for now has to play at less active games such as tea parties and dolls. Hopefully at her follow-up appointments in May and June, the doctors will find her recovered enough to return to normal 5-year old activities. As you might imagine, Mayra’s surgery was quite expensive. Her family, however, began to save money as soon as they knew that surgery was necessary and imminent. Niños Incapacitados is happy to have helped the family with part of the surgical expenses, as well as her medications, x-rays and other testing. Niños Incapacitados welcomes you to our monthly meetings—the second Thursday of every month, 10:00 a.m. in one of the lower level conference rooms at the Hotel Real de Chapala (La Floresta). NOTE: May 13 will be our last regular meeting until September as many of our members travel and are not available during the summer months. We do, however, continue funding our families year-round. Volunteers and new members are always needed to help with ongoing fundraising activities to help the children in our area whose families are in need of financial help to assist with medical expenses. For further information and to read about other children enrolled in our Program, please visit our website: www. programaninos.org or email us at info@programaninos.org.
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Geo-Mexico: The Geography and Dynamics of Modern Mexico By Richard Rhoda and Tony Burton Sombrero Books, B.C., Canada, 20100 A Review by James Tipton
I
have several long shelves that hold books about Mexico. This is, after all, my home, my country, and I want to know as much about it as I can. On top of those shelves is a short shelf, some favorites that I refer to often. Today I squeezed those short-shelf books a bit closer, and slipped in Geo-Mexico: The Geography and Dynamics of Modern Mexico, by Richard Rhoda and Tony Burton, a remarkable and very readable study of the 11th largest nation on earth (in terms of population) whose “ecological and cultural richness and global importance” often are not recognized. And, write Richard Rhoda and Tony Burton, geography itself “is also often under-appreciated, equated with memorizing the names of countries, capitals, mountain rang-
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d rivers. i ‘R l’ geography h iis es and ‘Real’ much more exciting! It focuses on the interactions between individuals, societies and the physical environment in both time and space. Geography looks at the processes behind these interactions and how human activities have helped define them. It also seeks to explain similarities and differences between places.” Rhoda and Burton have also
provided “More than 100 original maps, graphs and diagrams” and “Over 50 text boxes highlight illustrative examples and case studies.” Some of these text boxes are a lot of fun. For example, in “Mexico’s place names” we discover that the meanings of suffixes derived from indigenous (mostly Nahuatl) words include: -apan = in/near water or river -calco = in the house of -huacan, -oacan –place where they have -pan = in/on -tepec = hill In a chapter on population, we discover that Mexico is the most population-dense country in the Americas: 55 people/square kilometer compared to USA at 31, Bolivia at 8, and Canada at 3. We learn that Mexican life expectancy in the 1930s was only 37 years, compared to 75 years today. And we learn that (fortunately) fertility rates have plummeted from eight children on average per woman in the 1950s to 2.1 on average in 2010. In a chapter on indigenous people, again in a text box, we learn that Mexico abolished slavery in 1829; and in those 36 years before the US abolished slavery, more than 4000 US slaves fled south to Mexico. Incidentally, “About 85% of indigenous households are below the Mexican poverty line and over half live in ‘extreme poverty’. Over one third of houses lack electricity and over half lack piped water.” In a chapter on religion we find that although “the population remains predominantly Catholic, allegiance to the church has declined steadily since 1970. In 1970 96% of the population five years of age and older identified themselves as Roman Catholic. By the 2000 census the figure had fallen to 88%.”
Regarding the future? A lot of hope. The Mexican government program Oportunidades “is one of the most-studied social programs on the planet.” Through nutrition, health care education, and some financial assistance, this program helps families overcome poverty. Through financial incentives to the family, Oportunidades encourages children to attend school, and after completion of each grade, the family is rewarded with additional incentives. Only 4% of the administrative budget of $3.6 billion dollars goes toward administration. Five million families are helped (about 1/4th of all Mexican families), mostly in marginal communities. “In eleven years what has been achieved? Enrollment in junior high schools has risen 30% for 14-year-olds. The graduation rate from high schools is 23% higher.” Exciting! Richard Rhoda and Tony Burton, both residents (or former residents) of Mexico, are well-known for their writings about Mexico (too extensive to list here.) This joint effort, Geo-Mexico: The Geography and Dynamics of Modern Mexico, is a “must have” book for those of us hooked on this magnificent country.
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GOING ROGUE An American Life By Sarah Palin 413 pages Reviewed by Thomas Hally
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alin’s tome is a critical narrative of her mismanagement during the 2008 Republican White House bid. In a story that could be told in 300 pages instead of 413, she relates personal histories and vignettes about her earliest childhood memories, her adolescence, family, friends, fishing and a few pesky, small-town political adversaries. The title is linked to Palin’s activities during the campaign. It was decided she was “off script” when her critical comments about the GOP campaign pullout from Michigan upset top campaign staffers. They claimed she was “going rogue.” She later announced that the Republican campaign had spent more than $150,000 on designer clothes for her family, and again she was advised to censure her comments. Palin’s outspokenness led to a serious communication breakdown between her and some leading GOP staffers. Sarah Palin started her political career at the age of twenty eight. From 1992 to 1996, she was a City Councilwoman in Wasilla Alaska. In 1996, she was elected Wasilla’s mayor and served the maximum two-term limit, retiring from office in 2002. In 2006, she became the youngest, and the first female, Chief Executive of America’s forty-ninth state. While Governor of Alaska, she strove to lower taxes and promote energy independence. Her pet project was the Trans Alaska Pipeline: the biggest infrastructure project in United States history. Palin’s GOP Campaign narrative starts at about the halfway mark of her autobiography. Chosen by John McCain to be his running mate on August 29, 2008, he described her as a fighter for the working class who defeated “Big Oil “and successfully battled against corrupt bureaucrats. Palin had promoted herself as an ordinary American mother with more than enough savvy to be VicePresident of the United States. Yet, in a televised interview with CBS’s Katie Couric, the interviewer asked
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t bli hi her: “Wh “When it comes tto establishing your worldview…what newspapers and magazines did you regularly read before you were tapped for this to stay informed and to understand the world?” Palin could not answer Couric’s question intelligently, and she became agitated. Her confusion and lack of knowledge was evident. Three days prior to the final presidential debate, the Republicans found their mascot: Joe the Plumber. Nevertheless, the American people chose Barak Obama as the forty-fourth President of the United States. The Democrats received approximately fifty-three percent of the popular vote, while the Republicans gained about fortysix percent. After the defeat, Palin found herself inundated with lawsuits, ethics complaints, bills and mounting attorney’s fees. A shadow was being cast on her ability as an administrator and her efficacy as the mother of a child with Down’s Syndrome. Her teenage daughter, Bristol, an unwed mother, became a prime-time TV topic, and even her seven-year old daughter, Piper, was interviewed by the press. Her popularity level fell from nearly 96% to 56%. Palin announced that she would step aside as Governor of Alaska. In her farewell message to the people of Alaska, she underscores what she believes to be the most notable differences between Conservative Republicans and Progressive Democrats. She considers the Obama Administration’s reforms as a debt to be paid by future generations of Americans. Palin frequently evokes the Ronald Regan legacy and the importance of a strong military. She finishes her farewell speech with an appeal to her supporters: “Stand now. Stand together. Stand for what is right.”
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By John Keeling
The House Finch
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he house finch is a sparrow-sized bird which is a very common year-round resident at lakeside. The male has a red breast and cap, though is not as strikingly red as the vermilion flycatcher, which is the other small redbreasted bird commonly seen here. In fact the intensity of the color varies with the season, being brighter in mating season, when females tend to pick males with the brightest red color. These birds are typically heard singing a complicated twittering trill from the tops of bushes and trees. The female of the species is easily confused with a sparrow, because it is brown all over, and has highly streaked under-parts. You will often find the males and females foraging together in small groups, as they are very social birds. This knowledge will assist you in identifying the females. Notice the heavy beak which is required to crush seeds, which are the principal food source. In season they will also eat berries and attack fruit, a practice which does not endear them to commercial fruit growers. House finches are highly adaptable being found in backyards, town centers, farmlands and desert. Their adaptability to human environments has allowed them to aggressively expand their range from northern Mexico, up the Pacific side of the Rockies to Washington state and British Columbia. Most interesting is that in the 1940s these birds were sold in cages in New York under the name of ‘Hollywood finches’. Escapees soon became naturalized, and within 50 years the progeny of those birds
ad south to Florida spread Florida, north to eastern Canada, and also to the mid-west. They are now one of the most common birds in both Mexico and the U.S. They are monogamous and mate three or more times in the period March to July. The female constructs a cup-shaped nest of twigs and leaves, lined with feathers, in a tree or creeper or on a ledge. She lays about 4 eggs, (one a day), and incubates them for 14 days, and sits the babies for a few more days while they are still tiny. Throughout this time the female is fed by the male. For a brief period both parents feed the chicks. The young leave the nest within two and half weeks, after which they are fed by the male, allowing the female to start building a new nest right away. Naturally, there are predators. At this time of the year I see ravens occasionally checking out the house finch nesting colonies in the tall, thin cedars near my house in Ajijic, and casually lifting a chick or two for lunch, while the parents helplessly send out loud alarm calls. (John Keeling and his wife lead the ‘Lake Chapala Birding Club’ which is a group of people interested in birds. To receive notices of bird walks etc., leave your e-mail address at avesajijic.com. )
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FRONT ROW CENTER By Michael Warren Cash On Delivery By Michael Cooney Directed by Bob Coull
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ash On Delivery is a quintessential British farce by Michael Cooney, who is the son of farcemaster Ray Cooney, author of Run For Your Wife and its sequel Caught In The Net seen here on Lakeside four years ago. So we are in good hands, and the play does not disappoint. In the first Act, the play takes a while to get off the ground – but then the second Act is loaded with misunderstandings, confusion and loony characters who appear and disappear through doors as if by magic. An experienced cast keeps the action going with tremendous pace. Landlord “Eric Swan” (Zane Pumiglia) is defrauding the Social Services by claiming various disabilities for former and fictitious boarders. When an inspector “Mr Jenkins” (Jim Donnelly) turns up, Eric is obliged to become the boarder and then gets his real boarder “Norman” (played by Ken Yakiwchuk) – who by the way is now officially dead – to act as the landlord. Chaos is further confounded when Eric’s wife “Linda” (Shirley Appelbaum) discovers corsets and women’s clothing – stolen from Social Services by Eric’s “Uncle George” (Marty Davis) – and concludes that Eric is into cross-dressing. She brings in a counselor “Dr Chapman” (Jack Vanesko) who attempts therapy but is constantly interrupted and is sternly told to sit down. The situation is hilarious and getting more out of control by the minute – by now the audience is falling around with laughter as other characters arrive on the scene. Social Services are of course sweet and helpful, and burden Eric with unwanted benefits – Amy Friend shows up as “Sally” the bereavement counselor, who wants to “lay Norman” in the bedroom. And then there’s the undertaker “Mr Forbright” – hilariously played with great seriousness by Pierre Blackburn. Finally the formidable
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“Ms Cowper” of Social Services (Chris L’Ecluse) appears and is drawn into the general confusion. Eric develops a twitch and a nasty case of Tourette’s syndrome, much to Ms Cowper’s dismay. It’s like watching an episode of the Benny Hill show on speed. I should also mention the charming Daphne Peerless, who adds to the general hysteria as Norman’s fiancée “Brenda” – naturally she is upset to learn that he is already married, and surprised by his appearance in women’s clothing. He is supposed to be someone – Mrs Swan – by now we’ve all lost track of who is supposed to be dead or alive, or someone’s long-lost brother (or sister or stepmother). All of the actors do a tremendous job, and deliver their lines with impeccable timing. I really enjoyed this play, and Bob Coull deserves great credit for bringing it successfully to the Lakeside stage. It’s not easy to do farce, because the actors have to be “in the play” while maintaining terrific pace in the most absurd situations. Backstage Kathleen Neal was Stage Manager and Shirley Appelbaum was Assistant Director. Shirley capably took over at short notice as Linda because of the unfortunate illness of Gerry Marttila. I am happy to report that Gerry is back home and recovering from an emergency appendectomy. So Season 45 ends on an upbeat note with a hilarious farce. Thank you to all who contributed to this year’s productions, in acting, directing, set design and construction, sound system, costumes, makeup and all the elements required to put on these plays. It is no small undertaking and it takes all the players, onstage and backstage, to make it a success. Now I sign off for the summer and look forward to Season 46, which opens in October with Our Lady of the Tortilla.
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Hearts at Work —A Column by Jim Tipton
“Dahlings, I was wonderful!”
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ome decades ago I was romantically involved with a beautiful but mercurial actress and director in Denver, Colorado. We often attended post-performance parties, where I would soon (and happily I might add) find myself alone. At one such gathering, I saw an interesting old lady sitting by herself on a sofa. Always a pushover for interesting old ladies, I sat down beside her and introduced myself. She with a droll charm and southern drawl, with clear eyes that were laughing at me, announced: “I am Tallulah Bankhead’s daughter”. I had always been fascinated by Tallulah Bankhead, the glamorous, outrageous, sultry, unpredictable, and enormously popular “toast of everyone”. Her public loved her, for her talents, her loose life, her stunts, her beauty…her witticisms: “If I had to live my life again, I’d make the same mistakes, only sooner.” “There’s less to this man than meets the eye.” “I’ll come and make love to you at five o’clock. If I’m late, start without me.” “Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breaths away.” As it turns out, that evening I was in the home of a gracious and cultured man, Donald Seawell, who was currently Director of the Denver Center for the Performing Arts. In the past, for fifteen years, Seawell had been publisher of the Denver Post. He had also had been attorney to theatrical celebrities including Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontaine…and Tallulah Bankhead. Seawall’s wife, a highly regarded Broadway actress named Eugenia Rawls, had played Tallulah Bankhead’s daughter in Lillian Hellman’s, The Little Foxes. That “daughter” was the woman beside me. Eugenia and Tallulah had been lifelong friends. Tallulah had been Eugenia’s Matron of Honor at her wedding to Seawell; and she was godmother to their two children. Born in 1902 in Alabama to a prominent southern family, Tallulah
Bankhead made her acting debut in London in 1923, where she quickly established a reputation for stage talents as well as offstage talents of a more notorious variety. In 1931 she returned to the US and went to Hollywood where she had little patience for the process of making movies and little enthusiasm for Hollywood. Irving Thalberg (Hollywood’s Boy Wonder who died so very young) remembers Tallulah asking him: “How do you get laid in this dreadful place?” She later claimed, “The only reason I went to Hollywood was to f--- that divine Gary Cooper.” Soon, though, she was making $50,000 a film, a lot of money in the Depression, and she was linked romantically to stars like Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, and Marlene Dietrich. She had been David O. Selznick’s initial choice for Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind. Tallulah looked superb in black and white, but in the screen tests she photographed poorly in Technicolor. The role was given to Vivien Leigh. In 1939 Tallulah won the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award for her portrayal of Regina Giddens in Lilian Hellman’s The Little Foxes; and in 1942 she won the same for her portrayal of Sabina, domestic temptress in Thornton Wilder’s The Skin of Our Teeth. In 1944 Alfred Hitchcock cast her in Lifeboat, written by John Steinbeck. As Tallulah accepted the New York Film Critics’ Circle Award for Best Actress for her portrayal of Connie Porter, she enthusiastically declared: “Dahlings, I was wonderful!” Following the war Tallulah was
in a very successful revival of Noel Coward’s Private Lives, which she took on tour and then to Broadway. Tallulah was always a party favorite, and no wonder, entering a soirée stark naked, or doing cartwheels wearing a skirt with no panties beneath. She loved gestures. One evening leaving a theatre Tallulah tossed a $20 bill into the tambourine of a Salvation Army Band and left them with her blessing: “There dahlings, I know it’s been a rough winter for you Spanish dancers.” She was well into her fifties when (1956) she played Blanche DuBois, Tennessee William’s troubled southern lady, in A Streetcar Named Desire. (Vivien Leigh played Blanche in the screen version.) Tallulah’s final stage appearance (1963) was in another Williams play, The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore. And still another Williams’ play, Sweet Bird of Youth, was written with Tallulah in mind. Robert Temple, author of “Tallulah the Lonely,” London Daily Telegraph, March 18, 2000, met Tallulah when he was 17 and she was 65, while they were doing summer stock together at the Papermill Playhouse in Milburn, New Jersey. Temple calls Tallulah a “human hur-
ricane.” She was hard to work with because “she wore everybody out, and they collapsed around her like rag dolls.” Temple adds that “her daemonic psyche cranked out more energy than a Nikola Tesla generator.” Temple discovered, listening to her talk, that throughout her life Tallulah “devoured books, she devoured penises…she devoured vaginas and breasts, she devoured chicken salad at the rate of several chickens a day, she practically ate her cigarettes, she devoured life, life, life…. She had the energy of one hundred people and there was no way to turn it off. ” But because of this she was lonely. Temple concludes: “Apart from being the most overwhelmingly powerful personality I have ever met, Tallulah was genuinely someone to be adored for her kindness, her generosity of spirit, and her capacity for disinterested friendship. She was intellectually brilliant, as witty as Oscar Wilde, and a tribute to the vibrancy and radiance of the human spirit.” Tallulah, DahlJim Tipton ing, we miss you.
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The Ojo Crossword
ACROSS 1 Swiftly 6 Swine 10 Tenor 14 Confuse 15 Prayer ending 16 East 17 Freight 18 Egyptian river 19 Sage 20 Hit hard 21 Wrote quickly 23 Type of Buddhism 24 Decorative needle case 26 Husky 28 Temper 31 Holler 32 Kimono sash 33 Gestured “hello” 36 Chances of winning 40 Religious division 42 Elver 43 False bible god 44 Entreaty 45 Aide 48 Pair 49 Scorch 51 Czar 53 Conspiracy, with “in” 56 Fresh 57 Wing 58 Silver State 61 Alack’s partner 65 Level 67 Gambling game 68 Cain’s eldest son 69 Bode 70 Exploiter 71 Love 72 Sculpt 73 Slope 74 Ranked
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DOWN 1 What children learn 2 Ring, like bells 3 Hairdo 4 Toothed 5 Pride 6 National capital 7 Leave out 8 Money 9 Grimaced 10 Judge Advocate General 11 Car manufacturer 12 Fathers 13 Tease 21 Goddess 22 Pain unit 25 Decade 27 Stain 28 Hospital (abbr.) 29 Cain killed him 30 Grain 31 Bark in pain 34 Elk’s cousin 35 Eastern state 37 Input 38 Aurora 39 Gap 41 Mexican sandwich 45 Odious 46 Bunsen burner 47 Seed bread 50 Honey abr. 52 African nation 53 Rebound 54 “Remember the ___” 55 Type of nut 56 Add 59 Urn 60 Region 62 Money 63 Land measurement 64 Molt 66 Last 68 Serving of corn
LETTER FOR THE EDITOR
D
ear Sir: (This is in response to “Thunder on the Right” column (April) by Paul Jackson Mister Jackson, I hate to be the one to disturb you up there in Dallas North, but your article has some loose and loony assumptions. Sorry, Alberta oil sands are too costly, too polluting, too little and too late. The process is energy inefficient, causes too much pollution, uses too much of your fellow Canadian’s water and what are you going to do with the waste? And you can only supply a very small amount of US daily oil needs. Maybe you in Alberta don’t realize it, but the rest of good and polite people in Canada, (No names please) are taking less and less of a liking to the “blue eyed Arab” Albertans exploiting all the natural resources. Don’t worry, you are safe as long as Harper is in power, but let one of those “left coast liberals” from B.C. or, merci beau coup, a French Cana-
happen. To predict otherwise is a scare tactic of the conservative right to keep the status quo. But let me scare you. I PREDICT! If the price of oil goes to $225 a barrel a new word will come to the lips of good Americans and Canadians, actually it might be several words. One is: Windfall profit tax and other (better sit down Dallas North) nationalization. Better be careful what you wish for Dallas North. Michael G McLaughlin Ajijic
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dian from Montreal take control and …. Finally, to predict (and wish for) oil at $225 a barrel is, excuse the crude joke, only a wet dream for the folks in Dallas North. Yeah, it would be great, you could buy up the rest of Canada. $225 oil would, your guess is as good as mine or Jeff Rubin’s, equate to $8-$10 US a gallon for gasoline. At that price how many industries in the US, Canada and world-wide would crash? Let me count: Anything to do with a car, plane, train or boat, plastics, oh, heck, and the list just goes on and on. It won’t
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THE BOGART MYSTIQUE By Alejandro Grattan (Reprinted by Request)
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ne synonym for the word “mystique” is magical, and it is indeed magical that today, some fifty years after his death, Bogart is a bigger star than he was even in his wildly successful heyday during the ‘40s and ‘50s. More amazing is that his fans are currently comprised mainly of young people. For those who doubt these assertions, I offer the following exhibits: * There have been more than fifteen books published about Bogart. Gable and Garbo rated two each. Brando and Monroe three apiece. Moreover, several of the Bogart books were written by highly literate and sophisticated men (e.g., Alistair Cooke and Nathaniel Benchley) who ordinarily had little interest in the history and/or highjinks of filmdom’s rich and famous. * In 1993, the editors (most of whom were in their 30s and early 40s) of Entertainment Weekly voted
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B h greatest movie i star ever. Bogart the Amongst a list of thirty, some of the current stars whom he easily eclipsed are Connery, Newman, De Niro, Eastwood, Hoffman, Nicholson and Brando. The Top Thirty included such screen legends as Hepburn (K.), Grant, Monroe, Gable, Chaplin, Davis, Stewart, Cagney, Cooper, Bergman, Wayne, Astaire, Taylor (Liz), Olivier, Garland, Tracy, Dean, Temple, Fonda (H.) and Valentino. To have been included among such protean talent would have been a huge honor—to top such a list is a passport to posterity. * Since the early ‘60s, the Brattle Theatre in Cambridge, Mass. has run a series of Bogart films during Exam Week at Harvard. It has been reported that the students (both male and female) invariably know Bogart’s movies so well, they sit parroting his every line of dialogue, and rise in unison at the end of Casablanca to sing “La Marseillaise.” Finally, a few years ago, the American Film Institute conducted a poll among its 3000 members—all of whom are still actively involved in the industry—as to who was the
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greatest film star of all-time. Bogart won again. Yet the rationale for picking Bogart doesn’t fully explain his enduring popularity, or the perpetuation of his powerful mystique. They said he “was the onscreen essence of inner strength,” and an “icon of majestic indifference.” Other stars of his same era were outrageously good-looking, physically impressive specimens, while Bogart was an anomaly: short, rather scrawny, with a scarred lip that caused him to lisp and decidedly unhandsome in his later years. Yet, as the eminent film critic Pauline Kael once said, Bogart could dominate a scene simply by entering it. Okay, fair enough … but not quite far enough. One often overlooked reason for Bogart´s enduring popularity is the astonishingly high caliber of so many of the films he made. No other screen actor ever starred in so many outstanding movies. In the ‘30s, it was The Petrified Forest and High Sierra. In the ‘40s, The Maltese Falcon, To Have and Have Not, The Big Sleep, Casablanca, Sahara and the film many (myself included) consider his best, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. By the ‘50s, Bogart was himself in his fifties and poised to give three of the finest performances of his career in The African Queen, The Barefoot Contessa and The Caine Mutiny. By now it should be obvious that this list of films contains within it another reason for Bogart’s enduring legend: his artistic range and professional courage. In 1948, when he made Treasure, Bogart was the top box office attraction in the entire world. Yet he took a role which was anything but heroic, and one in which his character (a grimylooking, borderline psycho) dies a brutal and ugly death at the end of the picture. There are today very few toprated film stars who take the same courageous risks with their career—Jack Nicholson, Sean Connery. Certainly Brando in his prime was the most adventurous of all. But most stars seem scared silly to attempt any role which the public hasn’t already pre-approved. Such actors are, in effect, like a line of automobiles whose designers will never improve them for so long as a passive public keeps buying the current model. In an industry clogged with conformism, Bogart was a flamboyant
risk-taker, not only in his career, but in his personal life, as well. And here, I think, is where the secret to his enduring mystique lies. Throughout his long sojourn in Hollywood, he was famous for fighting against everything from censorship to blacklisting, and was equally (though secretly) admired for his fearless assaults on the pompous and self-adoring maharajahs of the movie industry. He was the first major star to openly condemn the despicable “pro-American” tactics of Senator Joseph McCarthy, this at a time when most of Hollywood was hiding under the bed. He was the first film actor to set up his own production company, even as the film industry was reeling under the initial impact of television. Yet for all his fame and undeniable achievements, Bogart was a supremely modest man, rare in a profession given to avid selfcongratulation. Whenever asked the secret of his success, he would answer without a moment’s hesitation: “I was lucky, that’s all.” Bogart had a strong sense of who he was and what he stood for. He once sailed into the harbor at Newport, California, and took his skipper along with him into the yacht club bar. An official quietly told him that the yacht club was restricted, and no place for “hired hands.” Bogart called for his bar check, and on the back of it he promptly wrote out his resignation. One month later, the club’s chastened board of directors dropped the restriction. This, and a hundred stories like it, would eventually make a deep impression on the general public. Hence, it is not surprising that by the end of his life Bogart the man had merged in some mysterious way with the most idealistic of his screen portrayals—a perception that has withstood the toughest trial of all, the test of time. Today, in an age cancerous with cynicism, Bogart remains a role model for young people—the bruised but gallant loner who in the midst of insidious corruption and craven self-deception somehow manages to hang onto his code of honor. As his friend and film mentor, John Huston, so succinctly put it at Bogart´s funeral in 1957, “He is quite irreplaceable. There will never be another like him.” Some fifty years after Humphrey Bogart´s death, time has proven how true those words were.
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WRITING AT THIRTEEN By Maya Barker Age 13 (Ed. Note: Maya lives in Chapala and is the grand-daughter of longtime Lakeside residents Mark and Adele Cordero. Maya recently read her poem to the Ajijic Writers’ Group and received an enthusiastic response.)
So many times in my life People have told me how well I write. They want me to write all the time, So I do, but I never get a dime. I do it to see the smiles on their faces, Hearing them say that I’m going places. I don’t know when it will be, But shouldn’t there be a future in store for me? I really like writing, But perhaps I want to do something more exciting. Maybe I’ve got talent, Which is a nice thing to know, But I want something different; I want to put on more of a show! I don’t know if I want to act, write or sing, I just don’t think it would always be my type of thing. But here I am, reading this, And thinking I just might have a go. I can always write and do other things I don’t want to miss, But what would that show? Maybe I’m young and shouldn’t worry yet, But it tugs at my mind and then I start to fret. I want to write, But it’s not something I want to do for the rest of my life. Maybe some day, I will realize that I want to be a publisher, Or editor, or do something that gives good pay. So those are my worries about my future... Hah, just kidding, I have a lot more! But what I’m trying to say Is that I just haven’t yet found that open door, That will lead me to what I want. But thank you for listening, I hope you enjoyed, I hope you liked it, And if you did, I will be overjoyed.
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THE WAR OF THE WOLVES
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ne evening an old Apache told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside of people. He said, “My son, the battle is between two wolves inside us all. One is Evil. It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.” “The other is The Spirit. It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy,
generosity, truth, compassion and faith.” The grandson thought about it and then asked his grandfather: “Which wolf wins?” The old Apache replied, “The one that you feed the most.”
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Welcome to Mexico! By Victoria Schmidt
Sounds of a Mexican Village
I
live in a Mexican neighborhood where our streets come alive with sounds beginning early each morning and continue until late into the night. The garbage trucks begin the first movement of a complicated opus. Their emptiness reverberates and echoes as the trucks rattle down the cobblestone street as they begin their early morning collections. During Christmas time, they rattle a clacker to let everyone know they are in the neighborhood and are ready to collect their annual donation. Soon after, the dueling gas trucks begin their counter melodies as they announce themselves to our inhabitants. One begins with the slow whine Zzzzzzz gaaaaaaasssss, while the other company plays a plucky little tune. Water delivery is announced as the deliveryman shouts “Agua! Aguuuuuuuaahhhhh! Agua!” as he toots his horn. A soloist on a small pan flute announces his presence in the neighborhood and his readiness to sharpen all of our dull knives. Later on a truck with speakers tied on top of the cab crawls through the neighborhood blaring out the items the junk man will take away in his truck. Interspersed throughout the day are other vehicles with speakers strapped to their car tops or hanging out of their car trunks as they shout out or play the latest advertisement. Often the car will park alongside the road and play through an entire announcement, and then slowly drive to another location where it will park and rest and repeat. These are several independent movements of the opus. As is the yellow plane which flies overhead, it, too, with a speaker attached, announcing some event. The produce sellers will park their truck and they will call out the type of produce they offer for the day, and the price of their wares. They will remain a short while, and continue their journey to the next block and repeat their stanza. During certain times of year, when the circus comes to town,
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trucks pulling animals in cages attract our attention again with speakers as they hawk the circus, the acts, and the price of the tickets, and park and sell tickets from the cabs of their trucks while the animals pace their cages or sleep in the extreme heat. And underlying this concert is the hum of the passing of vehicles and livestock. The clatter of the hoofs of the horses and burros alongside the various vehicles; the cars, motorcycles and ATV’s create the rumble, rattle, clatter and clamor of the vehicles as they navigate the cobblestone streets are the percussion to the ongoing musical. Many cars provide complex counter-melodies when they drive by with their own music reverberating at painful levels and we can feel the bass in our chests as they drive by. Can they even think with the music that loud? Even the parked cars join in with their whistles, whoops and warnings when their alarms go off if someone drives too close to the car, or the bass music was so loud that it set off the alarm. And in the midst of it all are the dogs that guard their fence lines and property and bark at each passerby to warn them off their territory. Sometime setting off a chorus of other dogs. The sounds of a village in Mexico are seemingly ceaseless, serenading us from dawn until well after nightfall. They announce the arrival of the many services, advertise and entertain. I once heard a story about a man who moved away from the village back to the Northern part of America who lost his ability to sleep peacefully, until a friend sent him a recording of the street noises in Mexico. He now sleeps like a newVictoria Schmidt born babe.
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A NEW LEASE—on Life! By Judit Rajhathy, B.A., RNCP, D.Ac.
Reviving Your Metabolism
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ops I did it again...just like the Britney Spears song. During a recent trip to Canada I totally got out of my exercise routine and spent nights raiding my daughter’s cupboards--even her freezer—socking back anything that contained sugar! And yes, I am the supposed health guru but one whose huge addiction issues got out of hand. And the result? My saddlebags and belly expanded quickly and nothing discourages me more than my clothes feeling tighter and tighter...well...that is not completely true. It was when my dance teacher grunted as he tried to lift me into the air with one of his famous ‘lifts,’ I knew it was time to buckle down and take it off again. How easy it is to gain and normally so very difficult to lose - but not this time! I was so humiliated by this dance experience that I got right back onto my healthy dietary regime and cardio six days a week and off it came! Yes, it was that simple! If I can do it so can anyone, including you! According to the John Hopkins Institute, we lose as much as 50% of our muscle mass between the ages of 20 and 90, the rate of loss being much more pronounced from ages 50-70. This also means that as you lose muscle you gain that much in body fat. Cutting back calories is one solution while the other is to burn body fat through regular exercise at least five to six days a week and in my experience, intense is the operative word - sweat, sweat and more sweat. A leisurely stroll or dipping in a pool just ain’t gonna cut it - sorry. There are several ways to boost metabolism and here are a few of them as sug-
gested by John Hopkins Institute: 1. Eat breakfast since it gets your metabolism out of resting state and back into burning mode. 2. Eat frequently so that your metabolism stays working - burning and processing calories all day long. 3. Eat more lean protein since your body burns more calories when digesting proteins versus carbs or fats and of course protein leaves you feeling more full so you will eat less overall. 4. Exercise frequently most days of the week doing moderate to rigorous aerobic activity. 5. Strength train either with resistance machines or free weights. This will encourage the growth of muscle and the more muscle you have the more calories you burn. 6. Get adequate sleep so that you are not too tired to exercise and so that you are not snacking to keep yourself awake in the evenings to get a second wind. Another great tip is to not eat anything white—only whole grain but with a focus on lean protein, veggies and low glycemic fruit such as apples and berries. Drinking lots of water for hydration and to help curb appetite is also important. Finding out what food sensitivities you have is also very helpful in terms of fat loss. So eat healthy, be well and see you at the gym! Judit Rajhathy
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LAKE CHAPALA SOCIETY 16 DE SEPTIEMBRE #16-A AJIJIC, JAL, MX WWW.LAKECHAPALASOCIETY.ORG
News
NEW THRIFT SHOP JOINT VENTURE!
FROM THE DIRECTOR’S DESK
Last week an historic agreement was finalized between The Lake Chapala Society, Lakeside School for the Deaf and Have Hammers… Will Travel. All three are non-profits and will share in the operation of the Casi Nuevo Thrift Shop located at Hidalgo #95, Riberas de Pilar, (across from the 7-Eleven).
2010 is well underway and I would like to take the opportunity to congratulate all of the volunteers for hanging in there and stepping up. As every member should know by now, LCS is in the midst of an important transition. Last month I highlighted the new operational structure. Presently the coordinators are:
Our share of the proceeds will go directly to support our Community Education Programs, e.g. Student Aid, Computer Training, Children’s Art, English as a Second Language, Remedial Learning, and others. LCS is installing a drop box (near the Video Rental office). Your support in this new, shared venture is desired. Bring your un-needed clothing, household items and electrical equipment to the drop box. You can phone Richard Williams at 766-1303 to make arrangements for larger household items and furniture to be picked up directly from your home. We are seeking volunteers to help in the Thrift Shop. Do you have retail or thrift shop experience, or just like to get out and meet people? We want you! We will train you. The Thrift Shop is open Monday through Saturday 10:30 AM to 3:00 PM. We will work around your schedule. Have Hammers…Will Travel teaches local youth vocational skills in carpentry twice a week at LCS and will soon open a shop in Chapala. Lakeside School for the Deaf provides hearing aids, hearing tests, speech therapy and much more through their school in Jocotepec which has 100 children.
IMPORTANT NOTICE U.S. Consulate visit date change Thursday, May 6 - 2010 Sign-up begins at 11:30
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• Karen Schirack --- Community Relations and Programs • Betty Schrader --- Volunteers • Hebina Hood --- Library • Shelley Huerta --- Administration • Richard Bansbach --- Facilities • Vacant --- Finance • Vacant --- Community Education I’m diligently looking to fill the vacant positions, and at one point thought that they had been filled, however, the stars have not aligned and the vacancies remain. Please step forward if you have any interest. Our new relationship with the Casi Nuevo Thrift Shop is exciting news and we are responsible for providing some volunteers to work there. If you have one day a week, with five unscheduled hours, you can help us keep our commitment with our new partners. Your help is also vital in supporting our commitments to the Lakeside community. The earnings will go directly to the community education programs, and is a welcomed revenue source. Finally, I need to thank the two anonymous donors who paid to have venetian blinds made for the office. We all appreciate it. Everyone visiting or working in the office this summer will have a calm and cool environment! Terry Vidal, Executive Director
LCS
News LIBRARY UPDATE
The Library extends sincere thanks to Veronica’s Books for her terrific donation of a number of large-print books. The donation will surely please our readers who need larger print. Reading Room users will delight in the generous donation of a subscription to National Geographic by Michael Clampit. It’s indeed thoughtful of him to broaden our knowledge of our world. Please leave this periodical in the Reading Room. Following is a smattering of new additions. Please be patient with our volunteers. They are processing these arrivals as fast as they can. Those that are not already on the New Arrivals shelves will be there soon.
May 2010 PROFILE OF THE MONTH Howard Feldstein, President, Board of Directors Howard loves his job as president of the board. He appreciates the great team he works with and the way that everyone steps up and does what needs to be done to improve LCS. He loves coming up with new ideas and seeing what works. I had not met Howard before and found him to be an easy person to talk to, very open, knowledgeable and pleasant. These are a good combination of qualities for his
NEW ARRIVALS BIOGRAPHIES Time to be in Earnest: Autobiography by P.D. James Point to Point Navigation: A Memoir by Gore Vidal FICTION & LITERATURE The Wings of the Sphinx by Andrea Camilleri Little Bee: A Novel by Chris Cleave The Alchemist by Paula Coelho A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick Living Witness by Jane Haddam The Last Child by John Hart Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel Revelation by C.J. Sansom Shanghai Girls by Lisa See NON-FICTION Payback by Margaret Atwood Curse of the Labrador Duck by Glen When Everything Changed by Gail Collins Imperial Reckoning by Caroline Elkins Unholy Alliance by David Horowitz On the Shoulders of Giants Edited by Stephen Hawking Galactic Alignment by John Major Jenkins The Rest is Noise by Alex Ross
Transfer your old VHS to DVD A new service offered in the Video Rentals office, only 50 pesos each!
present position. Howard and his wife Helena moved to Lake Chapala in 2004 from Denver, Colorado where he owned two packing/ shipping businesses similar to the UPS Stores. He has three children, two step-children and three granddaughters. He and Helena have been married for 12 years and enjoy traveling to other countries and have been to Italy twice, once for their honeymoon. A special trip for him was to Israel in 2008 the year of Israel’s 60th celebration as a State. After moving to Lake Chapala Howard slowly became active at LCS after being the Chair of Democrats Aboard Mexico and very active in that organization. In fact, in April he went to Mexico City for Michelle Obama’s visit and was not only impressed with Michelle Obama, but also with Mexico’s First Lady Margarita Zavala. When Howard is not working as president of the board or traveling, he spends a lot of time on his computer. He says “Probably too much.” Does this sound familiar to anyone? I think LCS is in very good hands with Howard at the helm.
www.lakechapalasociety.org
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LCS
News MAY SCHEDULED EVENTS LIBRARIES Book & Video M-SAT 10-2:00 Talking Book TH 10-1:00 MEDICAL/HEALTH INSURANCE Blood Pressure M+F 10-12:00 Cruz Roja Sales Table M-SAT 10-12:30 Cruz Roja Monthly Meeting 1st W 2-4:00 Hearing Aids M & 2nd & 4th SAT 11-3:00 IMSS M+T 10-1:00 NYLife/Seguros Monterrey Insurance T+TH 11-2:00 Optometrist TH 9-5:00 Safe Insurance W 11-2:00 Skin Cancer 2nd & 4th W 10-12:00 Sign –up INFORMATION Ajijic Rotary Club M 10-12:00 Becerra Immigration F 10-1:00 Information Desk M-SAT 10-2:00 Loridan Legal T 10-12:00 Los Ninos de Chapala /Ajijic F 10:00-2:00 US Consulate 1st Th 11:30-2:00 Sign up LESSONS Children’s Art SAT 9-12:30 Country Line Dancing T+TH 10-11:30,Members Only Exercise M+W+F 9-10:00 Have Hammers Workshop M 10-12:15, F 2:30-4:30 Intermediate Hatha Yoga T+TH+SAT 2-3:30 Primitive Pottery M + F 10-1:00, SAT 12:30-3:30 Storytelling T 1:30-3:00
SOCIAL ACTIVITIES AA M+TH 4-6:00 Beginner’s Digital Camera W 12-1:00 Computer Linux Class F 9:30-10:30 Computer Windows Club F 10:30-11:45 Creative Writer’s Group M 2-4:00 (Closed group) Discussion Group W 12-1:30 Film Aficionados 2nd4th5th TH 2-4:30 Gamblers Anonymous W 12-1:00 Genealogy Last M 2-4:00 Great Books 1st & 3rd TH 2-4:15 (Closed group) Green Group 1st T 3-4:30 Individual Counseling M-TH 3-4:00 Lakeside Friends of Animals 1st M 2-4:00 Mac OS 1st M 12-1:30 Mac User 3rd W 3-4:30 Mah Jonng F 10-3:00 Masonic Lodge #31 2nd & 4th W 4:30-8, 4th T 3-4:30 Music Jam F 2-3:00 Needle Pushers T 10-12:00 Open Circle SUN 10:30-12:15 Quilt Guild 2nd T 12-2:30 Scrabble M+F 12-2:00 Tournament Scrabble T 12-3:00 Transition Mexico 2nd M 11-1:30
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May 2010 AUDIT COMMITTEE REPORT Your new leadership team has been in office for almost four months. We wish to thank you for your willingness to serve on committees, your suggestions, and most importantly, your friendship. We have taken steps to ensure the financial integrity of LCS. We have hired new accountants who have begun to ensure that our books are accurate and complete and that we will be in complete and total compliance with all the regulations and laws with which LCS must comply. We are also very pleased that the Audit Committee has informed the Board that the preliminary results of their audit show there are no material issues with the audit and that while there will be some data entry changes, it appears that LCS finished the 2009 budget year with revenues exceeding expenditures by some 200,000 pesos. When the audit has been completed and reviewed by the board, the results will be posted for all to see. As a Board we are intent on keeping LCS on sound financial footing for our current members as well as those in the future. We appreciate the opportunity you have given us to serve LCS. Sincerely, Howard Feldstein, President Jack Shanks, Sr. Director #2, Chair of Finance Committee
Health Care Week will be July 12-17 Annette Reppen reports that in 2009, 731 people had their blood pressure monitored, and as of March 2010, 682 have availed themselves of this free service.
New Activity: STORYTELLING This is for all caregivers, grandparents and other interested persons to discuss, teach, evaluate and tell stories for all ages and to develop an interest in the oldest profession in the world—storytelling! 4 May-27 July 2010 Tuesdays 1:30-3:00 Gazebo
ESL STUDENT RECOGNITION DAY To be held in the Gazebo & Back Gardens May 15th, 5:00 to 7:00 pm. Wilkes Education Center ‘English as a Second Language’ students are busy finishing up the 2009-2010 semester on April 30th. After nine months of hard work students from all levels, Basic through Advanced English, approximately 180 ESL students, ages 13 to 65, will be awarded certificates. Before the start of the ceremonies the students and their families will enjoy cake and punch on the gazebo. Carol Bowman, ESL coordinator, will moderate the activities, giving thanks to all the teachers who provide their services to benefit the Mexican community, the LCS board for its continued support of the program and to the paid staff at Wilkes Center who keep the Center up and running on a day to day basis. It will prove to be a rewarding day for all participants. Due to limited space this event is only for the students, their families and invited guests.
Crime Prevention Seminars for Seniors
GREAT BOOKS
Presented by LCS & Ajijic Masons Speaker Jim Jensen, Law Enforcement Professional 15 June -21 December 2010 3rd Tuesday of every month - 2:00-4:30 PM LCS SALA Seating: limited to 40 for each session Admission: 50 pesos per session Tickets sold at LCS Tickets 24 May-14 June 2010
Notice and correction: The current Thursday Great Books group is closed to new members. To form a new group, please sign up at the LCS office. Indicate if it’s for a full time resident group or a snowbird group. Sign up is ongoing.
FILM AFICIONADOS Films and discussion 2nd & 4th Thursday in the Sala at 2pm May 13 – AN EDUCATION (2009) –This English firm was an Academy Award Nominee and starred Carey Mulligan who shows why she should have won the Best Actress Award. A coming-of-age drama. May 27 – CHERRY BLOSSOMS (2009) – A new film from Germany that is exquisitely and delicately crafted. A drama about love and loss that will truly move you. For LCS members to get on the Film Aficionado email list to receive notices and reviews of upcoming showings you can email me at: mak1939@gmail.com LAKE CHAPALA SOCIETY 16 de Septiembre #16-A, Ajijic, Jalisco LCS Main Office: 766-1140 www.lakechapalasociety.org Office, Information and other services open Monday – Friday, 10 to 2 and Saturday 10 to 2. Grounds are open until 5 LCS BOARD OF DIRECTORS President - Howard Feldstein Vice-President - Fred Harland Secretary - Richard Williams Sr. Director 1 - Dayle Blake Sr. Director 2 - Jack Shanks Sr. Director 3 - Wendee Hill LCS Education Director - Mary Alice Sargent Executive Director - Terry Vidal
◊ THE LCS NEWSLETTER IS PUBLISHED MONTHLY. ◊ DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS IS THE 15TH OF THE MONTH PRECEDING PUBLICATION. ◊ NEWS ITEMS CAN BE EMAILED TO EEREID39@YAHOO.COM NOTE: THE EDITORIAL STAFF RESERVES THE RIGHT TO COMPLETE EDITING PRIVILEGES. ARTICLES AND/OR CALENDAR EVENTS WILL BE INCLUDED ACCORDING TO TIME, SPACE AVAILABILITY AND EDITORIAL DECISION ON THE APPROPRIATENESS OF THE INFORMATION FOR INCLUSION.
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Service
EMERGENCY NUMBERS
www.tel.chapala.com
DIRECTORY * BEER & LIQUOR STORES
* ADVERTISING - EL OJO DEL LAGO Tel. 765-3676
* ANIMAL CLINICS/PET SHOP - ANIMAL CARE Tel: 766-3062 Pag: 57 - DEE’S PET CARE Tel: 762-1646 Pag: 67 - LAKESIDE SPAY & NEUTER CENTER, A.C. Tel: 766-0821 - PET SHOP Pag: 57 - SALUD ANIMAL Tel: 766-1009 Pag: 67
* ART GALLERIES/HANDCRAFTS - CATHY CHALVIGNAC Tel: 766-5381 - DIANE PEARL COLECCIONES Tel: 766-5683 - EL PALOMAR Tel: 01 (33) 3635-5247 - THE AJIJIC ART HOUSE Tel: 765-5097
Pag: 26 Pag: 29
Pag: 65
- HUNTER DOUGLAS Tel: 766-0026
Pag: 21
Pag: 32 Pag: 21 Pag: 20, 28 Pag: 47 Pag: 29
* CEILING FANS Pag: 74 - VENTILADORES DEL OCCIDENTE Tel/Fax: (33) 3631-6619, 3634-9982
- DEL MAR Tel: 766-4278
* COMMUNICATIONS Pag: 50 Pag: 17 Pag: 52
Pag: 49
Pag: 32
* BANK INVESTMENT Pag: 23 Pag: 25 Pag: 43
* BAKERY - BRENDA’S BAKERY BOUTIQUE Tel: 765-2987
Pag: 22
* BEAUTY - ANGEL ESTRADA Tel: 766-4666 - MARY KAY Tel: 765 7654 - PERMANENT MAKEUP Tel: 766-1066 - SARA’S BEAUTY SALON Tel: 766-3518
Pag: 27
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Pag: 67 Pag: 13 Pag: 22 Pag: 51
- ALFREDOS BAZAR Tel: 766-2980 - SUZY’S CONSIGNMENT SHOP Tel: 766-5458
Pag: 49
- ARELLANO Tel: 766-4696 Pag: 38, 39 - ARCHITECT - Arq. Francisco Zermeño Tel: (33) 3700-8329 Pag: 17 - CABO DO MUNDO- INTERIOR DESIGN Tel: 766-0026 Pag: 20, 21 - CONSTRUCTION & REMODELING Tel: 766-3626 Pag: 13 - GOSO GROUP Tel. (33) 1613-7253 Pag: 44 - STUDIO SYNTHESIS Tel: 33-8421-7733 Pag: 28 - THE WATERPROOFING CO Tel: 766-0217 Pag: 63 - WARWICK CONSTRUCTION Tel: 765-2224
Pag: 50 Pag: 27
Pag: 55 Pag: 20 Pag: 35
Pag: 17 Pag: 15 Pag: 12
Pag: 07 Pag: 24 Pag: 18 Pag: 10
- LAKESIDE HEARING SERVICES Cell. (045) 33-1511-4088
Pag: 66
* HOTELS / SUITES - LA NUEVA POSADA Tel: 766-1444, Fax: 766-2049 - LAS SALVIAS Tel. 01(33) 3613 55 44 - LOS CROTOS Tel: 764-0067 - MIS AMORES Tels: 766-4640, 4641, 4642 - QUINTA DON JOSE Tel: 01-800-700-2223
Pag: 03 Pag: 28 Pag: 58 Pag: 48 Pag: 14
* HOME APPLIANCES
* FINANCIAL SERVICES - INTERCAM Tel: 766-5978 Pag: 21 - LAKESIDE FINANCIAL ADVISOR DAVID LESNICK CFP CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER Fax: 001(623) 327-1277 Pag: 09 - LAKESIDE MORTGAGE CONSULTANTS Tel: 766-2914 Pag: 44
- ZUMBA Tel: (387) 76-30448
Pag: 37 Pag: 52 Pag: 68
* INSURANCE - EDGAR CEDEÑO - MEXICO PROTECT Cell: (045) 33-3106-6982 Pag: 45 - LLOYD Tel: 766-0152, 766-3508 Pag: 25
* INTERIOR DESIGN Pag: 68
* FLOWER SHOP - CRISANTEMO ROJO Tel: 766-4030
- EL TIO SAM Tel: 766-5664 - ELECTROVENTA Tel: 765-2222 - TECNICOS UNIDOS Tel: (376) 765-4266
- ELEMENTS Tel: 766-5826 - IDEARTE Tel. 01 (33) 3110-0502
Pag: 25 Pag: 55
* JEWELRY Pag: 53 - ALEX Tel: 766-3775
* FOOD SERVICES
Pag: 24
El Ojo del Lago May 2010
LEGAL SERVICES Pag: 57 - MAGO’S OFFICE Tel: 765-3640
* FUMIGATION/PESTS
Pag: 10
Pag: 35
Pag: 62
Pag: 47
- GOLDEN AGE Tel: 766-3989 - HYPNOTHERAPY - AUDA HAMMETT Tel: 766-4185 - WEIGHT WATCHERS Tel: 01 800 710 3378
* HEARING AIDS
Pag: 65
- SOCORRO’S PRIDE Tel: 766 1910
* CONSTRUCTION
Pag: 61
* HEALTH
* CONSIGNMENT SHOP/ANTIQUES
Pag: 66
* BED & BREAKFAST - CASA DE LAS FLORES Tel: 766-5493 - CASA DEL SOL Tel: 766-0050 - CASA TRES LEONES Cell: (045) 331-350-6764
- AJIJIC COMPUTING Tel: 765-4156 - CAFE INTERNET AJIJIC Tel: 766-3626 - COMPUTERLAND Tel: 765-7595 - NEW WORLD TECHNOLOGY Tel: 766-4343
766-1760 765-4444 766-5555
Pag: 11
* FITNESS
* COMPUTING SERVICES - ACTINVER Tel. 766-3110 -O&A Tel: 766-3508 - MULTIVA Tel: 766-2499
- AJIJIC DENTAL Tel: 766-3682 - C.D. MARÍA LUISA LUIS VILLA Tel/Fax: 766-2428 - C.D. SANDRA ANAYA MORA Tel: 765-3502, 765-5444 - DRA. ANGELICA ALDANA LEMA DDS Tel. 765-5364 - DRA. DOLORES RUSSELL D.D.S. Tel: 766-2881, 766-0075 Cell: (045) 333-108-7727 - DR. ALBERTO DON OLIVERA Tels: 765-4838, 765-4805 - DR. FRANCISCO CONTRERAS Tel: 765-5757 - DR. HECTOR HARO, DDS. Tel: 765-3193, 765-6974
* DRY CLEANING/LAUNDRY
* CHURCHES
- EASYCALL MEXICO Tel: 766-4980 - MAILBOXES, ETC. Tel: 766-0647, Fax: 766-0775 761-0363, Fax: 761-0364
Pag: 20
066 765-2308, 765-2553 766-3615
Pag: 08
- LAKE CHAPALA BAPTIST CHURCH Tel: 765-2925 Pag: 20, 69
* AUTOMOTIVE
- PAPELERIA TRINIDAD Tel: 766-2400
* DENTISTS
* BOUTIQUE / CLOTHING STORES
- AUTOMATIC GARAGE DOOR OPENERS Tel: 766 - 4973, Cell: (045) 33-3157- 6536 Pag: 52
- FERNANDO’S Cell: (045) 331-323-6289 - LINEA PROFESIONAL Tel. 766-2555, Fax. 766-0066 - RON YOUNG-MECHANIC Tel: 765-6387
Pag: 68
* BLINDS AND CURTAINS
- ARATI Tel. 766-0130 - CUGINIS OPUS BOUTIQUE Tel/Fax: 766-1790 - FIAGA BOUTIQUE Tel: 766-1816 - LA BELLA VIDA Tel: 766-5131 - LEATHER GALLERY Tel: 766-2845
Pag: 58
* COPY CENTER
- BETO’S WINE & LIQUOR Tel: 766-5420, Cell (045) 333-507-3024 - MODELORAMA Tel: 766-2678, 765-2055
Pag: 52
* AUTOMATIC DOORS
Cell. (045) 331-135-0763
EMERGENCY HOTLINE AMBULANCE - CRUZ ROJA FIRE DEPARTMENT POLICE Ajijic Chapala La Floresta
- FUMIGA Tel: 762-0078, (045) 33-1155-7059 - FUMI-TECH Tel: 766-1946, Cell. (045) 333-369-3737
* LIGHTING & DECORATION Pag: 55 Pag: 67
* FURNITURE - INTERIOR & FURNITURE -RICARDO FERNANDEZ Tel: 766-4331 Pag: 29 - TEMPUR Tel: (52) 333-629-5919, 333-629-5961 Pag: 51
* HARDWARE STORES - FERRETERIA Y TLAPALERIA GALVEZ Tel: 766-0880, Fax: 766-2440 Pag: 61
- LIGHTING & DESIGN CENTER Tel. 766-3506
Pag: 27
* MEAT/POULTRY/CHEESE - TONY’S Tel: 766-1614, 766-4069
Pag: 59
* MEDICAL SERVICES - BODY SENSE CLINIC - PODIATRIST Tel: 766-6080 Pag: 63 - DERMATOLOGIST Tel: 766-1198, 765-2400 Pag: 63 - DERMIKA Dermatologic Center Dra. Monica Ramos Tel: 766-2500 Pag: 30
- INTERNAL MEDICINE SPECIALIST & GERIATRICS Dr. J. Manuel Cordova Tel: 766-2777 Pag: 09 - DRA. MARTHA R. BALLESTEROS FRANCO Cell: (045) 333-408-0951 Pag: 19 - HOSPITAL ANGELES DEL CARMEN Tel: (01) 3813-0042 Pag: 15 - ISILAB Tel: 766-1164 Pag: 35 - PINTO OPTICAS Tel: 765-7793 Pag: 33 - PLASTIC SURGERY - NFB Tel: 766-1185 Pag: 27 - RED CROSS Tel: 765-2308 - SURGERY HOST Tel: 766-3145 Pag: 50
* MALL - CENTRO LAGUNA Tel: 01 (33) 3560-2670
Pag: 75
* MOVERS
- FOR SALE BY OWNER Tel: (387) 763-1974 - FOR SALE BY OWNER Tel: 315-351-7295 - FOR SALE BY OWNER Tel: 766-5458 - GEORGETTE RICHMOND Tel: 766-2129, 766-2077 - JAVIER GONZALEZ Tel: (045) 33-1443-2143 - LAGUNA VISTA Tel: 766-5740 - LLOYD REAL ESTATE AJIJIC Tel: 766-3508 - MICHEL BUREAU Cell. (045) 333-129-3322, Home: (376) 765-2973 - RAUL GONZALEZ M. Tel: 331-437-0925 - TOM AND DIANNE BRITTON Tel. 766-5249 (home) Cell. (045) 33-1298-5722
Pag: 56 Pag: 48 Pag: 35 Pag: 13
- TOMAS Tel: 765-3897 - TONY’S Tel: 766-1614, 766-4069 - YVES’ Tel: 766-1851
Pag: 43 Pag: 59 Pag: 33
Pag: 08 Pag: 06 Pag: 16 Pag: 17
Pag: 29 Pag: 19
* THERAPISTS Pag: 12 Pag: 31 Pag: 25
- LA CASA NOSTRA Tel: 765-4187, Fax: 765-5815 - LA SAGRADA FAMILIA Tel: 762-1425, - RETIREMENT CARE - THE BLUE HOUSE Tel: 766-1256
Pag: 06 Pag: 66 Pag: 68
* TOURS
Pag: 09 Pag: 61
* TREE SERVICE
* SATELLITES/ T.V. Pag: 49
Pag: 03
Pag: 19
- CHARTER CLUB TOURS Tel: 766-1777 Pag: 09 - SUNSET Tel: 766-0012 Pag: 25 - VOLUNTEER ADVENTURES MEXICO Cell: (045) 22-8143-3243 Pag: 55
Pag: 54
Pag: 44
- AJIJIC ELECTRONICS S.A. DE C.V. Tel/Fax: 766-1117, 766-3371 - SATELLITE SERVICE Tel: (376) 765 26481
- PROFESSIONAL REHABILITATION Tel: 766-5563
- COLDWELLBANKER CHAPALA REALTY Tel: 766-1152, movile: (045) 33-1175-9632 Pag: 60 - FOR RENT Tel: 765-6462 Pag: 33 - RENTAL LOCATERS Tel: 766-5202 Pag: 12 - ROMA Pag: 16 Tel: 766-3163 - SANTANA RENTALS Pag: 47 Cell: 315-104-3283, 315-100-9955
- CHAPALA TREE SERVICE Tel: 762-0602
- ITTO Tel: 33-3658-3224 - IMAC Tel: 33-3613-1080
Pag: 27 Pag: 55
Pag: 69
* WATER - TECNO AQUA Tel: 766-3730, 766-3731
Pag: 18
* SECURITY SYSTEMS - S.O.S.E Tel: 765-4921
Pag: 69
* SELF STORAGE * REPAIRS/ MAINTENANCE - SELF STORAGE-BODEGAS CHAPALA Tel: 766-0661, Tel/Fax: 766-1045 Pag: 53
Pag: 54
* PERSONAL ASSISTANCE - JUSTUS HAUSER Tel: 763-5333, Fax: 763-5335 Emergencies: 01 (33) 3441-8223 Pag: 05 - NEWCOMERS ILSE HOFFMANN Cell: 33-3157-2541, Ilse40@megared.net.mx www.mexicoadventure.com/chapala/guadalajara.htm Tel: 01 (33) 3647-3912
* PHARMACIES - FARMACIA CRISTINA Tel: 766-1501 - FARMACIA EXPRESS II Tel: 766-0656 - FARMACIA MASKARAS Tel/Fax: 765-5827 - FARMACIA MORELOS Tel: 765-4002 - FARMACIA UNICA Tel: 766-0523
Pag: 48
* RENTALS/PROPERTY MANAGEMENT
* MUSIC - A FREEDOM CELEBRATION FOR BROTHERHOOD Tel: 761-0111
Pag: 40
* RETIREMENT/REST/NURSING HOMES
* SCHOOLS - BALDERAS Tel: 01 (33) 3810-4859 - LAKE CHAPALA MOVING Tel: 766-5008 - SEYMI Tel: 01 (33) 3603-0000, 3603-0256 - STROM- WHITE MOVERS Tel: 766-4049
Tel: (387) 761-0111, 761-0326 - RESPIRO SPA Tel: (045) 33-3157-7790 - SUNDANCE SPAS Tel: (33) 3613-2214 - TOTAL BODY CARE Tel: 766 3379
Pag: 67 Pag: 18 Pag: 57 Pag: 63 Pag: 26
* POOL MAINTENANCE - EQUIPMENT AND POOL MAINTENANCE Tel: 766-1617 Pag: 26
* REAL ESTATE - 1ST CHOICE HOMES LAKESIDE Tel: 765-2484 Pag: 47 - AJIJIC HOME INSPECTIONS Tel: 766-2836 Pag: 11 - AJIJIC REAL ESTATE Tel: 766-2077, Fax: 766-2331 Pag: 03 - ALL IN ONE REAL ESTATE SERVICE Tel: 766-1161 Pag: 05 - BEV. & JEAN COFELL Home Tel. 766-5332 Office Tel. 765-3676 Pag: 51 - COLDWELL BANKER CHAPALA REALTY Tel: 766-1152, 766-3369 Fax: 766-2124, Tels: 765-2877 Fax: 765-3528 Pag: 76 - CONTINENTAL REALTY Cell: (045) 33-1443-2143 Pag: 20 - CHULA VISTA NORTE Tel: 766-2177 Cell: (045) 33-3841-8867 Pag: 49 - EL DORADO Tel: 766-0040 Pag: 02
- SERVICIO BELTRÁN Tel: 766-4586, 765-3949 - WATCH & CLOCKS Tel: 765 5190, Cell: (045) 33-1331-9226
Pag: 68
* SOCIAL ORGANIZATIONS Pag: 68
* RESTAURANTS/CAFES/CLUBS - AJIJIC TANGO Tel: 766-2458 Pag: 45 - CAFÉ ADELITA Tel: 766-0097 Pag: 30 - CASA DEL WAFFLE Tel: 766-1946 Pag: 03 - CHAC-LAN Tel: (387) 761-0111, 761-0326 Pag: 40 - CHILI BANG BAR Tel: 766-1919 Pag: 27 - DAVID’S CAFE Tel: 766-2341 Pag: 16 - EL BAR-CO Tel: 766-0452 Pag: 24 - EL JARDIN DE NINETTE Cell: (045) 33-1410-4064 Pag: 28 - GO LE CLUB Cell: (045) 33-3502-6555 Pag: 14 - JOLANDAS Tel: 315-351-5449 Pag: 32 - LA NUEVA POSADA Tel: 766-1444, 766-2049 Pag: 03 - “LA TAVERNA” DEI QUATTRO MORI Tel: 766 2848 Pag: 53 - LA VITA BELLA Cell: 33-3476-6577 Pag: 40 - LAS CABALLERIZAS COXALA Tel: 766-0744 Pag: 40 - LOS TELARES Tel: 766-0428 Pag: 45 - MANIX Tel: 766-0061 Pag: 48 - MOM´S DELI & RESTAURANT Tel: 765-5719 Pag: 11, 62 - NUMBER FOUR Tel: 766-1360 Pag: 25 - PANINO Tel: 766-3822 Pag: 19 - PEDROS GOURMET Tel: 766-4747 Pag: 14 - PEPE & AURORA Cell. (044) 33 1265 7900 Pag: 22 - TABARKA Tel: 766-1588 Pag: 53 - TERRAZA QUITUPAN Tel: 766-3179 Pag: 26
- ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS Tel: 766-5961 - EL BAZAR DE LOS NIÑOS Tel: 765-3147 - LAKE CHAPALA SOCIETY Tel: 766-1140
Pag: 69 Pag: 66 Pag: 66-69
* SPA / MASSAGE - BODY SENSE CLINIC Tel: 766-6080 - HYDROPOOL Tel: 766-4030 - LA BELLA VIDA Tel: 766-5131 - MONTE COXALA
Pag: 57 Pag: 53 Pag: 47
SAW YOU IN T HE OJO
The Ojo Crossword
Saw you in the Ojo
71
AA- Meets daily at 10:00 am. Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday at 4 pm. Marcos Castellanos 51-A. 766-5961. ACÁ- Teaches youths, families sustainable agriculture, Joco and Jaltepec. Meet 14th of month. For more Information 387 763-1568. A COURSE IN MIRACLES- Saturday 2:00 pm 16 Sept #34, Unit 6, 766-4882 No charge. Ongoing. AIR FORCE ASSOCIATION OF CANADA 904 WING- Meeting 2nd Friday of every month in May, June, July & August. From September to April we meet the 2nd and 4th Friday. Contact Don Slimman 765 4141. AJIJIC QUILT GUILD - Meets second Tuesday monthly. Guests & New Members Welcome. ajijicguild@gmail.com AJIJIC SCRABBLE CLUB- Tuesdays and Thursdays noon-3 pm at LCS Ken Gosh Pavilion. Dan Stark 766-0411. AJIJIC WRITERS’ GROUP- Meets 1st and 3rd Fridays at 10 am. New Posada. Coffee. Meeting followed by lunch at the New Posada. AXIXIC MASONIC LODGE #31- Meets 2nd and 4th Wednesdays of each month at 5:00 pm. Contact the secretary at 763-5346 for details. AMERICAN LEGION OF CHAPALA POST- #7 General Membership meets 11 am 2nd Thursday. Tel: 765-2259. AMIGOS INTERNACIONALES- Every Wednesday 6 to 8 pm, Nueva Posada; informal friendly group meet to make new friends. AMIGOS DEL LAGO A.C.- Working to improve the ecology. See www.amigosdelago.org or contact us at info@amigosdelago.org. AMITIES FRANCOPHONES- Meets every 3rd Saturday at 1 pm contact: Roland and Camille at 766-0149. rvanhoudt@prodigy.net.mx. ANIMAL SHELTER- Provide shelter and new homes for dogs and cats. Tel: 765-5514. ANITA’S ANIMALS- Free loving dogs and cats. call (01 387) 761-0500. www.anitasanimals.com. ASA- Ajijic Society of the Arts. Meets every 1st Monday of the month at Nueva Posada, 10 am. BRIDGE AT OLD POSADA- Monday 1:15 check in. Mary Andrews 766-2489. BRITISH SOCIETY- Lunch meeting the 1st Saturday of each month, 1pm at Manix Rest. 765-4786, chapalainn@prodigy.net.mx. CARD & DOMINO CLUB- Wednesday, Friday & Sunday. Call for times. We will teach; make friends! Tel. 766-4253, Cell: (045) 33-1295-6485. CANADIAN CLUB OF LAKE CHAPALA- Meets on the 2nd Wednesday of the month, September through April. Social hour: 3:00 pm, program 4:00 pm. Visit www.canadianclub-chapala.com. CASA DE ANCIANOS- Provides support for elderly citizens, 765-2497. CENTRO DE DESARROLLO AJIJIC- Provides family planning and reproductive health education. 766-1679. CHILI COOK OFF- Providing a carnival for residents raising charitable funds, 763-5038. DAR- (Guadalajara)- Daughters of the American Revolution, meets monthly Sep. through June. Cell:333-897-0660 or Tel: (376) 766-2284. DAR- (At Lakeside)- THOMAS PAINE CHAPTER meets every 3 Wednesday at 12:30 noon, September thru June. Tel: 766-2981 or 762-0834. EASTERN STAR ESTRELLA DEL LAGO CHAPTER #10- 1st Wed. at 1:00 pm at Hotel Monte Carlo. 766-3785, www.oesestrelladellago.org. E.R.I.C.- Provides support for the construction and renovation of educational buildings. 766-2866. GAMBLERS ANONYMOUS- GA Meeting held every Wednesday afternoon at 3:00 PM in the Doctor’s office at the Lake Chapala Society Charlie K. at cell: 331-445-2136. GARDEN GUILD- promoting the interest in the development of local gardens with an accent on the exotic species available in central Mexico. GERMAN MEETING- 2nd Thursday, 1:00 pm. La Nueva Posada. Call Thea 765-2442 or Hannes 765-3094. GOLDEN STRINGS OF LAKE CHAPALA, A.C.- Rehearsals at auditorio de la Floresta. Tuesday & Friday, 3-6 pm. HASH HOUSE HARRIERS- Every Saturday at 8:30 am at La Nueva Posada. IRISH SOCIETY OF MEXICO- Meets second Monday 4 pm at La Nueva Posada, Ajijic. Contact Brian Cronin, at 765-5071. JUNIOR LEAGUE DE GUADALAJARA A.C.- Av. San Francisco #3332. ligagdl2@prodigy.net.mx, Guadalajara, Jal. Tel. (33) 3121-0887. LAKE CHAPALA DUPLICATE BRIDGE CLUB- Meets every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday at 1:15 p.m.. www.chapalabridge.com. LAKE CHAPALA GARDEN CLUB- Gardening at Lakeside with garden tours and meeting 3rd Wed of every month at Nueva Posada for noon lunch and program. Contact sandy_feldmann@yahoo.com. LAKE CHAPALA SHRINE CLUB.- Meets the 3rd Tuesday of every month at 1 pm in the Nueva Posada. Perry King at (376) 763-5126. LAKE CHAPALA SOCIETY - LCS- 16 de Sep. # 16-A Ajijic, Open Monday - Saturday, 10 am to 2 pm. www.lakechapalasociety.org. 766-1140. LAKESIDE COMMUNITY AWARDS- We benefit all the community by honoring lakeside’s most talented. 766-3232. LAKESIDE FRIENDS OF THE ANIMALS - Board meets last Monday every month. Contact Ellie McEvoy at 765-2523 or John Marshall at 766-1170. LAKESIDE LAUGHTER CLUB- Bilingual group promoting well-being through Laughter Yoga. Wed. 5 PM on beach behind Nueva Posada. Charlene 766-0884, Patricia 765-2449 LAKESIDE LITTLE THEATRE A.C.- Balanced theatrical entertainment, English-speaking, 765-5942. LAKESIDE SCHOOL FOR THE DEAF- The 4th of each month. Nueva Posada 10:30 am. Call 766-2280, www.lakesideschoolforthedeaf.org. LAKESIDE WILDLIFE RESCUE & REHABILITATION- Rescue & rehabilitation of wild animals. 765-4916. LAKE SPAY AND NEUTER CENTR A.C.- Provides shelter and helps curtail the over-population of animals. 766-3813. LCS EDUCATION CENTER- Provides classes in language and other topics for both Anglo and Mexican community. 766-0499. LCS STUDENT AID FUND- Provides financial support to area students to enroll in university, vocational and high school program. 766-0716. LINK- Assisting foreign community. Desk at Lake Chapala Society-Monday, 10 am-noon. LITTLE BLUE SCHOOLHOUSE- Provides financial assistance for students at school for disabled children in Chapala 766-1552. LOS NINOS DE CHAPALA Y AJIJIC, AC Providing educational scholarships to Lakeside children 376-765-7032, www.lakesideninos.org. LOVE IN ACTION- Shelter for abused and abandoned children. For volunteers and donations. Anabel Frutos 765-7409, cell: 331-351 7826. MAS- Music Appreciation Society. Concerts from fall to spring. Classical music and dance concerts. For info call Beverly Denton, 765-6409. MISION SAN PABLO- Helping 60 orphaned children ages 2-14 yrs, Bonnie Shrall - Bonnie@shrall.com #766-0009. www.misionsanpablo.org. NAVY LEAGUE, LAKE CHAPALA COUNCIL- Meets the third Saturday for lunch at 1 pm, Manix Rest. 766 4750 or 766-1848. NEEDLE PUSHERS- Sew dresses, knit or chet sweaters for local kids. Every Tues. 10 am at LCS. Call Gay at 766-2902. NIÑOS Y JOVENES CARAVAN- Delivers foodstuffs and used clothing to orphanage in San Juan. Call Reuben Varela, 01-387-761-0828. OPEN CIRCLE- Fostering body, mind & spirit, every Sunday at the LCS from 10 am to 12 noon. 765-3402 or frankdburton@yahoo.com. OVEREATERS ANONYMOUS- Every Tuesday & Friday 12 pm at Marcos Castellanos 51-A, in Upper Ajijic. Tel: 766-2575 or 766-1626. PROGRAMA PRO NIÑOS INCAPACITADOS DEL LAGO AC.- Assisting Lakeside disabled children www.programaninos.org , 763-5010. PASOS MILAGROSOS (MIRACULOUS STEPS.)- Helping Handicapped Children Through the Magic of Horses. Saturdays 8-2. www. pasosmilagrosos.com RED CROSS VOLUNTEERS- Meets 1st Wednesday at 2:00 pm at the Sala LCS. New members welcome. ROTARY CLUB OF AJIJIC- Meets every Tuesday at 1:00 pm at Hotel Real de Chapala. Contact at 766-3302. SCIENCE OF MIND STUDY GROUP- Discussion group every Tuesday at 10 AM Lake Chapala Center for Spiritual Living at Nicolas Bravo #17 Ajijic; contact Rev. Tim at 766-0920 or tim@revdoctim.com. THE GENEALOGY FORUM- Meets monthly on the fourth Monday in the Sala at LCS, from 2:00 to 3:45. UVA - University/Vocational Assistance (Little Chapel by the Lake a.c.)- Sue Torres, 766-2932 or Lynn Hanson 766-2660. VILLA INFANTIL ORPHANAGE- Provides financial support for children. 766-3396. www.friendsofvillainfantil.org VIVA LA MUSICA - Bus trips to the symphony, summer concert series, call Rosemay Keeling 766-1801. www.ajijicviva.org. VOLUNTEER HEALTH RESOURCE GROUP- Meeting last Saturday of each month at LCS in sala, 10:30. VOLUNTEERS OF THE CRUZ ROJA- Sponsors fund raising events and provides administrative and support services to the Delegation.
(NOTE: If there is any change in the above, please advise us so that corrections may be made. Call: 765-2877)
72
El Ojo del Lago May 2010
All Saints Lutheran Church Worship Service 11:00 am 4600 Avenida Tepeyac, Guad. Tel. (01 333) 121-6741. Abundant Life Assembly of God Carr. 140 next to Mail Boxes etc, Tel: 766-5615. Center For Spiritual Living Celebration Service, 5pm Fridays, Nicolas Bravo #17 Ajijic. 766-9020 or tim@ revdoctim.com. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints Services in English and Spanish, 10 am, Riberas del Pilar Bishop Wyvell Tel. (376) 765-7067, Bishop’s residence (376) 766-1532. Church of the Holy Spirit Services Sun. 10 am, Albaro Obregon #119, Chapala Tel. (376) 765-4210. Grace Baptist Church 5th Sun. Evening service 6 pm, Pedro Buzeta No. 970, Guad. Tel. (013) 641-1685. Lake Chapala Baptist Church Mid-week service, 9:30 am, worship service, 10:45 am. Santa Margarita #147, Riberas del Pilar, Tel. (376) 7652925, 765-3329. www.lakechapalabaptist.com. 7th Day Adventist meet at Madeira 12 in Rancho del Oro, 9:15 am to Noon. Potluck follows. 765-2165. Little Chapel by the Lake Sun. services 11 am, Chula Vista,. Jal, Tel. (376) 763-1551. Lake Chapala Jewish Congregation Santa Margarita 113, Riberas del Pilar, Tel: 765-6968. For information and service times, please call Pres. Elliot Gould. contact us@lakechapalajews. com. Web site: www. lakechapalajews. com. Lakeside Fellowship Sun. worship 11 am, Javier Mina #49 Ajijic, Tel. (376) 766-0795. Saint Andrew´s Anglican Church Calle San. Lucas 19, Riberas del Pilar, Sunday 1 service, 10 am. www.standrewsriberas.com San Andres Catholic Church Services 9:00 am. Ajijic, 766-0922. St. John’s Catholic Church Between Av. Vallarta & Av. Lazaro Cardenas, Guad. Sun. 11am. (013) 121-8131. The Lake Chapala Unitarian Universalist Fellowship meets Sundays at 10:30 a.m. at the Jewish Community Center behind Mateos in Riberas del Pilar (Santa Margarita 113). For additional information call Steve at 766-5507 or email: trudycrippen@gmail.com. Check out our website at www.lcuuf.org.
CARS WANTED: Our car just died and we need another ASAP. Please call 765.4035. Only call with a car having low mileage and in excellent condition. WANTED: Need a US plated car. Would like in good or better condition, low mileage. Must be automatic. FOR SALE: Johcar. Price 3,500 USD. The vehicle has Texas plates, worth considering. Ideal vehicle for this part of the world. FOR SALE: 1988 Chevy Super Van, 45220 original miles, has US plates. Very excellent condition. $10,000 USD OBO call Alfred at (376)765-6462 FOR SALE: 2002 Ford Mustang, 6cyl/3.8 engine, excellent condition, recent tune up, new shocks, rebuilt A/C, new battery, belts & hoses 120,000 hwy miles S.D. plates.$4,900 USD. Call cell. (045) 331-194-4783 FOR SALE: Cargo Trailer. American nighthawk, 18’ Trailer. Perfect for Furniture Moving. Sell $4500.00 with Total Hitch Assembly. Contact: Robert Tierney. FOR SALE: 1993 Mercury Villager (same as Quest, complete power train is Nissan), 7 passenger van, A/C blows cold, non-smoking, one owner, original paint $4950 USD 763-5015 or us phone 360-3840919 FOR SALE: 1983 CLASSIC MERCEDES 4 DOOR. Air Conditioner, AM/FM Stereo, Automatic Transmission, Leather Interior, Sun Roof, Power Windows, Steering, Locks, near immaculate condition, Price $3,000. USD Call: Heinz Stapff at 765-3587 FOR SALE: 1997 Pontiac Bonivile. Engine runs good. Mirrors gone. Dings and dents. Needs paint job. Air-conditioner and right side passenger window needs fixing. Price $4000 USD. Call: Heinz Stapff at 7653587.
COMPUTERS FOR SALE: EPSON chip resetter (7 pin). This is versatility; it can automatically identify the type of ink cartridges, and resets the chip on the cartridge into a full mode. Price $50 USD. Call David at (376) 763-5248 FOR SALE: Toshiba Battery Pack (2). These are 14.8V, 3900 mAh. Both work well and hold charges. Price $200. Contact David. FOR SALE: SONY rechargable battery Pack. This works well and holds charge. 14.8V/4000 mAh. Price $100. Contact David FOR SALE: IOMEGA External Super DVD. This is an external DVD Multi Recorder/ burner, DVD Rewritable, CD Rewritable (Ultra Speed). Has power supply and USB2 connection. Works 110% perfect. Price $250. Call David at (376) 763-5248 FOR SALE: CD-burner. Semi-new cd burner for computer. Price $200 pesos (387) 761-0827 FOR SALE: PCIMCIA /1394 Firewire card. This card allows you to download data, pictures and/or video from your laptop to your computer. $250 OBO. Call: David at (376) 763-5248 FOR SALE: PCIMCIA Ethernet card. If your notebook or laptop isn’t set up for wired Internet, you can use this card to connect to a DSL line. $250 pesos OBO. Call: David at (376) 763-5248 FOR SALE: Transfer your VHS tapes to your computer Hard Drive and never lose them. Simple to use and all software
included. $250 Pesos. Call: David at (376) 763-5248 FOR SALE: RAM 256, 512 chips, PC133 and DDR. Contact: Spencer McMullen FOR SALE: SONY VAIO w/Wireless. 15” SCREEN; Legit XP Home W/SP2; wireless; CD-RW/DVD player; Two Firewire port; 2 PCMCIA slots; all OEM system recovery disks; plus more. $200 USD or pesos FIRM. Call: David at (376)763-5248 FOR SALE: Wireless Receiver. LagunaNet wireless receiver complete with antenna and cable. Price $200 USD. Excellent condition. Contact: Heather Leonard
GENERAL MERCHANDISE FOR SALE: Work shop/kitchen prep Stainless Steel Top, Strog White Wooden Frame, Two Book Shelves Above Along back, Two full Shelves Below. 48.25”L. x 29.5”W. x 56.25”H. to table top. Needs paint.$1,800 pesos. Call Heinz Stapff at 7653587 FOR SALE: Work Shop/Kitchen Prep Table Stainless Steel Top, Strong White Wood Frame, Two Book Shelves Above Along back With Two Full Shelves Below. 76”L. x 29.5”W. x 56.25”H. to table top x 1. Needs paint. .$2,200 pesos. Call Heinz Stapff at 7653587 FOR SALE: Bar Table White Wood Frame with inlaid Glass Top & Two Shelves 63.5”L. x 23.5”W. x 37.5”H. x 1. Strong, needs paint. $1,500 pesos. Call Heinz Stapff at 7653587 FOR SALE: Memorex 20” color TV. Great condition, remote. $1,800 pesos. Call Heinz Stapff at 7653587 FOR SALE: Samsung 27” color TV. 2 years old, great condition, remote, manual & antena. $3,000 pesos, call Heinz Stapff at 7653587 FOR SALE: Sony Trinitron 20” TV. 3 year old color TV, great condition, remote and rabit ears with manual. $2,000 pesos. Call Heinz Stapff at 7653587 FOR SALE: Large oval table , glass top with 4 matching chairs. I also have a 3 piece set of equipales. Price $2,500. All offers considred 765 2233, ricardo.heredia@ yahoo.com FOR SALE: Used furniture....king mattress with frame and headboards, 3 single beds/mattresses/headboards/ bedside table, sofas, dining room buffet, entertainment center. VCR/VHS. All in very good condition. Call: Lorraine Skoda at: 765-3147 or 765-6914 FOR SALE: Moving And Garage Sale. Everything must go! May 15 & 16 Flavio Romero #360A, Chapala (between Cristiania & Acapulco) FOR SALE: $300 each: JAG Full Season 9, JAG Season 10 (Final), CSI full Season 9, Doll House, full Season 1, Best of Dog Whisperer (Cesar Millan), John Adams. Entire Seven Part Miniseries Call David at (376) 763-5248 FOR SALE: Honda 250 quad. This new RECON Quad it has less than 150 miles on it. If you are looking for a new bike, this is the best you will find! $34,000 pesos johnny@ bamboocrossing.com FOR SALE: Good quality set: sofa, loveseat & armchair in Mexican Rustico style Large & heavy, quite comfortable and in very good condition. Well priced at 3800p/$300US firm. Contact Sherry Hudson. FOR SALE: King Sut sarcophagus. Full sized. Costs US$950.00 today including
shipping inside the U.S. Here it is in the Design Toscano website where I got it years ago and paid more. For more information call David at (376) 763-5248. FOR SALE: Wireless spy camera. This is a AJOKA model AJ-007S unit. Price $700. Call David (376) 763-5248 FOR SALE: IKELITE underwater SCUBA light. Model MINI-O-LITE. Takes 4 batteries (“C” cells). Works perfect. Used for scuba diving or any other underwater purpose. Good for about 200 feet. $200. Contact: David FOR SALE: UK400 Underwater light. Excellent condition (minor scrapes but works fine. Takes 4, D batteries and tested to 500 feet below water level. Price $40. Call David at (376) 763-52-48 FOR SALE: Tasco 7X35. Never dropped. Great condition. Price $200. Call David at (376) 763-52-48 FOR SALE: Pair Midland Walkie Talkies. Model GXT-200, they work fine. Range claimed 6 miles, but maybe 2 with no mountains or large buildings in the line of sight. $200, call David at (376) 763-52-48 FOR SALE: Tasco Binoculars, 10X50. Excellent condition never dropped.$250, call David at (376) 763-52-48 FOR SALE: BMK Model JAZZ. Bought 2005. Under 2,500km. Runs good, loud muffler, electric starter. Currently registered. Sold on Bill of Sale (100% legal in Mexico) since I can’t find the original purchase receipt. $425.00 USD or pesos, call David at (376) 763-52-48 FOR SALE: Older Kenmore ZigZag machine with manual 800 pesos. 766 4738 FOR SALE: Brand New Waring Pro Juicerator JEX450, juice whole apples in 3 inch chute. $99 USD or 1,200 pesos (see bizrate.com) Perfect condition, Call Mitchell 765-7455 FOR SALE: Entertainment ctr. $150, 60” round table w/8 chairs $200, hutch & base w/4 doors & glass in front, $200, recliner chair-dk.blue, $200, all in USD, & good condition. 766-6197 WANTED: Want to buy good quality electric mixer and or juicer, contact Steve Sobel WANTED: Looking for a TV/VCR combo. Reasonable price. Bigger screen is better, but will take anything available. Must be in good working condition. Call Jill Flyer at 7663025. FOR SALE: Mitsui 14” Color TV. Year old, Perfect condition with Remote. First come first served, $600 Pesos. Contact: Heinz Stapff FOR SALE: White Brand heavy duty machine with surge, with portable case. Approx 10yrs old. Asking $1000 pesos. Contact: Dusty Ward. FOR SALE: Lathe, like new. Call Alfred at (376)765-6462 FOR SALE: Fellowes paper shredder. excellent condition. $350 pesos call (045) 331-194-4783 FOR SALE: Panasonic Fax/copier/ telephone in excellent condition. extra toner incl.$950 pesos call 045-331-194-4783 WANTED: Looking for men’s mountain bike in good condition, to fit 5’11” rider. Call Kevin Knox at 766-3772 FOR SALE: West End automatic bread maker for sale. Used six times. This machine is like new. Comes with manual, one box of bread mix, and a slicing guide. $40 USD or $500 pesos. Call Bernie at (387)761-0827
FOR SALE: 1,000 liter propane gas tank. Less fill ups. $1,500 pesos. Call Dan 766-2866. FOR SALE: 2- Natural plywood cabinets for display and storage. Bottom half has three separate compartments for storage with doors, and top half has three display shelves. Great condition. $1500 pesos ea. Contact: James Bily WANTED: Bread maker machine. Preferably smaller loaf sz new or like new & with recipe/use manual. Contact: Sherry Hudson. WANTED: Looking for used/new pinball machine and billiards table. Email with details of condition, name brand, price and your phone number. Contact: Monica WANTED: Generator 3500 watts or more Heater, portable room heater. Mixer wanted. Standing or hand held. Excellent condition. Call: Rubi Diamond 766-2524, leave message if necessary. FOR SALE: Rarely used GE 3 cycle gas dryer. $1995 pesos. Call between 7-9 AM & 5-8PM, (376)765-6505 FOR SALE: 2007 “Airframes Unlimited” (Texas) Powered Parachute (PPC) complete with 2 seater trike, re-built 503 Rotax engine, Elan 500 SX Chute, and a 8’ X 10’ Utility Trailer transporter. $7,000 USD. Call Jim at 766-3785 FOR SALE: Moving to furnished apt, so selling contents of 1BR apt. Includes fridge, stove, micro, settees, tables, TV, double bed, etc. All in used but good shape. Load & pickup yourself in Jocotepec & take 10% off all prices. Contact: John Haskett FOR SALE: Sony speakers from bookshelf stereo system, 13h X 9w X 11d. $500, Call: Karen at 331-364-2195 WANTED: Looking for gently used recliner, reasonably priced. No plaid. Call: Karen at 331-364-2195 FOR SALE: Queen size duvet/cover, shams and bed skirt in rust/gold/green. Excellent condition. $450, Call: Karen at 331-364-2195 FOR SALE: Dining Table and 6 Chairs $5,000 pesos or best offer. Call 766-3103 or email arjay333@gmail.com FOR SALE: Double espresso and steam outputs comes complete with manuals and electric coffee grinder, restaurant quality.. Price $2,500 USD. Call: Heinz Stapff at 765-3587 FOR SALE: Heavy duty wrought iron drapery rod with decorative ends on rod. Usable rod length 65” to 72”. Decorative end pieces and a further 9” for one piece or 18” for the 2. Price $ 38.- USD . Call: Yolanda Mc Gaughey at 765-7280 FOR SALE: Two sets of luxurious satin finish fully lined pinch pleated drapes. Thick lining will keep light out for good night’s sleep. One pair: 66” wide & 9 ft. In length $28.- second pair: 41” w & 80” long. $ 18.Contact: Yolanda Mc Gaughey at 765-7280
COLLECTABLES FOR SALE: Large collection of world stamps in old H.E. Harris Citation Album plus stock books of stamps and dozens of full sheets of mint Mexican stamps from the 1980s. Contact: James Tipton
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El Ojo del Lago May 2010
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