the anti-facebook lives on the streets of barra de navidad

About two weeks ago, I put myself on a Facebook diet.

Prior to the current virus mania, I did not read many entries in Facebook. But, when we went into a modified lockdown here (whenever that was), I spent far too much time on Facebook.

Facebook is like a multi-zoned neighborhood. There are some informational gems. But they are deeply embedded in a lot of dross. For a while, the emotion-based posts about politics and the virus were an interesting voyage into other people's lives.

It stopped being interesting when I realized the posts were actually affecting my mindset. I am, by nature, a positive person. My experience is that everything comes out well in the end.

If I were to believe Facebook, the villages on the bay were just moments away from catastrophe. The economy was in danger. The virus was about to have its way with us.

But that is not what I see when I go out on my walks.

I walked to my doctor today to inform her the medication she gave me has knocked out most of my symptoms. I still have a slight cough. Three days ago, I could not have walked across my patio let alone three miles.

What I saw on my walk was encouraging. The economy here took a hit when the government forced the beach closure. Now that almost all businesses are open, people are feeding their families, and enjoying the freedom that living outdoors here affords.

Remodeling and new construction continued during the partial lockdown. And there are still several projects under way. Like this palapa being erected on top of a home.

It makes me wonder if being on the cusp of hurricane season is the best time to build a palapa.* But, I guess it is going to have to prove its durability at one point. Why not now?

In opening up shop in early May, I praised the Mexican entrepreneurial spirit. In the midst of a government-imposed revenue strangulation for businesses, three small businesses opened up just a block from my house. And they are surviving, if not thriving.

About a month ago, another restaurant opened at the other end of Nueva España, It is a small place. But it catches my eye every time I drive by because of its clever use of color.

With the arrival of Mexican tourists, it appears to be doing a respectable business.

I know very little about the place other than it resides on Nueva España, the main commercial street in my neighborhood. For me, its symbolism is important. The owners were willing to risk everything with their new venture -- despite everything. It is the very antithesis of the gloom pervading Facebook. 

Now and then, I take a peek in on Facebook to see if the tone has changed. It has not.

Instead, I will rely on a more positive picture of the villages by the sea by getting out and enjoying life. My Mexican neighbors have the correct perspective on that.


* -- For those of you wondering whatever happened to tropical storm Cristina, she is heading out to sea -- offering us no new rain. But there is another disturbance off the coast of El Salvador trying to make up its mind if it wants to head from cyclonic fame. Or not.

¿como esta tu rana?

Today was going to be a day I told you a story about my youth.

But, I am not going to do that.

I am going to tell you a story about my youth. Just not the one I had planned.

This morning, while preparing breakfast, I was carrying a dirty skillet to the sink when I saw something on the floor. At first, I thought I had tracked in a leaf. But my lack of depth perception often plays tricks in identifying objects on the floor. The last time I thought I was picking up a dried leaf, it was a very alive scorpion.

With a closer look, it definitely was not a leaf. It was a frog. A frog that appeared to be almost flattened. For a moment, I thought I was reliving one of my disquieting childhood memories.

I may have told you this before, but bear with me.

I have always been fond of frogs. When I was in grade school, there was a green pond frog that lived in our damp basement. I would often find it on the steps when I went down to the freezer.

I invented a game where we would hop down each step together. For me, it was fun. For the frog, I am certain it was nothing more than Jack escaping the giant.

One evening we were hopping along step-by-step when tragedy struck. The frog jumped out of sequence as I was hopping and he landed under my foot just as it hit the ground. I was devastated.

About two months, I found a frog -- a different frog -- attempting to get in the kitchen. But it was foiled by the screen doors. 

There must be something in the kitchen that attracts these wily amphibians. My first guess would be food. Frogs are hunters. Cockroaches. Geckos. Ants. The place is a buffet.

Or maybe there is some sense of refuge in the kitchen from our recent increase in snakes.

Whatever attracts the frogs, here was another. I feared I had walked on him as I prepared my meal. But I don't think so. He looked flattened because he was severely dehydrated.

Because I was a child that dealt in frogslaughter, I have become one of their protectors. I grabbed a bowl and filled only the bottom with water -- just enough to immerse the frog's belly while keeping its nose above water. After all, frogs are amphibians, not fish.

He has been in his ranine spa for about two hours and seems to be stabilizing. As dehydrated as he was, I will not be surprised if he does not survive. Only time will tell. 

The bowl is resting in the shade of a vine. I am just going to let him rest and watch that his nose stays above water. 

If he revives, getting out of the bowl will be easy. He can then go a'courtin' or whatever he was doing when doom befell him.

going wild with the virus

The arrival of the virus did not induce me to make rash promises.

My magazines were replete with people who declared now that they had time, they were going to accomplish some great thing of which they had dreamt for most of their lives. Write a novel. Read all of the great Russian novels. Compose a symphony. Or just get out of bed before the sun passes over the yard arm.

I know myself too well to get sucked into that form of delusion. Instead, I took the opportunity to catch up on my reading. To my amazement, even that got a bit monotonous, and, instead, I gave into addictive behavior.

I started binge-watching on Netflix. I worked my way through the 10-seasons of Modern Family -- laughing hilariously for the first six seasons, and then watching with growing pain as the last four seasons petered out into self-parody. The path seemed far too familiar.

Even that has come to an end. Last week, I was flattened with another bout of what I had in early March when I returned from Oregon. Headache. Cough. Loss of taste and smell. Achy joints. Diarrhea. And severe fatigue. I slept for three full days at one point. The only difference this time was that I had absolutely no fever. Not a twinge.

In March, it took three weeks for me to shake whatever it was. My doctor gave me some medicine for the symptoms, and I pulled through. I saw her again yesterday, and she armed me with more drugs.

Out of necessity, I have confined myself to my bedroom. It is probably no more than a head cold, but I do not need to spread it to the people who come and go from my house.

Because I am too tired to read and not-at-all interested in any more screen entertainment, I have been looking through some envelopes of photographs I brought back with me on one of my trips north. I thought you might like to see some.

That photograph at the top is me. Even though it is almost fifty years old, it does sum up how I feel these days. A bit scruffy, but still willing to make my way in the world. I could be Pip or Huck or Jem.

I was none of them, though. I was just a simple country lad in law school trying to make sense of a confusing world.

Several years earlier, a younger version of me was still an undergraduate. During the summer of 1970, my friend John Crooks and I decided to visit Washington, DC to investigate for ourselves what we had been learning in our political science courses. I had scheduled several appointments with the various branches of government.

During the 1968 election, I had worked with a guy by the name of Dan (his last name having now been engulfed in the furnace of age) who had a job in the communications department of the White House. He showed us around the place.

Our next stop was Congress. I had known Mark Hatfield for years -- long before he became Oregon's senator. I knew that if I ever wanted to run for office (which I did), I would be true to the basic principles I shared with him. We had a long talk about that. How shared principles build respect, even when they lead individuals to different positions.

That wisdom appears to be lost in today's politics. And everyone is ready to blame other people for their own failings. I count myself among the lost.

But my favorite part of the trip was a visit to my then-favorite Supreme Court justice. Potter Stewart.

His name first came to my notice in his dissent from the 1962 decision in Engel v. Vitale -- one of the school prayer cases. His common sense reasoning persuaded me that my own position might need re-examining. Most people know him for his 1964 concurring opinion in Jacobellis v. Ohio, an obscenity case, "I know it when I see it."

Justice Stewart spent over an hour talking with John and me about the court's process. At the time, I had a dream of clerking for the court, and he gave me some encouraging hints.

But most of the time, we discussed why it was important for the court to avoid being seen as a political body. He pointed out that Felix Frankfurter refused to even vote in elections after he joined the court. It was not surprising then that Justice Stewart simply laughed and brushed off his inclusion in a list of men, in a 1967 Esquire article, who would make great presidents.

John shot a photograph of the justice and me. It was one of my prized possessions. But it appears to have disappeared in one of my moves. I am hoping it is amongst the photographs that once hung on my law office wall.

The last photograph is sandwiched in time between the two others. After I graduated from college, I knew I wanted to go on to law school. But I also wanted to get some life under my belt. So, I joined the Air Force.

I suspect that everyone who has ever been in the military understands the strange aspect of forming friendships while on duty. It may be the knowledge that time is short because we all soon will be moving off to other assignments. Or it may be that the intensity of the military experience also intensifies friendships.

I do not know for certain. I just know that the friendships I invested time in during my Air Force years have led to some of the strongest friendships I still have.

This photograph is evidence of that. The grouping is of me and my friends Dennis and Diane Dooley. Our mutual friend Robin Olson is behind the camera.

It was Memorial Day weekend of 1973. We had rented a ski boat at Castle AFB and Robin towed the boat with his pickup to a local lake (which also escapes my memory) where we camped. Between water skiing, eating some great campfire food, and sharing the tales of our limited life experience, we formed friendships that last to this day.

And that is how I am spending my day in my more restricted regime until my cold recedes. I was tempted at one point to start sorting the photographs for a far more grand project.

Instead, I will trickle some of my favorites to you as time goes by -- and I trust I do not. At least, not yet.

while we slept

Maybe it is because we are all getting older, but some of the smallest things in life can be the most pleasant.

Rain, for instance.

During the summer, the combination of heat and humidity can be a bit discomforting here. Fans help. But tropical weather can be as heavy as a terry cloth robe. The only thing that offers relief is rain. Heavy rains.

Last night, we received our first heavy rains of the summer. Had I not heard it in the night, I would have known it had rained solely by stepping out of my bedroom this morning. The temperature was down and the air had a freshness to it we have not felt in over a month now.

That got me thinking about what the broader weather picture looked like. I usually start every summer morning here by thumbing through the National Hurricane Service's site. But I am have been a bit lax lately.

A "head cold" (at least, that is what I am calling it) has kept me off my feet for a few days, and has rather diminished my intellectual curiosity about tracking summer storms. So, I was a bit surprised to discover one of the disturbances I had been watching days ago had turned into a tropical storm. Cristina by name -- and that the service predicted Cristina would be a hurricane by tomorrow afternoon.

Now, that is quite an event to have slept through. But like all cyclonic activity, the question is not only how it is classified, but where it is going.

Very few tropical storms or hurricanes directly affect this area of the Mexican coast, but they can. Patrica and Jovan have rumbled across us since I have lived here. Most give us a glancing blow before heading up to Baja to do their worst there.

Cristina appears to be taking a different track. If the storms proceeds as predicted, it will head out to sea and die out some time next week.

But it is early in the season. While we can do without a hurricane, the rain will always be welcome.

three myths in one

One of the joys of living in Mexico is that I get to celebrate three national creation myths.

During the winter, a large contingent of Canadians and a handful of Americans head south to enjoy the sybaritic pleasures of Barra de Navidad and San Patricio Melaque. They join a much smaller group of Canadians and Americans who live here all year.

Even though foreigners always have a certain untoward effect upon the places they visit, the villages here on the Costalegre are Mexican. Thoroughly Mexican.

Today is the Fourth of July -- the day Americans celebrate their independence from their colonial overlords. Mexico has its own Independence Day on 16 September when it too threw off its colonial overlords with shouts of "death to the Spanish."

Canada celebrates a type of independence on 1 July when the three separate colonies of Canada, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick were combined into a single dominion. No tar and feathering. No war. Just a long peaceful transition. (happy 151st something, canada). I threw caution to the win and reveled in the day's glory on Wednesday with two hot dogs and a Coke.

I have celebrated the Fourth of July in several countries around the world. My favorite spot was in Great Britain. There was something about the thumb-in-the-eye that seemed just about right. But I balanced that out in Salem when I would fly the British flag each Fourth of July. The contrariness is inbred, I do believe.

This afternoon, I will be joining a few friends from church for an informal get-together to celebrate both the day and our special communion.

Celebrating both Canada Day and the Fourth of July here in Barra de Navidad seems a bit odd. Neither day means anything to my neighbors -- except those who wanted to sell me a large bag of fireworks for the day. Life will go on while we speak of our own national ideals.

What I am really looking forward to, though, is 16 September. There will fireworks aplenty and, depending on the status of the virus, parade after parade of children and teenagers doing their serious best to dress and act like the heroes of Independence.

But today, I will simply wish all of my American readers a Happy Fourth of July. The country has plenty of divisions. But, for one day, we can pause and consider what the country would be if we lived upo to our ideals:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

In that spirit, I am going to ask that we focus on what unites us, and not what divides us. We should be able to do that for just one day, shouldn't we?

A happy Fourth of July to all of you.

and then there were none

Some topics are tackled by writers at their peril.

I shot this photograph last night. What attracted me to the shot was the texture of the clouds and how the light successfully drained the color from our full-spectrum sky.

It was also going to be the photograph to accompany an essay about how today was the start of a full-week of predicted thunderstorms. If the weathermen were to be believed, this morning should have sounded like the finale of the third act of Die Walküre.

Apparently, the weather does not read the same apps I do. When I rolled out of my bedroom into the patio, the day was absolutely Disneyesque.* The only things missing were the unicorn ponies and the flute-playing pan-ettes.

But Disney was a far better symbol for this day. Last night, Citalli from the local immigration office called to inform me my replacement permanent resident card had finally arrived. I now feel my arm is complete again -- as Sweeney Todd would (and did) say.

Well, it is after I drove over to San Patricio, displayed my passport, and signed three documents. Project Recovery is now at an end. At least, for those actions I can take in Mexico.

I still have to fly to The States for an appointment in Los Angles and another in Portland or Bend to get my wallet in the same shape it was before I lost it two months ago. With the virus still running its course, I considered not making the trip until later in the year.

But something else has come up that requires my physical presence up north. And time is not going to resolve it. There is only one Alaska flight out of here each week during this time of year. On Saturdays.

As soon as I get some additional information, I will be able to report to you on the status of flying during a viral storm.

But not today. I think I will go ride a flying horse.



* -- I have a certain soft spot in my heart for Fantasia. So, here is a sample. Despite its Disney parentage. After all, the star here is Beethoven.

canada day without the party

For most Americans, 1 July is three days before the Fourth of July, and half-way through the year -- time to take stock of what we have accomplished during the past six months.

For me, this week is a two-fer holiday. The Fourth of July is on Saturday, of course, but today is a special day, as well. When my DNA yearns to celebrate. Canada Day.

Even though both of my parents' families first came to the New World in 1620 at the Plymouth Colony, the path each branch took to Oregon was quite different. Dad's family made its way to Virginia then to Missouri, and, in the 1840s, took the Oregon Trail to what was then quaintly called The Oregon Country -- a chunk of land claimed by the British, Spanish, Russians, and Americans.

My mother's family took another path. After the Great Unpleasantness of the 1770s, her side of the family moved to Vermont, and, for some reason (my theory is the family backed the wrong horse in the Revolution), Moses Rolfe packed up his brood of eight children in the early 1790s, and once again claimed his loyalty to the Hanoverian King. They lived in Quebec for another three generations of Rolfes. In the 1880s, the Rolfes made another jump. To Minnesota.

My grandfather's family took a Canadian path, with a variation. Peter Munro left Scotland in the early 1800s for a new life on Prince Edward's Island. Another three generations of Munros lived on Prince Edward Island until a later Peter Munro moved his family across an obviously-porous border to Minnesota in the 1880s.

You can do the math there. These two Canadian families joined forces and moved to Oregon in the 1920s, where my father met my mother. And thus I am here telling you this story.

Mine is not the only family with Canadian roots. My Aunt Naomi kept up the tradition by marrying my Canadian-born Uncle Frank.

Usually, I would anticipate attending a Canada Day party this evening at Papa Gallo's in San Patricio. That will not happen because of the virus. So, I will pass my greetings along to my fellow Canadians with today's essay.

Today is a day to celebrate as individuals, to recognize what Canada has accomplished, and to acknowledge that we do not need common blood to be friends.

As I do almost every Canada Day, I will close with what I believe is one of the best arrangements of the Canadian anthem.

Wherever you are, enjoy the day.