From Xico

Why bother with science?

It's Friday.  First, we took two dogs on one walk and the other three on another.  Rita who is 17 1/2 years old had been languishing without a walk for a couple of weeks.  She looks old now with her fur without luster and seeming to grow in mats, But she is still cheerful and eager and loyal.  We took Jocko, too, and just went up as far as the park and walked around it and then went back the way we'd come.  Both dogs seemed satisfied.

The next walk with Hank, Happy and Lil Guy was longer.  The neighbors were surprised to see us a second time.  It was hot and dusty.  Hank got in two swims and the other two wet their feet in the rio where it crosses the road and Paul Barber's property.  Paul is the English gardener who is a naturalized Mexican.  He was clearing an area up near the road for more garden space.  

I heard thunder.  I hate being outside in thunder.  It's one of the few things that still strikes fear in me.  I don't mind it if I'm inside.  I like storms as long as I'm inside.  

As we turned to retrace our steps home, the heat seemed to reach a peak.  The air was still.  Dark clouds gathered as if at a starting gate, waiting for some signal.  There was a puff of wind, just a puff to stir the leaves.  Clouds poured down from Cofre de Perote into the valley just beyond us.  Suddenly leaves whipped against each other in a strong gust. The sky blackened, ominous.  We quickened our steps back into the village.  But we got no rain then or later that night.

In and around our Colonia people still use horses and mules for transporting crops and firewood and long poles and themselves. We saw quite a number of horses today, some with dogs running along side.  One had a boy and a load of grass for forage on its back.  The boy looked as if he had fallen asleep.  Maybe he had.  He was wearing shocking pink rubber shoes.  Those rubber shoes are quite popular and quite useful for working and walking on dirt that turns quickly to mud when it does rain.

There are lots of kids in our neighborhood.  I wish our grandchildren would come and stay long enough to make friends with some of them and learn a bit of Spanish.  When we walk by with our dogs, a lot of them call out, "Hello!" in English and ask us a bunch of questions. "How do you say my name in English," or "Which dog is Jocko?"  Some of the kids and I have developed extravagant arm motions for greetings.  They can go on for awhile, kind of as if they were choreographed.

Life spills onto the street. Three men sit on chairs under an overhang and gossip, I imagine.  One of them doesn't think we understand any Spanish at all and gestures to us without making a sound.  I thought that he might perhaps be mute, but when I passed closer to him and his friends, I could here him clearly.  A group of kids, boys and girls of different ages suddenly form into street soccer teams.  Dogs weave in and out and bark at our dogs menacingly but don't come close.  A line of people waits outside the community DIF store waiting for the free fluorescent bulbs the electric company is giving out if you bring a regular, working old fashioned one and two paid receipts from bills.  A couple of old women pass by, piles of neatly arranged leña, firewood, on their heads. One of our neighbors swirls past on his motorcycle: he is letting his younger brother sit in front and drive it. Two or three people clip-clop on horseback. A young woman trudges past with bags from the supermarket, Chedraui, though she probably bought her stuff here in the Colonia. A burro is tied up at someone's front door.  A couple wave.  They sit and watch their little black dog play with a rag or something similar. If it's not raining, if it's not very cold, if it's not late at night, the streets are busy.  A guy with a cart attached to the front of a bike attracts people with the smell of the guisado cooking in a pot in the cart.  Bottles of salsa line the rim. People lean in doorways and look out of windows, their elbows resting on the sills. We reach our gate and bring the dogs inside.

 

 

Hearts and Minds

The past couple of weeks have been interesting.  Here's how they went.  I was feeling a bit more breathless and tired than usual. Old-lady blues, I thought.  But without knowing quite why, I made an appointment with the doctor for a week ago last Thursday.  In fact, when I went in to the appointment, I said I probably shouldn't have made one (700 pesos down the drain, I thought to myself but didn't say out loud).  I started to describe my symptoms.  I was putting myself to sleep.  At one point, Dr. Huesca said "I am going to recommend these tests."  One was for a urinalysis, one was for bloodwork, one was for a stress test, one was for an evaluation by an ear specialist.  I put them in my purse and decided to forget about them for awhile.  Ho hum.  

On Saturday, we had planned to visit a very eccentric friend who was prone to dramatic pronouncements and flourishes.  A tall, baggy man with a kind of bloodhound face, he had been kicked out of the room he rented from a family in Coatepec because he had had several falls and at least one episode of wandering and babbling and he refused to accept that he couldn't live alone any longer.  The family had been loyal to him beyond all reasonableness and finally decided they couldn't take care of such problems.

I'm sure David thought he was important and completely undervalued. Maybe in his mind he stood apart from and above the rest of us. Paradoxically, he really struggled with his sense of  himself, and with his failure to live up to his ideals. I was not the most sympathetic friend he had.  I would decide, with some frequency that it was time to tell him what I thought of his rambling writings. Then I would feel I had been too harsh, and I would backtrack.  He would respond with regal graciousness saying that I shouldn't worry, he knew I was moody.  He'd say I was feisty and that he only wished he could see more of my husband, our pets and me.  

I needn't have worried. He had many admirers, most of whom he communicated with on the internet. He was a prolific contributor to Facebook and wrote a multitude of emails to a list of friends and acquaintances who knew him, perhaps not well.  He spilled his heart and head out, often repetitively, as if absorbed repeatedly in rituals he couldn't avoid or recognize in his postings.  His style was consistently nineteenth-century grandiose.  Some of his expressions were puzzling, not to say intriguing, one of his favorite words.  He would write "intriguing" in some subject headings, "please read carefully" or "wistfully significant" in others. Sometimes he would trumpet the status of his health as if he were a head of state. He often referred to us, his audience, as dear hearts and gentle readers.  His struggle with life he told us he blamed on strokes he had had a number of years ago.  He said that he had been a published writer in the 60s and 70s and early 80s. Now at 69 he lived alone in a room filled with books and papers and a computer someone had given him. He told us he spent hours and hours of his time when he wasn't on Facebook or creating emails writing and rewriting and rewriting again pieces most of us never saw.  He wanted, he said, to get his work published soon so that he could pay back the debts he owed to friends. He spent the past five years working on his writings, which Babs, a professional editor, loyally typed up for him all the while despairing of his chances to have anyone accept his work. 

David was, to say the least, ambivalent about what he referred to as allopathic medicine.  This fell into the collection of practices and ideas he considered bourgeois and distasteful and responsible for the decay of society. He also frequently railed against government, corporations, consumerism, science and established religion. He often reminded us that he was both extremely conservative and extremely liberal and bemoaned the fact that people with extreme right and left wing ideas weren't taken more seriously..  His medical care was a hodgepodge of allopathic, traditional, holistic, whatever, medicine, and he did not necessarily follow through.  He broke his ankle some months ago, however, and did, I believe, stick with the huesero, who treated him, and he recovered.  Hueseros, by the way, are roughly equivalent to chiropractors but more truly bone specialists who do not talk about manipulation as a cure for non-bone diseases.  Hueseros in the past, at least, inherited their positions from their fathers.  I've seen them be quite effective.

 Before his solitary existence, he had lived with a woman in Xalapa who had been a successful caterer in San Miguel.  They had what appeared to be a mutually satisfying relationship with each other and a number of cats, a dog named Beethoven and a parrot.  When she died, David began his existence as someone clearly in need of the kindness of strangers and friends.  He lived first with a Mexican family at the edge of Coatepec, practically in the country.  He had his own room and apparently taught some English to the children in the family.  I don't remember why he moved from there, but then he found himself living with the family I mentioned which was enormously kind and generous.  Ultimately, and recently he had to move from there, as I said,  because he absolutely refused to live with a roommate or an assistant which he clearly needed. He had had an increasing number of falls and faints and seizure-like episodes and had begun to, at times, wander from his room uttering what seemed psychotic nonsense.The family was frightened.

So on this particular Saturday, the 2nd of May, a couple of days after my own doctor visit, David had just moved to another room that a friend of a friend had found for him.  It was in a row of rooms along a wide passageway that people rented, a bit shabby, but cozy and pretty much what David needed and felt comfortable in.  Babs, the most incredible woman I know, had helped him move, supervised getting the stuff he'd left behind, and made sure other people would come and visit him.   Jim and I were lined up for this particular Saturday morning.

We walked down the passageway towards his room and noticed that the people who worked there were standing around looking stern. I knew there was a good chance he would be kicked out again.  The owners had insisted that David have someone with him in his room all the time because he had had some episodes already.  Babs's friend Jose Luis, truly Babs's right-hand man, had dug up a relative to spend the night and Babs had arrived early so this relative could leave.  David had paid for a month in the room, but it wasn't clear he'd be able to stay that long.  We were all thinking of what to do with him, where he could go.  

As we approached his room, Babs came out into the passage looking distraught.  In a loud whisper, she said, "I think he's dead."  "What?"  "I think he's dead."

And indeed he was.  Jim and I went into the room. David was sitting sprawled comfortably in an easy chair.  I went up to him.  His skin was starting to cool, there was no breath in him.  His hands, soft and graceful with their tapered fingers, lay in his lap.  

"We were talking," Babs, extremely distressed, whispered,  "He said something like he was tired and he took three breaths and then, nothing."  

Jose Luis called the Red Cross.  They came and agreed that he was dead.  By that time his skin had become pallid and the bruises from his many falls stood out shockingly.  The Red Cross paramedics said he probably died of hemorrhaging from one or more of his head injuries.  

We learned that we had to get a doctor to sign off on his death.  The trusty Jose Luis took off to search for one.  What could we do while we waited?  Babs, James and I went down to the little restaurant in the passageway for a cup of coffee.  It was good coffee.  The cook put a plate of pan dulce on the table, and we ate some.  It was strange, the three of us sitting and chatting as if all that had happened was that we'd met for coffee.  

The doctor arrived, a chunky, healthy looking man in a football shirt.  We took him to David's room. Someone had covered David with a sheet, put a small vase of flowers on the table next to him, lit a candle there.  The doctor probably poked and prodded a bit more than was necessary to confirm David was dead, certainly enough to sign the death. certificate.  He said David died of a heart attack.  Babs mentioned what the Red Cross people had said.  The doctor said, "This is a heart attack," leaving no space for contradiction. David's mouth hung open.  The doctor wanted it closed.  He instructed Jose Luis to tear a piece from the sheet that had covered him.  Jose Luis tried several times to tie it around David's face. His mouth kept falling open.  Finally he succeeded so that David sat with what looked like a big bow on the top of his head.  The doctor said it was necessary to prevent bodily fluids from draining out when he was moved.  David would stiffen soon, he added, and then no one would be able to close his mouth.

Babs and Jose Luis continued with all the sad tasks of dealing with David's death.  He had told everyone in a post that he wanted to be cremated.  It didn't appear, however, that he thought he was going to die in the near future.  Babs and Jose Luis made all the arrangements for this to happen and at 5:30 that evening, David became ash.  

And what does this all have to do with my doctor's appointments and lab tests?  Obviously the tests took on more importance than I'd given them at first.  On Monday I called and made an appointment for the stress test the next day.  On Monday I went to the lab.  And I made an appointment for the ear exam.  I felt a little bit as if I was following David's example because I kept sending one email at a time to my doctor reporting one result in each.  Finally James said I needed to make an appointment, so finally I did, for Thursday.  After all that's what the doctor had ordered.  The doctor had, on Thursday sent me an email saying he didn't just want my results dribbled out: he needed to see me.  I had never sensed annoyance in him before.  I ended up going back to see the cardiologo  on Friday afternoon, and lo and behold, went to the hospital for angioplasty on Saturday, early in the morning.

My news was the better than I expected. My arteries were clear, not caked with plaque.  My problem is that I have two kinks like those in a garden hose.  They act the way plaque does, but with medicine they can relax.

David, for all my grumbling about him, made his way into my heart.  I like him there.

 

China's Voracious Appetite Is Devouring Mexico's Crafts

In at least two important areas Mexico has seemingly managed to put the kibosh on China's efforts here. The first was the cancellation of its winning bid to build high spped rail here.The second was shutting down the Dragon Mart development near Cancún because of serious environmental damage.

But China has many tentacles.  Now China is overwhelming Mexico's artesanal production.  With Chinese junk, of course.  Today's La Jornada quotes Socorro Oropeza the director of the Unión Nacional de Productores Artesanales Coyolxauhqui which claims 15000 members as saying "We [artesans] are being extinguished" by the cheap Chinese imports. Although Mexican artesans have won international prizes, most live on the edge of poverty, without land. Rodrigo Gutiérrex from the indigenous community of El Rosario in Jalisco said that artesans had stopped making ceramics because of Chinese "junk".  Instead, almost all the artesans in his area collect plastic bottles for which they get 12 pesos a kilo.  (That would be empty plastic bottles.)

As far as I know, there is no official national government support for Mexican craftsmen.  Here in our area, there is a government store, but I don't know about anything else.  I do know we still buy lovely pots and casseroles and dishes from Puebla and our area.  But tourists are the big market.  Tell any you see to BUY MEXICAN.

 

Related articles

Mexico cancels high-speed rail projects due to budget cuts

Mexico Halts Chinese Expo Center Construction

I really, really do not like Hillary Clinton

At a recent interventional cardiologist meeting recently Hillary gave her medical talking points.

The Fee-for-Service Debate

Edward Kulich, MD: "The political atmosphere regarding healthcare falls short in its attempt for a 'one-size-fits-all' approach. Hillary Clinton addressed a room full of interventional cardiologists, with an average salary of $400,000, while not addressing a room full of pediatricians, who earn, on average, $130,000. However, the medical school debt is the same for specialists and primary care doctors -- approaching $200,000."

Brian Flyer, MD: "Her comments suggest how out of touch she really is with healthcare. The problem with government intervention, is that they equate healthcare with insurance coverage. They miss the crux of the system, which is the doctor-patient relationship. The choices many specialists make to get by is really gaming the system. They make so little for their cognitive efforts, that they end up ordering unnecessary tests."

As I've said many times, here in Mexico we have fee for service medical care and doctors who do, when necessary, make home visits.  If we come to need sophisticated cancer treatment which really, really would improve our quality of life and not leave us lying on a hospital bed, then we might go to one of the cancer hospitals in the Land of the Free (my friend Susan's name for it).  

I really really really hope that Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, even Joe Biden can push Hillary out of running.  She hasn't shown any indication of using her time to really learn about the issues, how people feel about them, their history.  Her understanding of foreign places, especially Mexico which is saddled with the Merida Initiative remains limited to that which high placed diplomats and officials give her.  

Five Dogs Plus Me

We now have five dogs living at our house.  Too many!  The afghan is just recuperating here and will go home to his family down the street soon.  We take them all for walks together.

 

A Few Photos of Photos at Caftan Rojo

The final curtain has fallen.  Susan Trigg and Jim's photo exposition is over.  I never quite managed to get there at the same time as my camera did (I don't have a smartphone) and so never got to take orderly pictures.  But below are a few of Jim's shots seen through my camera as we were taking everything down, and also a few shots of Caftán Rojo, the exhibition space/art school where the show was held.  Any fuzziness in the shots is my fault.  Jim's photos were beautiful and sharp.  The woman who printed them, Mariana del Campo, gave them rich, velvety color.  Remember, if you click on them, you can get bigger (but not clearer) images.

 

 

A grasshopper hugging a blade of grass.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A mostly blue moth

 

 

 

 

 

A Giant Beetle

 

 

 

A ladybug

 

 

 

 

 

I hope I am not doing too much of an injustice to this photo by putting up my inadequate version.  It was taken at the very top of Cofre de Perote with fog swirling around.  The rails lead back to the ladder on which you go down the rocky outcropping which crowns the mountain.

 

 

 

 

 

Baby hummingbirds in their nest.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Covered patio at Caftán Rojo.  Art students hang out during their break.  One girl is an incredibly hoola-hooper.  She seems to practice for hours.

 

 

 

 

 

The courtyard at Caftán Rojo.

Jim and Susan worked hard putting the exhibit together and hanging it. And they took it down so fast!

 

Dogs and other stuff

Although the house and our lives seemed strangely muted after Jocko's death, we had started to like the idea of having only three dogs, none of whom was big.  Jocko wasn't loud or destructive.  He was loving and well-behaved, very appealing, endearing.  Throughout his life with us, he never quite seemed to be a real dog: more some kind of creature maybe from another planet or dreamed up in someone's imagination. He did learn some dog skills from our other three. He mastered the art of begging: He'd sit quietly, ears forward, eyes huge and liquid.  Irresistible.  He learned to bark when the other dogs did, his voice low and husky.  Boy, do we miss him! But we had, we thought, actually decided three was better than four. Anyway there was no substitute for Jocko.

Then last Monday morning the phone rang.

 I´m sure you've guessed.  A friend had rescued a dog who'd been wandering, lost, up and down the road to Xico.  He and his wife couldn't keep him. He was looking for someone who could, as well as trying to find out if anyone had lost this muy amable creature.  Well.  With Jim's prompting, not so subtle, either, I said we couldn't.  And I asked what kind of dog he was.  A slightly dark-haired golden retriever type, incredibly affectionate, he said.  I asked our friend to call us back to let us know if he'd had any luck.  When I hung up, Jim, much to my surprise, said well maybe we could think about it.  But we can't take him unless we meet him first and like him.  I said something inane like well, change keeps our minds working better. What's life without a little chaos?

So we brought this lovely beast home.  He's a stocky dog, heavy and strong but not particularly tall. And indeed, incredibly affectionate and loveable.  And after a couple of noisy days when Daisy and Happy loudly voiced their objections to him every time he got close to Jim and me, things seem to have settled down. I don't quite know why, but we named him Hank.  I think we should spell it Jank as this is Mexico.  H(J)ank is strictly a Spanish language dog, but he has a big vocabulary and was obviously taught well.   As you can imagine, he loves walks. Below are some pictures from today's walk.       

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hank in front, Rita and Happy in back.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Good Ole Rita Bita

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Daisy jumping off a rock.  She makes us nervous when she does this.  Dachsunds are notorious for having back problems.  We hope all her exercise keeps her back strong.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jim and Hank in the river near the new bridge.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Daisy and Hank walking back to the car.

We took Hank and Daisy, too, to see the new veterinarians, husband and wife, in Xico last week, a checkúp for Hank and a parasite check for Daisy.  They are an interesting couple, from DF, spent five years studying in Spain. I guess you could say they practice integrated pet management, making use of medical treatments when necessary and supporting them with natural stuff, some of which they make themselves.  A bird cage hangs outside the office door with a sign saying that a free bird lives in it.  And guess what, it is indeed an open cage and the bird lives in it and comes and goes at will. 

**********************

We have been having daily rain.  Rainy season isn't supposed to start till June.  It's hard to complain, though, because instead of the usual dust and heat of May, things are gloriously lush already.

Today is Mother's Day in Mexico.  My friend Doña Gloria brought me flowers and a delicious and very fattening cake for the occasion. A lovely surprise!  Graciela and Claudia came and wished me Happy Mother's Day last night.  We had just come back from our walk. We mentioned to her that the road up to Xico was packed with traffic.   Doña Gloria said people were going to the Pantheon, the Xico cemetery, to put flowers on graves of mothers who'd died.

We went to the city of Veracruz twice last week, the first time so Jim could have a cataract removed and the next day to have the results checked on. Veracruz is indeed a hot place, but it is seductive, too, with brilliantly colored flowers and strange plants.  It's dreary going into Veracruz, though, with what seem like miles and miles of dreary small stores selling car parts and junk and beauty shop supplies and so on tumbled together on barren blocks.  There are housing developments, rows of tiny attached units.  And then there are the rich who smile out of the pages of glossy society magazines and sit in the doctor's waiting room in expensive jeans and very high heels.

The setting for Jim's surgery was a blank new building in Boca del Rio, a place I can't quite figure out.  The tiny city is stark and modern, with fancy hotels and restaurants and a world trade center in the midst of unfinished streets and buildings.  It is contiguous with the city of Veracruz, sitting more or less south and east of it, and bounded on its east side by the Gulf.  An anonymous building with only a number on it housed the doctor's surgery suite.  It seems that Boca del Rio is actually the municipality of which Veracruz is a part, not the other way around.

The doctor's office is in a small cylindrical medical office building in a neighborhood of doctors and clinics and very pleasant houses.  The air is heavy and fragrant.  We found a cafe which we've been to twice.  They have, by the way, excellent coffee in Veracruz. People talk with each other in much louder voices than they do in the Greater Xico Metroplex.  Voluble.  They do inthe doctor's waiting room and the bus station and on the street, too.

Well, I'm ending this right here.  Somehow time flew. It's way past my bedtime.

A Demonstration in Our Neighborhood

The buses in our area are privately owned but supposedly regulated by the government of the state.  Recently Autobuses Excelsior had planned to raise fares from Xico to points in the mountains west of Xico, heading into Cofre de Perote  and away from Xalapa. Excelsior is the only company covering those routes.  An agreement had been reached between the government, the Movimiento Social Campesino de las Faldas del Cofre de Perote and Excelsior to establish rates considerably lower than what the company wanted: the highest fare would be 25 pesos (about $1.80) instead of the 40 pesos (about $3.00) Excelsior was planning.  

When there was no evidence that this agreement would be enforced, campesinos decided to demonstrate by closing the road between Coatepec and Xico. They included a demand that another bus line be able to provide services at a lower rate to encourage competition.The routes they were concerned about serve a largely rural population of farmers and small shopkeepers and herders, not rich people by any stretch, so even the fare of 25 pesos is steep. An average minimum wage for the area might be at best around 90 pesos a day, or $6.79.  It is lower than that for the many people who work in the informal economy.

Demonstrators show their banner and posters in the photo above.

Jim and I became aware of the demonstration because we had to drive the very definitely back road to Coatepec on one of the days. The demonstrators let emergency vehicles through in case you were worried. And after two days, they did get attention and the lower rates they sought. 

On this map the red marker indicates Matlalapa, close to the end of the bus line.Los Pocitos is a little further. You can tell the roads aren't exactly major.

The demonstrators were peaceful, but as someone noted, most of the campesinos wore their machetes. They always do.  If you look closely, you may be able to spot one in the photo below:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What we do when we don't do much

MONDAY, January 6  I have resolved to write something for twenty minutes a day.  I have to tell you that the two things I identify myself most with are reading and writing.  I like to do a lot of other stuff, too, but these two top the list.  Reading is way ahead of writing.  Reading is EASY, writing is HARD, at least a lot of the time.  This bit I’m scribbling now is easy.  It’s essentially, what do they call it, not stream of consciousness.  Nah.  This is more like automatic writing: whatever comes to mind, put it down.

So not much is coming to mind at the moment.  Well, that’s not true.  What first comes to mind is that we’ve had no internet for three and a half days, let alone telephone and television, all provided by Megacable.  This is the first time we’ve had any significant problem with Megacable.  I think the problems have been amplified by the fact that each time we’ve called or gone to the office, the clerk has said the equivalent of the check’s in the mail.  What if, instead, she’d said, we'll try to have someone at your house on Monday, which is today, in the afternoon? Nah, that wouldn't have worked either.  Monday, we'd have screeched, or not screeched because we would have tried to be polite.  You don't think it could be sooner than Monday? The cable guy who is not Jim Carrey and who speaks Spanish probably exclusively which is not a problem, just a probable statement of fact, came, probably or possibly, while we were in Coatepec on line at the Megacable office (or in line as people not from the Northeast say).  When we returned home, our cleaning person told us someone had come to the door and told her the cable guy had come, and had gone back to Coatepec for some cable.

We are still not placing any bets on having stuff back in service tonight.  As we discovered as we attempted to go to  Coatepec to make our daily inquiry about our service, there is a manifestación, a demonstration, on the main road, the only easy (and it is very easy) route, not only to Coatepec but also to Xalapa and other points in between. The alternate route is a dirt road, recently graded, but very muddy and slithery and twisty and rocky.

Manifestaciones blocking important roads are very common in Mexico, and the right to have them is guaranteed in the Constitution.  At least until recently, nothing could interfere with them. Nada. Recently, after endless teachers’ demonstrations tied up vital spaces in Mexico City’s highway network including a very main avenue in the city and main access to the airport, I think some changes were made to put limits on the right to endless free speech which unfortunately doesn’t always have the impact the demonstrators hope for.  Jim suggested that in our area, one of the reasons manifestaciónes don’t always have significant impact is that there isn’t always enough publicity.  All we drivers know is that the road is blocked again. Sometimes people in the Colonia know what it’s about, sometimes not.  If it’s not a big manifestación, sometimes you can make your way to the start of it, like the time demonstrators blocked the crucero, the intersection where the road turns left to the very interesting town of  Teocelo and right to our colonia.  The demonstrators were protesting the absolutely horrific state that critical road to Teocel had fallen into. I mean talk about potholes, the pavement interfered with the potholes, not the other way around.  And indeed, THAT manifestación seems to have been successful as well as to have garnered quite a bit of justified sympathy.   Repairs have actually begun. Often there is reason to have sympathy with the manifestacion participants, though not for me anyway with the corrupt teachers' union.  I do share many of the concerns with the education law, but that's another blog post that I may or may not get to.  I just have to add that the roads are in terrible shape because we had extraordinarily heavy and lasting rains during the rainy season.

TUESDAY, January 7. Next daily twenty minutes.  Back to my Opening Paragraph. I'm not referring to the issue of automatic writing.  I'm referring to the absence of internet and television and coming in third, the telephone. 

Until recently I hardly watched television.  Jim would put on a movie at night and ask me if I wanted to watch it.  I would sit for few minutes and start getting antsy remembering that I was at a tense point in my latest Scandinavian mystery. I eat up Scandinavian mysteries.  I have no idea why. They are often depressing, and the weather in them is not generally inspiring.  It's usually not even beautifully snowy, more often rainy with harsh winds blowing.

Then one day a few months ago a friend of ours whose opinion I tend to hold in high regard asked if we'd seen Breaking Bad. I was shocked. Uh, no.  Why would we watch a series about a bunch of suburbanites who somehow get involved in selling speed? Our friend smiled knowingly.  I´m an addict, she confessed.  I watched the whole first season in one sitting. Then another friend whom I never would have dreamed would get caught up in Such a Thing confessed to a Breaking Bad addiction. She and her husband had the excuse that it was set in Albuquerque where they had lived for quite a few years.

So we renewed our subscription to Netflix (which we'd intended to do anyway) and with trepidation and certainty that we wouldn't like it got into S1 E1 of Breaking Bad. That evening we watched four episodes.

Fortunately last Friday when our cable connection failed, we had watched all 54 episodes available on Netflix and were waiting anxiously for the last season to show up.  There was no satisfactory substitute so I had retreated from TV and returned to Scandinavia, this time Finland.

But I craved the internet. I am not an addict. I swear.  I had only given in to the craving once, yesterday, Monday, when we stopped at an internet cafe in Coatepec and where I realized to my despair that I didn't remember my gmail password.

Since the information about the cable guy had been kind of blurry, I went to my neighbor's to check what the cable guy had actually said, and SHE had never seen him. She did, however, hear me cough and recommended that I try hoja santa leaves on my chest.  She told me what to do.  I went home and tried heating the leaves, but they shriveled up.  I went back. My neighbor explained more exactly what to do and gave me some replacement leaves.  And then one of the kids who plays on the block told me he'd only seen the Megacable guy up the street, not near our house.  Once again Jim and I comforted each other while being sure it would be a long time, considering the manifestacion in progress making driving slow at best, and what cable guy would contend with THAT? 

So Jim and I were sitting around trying to comfort ourselves that we could hone other skills, do other stuff.  We could, we could….And in fact we DO do a lot without the internet(because we’re not really addicts, we only need maintenance doses, but you know there’s that maintenance dose….)

Well, as you can see if you’re reading this, we did get our service back.

The cable guy showed up about 1:30.  He said he just had to turn on the connection.  Huh?  You mean fix the wire?  No, he said, turn on the connection.  Huh? He said when someone doesn’t pay the bill for a while a cable guy comes out and turns off the connection.  But we PAID our bill we huffed (I mean puffed) indignantly.  They realized that, he said, and that’s why I’m turning on the connection.  He climbed up the pole which is outside our on the corner. Maybe someone further down the line hadn’t paid.  Whatever. We practically threw ourselves at his feet in gratitude.  Let’s go inside and make sure your internet works he said IN ENGLISH.  You speak English? Yeah. He smiled. He spoke fluent English and our internet was back.  So not all cable guys in our area speak only Spanish after all.  I bet more people around here speak English than an equivalent bunch of people in maybe St. Louis speak Spanish.  Guess why.

 

Yoga and Jesus

There I was in my yoga class lying with my heels together, yanked as close as I could get them to my groin with a strap which is olive drab and makes me think of  military training camp equipment) with my eyes closed, a cloth covering them, trying hard to relax  when all of a sudden the room shook (I swear) with the explosion of a bottle rocket, a cohete, which sounded like a bomb exploding right outside the front door.  "Holy cow," I gasped (I still say holy cow),"What was that?" I half sat up (I couldn't sit all the way with my feet strapped).   The other student and Luana, the instructor lay like corpses. Another explosion. I managed to keep my mouth shut.  A long pause, long enough that I actually relaxed and  then, just as my back sank onto the floor, the biggest boom of all.  "Jesus Christ," the name burst full-force out of my mouth.  You don't hear that a lot here, though you hear all kinds of other profanities.  Anyway, it was loud enough to rouse my fellow students.  Luanna looked at me blankly. "Are you all right?"

"Didn't you hear that?"  

"What?" I swear she said "what."

She and the other student were now sitting up.  I was at a disadvantage, only able to get half-up with my hands supporting me and my heels still practically tickling my crotch.  

"That explosion. It sounded like a huge cohete right in front of your door!"

"Aren't you used to them yet?"

I had to assert my longevity in Mexico.Of course I was used to the cohetes.  "Well, yeah, but not right outside my front door!"

My front door is behind a wall.  Luana's is right on the sidewalk of the main street of Xico.  As she said, she hears them all the time.  Every church has a patron saint, the calendar is filled with holy days.  The class ended and we stepped outside onto the sidewalk to see a procession filling the street, a cohort of masked clowns twirling in their wide-legged costumes, their tall, conical hats swaying, their glittery noisemakers crackling rhythmically. Then came a seated Jesus high above us on a litter borne by eight or ten men and, finally, a large mariachi band. 

 

When we first came to Xico years ago, such processions were a bit more ragged, but with the growth of tourism and the consequent attention, they've gotten much more polished.  Maybe it's a good thing.

Which brings me back to Luana's yoga classes.  I have to mention again that she is a wonderful teacher of the Iyengar branch of Hatha yoga.  If you live in the greater Xico metroplex, you should give her classes a try. She is at Hidalgo 100 in Xico, her cell phone is 228 111 7647.  You can find her at facebook at Yogatlán.  Classes are on Monday and Thursday from 7:00 to 8:30 pm, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday from 9:00 to 10:30 in the morning.