Waiting Waiting Waiting

Chapala, Jalisco, Mexico

How embarrassing.

So it’s been over a year since we last did a “regular” blog post.

Though Mark has found things to be curmudgeonly about since. And as he was working on a post recently, Linda noticed that we have badly neglected the blog.

Well, it’s been easy to ignore the blog, since we haven’t been doing much. Covid has definitely put a cramp on our style.

As those of you who do see the blog know, we exited Asia in a hurry, stopped in Hawaii, then headed back to Mexico in July of 2020. And we’ve mostly been in Mexico since, with 3 trips up North of Border in 2021 which is more than usual for us.

What have we been doing in Mexico? Well, a couple of quarantines and such later….

Once a week, we have been volunteering at Lucky Dog Rescue, walking dogs, helping with baths, etc. And there is a bonus of a herd of donkeys on our walking route, that now know Linda’s “burrrrrros!” call and come running for carrots and bananas.

Our pop up at a local bazar (thrift shop)

We also have been helping out the Feria Maestros del Arte folk art organization with a few things. We facilitated a strategy / workplan series with Board. We’ve staffed some “mini-events” and “pop ups” locally here at the lake, as the normal November event has been Covid-cancelled for 2 years. Linda has been helping with getting a new website and ecommerce up…soon….we hope.

 

Lovely copper work from Santa Clara del Cobre

Miniature restaurante

 

Mark has taken up pickleball (of all things) and is playing “old guy softball” both once a week or so. Linda has been attempting yoga at a private class here. Who knew you got so sore from yoga?

Our trips up north involved:

... getting Covid shots

Flu fighters!

...Going on a road trip mostly to see Linda’s family:  California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Nevada, back… and using up expiring airline tickets.

Leg of lamb

...Cooking and eating and drinking a lot...

Paella

Ribs Gilbert

Mark, Bob, and BIG Bottles

 

...Going to Aunt Rose’s funeral, and getting a booster shot.

Back in Mexico: We’ve moved to the town of Chapala, which is more Mexican and less gringo. And commensurately more noisy with cohetes (small rockets) and lots of bell ringing, as we are 1 block behind the church!

 

 

Video of a recent bell ringing event 

People keep asking us what our plans are. HAH. Cannot answer that. We should have been on Bonaire, in Europe, etc. etc., but Covid keeps changing our plans for us. So, we’re planning to stay Lakeside Chapala for the time being, maybe taking a short trip to Michoacan in January. THEN maybe we’ll have something new to talk about?

 

                                                                                                                             2021 December 13

Redemption Sauce

Curmudgeon's Corner

Recently we were having lunch out here in Mexico, and admiring the process as the waiter prepared fresh salsa in a molcajete at our table. He commented that most gringos prefer ketchup (catsup), which he called American sauce. It started me thinking about my long relationship with, and love for, ketchup.

According to a story in National Geographic, ketchup comes from the Hokkien Chinese word, kê-tsiap, the name of a sauce derived from fermented fish. It is believed that traders brought fish sauce from Vietnam to southeastern China. The British likely encountered ketchup in Southeast Asia, returned home, and tried to replicate the fermented dark sauce. They must have taken a left at Albuquerque, though, and ended up with HP Sauce.

Ketchup was for me, like maybe a lot of kids, a way of making something not so palatable at least marginally more so. A classic example is liver & onions, which my dad loved though no one else did. Another is “roast beef”, which in my growing up meant gray and tasteless meat. But the pinnacle of ketchup’s power as a cuisine converter (redeemer?) was achieved in making my mom’s salmon croquettes edible enough that I did not get in trouble for not eating them. Sorry, mom. Redemption Sauce. Sorry Robert Nesta Marley!

When I was 9 years old, between 3^rd and 4^th grade, I had baseball practice most summer evenings. The practice field was a 4-5 block walk from home. It was on these walks hone that I collected pop bottles, which I redeemed (more redemption!) to have money for Mad magazine. I played for the Lafayette Ravens in Oklahoma City, south of the North Canadian River. The affluent lived to the north of the river. Interestingly, a city improvement effort in 2004 dammed up the usually low and slow-flowing North Canadian to create the “Oklahoma River”, which includes an Olympic-level rowing and training center. I cannot imagine rowing in the Oklahoma wind. Oil money can do surprising things.

But I digress. Baseball figures into this because my parents would often go out looking at real estate in the summer evenings. It was I guess cheap entertainment. They looked for years before we finally moved from SW 47^th to SW 97^th. This all meant that I generally came home at dusk to an empty house, with my dinner on a melamine plate, covered with foil in the massive O’Keefe & Merritt stove (it probably weighed 300 lbs.) It had a warming area with very low heat where I would find my dinner.

Not my mom's croquettes!

Salmon croquettes were in the bi-weekly rotation. They were made with canned salmon. The can looked a lot like this one, except it did not reference “natural”, “Omega-3’s”, or “wild-caught”. I am not even sure it said Alaska. A feature of that canned salmon is that it retains the bones, which are pressure cooked and thus soft. This includes vertebrae. When I winced, my mom would say, “there is a lot of calcium in those bones, they are good for you!” She was not wrong but eating a fish backbone was icky.

A leading source of calcium!

Enter ketchup. With enough catsup, the croquettes became manageable. The brand we had was Brooks Catsup. We never sprang for Heinz (I have a similar story about Zesta vs. Premium saltine crackers), which I knew was better since a neighbor had it and I had tried it. There was a Heinz TV ad back then that showed two paper towels with a dollop of Heinz on one and the “other leading brand” (Hunt’s) on the other. As you might expect, the #2 band seeped water out into the towel, while the Heinz remained steadfast, a sign of its superiority. This is no doubt due to viscosity enhancers and coagulants in the Heinz, but no matter. Heinz is still king, with a 60% share in the US and 82% in the UK.

In looking for a picture of the Brooks bottle I remembered from being a kid, I discovered to my delight that along Route 66, The Brooks Catsup Bottle water tower, south of Collinsville, IL, constructed in 1949. It is trademarked "The World's Largest Catsup Bottle". Much cooler than the catsup itself ever was. We will be driving Route 66 from Chicago to LA soon, and will be looking for it.

A final comment about the Lafayette Ravens. Lafayette was the grade school both I and my older brother Dan attended. It had an auditorium which at the time seemed cavernous, though I am sure if I saw it today, I would marvel at how tiny it was. On the right of the stage was a large portrait of George Washington, on the left, a similar portrait of Marquis de Lafayette. I was tickled when Lafayette had a starring role in the musical, Hamilton. The Ravens were 3^rd and 4^th graders, and we had a particularly good team that year, no thanks to me.  I was average at best, and inexplicably played shortstop, which is usually a skill position. It may have been tied to my inability to track down fly balls. Our success was due mostly to 3 players, a pitcher named Steve (the coach’s son), and two brothers, a year apart, Randy and Terry. As was always my experience playing sports as a young person, there were always a few guys who were just not only better skill-wise, but kind of physically precocious. This does not include the guy in 9th grade football who was actually about 16, having flunked or “been held back” a couple of years in a row.

Anyway, that year we won almost all our games (maybe we did win them all) and in the course of the season-ending tournaments, accrued something like 5 trophies. For me, it was kind of like being the equipment manager for a Super Bowl team, you still get a ring. The irony was that same year, my aforementioned brother, a far superior athlete to me, played catcher for the Southside Cobras. They won big as well, but he ended up with a single trophy that was smaller than any of my 5. He did not hesitate to point out how ridiculous it all was.

Dubiously acquired hardware?

So from molcajete and salsa to ketchup, salmon croquettes, and Little League baseball. I have read one’s memory of the past gets sharper with age, even as the more recent memories are less sharp. Who knows? Or…maybe it’s just because baseball season started again. And like the motto on our Old Guy Softball League shirts - “The older I get, the better I was”. So true.

                                                                                                 Written April; Published 2021, June (sigh)

Dia de Los Muertos 2020

 San Antonio Tlayacapan, Jalisco, Mexico

Original Posada Catrina in Oaxaca (we're told)

Almost exactly 3 years ago, we moved to Mexico with a few suitcases and set up shop in San Antonio Tlayacapan, Jalisco. A couple of days after we arrived, we went to a class at LCS (the Lake Chapala Society, the main “gringo” organization here,) taught by Alfredo Perez Aldana, titled “Mock Death, will you!” We learned the story behind the now famous La Calavera Catrina, a cartoon drawn about 1910 by Jose Guadalupe Posada, poking fun at “cultured” Mexicans who were at the time adopting the culture and style of Europeans. La Catrina, or El Catrin (masculino) means “dandy,” and is not a name per se. One of the attributes of that adoption was to try to lighten the skin, making people look like skeletons. Interestingly, this desire for whiteness was also very prevalent in SE Asia, where girls spend small fortunes on skin whitening creams and avoid the sun at all costs. The irony of white people spending time and vacations trying to be “tanned” is rich.

2017 LCS ofrenda

We also learned in the class about the ofrenda, or offering, a sort of altar to honor family members who have passed and welcome them back as special guests. 

The ofrenda has several key components. Cempasuchitl flowers (marigolds), to guide the visiting souls to the ofrenda. Water and salt for the other-worldly visitors, as well as favorite foods and drinks, often mole and tequila, or pizza and soda for the kids. The sweet, orange-scented bread of the dead, is usual, as well as brightly painted sugar skulls (not edible, really.) Copal incense is lit to carry prayers to the heavens, and of course, photos of the departed. 

We have a slightly-Buddhist version in our Mexican home (wherever we are,) for our moms, with a small bell and incense, and we add the flower petals at this time of year. This year a full marigold plant!

Bali offerings on the steps

The tradition is very similar to Buddhist shrines in family homes, which are permanent, and the Hindu offerings put in front of most all homes and businesses on Bali every morning. There is an entire industry in Bali to make these tiny offerings of food and flowers, about 5” square on banana leaves.

 

Later that day after our class, we went to the plaza in Ajijic and painted our faces in the style of La Catrina, Linda’s more elegantly done than Mark’s, who ended up looking more like a Dali-esque nightmare than a Catrin. We then walked to the cemetery west of town and observed all the families at their loved ones’ graves. Candles, food, tequila, decorations, mariachis it was just like the scenes in Coco (the movie), or rather, the movie captured the look and feel perfectly.

 

Now THAT'S an ofrenda!

That was 2017. In 2018, we spent a month in Oaxaca, renowned for its Day of the Dead celebrations. People travel to Oaxaca from all over the world to observe and participate. The entire town is decorated with calaveras, sitting on ledges, and standing next to store doorways. There are ofrendas everywhere, private ones in homes and large ones in the plaza.

 

We signed on for a night tour of 3 different panteons (cemeteries,) 2 in the Oaxaca city limits, and one outside the city proper in a small town. The tour was interesting as the guide told us the history of each cemetery. The 2 in town were interesting but overrun with tourists (like us!). The one outside of town, however, was a whole different experience. The town was San Juan Etla, and the cemetery was much smaller. The graves themselves looked different, mostly small mounds of earth. The families were there in force, and very gracious to we “intruders.”  

What we love is that it is not just a sad event, there were mariachi bands, and families eating tamales together near their departed members, still involving them in the party. Beautiful. (We think the norteamericanos should adopt a similar practice…all that wasted park space in cemeteries!)

Now it is 2020, and with the coronavirus, Jalisco is currently (once again) in a semi-lockdown. The cemeteries are closed and locked. Families entered earlier in the week with their decorations and candles and left them for their departed family members. Last night, we walked to the one about 100 yards from our current casa, and it was heartbreaking to look through the locked gate and see the adornments, candles flickering, knowing this essential part of Mexican culture was being cancelled because of the virus.

Peeking through the gate

We are using this time to think of those who are no longer here, yet also to celebrate their lives, and how they can be near us in a way, still.  ....our dear ones as well as the many who have lost the battle with a new enemy, Covid. 

 2020 November 1

 

The Sidebar: Man's Inhumanity to Man

NOTE: This is the first installment of what Linda is choosing to call “The Sidebar” – so called because it is a departure from our normal “travelogue” blog posts, more of a "thought" piece, and it will be tracked on the “sidebars” of the blog in the future (and evokes beverages, to us, rather than courtrooms). Some of you may be familiar with our other side post: “Curmudgeon’s Corner” which features venting, mostly from Mark.

Wait for it....

However, that said, this first Sidebar does begin with our recent travels in Asia, specifically Vietnam and Cambodia.

It was December, 2019, and Mark was battling a bad cold / cough that we are pretty sure was NOT Covid. So he decided to stay in the hotel room, while Linda went on the last tour in Vietnam – to the infamous Cu Chi Tunnels. Just the name is enough to send shivers down spines of those who remember them, or even just remember reading about them or seeing them in documentaries about the Vietnam War.

Blurry for obvious reasons

The tunnels were a vast 124 mile network near and in Saigon (today’s Ho Chi Minh City) that were used as Viet Cong storage and supply routes, living quarters, ammunition factories, and hospitals as well as a hidden points from which to attack American forces at night. It was the center of operations for the Tet Offensive in 1968. The tour guide worked very hard to keep the narrative neutral, even for our group – of which I (Linda) was the only American. She talked about how they made the tunnels “Vietnamese-sized” and because they were better able to squat and move around low to the ground, they were better guerilla fighters.

Vent in termite mound

Yes, we could go into the tunnels… and I was thinking that it was a good thing Mark didn’t come on the trip. He hates tight spaces. Particularly tight, dark, humid, hot spaces! I only went through the “short” one, which was plenty for me. The entrances of course were hidden carefully, and there had to be hidden vents for air and for cooking so the Americans could not find them.

 

However, I have to admit the most chilling part of the tour was a demonstration of the various “man traps” that were used throughout the forest and the tunnels themselves to kill the enemy with bamboo and scrap metal, which is what you do when you don’t have a lot of bullets and bombs. It was terrifying as I was imagining my brother, who fought on the ground in Vietnam, having to avoid these simple, yet very effective traps. If they didn’t kill you immediately, the infections from the injuries in the jungles eventually might.

Though estimates vary, the midrange is that 2,450,000 people died between 1955 – 1974, of which “only” 282,000 were Americans. One estimate is that 670,000 civilians were killed in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, but other sources say it was more likely 1,092,000, as many were never accounted for. Very sad and shocking numbers.

 

A few days later, we were in Cambodia. One day was a tour of the “Killing Fields,” and an associated prison (once a school) now the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum in Phnom Penh. I didn’t feel as if I knew enough about these events (other than from the movie,) but I admit to being more than a bit shocked to learn that the others on our tour did not know ANYTHING about this horrific time in Cambodia’s recent history, between 1975-1979. These were not uneducated folks – from Germany, England, Ireland, Belgium, and Scotland. 

 

During the Khmer Rouge regime, only 40 years ago, between 1.7 to 2.5 million people were killed, after confessing their “pre-revolutionary lifestyles and crimes” and being sent to farms to be “re-educated” and dealt with ultimately by bullets, machete, or starvation.

 

Rules at prison S-21

The number of people killed made up about 31% of the total country’s population of ~8 million! And who were the people killed by their own government? Anyone who worked for the prior government, monks, foreigners and anyone who had any contact with any foreigners (including missionaries and relief agencies,) anyone who had been educated (including doctors…talk about shooting yourself in the foot,) and anyone who wore glasses (because you obviously read books and were educated).

 

We visited only one of the 20,000 mass grave sites in Cambodia, and it just hummed with the spirits of the dead. The tower or stupa of Choeung Ek was thoroughly chilling but beautiful. Walking around the former orchard, you could actually see the clothing and bones of victims on the sides of the wooden walkways.

The Genocide Museum in the city was also very disturbing…classrooms turned into cells, and the thousands of pictures of the inmates who were processed, tortured and then sent to the fields. Except for a few…in fact there were 2 elderly gentlemen there signing books that survived by having unique gifts – the ability to fix typewriters and the gift to be able to paint Pol Pot in a flattering way. Ha. They were about the only uplifting points in the day.

The Khmer Rouge wanted to bring everyone to ONE level and to punish the elites, by literally emptying out the entire city of Phnom Penh in a few days and sending all the “intellectual city dwellers” to be “re-educated” on farms.

The question kept spinning in my head -- How can humans do such awful, dreadful things to each other?

 

I imagine many would dismiss these cases as due to them being “Asian” or located in “Third World sh**holes.” But these things have been happening in Europe (WWII) and instigated by Europeans as well (Africa). IS it happening in other places now? Yes. And could similar things happen in other places as well? Yes, of course. Including the USA? It didn’t take much for me to draw a line from the wartime US vs. THEM thinking and the Cambodian campaigns of mistrust of government and the educated …to what we are seeing in US politics right now.

Federal agents teargassing in Portland, July 2020. Noah Berger, AP

Disturbing and chilling, to say the least. 
And ... Halloween and Los Dias de los Muertos just around the corner, along with the US election. 

I was going to end it there, but didn’t want to end on such a depressing note....

I became curious as to where the saying “Man’s inhumanity to man” came from … I was pleasantly surprised to find the source to be none other than Robbie Burns, the national Bard of Scotland! It is from his 1784 poem: Man was made to mourn: A Dirge.

I love how the poem begins…!

Robbie! (Thanks, Pamela!)

When chill November's surly blast
Made fields and forests bare,

And there it is in stanza 7:

Man's inhumanity to man
Makes countless thousands mourn!

"See yonder poor, o'erlabour'd wight,
So abject, mean, and vile,
Who begs a brother of the earth
To give him leave to toil;
And see his lordly fellow-worm
The poor petition spurn,
Unmindful, tho' a weeping wife
And helpless offspring mourn.

So the poem talks about how people don’t care about one another and even worse, scorn each other, how the rich ignore the poor... and the best outcome is death as a release. And that brings me back to thinking about the USA right now.

Sigh.

Robbie Burns dinner in 2014

So much for ending on a less depressing note!

That said, I liked this poem quite a bit, even more than Address to a Haggis! 

Linda -- 20 October 2020

Man was made to mourn: http://www.robertburns.org/works/55.shtml

Address to a Haggis: http://www.robertburns.org/works/147.shtml

 Data source: Wikipedia  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War_casualties  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_Fields

I hear the whistle, but I can’t go, I’m gonna take it down to Mexico

San Antonio Tlayacapan, Jalisco, Mexico

(Note: new version of Blogger seems to have some formatting glitches, sorry)

Into Seattle

Leaving Hawaii with mixed feelings, we boarded a redeye flight on June 26 to return to the mainland, en route to Mexico. The redeye was not our choice, but Alaska changed our nonstop to SJC to a connection through Seattle a few days before the flight. Flying in the times of Covid. Seattle was semi-terrifying as SEA was very crowded and many folks seemed to have only a cursory interest in masks and distancing. So we did our best to dodge the more flagrant violations of polite (and sane) behavior, moving our seats a few times as we waited for our connection.

Just a bit crowded

 

When it was time to board the plane, it was clear we were on a smaller 2 x 2 configuration, again, due to equipment changes by Alaska. When Mark asked the gate agent why our seats had been changed to not have any space between us and others, given Alaska’s notable advertising of space on planes, two to a row, the answer was “if you are a party of two you sit together.” Simple enough, but on a 2x2 plane, this means technically the entire plane could be full if everyone were in a party of two. This was not quite the case, and yet we got pushback from a FA when we moved across the aisle to 2 empty seats so as not to be directly behind 2 people directly in front of us, and 2 more in front of them. Harrumph!

Happy Birthday, John!

We spent 5 days in the SF Bay Area (No quarantine or temperature checks here! Land of the free!) on a mission to have a birthday pizza with son John, reconnect at a distance with some friends, and relocate our small storage unit contents from Dublin to San Jose in order to save $100 per month on the rent. We accomplished the latter with help from John, then headed to a SJ park with 2 pizzas to celebrate as best we could John’s birthday – which was in fact that very day! We had about 10 boxes (out of about 100 stored) that we decided to sort and downsize. After all, if we haven’t needed it in 3 years?! The owner of the motel where we stayed in Palo Alto looked a little surprised when we pulled in with a U-Haul truck, but we explained what we were doing, the place was empty anyway, and he let us use the room next door to sort while we slept in the other. Very kind!

On to Mexico, this time our nonstop was changed to include an LAX connection on the way to Guadalajara without our knowledge until check-in, to a DAY LATER. LAX was as equally concerning as SEA regarding respect for La coRona. We arrived in San Antonio Tlayacapan on July 2, where we spent another 14 days in quarantine at our new rental in El Parque. It was quite easy as our property manager, as well as a friend who lives around the corner, brought us groceries, and neighbors carted our garbage bags down to the dumpsters, thanking us for being “responsible.” At one point one of our kind couriers expressed some surprise that we needed rum…again! New purchasing allocation and recycling strategies were deployed!

 

We were fortunate to catch up with our insular Peninsular friends, Ita, Sarah, Pamela and Bruce, in properly spaced lawn chairs on the front lawn, and then with Tony & Amy, also well-spaced in their backyard. It was so nice to see friends after so long away, and also to drink good wine! We also checked in with our Oakland neighbors, JP and Ann.

Our Supply Chain!

 

After the 2 weeks, we very slowly re-entered the social scene, and at that only barely. We had lunch outdoors with friends Peter and Heather (and Misha the Dog) and spent a brief time at our old watering hole, the Once-and-Future Mama’s Bar. During our absence, there was a rent dispute at the previous location (which was in fact the second incarnation of Mama’s – read on,) so the bar was moved – lock, stock and barrel, literally -- to a new spot, which turned out to be in the original Mama’s Bar location we had first visited in November of 2017. That location was also previously closed, and moved, due to a rent disagreement with a different landlord. To clarify, the “disagreements” tend toward “oh, your business is doing well, so I am going to triple your rent!” The most recent move literally left only the concrete slab and two bathroom walls behind. This was totally fair as the place had been built from the ground up by the bar owners, so it was their property. Ah, Mexico!

We currently limit our days out to a restaurant or bar to about twice per week, with masks and hand sanitizers. (No, he didn't eat that at one sitting!)

 

Mark finally broke down and bought a Weber (charcoal, of course) which is parked on the mirador (rooftop deck) and he is very happy. He is working with a local teaching woodworking shop to get some cedar planks made for his famous salmon. And…then…a Weber smoker turned up on Facebook!  It’s Mark’s Christmas present. And we’re looking forward to smoking a turkey again, which was our tradition in Oakland.

 

Now that Linda is not working (finally!), there is extra time to fill:

 

We have been volunteering as walkers / cuddlers at Lucky Dog again. It has been fun to do, although a little weird with masks. We were always careful to wash our hands / arms between dogs, so not much difference there.

We are in the initial stages of looking into assisting the Feria Maestros del Arte organization here at Lakeside, whose mission for the past 19 years has been to help make a market in Mexico for the Mexican folk artists in about 10 Mexican states. It has the added benefit, beyond sales for the artisans, of keeping folk art traditions alive. With La coRona, this year’s big in-person fair in November will likely not happen, so we are helping the people who run it think through options and also start to build an online platform that could eventually reach NOB. (North of Border)

A great ceramic artist; we may have to get the Mermaids!

We are also spending a couple hours a week at the Recycling Center – which is a new process in this area. It’s pretty interesting to see / smell everyone’s garbage as we sort out the different types! (Rinse / wash your bottles and jars out, folks!) They can only find buyers for certain materials, which change frequently, and all items need to be sorted prior to sending them out. In addition, shrink-wrapped labels need to be removed. It’s very interesting to be on the “ground floor” of such an effort. And we’ve only seen a couple of cucarachas, shockingly!

This from 2019 w/o masks

 

Mark was challenged by the “mom” of Pancho Villa, the African gray parrot, to work on a burning mosquito repellent solution using spent coffee grounds. Not sure what Xanthan gum really has to do with it, but…it something for Mark to muddle about.

Planting things: the basil we planted initially was going great guns, but suddenly all turned weird colors with spots, so now we are thinking replant. Mark has gotten enamored of starting from seed various chili pepper plants (tabasco, piquin) particularly since the gardener at our friends’ house pulled them out!!

We are planning to stay put in Mexico for a while, as things are looking stable here for now. But we will be moving to another casa in this development in December, as the owner of our current place is probably coming down. We’re looking forward to another point of view, but not to moving all the stuff we’ve somehow accumulated. It’s a shock after living out of a carry-on bag for 5 months while we travelled Asia!

Here's to health and sanity for the rest of 2020!

2020 June 27 – September 21