being dan

Everybody has a relative that they want to be just like.

Or so I have been told.

Now, I do not know how universal that rule is, but I do know I wear it like a second nature. When I was growing up, I wanted to be just like my cousin Dan. He lived just down the mountain in Myrtle Point and was one year older. I thought of him as an older brother. And still do. That is him at the far left -- the charismatic boy up to some mischief.

When I started piano lessons in the sixth grade, the course I was taking gave students an option of sheet music as electives. My piano teacher asked me what type of music I would like to include on the list.

Mom overheard my teacher and suggested that I choose Broadway music because Dan liked musicals, and I admired Dan. I knew nothing of musicals at that point, but if Dan liked them that was good enough for me.

That was the start of one of the strangest paths I have ever taken in my life. I remember asking myself how Dan could like this music. It struck me as rather sappy with its emotional ballads and mawkish lyrics. But Dan liked it. Enough said.

I sometimes tend to be a bit obsessive. Once I set my mind to a project, it consumes me. And this project has consumed me for sixty years.

I bought every original cast album I could find at Al's Records, our local limited-inventory record shop in the Oak Grove Fred Meyer shopping complex, and studied the music. Then came the scripts. In addition, I attended every road show that came through Portland and scheduled my Air Force reserve duty around Broadway performances. Being stationed just outside London for two years in the 1970s was like being sent to musical heaven.

It got to the point that when I saw Bob Holiday in It's a Bird, It's a Plane, It's Superman on Broadway in 1966, I did not need to consult my Playbill to know that he had played the role of Neil in Fiorello in 1959. While my high school classmates were rocking with the Rolling Stones, I was analyzing the harm Richard Rogers's music in Do I Hear a Waltz? did to Stephen Sondheim's lyrics.

I had turned myself into a cultural anomaly -- a straight Broadway expert. Of course, I put that questionable skill to work whenever I could. The best venue was Broadway Trivia on cruises -- where I seldom missed an answer. 

I say the skill is questionable because it has limited my conversation. Last week at dinner, there was a lull in the chat. I have no idea why I did it (obviously, I was not thinking), but I tossed out a question: "Which ballet from a Broadway show do you prefer? Oklahoma? Carousel? Or something else?"

It must have been "something else" because my five dinner companions stared at me as if someone had sprayed obscene graffiti across my forehead. I may as well have asked what they thought about the Rule Against Perpetuities being used as a plot device in novels.

But all of those years of studying the American musical as an art form have given me a trunk of analytical templates when the Next Bright Broadway Thing comes along. That last sentence is pure self-serving justification because, as Paul Harvey used to say, here's the rest of the story.

Remember how my Mom launched me on this path with the overture that Dan loved musicals? Well, it turned out that was not quite true.

In December 2014 and January 2015, Dan and his Colombian wife Patty visited me on one of their many extended road trips. I joined them for a month while we drove through southern Mexico. Somewhere along our trek, I mentioned to Dan that I was surprised he liked musicals; I had always pegged him as a rock-and-roll guy.

His response caught me off guard. "I hate musicals. Especially movie musicals. Whatever made you think I liked them?" So, he heard the story I have just related to you.

I still do not know if Mom was mistaken or if she had a hidden agenda of her own. She certainly was not a musicals fan. She still isn't.

But there you have it. If you are sitting with me one day and ask which is my favorite Beach Boys song, I will most likely ask which beach boys you are talking about. While you were listening to Mike Love croon about good vibrations, I was chuckling at Zero Mostel's attempts to tackle Sondheim's internal rhymes.

There are no such things as bad decisions. There are simply decisions that make us who we are.

So, if you are feeling in a comparative ballet mood, come on over. We can spend an evening discussing the choreography strengths of Agnes de Mille and Susan Stroman.

You might want to bring your own No-Doz.

 
Note -- If we are going to discuss Agnes De Mille, here is your homework.

moving to mexico -- buying a house

The moment I walked in the front door, I knew she was going to be mine.

In 2006, I decided that I would retire and move to Mexico. Because I am a big believer in the American Dream, my initial instincts were to buy a house before I made the big leap. So, I started scouting.

For reasons unimportant for this essay, after two years of looking for houses to buy, I ended up renting a place for almost eight months on the beach of Villa Obregón. When my stay there was done, I considered some short-term auditions of other towns in Mexico, but I decided to try another six months as a renter on Villa Obregón's laguna. The six-months stretched to five years.

While living there, I looked for houses to buy. I had a permanent resident card in my pocket, and the area where I lived suited me fine. It was time to start erecting tent poles.

The house with no name was not my first house date. I had looked at least a score of other houses and at least five were in the I-can-live-with-this category.

Then true love struck. I say I knew the house would be mine when I walked through the front door. But it actually took fifteen minutes of contemplating the Barragánesque lines to convince me to make an offer on the house.

The asking price was well out of my budget. I had just made an offer for a house that was snatched out from under me, so I had a certain amount of money set aside already. To my surprise, the architect-builder who had constructed the place as her dream house, immediately snatched up my offer and set the closing date a few weeks away.

I saw nothing untoward in the rush. I knew there were some partnership problems the owner needed to clear up, but she assured me they would be resolved by closing.

When I told Christine, my landlady at the Villa Obregón rental, that I would be moving out because I was buying a house, she told me to ensure that I received a finiquito from the buyer --  a document proving the social security assessments from IMSS had been paid for the construction of the house.

A friend of hers had failed to do that and was then involved in a dispute that resulted in more tears than joy. I followed her advice and included the clause in the earnest money agreement.

It turns out to no avail. When my realtor, her assistant, and I drove to Manzanillo to sign the closing papers at the notario's office, a copy of the IMSS document was not part of the paperwork. I went into Full Frontal Lawyer negotiating mode, and said I would not close without the document. I knew the seller was anxious to sell, but I needed the document to ensure there would be no additional costs.

The assistant took me out in the hall to re-direct me. He told me the bank would not issue its trust deed if there were any potential liens outstanding. He had a certain northern logic to his argument. So, we closed.

Of course, that is not the end of the story -- or I would not be writing this essay. Within a year of closing, a fellow claiming to represent IMSS showed up at my house informing me I owed the IMSS assessment because I now owned the house. I contacted the former owner who gave me a song and dance how everything had been resolved; she was just waiting on the paper.

Well, we are both waiting for the paper. And I suspect we will wait for eternity to see it because of the next event in this little drama.

While I was in Manzanillo on Tuesday, someone claiming to be from IMSS served a document on Omar. The current owner of the property ("me") is required to appear in the IMSS office in Puerto Vallarta to show cause why I should not pay the unpaid assessment.

There are some questions whether IMSS can legally recover the assessment after five years. But IMSS certainly claims the authority to summon my presence -- as it has done.

Either today or tomorrow, I am going to see my accountant to enlist his professional skill in resolving what needs to be resolved. If the assessment was not paid by the contractor or the former owner, IMSS is entitled to that amount, an amount that could easily put me in the driver seat of a very nice European sedan. The only question is whether IMSS has acted in a timely fashion.

I will keep you posted on how this develops -- if only to let readers know one of the potential traps in buying a house in Mexico.

What I do know is that if your landlady tells you to do something to protect your interests, do it.
       

the dearly departing

Controversy about the Covid-19 vaccination still stalks the streets. Even over simple details like dates.

Last night, I attended a small dinner party at Papapa Gallo's to celebrate the departure of an acquaintance. If "celebrate" is the correct word for someone leaving.

Robert is a veterinarian from Mississippi who has visited Melaque for half-a-score winters. But it is now time for him to return to his home north of the border. He will board an airplane today to return to the Magnolia State.

Of the six of us at dinner, four have received the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccination for covid-19. I received mine on 18 February (a tale of two lines). The other three received theirs on 17 February. When each of us left the vaccination clinic in Cihuatlán, we received a piece of paper showing the date of our first vaccination, a line for information concerning the second vaccination, and some additional warnings.

The current controversy centers around the line set aside for the second vaccination.

Let me provide a little context. After receiving the vaccination, each of us was ushered to a covered area in the clinic's garden where we were seated under a shelter. The purpose of that stop was two-fold: first, to let us wait for a half-hour to see if any of us had an adverse reaction to the vaccination, and, second, to discharge us and provide us with information about our first and second vaccinations.

We exchanged our sign-in form for a second piece of paper. You can see a portion of my copy of the second form at the top of this essay. The bottom of the form requests people who suffer any untoward effects following the vaccination to report it immediately through a provided telephone number.

But there is no controversy about that. The woman who filled out the second form wrote in a date on the line for the second vaccination. And that is the source of some confusion. My dinner partners were certain that the date was for their second vaccination, though no one told them that. It does look like what a northerner would assume to be an appointment.

Other people on Facebook, who speak Spanish, tell them that the young woman who discharged them, referred to the date as an appointment. But that is not my story.

The 30-minute wait turned into almost two hours for my vaccination group. I was within 4 people of being called next, when one of the vaccination team members sat down next to me and reviewed my form to see if it was completed correctly.

He told me the date on the form for the second vaccination was only approximate and that I would receive a call for the exact date and for the place of vaccination on that day. Apparently, there had been some serious logistical problems in using the IMSS clinic.

As you can see, he also annotated my form with the information he had just shared. I must have been showing my dotage that day.

The tentative nature of the second vaccination made sense when he told me why the appointment system for vaccinations had been scrapped in favor of a "all-seniors-on-deck" approach. The computer-based appointment system had numerous problems. If only people with appointments had been vaccinated, a good deal of vaccine would have expired. So, the team improvised -- to everyone's benefit.

Confusingly, there is a second entry with the date 15 April, and that line refers to the date as "Fecha de tu Cita para tu Segundo dosis." I guess, you don't pay your pesos, but you take your chances.

Subsequent news has also pointed out supply problems. The EU is trying to restrict the export of any of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine produced in Europe from being exported outside of the EU. (The target, of course, is Britain, but all other non-EU countries will suffer from a rather blatant protectionist move of vaccine nationalism.) That move has been exacerbated by production issues that have left promised shipments late in coming. Mexico is not a priority on the shipment list.

I am hoping my 15 April date is just what the young man said. Approximate. I have seen a couple of studies that this particular vaccine attains its greatest protection at 90 days. For me, that would be 15 May -- or thereabouts. The later the better.

Having said that, if I have not received a telephone call by 14 April, I will drive over to Cihuatlán on the morning of 15 April to see if the vaccination clinic has once again set up shop at IMSS. If it is not there, I will check the two general hospitals. After all, they are only a needle-toss from one another.

One way or the other, we will all get our second jabs. But I am not going to be anxious if it does not happen on tax-filing day.*


* -- Speaking of income taxes, that is a topic I would like to discuss. Probably tomorrow. 

firing the butler

I have been spending too much time watching English costume dramas -- or maybe it has been watching all of those Fawlty Towers episodes years ago.

Lately, I have started thinking about what it would be like to live in a house with additional staff. A driver. A cook. A house manager. But every time I wander down that path, I realize that Dora's cleaning regimen and Antonio's pool maintenance are all I really need.

When my house was built, whoever designed the pool thought through some of the difficulties of pool ownership. To avoid overflows, there is a drain that empties into a tinaco buried at the pool's verge.  There are several "v" cuts along the edge of the tinaco that allow water to flow into the house's drainage system if too much water makes its way to the tinaco. For instance, during heavy tropical rains. I never have to worry about the pool overflowing.

It also works in reverse. When the water level in the pool recedes due to evaporation or excessive fun, a float in the tinaca will turn on my well pump to provide more water to the pool. It is a nifty system.

Except for one thing. The float is similar to the float you might find in your toilet tank. Over time (about every eight months or so), the metal attachment corrodes so badly that its breaks, leaving the float doing its impression of Jack Dawson in Titanic.

Even though the tinaco is covered by a heavy concrete and metal lid, I know when the float has snapped because the pump thinks the tinaco needs re-filling, and will switch on and off in four-minute cycles. I always check each of the toilets and sinks in the house to be certain no water is running before I notify Antonio. I have been embarrassed in the past when the problem was a leaky tap and not a broken arm.

Fortunately, I did not need to call Antonio for a special trip. This was his morning to be here -- at 7:30. We discussed whether any taps were open (he knows me well) and he then lifted the lid. The float was bobbing away. Like those annoying kids in high school who always had their hands in the air with the right answer. But the float, with its raised arm had the wrong answer.

After a quick trip to the hardware store, an intricate surgery of removing the old and attaching the new, and a sophisticated adjustment, I had an operating system in just over one hour. Well, I had an operating systems thanks to Antonio and his Christmas-card-bringer son Enrique.

All for the total cost of 300 pesos (about $14 (US)) -- parts and labor. As always, Antonio did not want to be reimbursed for his time, only the 69 pesos for the float. That was not going to happen. Of course, it is a little dance we both play when he provides additional pool services.

I have written about the half-life of floats in my tinaco several times. The essays always elicit a list of suggestions on how the engineering might be improved. Some have been quite sophisticated.

I have considered them all. And I am sticking with the current setup.

Certainly pouring capital into an improved switching system might be a good investment, but I rather enjoy what I have. It allows me to hone my skills as a house manager, and I then get to watch Antonio apply his expert skills in repairing the lame system.

Sometimes, good enough is good enough.

At least, good enough for me.

 

the falling tree

Yesterday I was walking with an acquaintance in West Melaque. 

He and his wife have been coming to the Costalegre for sixteen years. They only stay two months -- January and February. Because of recent travel restrictions on returning to their home country, they have decided to stay an additional two months.

As we were walking along, he asked: "You pretend to know everything. Is there something wrong with the trees on the hill? Everything is starting to look gray."

His question reminded me of a flight I was on two years ago. It was the summer, and I was returning home to Mexico from a Panama Canal cruise. As we made our final approach to the Manzanillo airport, we flew over the hills that give this area their scenic charm.

The young man sitting next to me was from Oregon. When he looked out at the hills, he asked: "Was there a forest fire here?" I had not given it much thought. But to an Oregonian eye, our summer hills do resemble the Tillamook Burn. Lots of bare trunks and branches. No foliage.

The answer to both questions was the same. This area has two seasons. The Wet and The Dry. When the rains come in summer and fall, our hills green up as if they were part of the Dingle Peninsula. Ryan's daughter would feel at home here. Well, maybe not with the heat and humidity, but you get my point.

When the rains stop in the late fall, the hills continue their show until just before the arrival of spring. Old leaves then make way for new flowers -- and eventually new leaves with the summer rains. 

That is why the hills looked so odd to my walking companion. In his 16 years of visiting Melaque, all he has known is that the hills were heavily greened. What he was now experiencing was a peep backstage in the dressing room where the actors are donning their costumes for this two-act play.

There must be something in our minds that makes us believe that places stay the same as we last saw them. Perhaps that is why people who visit the area are so shocked when natural disasters like earthquakes, hurricanes, and flooding hit the area while they are not here. It is difficult to conceive just what is going on without experiencing it in person.

There is also the opposite phenomenon -- or a variation on the other. I was standing in line at the Banamex ATM five years ago. The line snaked out from the bank into street. So, I had plenty of time to talk with a friend who sat on a charitable board with me.

She looked at the line of gray-headed northerners and said: "I do not understand how this place survives when we all leave." She was sincerely concerned.

I responded that not all of us do leave, but most of the area's tourist business comes from Mexicans during the summer and on holidays when most northerners are not here.

She looked at me with a combination of pity and surprise, and responded: "I mean real money, Steve."

I suspect that conversation arises from the same perception as the "why are the hills gray?" question. We tend to be an existential race. The only things that are real are what we experience.

That is not a complaint. It is just who we are. And I expect that is why some of us read and watch travelogues. We want to experience new things without needing to travel to new places.

But whether we are here to watch the hills gray or to see Mexican tourists exchange their pesos for a good time, the tree falling in the forest will still make a noise -- even if we do not experience it.

  

going to town

My friend Joyce laughs whenever I tell her I am putting on my big-boy pants to go to town.

With all of the weight I have put on, "big boy" may have a completely different meaning than what I intend. Whenever I go to a larger city, I prefer to dress as an adult rather than in my pre-school clothes -- the outfits we northerners tend to wear around town that give casual a questionable name.

Other than going to church, I have not put on a pair of Dockers for months. The primary reason is that in Mexico I have not ventured past the city limits of Cihuatlán since at least October. Or, it seems that long.

Yesterday I broke my surly bonds and headed down the road to Manzanillo. I had no choice. My six trips to Oregon since August have left me with a pile of dry cleaning that needed tending to. And, since the nearest dry cleaner is in Manzanillo, I took my Hobson's choice.

I am not fond of the drive to the Big M, and I am not certain why. It is only a 26-mile drive. Admittedly, the main highway that takes me there is two lanes with limited shoulders in places. And there is always a potpourri of vehicles with varying driving speeds. The scenery is always pleasant. I can easily leave my house in Barra de Navidad and arrive at the dry cleaner in 30 minutes.

Even though my sole purpose for the trip was to drop off my dry cleaning before I head north again, I decided to stop at La Comer and Sam's Club. The Sam's Club stop was for the industrial-sized cleaning materials Dora needs to keep my mini-hotel high on the Trip Advisor list. But the stop at La Comer had an entirely different purpose.

When I moved to Mexico in 2009, there were three large grocery stores on the west end of Manzanillo: Soriana, Comercial Mexicana (whose name changed to La Comer when the Soriana organization purchased it), and Walmart. I thought that I would end up spending a good deal of time shopping for groceries there when I would make the weekly trip to pick up my mail. Probably because they looked like Safeway stores in the 1950s -- lots of merchandise on offer in a utilitarian fashion.

But that is not what happened. I quickly discovered that I could save myself a trip to Manzanillo for grocery shopping when I discovered the combination of Hawaii and the corner abarrotes could provide me with everything I needed. (The mail drop was replaced by a postal box in San Patricio.) 

My grocery stops in Manzanillo were reduced to my twice-a-year trip to the city. La Comer was always on the list because it is in the same mall as my optician.

A lot of us wondered what Soriana would do with Comercial Mexicana when it bought the chain in 2016. For a long time, nothing happened other than the name change to the slightly-swanky La Comer -- best pronounced with one's nose squeezed tight. The same way the English pronounce "croissant."

Then the big changes started in the summer of 2020. The store was kept open while the interior was essentially gutted and re-worked in stages. When I was last in the store in October, it was still a construction site.

Joyce told me in December that the new construction was complete and the store looked fantastic. (She is particularly fond of here superlatives.) When I stopped yesterday, I discovered for myself that she was correct. The place was as bright and modern as any supermarket north of the border -- luring customers to sample its wares.

I wandered over to the pasta section and was surprised to see La Comer carries my favorite brand -- Rummo. The usual shapes are there, including bucatini.

Bucatini is my gold standard to test the availability of good pasta. Most Oregon supermarkets flunk the test. La Comer, on the other hand, offers it from three different makers. The transformation is complete. (Alex at Hawaii regularly sells bucatini.)

For me, La Comer is symbolic of Mexico's economic development. Grocery stores of this type are not built for northern tourists. They are built for middle-class Mexicans to spend their excess income on what they see as a better style of life.

And, just as I discovered that Hawaii and the local abarrotes could meet my grocery-shopping needs, the appearance of high-end grocery stores are no more a threat to "authentic" Mexico (whatever that is) than building wider roads. It is part of the economic process of Mexico growing into its place as the 11th richest economy in the world.

I guess all of that is worth putting on my big-boy pants.

mooning for adventure.

Like everyone else, I am a sucker for the big "one-off" astronomical events.

Super moons. Planet conjunctions. Meteor showers. Solar eclipses. News of similar events is similar to the percussive call of the sideshow barker that pulls us into the heavenly freak show.

Of course, none of those events are "one-off." Every astronomical event that slips on stage is cyclical -- well, with the obvious exception of dramatic climaxes that end up creating a huge crater in the Yucatan peninsula and provide material for another Gary Larson cartoon.

As enticing as the Big Events are, my favorite sky-watching pursuit is the phases of the moon. There is an obvious moral in the lesson of the moon whose ability to be seen is dependent on its flashier cousin the sun.

As the month passes, the moon chases the sun and draws closer and closer. But, instead of benefiting from its proximity to the sun, the closer it gets during the day, the less light reflects from the moon's surface until it almost disappears in the day sky.

It isn't until the moon is furthest in its orbit from the sun (as viewed from Earth) that it attains its full glory on its own. Light will reflect off of the full surface of the moon only when it rises just as its source of light is setting.

The sun-moon chase is part of our common history as humans. The Inuit know the tale as the incestuous Igaluk chasing his beautiful sister Malina. Or the competition between Helios and Selene in Greek mythology. The chase echoes deep in our souls. 

Scientists, of course, will explain all of this as nothing more than the orbit of the moon around Earth and Earth's orbit around the sun. Simply a Keplerian calculation.

The photograph at the top of this essay was taken in last week's full moon cycle. On the same day that the Perseverance probe landed on Mars.

That evening I had dinner with Joyce and Gary. She was thrilled by the video of the Mars landing, and with the very idea of humanity reaching out into space. That was not a surprise. She is one of the few people I know who tracks the possibility of seeing the space station orbit overhead. She even has a ticket to Mars.

I say "few people" because most people I know have become blasé about space exploration. My grandmother was born in 1892 in Northcote, Minnesota. Not only did she experience a move to Oregon in her twenties, she witnessed the introduction of automobiles, airplanes, home appliances, victory over European and Asian fascism and communism, electricity, phonographs -- and space travel. When she died in 1977, she left a world that she would have not recognized in 1892.

In 1961, Miss Dix wheeled a portable black-and-white television set from the West Concord AV room into our sixth grade classroom. My friends, Keith May, Neil Hodgin, Daurel Colony, and I watched rapt as Alan Shephard was shot into space, and, almost as miracuously, recovered from the ocean.

The next year, the same television, this time in Mr. Vaught's class, brought us John Glenn's flight. And so it went through high school.

Television was there reporting on our space adventures -- until that day in the summer of 1969 when my college friends and I stopped our beach reveries to watch Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins launch into space. Four days later, in a friend's basement, about a dozen of us gathered around another television to watch Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon.

That memory is why I am so fond of an episode of "The Crown." Episode seven of season three centers around Prince Philip's fascination with the 1969 moon landing and his own mid-life crisis.

Because princes having some privileges, he arranges a personal audience with the three astronauts. Up to that point, he had been struggling with his purpose in life, and, like many of us, thought he had found it in the technological wonder of the moon landing. He had "an almost jealous fascination with the achievements of these young astronauts."

Instead, as a result of his audience with the astronauts, he discovered they astronauts were just ordinary men -- not heroes with extraordinary qualities. (Tom Wolfe, of course, offers a completely different portrait in The Right Stuff.)

At a meeting of frustrated middle-aged Anglican priests, he summed up what he thought was really bothering him.

My mother died recently. She ... she saw that something was amiss.

It's a good word, that. A-Amiss.

She saw that something was missing in her youngest child. Her only son.

Faith.

"How's your faith?" she asked me.

I'm here to admit to you that ... I've lost it. And... without it, what is there?

The ... The loneliness and emptiness and anticlimax of going all that way to the moon to find nothing, but haunting desolation ... ghostly silence ... gloom.

That is what faithlessness is. As opposed to finding ... wonder, ecstasy, the miracle of ... divine creation, God's design and purpose.

What am I trying to say?

I'm trying to say that ... the solution to our problems, I think, is not in the ... in the ingenuity of the rocket, or the science or the technology or ... even the bravery.

No, the answer is in here.

Or here, or wherever it is that ... that faith resides. 

F. Scott Fitzgerald had a great sense of the human condition. "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function."

I suspect he was trying to say that humans inherently possess a first-rate intelligence because we are all capable of holding opposed ideas. We do it every day.

I have yet met a person who believes solely in the scientific method to describe everything in their lives. Any scientist who has been in love or read a novel or experienced a sunset knows that most of life's offerings lie outside the boundaries of science.

That is why it is possible to see space exploration not only as a great technological achievement, but also as the type of adventure that helps give meaning to our lives. Often to enhance our faith.

Knowing how a rocket works does not take away from the possibility that the wolf will eventually catch the rabbit in the sky.