El Ojo del Lago - August 2018

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z D I R EC T O R Y z PUBLISHER

Richard Tingen

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Alejandro Grattan-DomĂ­nguez Tel: (01376) 765 3676, 765 2877 Fax: (01376) 765 3528 Associate Publisher David Tingen Graphic Design Roberto C. Rojas Diana Parra Morales

Index...

FEATURE ARTICLES

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COVER STORY

0DUN 6FRQFH ZULWHV DERXW WKH KXJH LQÀXHQFH WKH ERRN Charlotte’s Web has had on children all over the world, and how its author E.B. :KLWH DOVR WHDPHG XS ZLWK KLV IRUPHU FROOHJH SURIHVVRU :LOOLDP Strunk, to write The Elements of Style D ERRN DOPRVW DV LPSRUWDQW to writers as Web is to children.

10 POETRY Robert Taylor’s writes about what was once his best friend, and if you guessed that it was a dog, you must be dog-lover yourself.

Associate Editor Victoria Schmidt Art Critic / Contributing Editor Rob Mohr Theater Critic Michael Warren

Roving Correspondent Dr. Lorin Swinehart Sales Manager Bruce Fraser Carmene Berner 2ႈFH 6HFUHWDU\ Rocio Madrigal ADVERTISING OFFICE Av. Hidalgo # 223, Chapala Mon. thru Fri. 9am - 5pm Sat. 9am - 1pm Tel. 01 (376) 765 2877, 765 3676 Fax 01 (376) 765 3528

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26 REMINISCENCES Margaret Ann Porter remembers Tom Faloon, a long-time Lakeside resident whose gift for interior decorating graced many local homes, and whose compassionate nature helped many of the owners of those homes.

38 PROFILE Sandy Olson takes a look at the life and career of local writer/poet Mel Goldberg, whose special talent is composing Haikus, an esoteric form of Japanese poetry. LAKESIDE LIVING

46 WILDLIFE Dr. Lorin Swinehart goes after those would-be human beings who engage LQ FUXHOW\ WR DQLPDOV DOO LQ WKH QDPH RI IXQ DQG SUR¿W 42 MEXICAN MYTHOLOGY Susa Silvermarie’s poem is about La Llorona, who (given the situation at the Texas-Mexico border) has plenty these days about which to cry.

Send all correspondence, subscriptions or advertising to: El Ojo del Lago http://www.chapala.com ojodellago@prodigy.net.mx Ave. Hidalgo 223 (or Apartado 279), 45900 Chapala, Jalisco Tels.: (376) 765 3676, Fax 765 3528 PRINTING: El Debate El Ojo del Lago aparece los primeros cinco dĂ­as de cada mes. (Distributed over WKH ÂżUVW ÂżYH GD\V RI HDFK PRQWK) &HUWLÂżFDGR GH /LFLWXG GH 7tWXOR &HUWLÂżFDGR GH /LFLWXG GH &RQWHQLGR Reserva al TĂ­tulo de Derechos de Autor 04-2011-103110024300-102 Control 14301. Permisos otorgados por la SecretarĂ­a de GobernaciĂłn (EXP. 1/432 “88â€?/5651 de 2 de junio de 1993) y SEP (Reserva 171.94 control 14301) del 15 de enero de 1994. DistribuciĂłn: Hidalgo 223 Chapala, Jalisco, MĂŠxico. All contents are fully protected by copyright and may not be reproduced without the written consent of El Ojo del Lago. Opinions expressed E\ WKH DXWKRUV GR QRW QHFHVVDULO\ UHĂ€HFW WKH views of the Publisher or the Editor, nor are we responsible for the claims made by our advertisers. We welcome letters, which should include name, address and telephone number.

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Special Events Editor Sandy Olson

Book Review Panel Margaret Van Every Margaret Porter Clare Gearhart

COVER STORY

VOLUME 34 NUMBER 12

El Ojo del Lago / August 2018

COLUMNS THIS MONTH 6

Editor’s Page

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Saw you in the Ojo

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COLUMNIST

Editor’s Page %\ $OHMDQGUR *UDWWDQ 'RPLQJXH] There is something rotten in Helsinki

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orrowing from S h a k e s p e a r e ’s Hamlet (who and what better to cadge from?), the reviews are in regarding President Trump’s recent performance in Moscow and they are devastating, many coming from members of his own political party, to wit: Sen. John McCain, (R): “No American president has ever debased himself more abjectly before a tyrant.” Mitt Romney, (R)-Former Republican Nominee for President: “A disgraceful performance.” William Brennan (R) and former head of the CIA: “Nothing short of treason.” Senator Bill Flake (R): “Never thought I would see an American president place Russian interests over those of his own country. Shameful.” Rep. Paul Ryan (R) Speaker of the House: “Russia did interfere with our election and continues to undermine democracies all over the world.” James Comey (R) Former Head of the FBI: “Trump refusing to stand up to a murderous, lying thug and not back up his own country is a national disgrace.” On the general subject of weakness, and despite the ton of evidence from virtually every single American intelligence agency regarding the massive (and continuing) Russian conspiracy to undermine elections in the Unites States and thus pervert one of its most important democratic pillars, President Trump did finally muster the courage to timidly ask Putin if he had anything to do with such an effort, to which Putin answered “No” —and for the President that settled the matter! General Consensus: No foreign treaty, understanding or agreement is worth throwing America and its people under the bus. Prior to meeting with Putin in Helsinki, President Trump had earlier attended a NATO meeting where he claimed that the US of A was paying some 90% of the bill that kept the organization going. The truth: it was more

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like 20%. His presence at the conference was riddled with such exaggerations and only created discord in the organization that since World War II has been the Allies’ bulwark against Russian aggression. In England, he trashed its Prime Minister and extolled the virtues of her main political adversary. Trump had earlier complained at the G-7 meeting in Canada that Russia should not have been kicked out, and should be immediately re-instated. He seemed not to realize that Russia had been kicked out for the very good reason that it had annexed Crimea and was occupying the northern part of the Ukraine. Given all of the above, one must ask: why is President Trump playing the puppet for Putin, even while trashing America’s long-standing allies and trading partners all over the world? How can he make jokes about Russia’s hacking of our political system “I think it was a 400-pound guy in a basement somewhere who did the hacking.” To do so is nothing less than license Putin to continue the perversion of America’s political system. Already American intelligence has detected that Russia is gearing up for the U.S. mid-term elections. I suggest that there can only be two motives: Either Russia has shameful and career-ending material (video tape?) of Trump’s personal behavior during the last time he was in Moscow (e.g., the Steele Dossier) as a private citizen, or since Russia clearly favors him, he has decided to simply “overlook” the subversion. He has occasionally said that he envies dictators which remain in office for “life” and perhaps that is exactly what he has in mind. Alejandro GrattanDominguez


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Charlotte’s World-Wide Web %\ 0DUN 6FRQFH

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ust Imagine…somewhere in the world right now, a child or the parent of a child is turning the first page of the most popular children’s story in U.S. history, translated into at least 35 languages. They’re reading the first sentence in Swedish or Mandarin or Braille: “‘Where’s Papa going with that axe?’ said Fern to her mother as they were setting the table for breakfast.” Fern, you’ll remember, was the delightful daughter who saved from the axe the runt of the litter known far and wide as Wilbur, the piglet befriended by a spider in Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White and illustrated by Garth Williams (1952). “Wilbur was merely suffering the doubts and fears that often go with finding a new friend. In good time he was to discover that he was mistaken about Charlotte. Underneath her rather bold and cruel exterior, she had a kind heart, and she was to prove loyal and true to the very end.” White’s first children’s book, Stuart Little, is nearly as popular and preceded Charlotte’s Web by seven years. “When Mrs. Frederick C. Little’s second son arrived, everybody noticed that he was not much bigger than a mouse.” Truth was he looked like a mouse in every way and “could have been sent by first class mail for three cents.” The Trumpet of the Swan (1970) is less well known than “Charlotte” and “Stuart” but emanates the same charm and effortless writing. “Late in the afternoon, the swan was rewarded for her patience. She gazed down, and there, pushing her feathers aside, came a tiny

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head—the first baby, the first cygnet. It was soft and downy.” E. B. had a way of soothing the reader with descriptions like this: “The next day was foggy. Everything on the farm was dripping wet. The grass looked like a magic carpet. The asparagus patch looked like a silver forest.” We also know that somewhere in the literary world, for nearly 60 years, some writer or student is consulting or reading for the first time Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style by Cornell English Professor William Strunk Jr. and enlarged by E.B. White, his devoted student. “Strunk was a memorable man, friendly, funny and devoted to lucid English prose. Under the remembered sting of his kindly lash, I have been trying to omit needless words (Rule 17) since 1919. But a shadow of gloom seems to hang over the page, and you feel that he knows how hopeless his cause is.” And if you subscribed to The New

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Yorker magazine in the ‘30s, ‘40s and beyond and turned to “Talk of the Town” or “Notes and Comment” or even “A Far-Flung Correspondent,” you were reading the remarkable E.B. White who joined the staff shortly after the magazine’s founding in 1925. In the early days of the magazine, he even dreamed up better captions for The New Yorker cartoons. His most famous one attaches to a drawing by his friend James Thurber where the mother says to her young daughter: “It’s broccoli, dear.” And the daughter replies, “I say it’s spinach, and I say to hell with it.” This caption of course applies today where “alternative facts” are hell-bent to replace reality. So how does a fellow so familiar with the barnyard activities described in Charlotte’s Web wind up setting the whimsical yet sophisticated tone of The New Yorker, a tone that continues today, a tone one writer described as “invincibly debonair” á la Eustace Tilley? (The $8.99 you pay per issue today used to cost 15 cents.) Let’s begin with what we do know. Elwyn Brooks (E.B.) White opened his eyes in Mount Vernon, New York in 1899 in his parents’ handsome home and closed them at his farm house in North Brooklin, Maine in 1985. He grew up in a prosperous home with maids, cooks, and a stable out back, a sure status symbol. Therein, he paid attention to and learned about the lives of horses, pigeons, chickens, a turkey, ducks, geese, rabbits, not to mention snakes, cats and rats. (He once taught tricks to a house mouse.) E. B. later expressed this attraction through the farmer’s daughter, Fern: “She liked it better when she could be all alone with her friends, the animals.” He felt a kinship he never felt for people. Like Cicero, he was “never less alone than when alone.” And all the while he was writing down his responses to the world around him. Ascribing human traits to his animals came naturally, as naturally as an Aesop Fable. We know that he hated the name Elwyn just as Vincent Millay hated Edna. “My mother just hung it on me because she’d run out of names,” he told The New York Times. “I was her sixth child.” He took the name “Andy” while earning a Bachelor of Arts degree at Cornell in 1921 after which he worked a spell for United Press, the Seattle Times and an ad agency before landing a position with The New Yorker. He eventually developed his own style, one simultaneously simple and elegant, droll and off-hand. He began with bits of light poetry, wry, slice-oflife encounters and musings; he ended producing hundreds of essays, sketches, columns, and all manner of literary compositions for nearly six decades.

He had an approach to life that readers liked. Take the bank panic that FDR faced early in his administration. E.B. didn’t weigh in with deep thoughts about presidential power or the “climate of economic fear.” Instead, he wrote: “The town was strangely quiet the first morning of the bank holiday. Every time a liner in the river blew its whistle, people jumped. We had the feeling that if anybody had broken rank and started down the street at a fast trot, the whole town would have followed him, thinking he knew where to go.” Perhaps Somerset Maugham was right when he observed that “The best style is the style you don’t notice.” Despite Andy’s growing confidence as a writer, he was still afraid of romance. His shyness and preference for solitude did not bode well for the prospect of love and sex. But then he met Katherine Angell, the woman who brought him aboard The New Yorker. Ms. Angell was a highly respected writer and editor older and more mature than Andy. But they clicked and married and stayed that way for nearly 50 years. When the magazine began to prosper, they were able to buy a Maine farm for $11,000 with a barn full of cattle, chickens, pigs, sheep, goats and, of course, spiders. We’re told he studied the life of spiders in books and examined museum specimens for a year before starting Charlotte’s Web. He even threw a filament around wife Katherine when he went absent on business. “Thus I, gone forth, as spiders do, In spider’s web a truth discerning, Attach one silken strand to you For my returning.” Not exactly a hypochondriac, Andy did complain of aches, pains and maladies often but usually with a touch of humor: When the Last Great Bronchitis Comes. During one bad patch, he wanted to consult a psychiatrist “because his brain felt like a tree with a kite tangled in its branches.” In 1978, White won a Pulitzer Prize citing “his letters, essays and the full body of his work.” He also received the Presidential Medal of Freedom and honorary memberships in literary societies across the country and finally awarded the National Medal for Literature. “All that I hope to say in books, all that I ever hope to say, is that I love the world.” However, “Man’s curiosity, his relentlessness, his inventiveness, his ingenuity have led him into deep trouble. We can only hope that these same traits will enable him to claw his way out.” As Charlotte herself might spin: Some Writer Mark Sconce


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What say you, my faithful friend We are both old now- our years the same What lies ahead, we can’t pretend We both know we face the end. But master dear, I sense your whim Our time together is running thin My wish to go please don’t condone If you go first, I am left alone. You found me and I found you Abandoned, lost, starving, who Wondered why in Heaven’s name Treated you with cruel disdain. I remember my first days with you Confused, afraid but slowly grew My faith in you- my savior found How you turned my life around. For years now, you’ve shown such strength One hind leg lame and still at length Three surgeries could not mend Your loss though to contend. Your limb askew still you grew To accept these terms unfair Some blessed hope whereof you knew And I was unaware. My darling boy you never showed Such resentment of your fate On you so suddenly bestowed Your courage now your finest trait. So yes my boy, it would be best If you go first and I will follow We both deserve such peaceful rest Our lives now spent and seem hollow. Rainbow Bridge now calls for me Where I will run again carefree When your time comes please don’t despair You’ll find me waiting for you there.

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((And Mine, Too!)) %\ 6\GQH\ *D\ &RQWLQXHG IURP ODVW PRQWK

I Laugh Then I Cry

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y husband and I moved to Ajijic, Mexico twelve years ago, the way we moved here seems like a miracle to me. Perhaps a miraculous childhood had something to do with it. World War Two, one year old, I live in the New Orleans French Quarter above a saloon, my parents named me Sydney Gay, the beginning must have been lovely life of kindness and care, I am not conscious of all the details until the first miracle, a soldier walks into our home, a gruff angry man, the opposite of kindness, fear enters our family, its name is Daddy. A week later he ships back to Germany, but before he leaves I tumble from a second floor balcony and land unconscious on my head, for how long? I don’t know, the next memory is hearing grandmother say she’s okay. No doctor is called, no money for a doctor. By age three I experience the second miracle, a surprising but welcomed event that cannot be explained by laws of science; a marvelous sensation, a mystery, a thrilling exhilarating heart-racing experience that endlessly inspires; it happened this way: The early part of each day is spent with grandmother who owns a small grocery store adjacent to the saloon, a few blocks from Bourbon Street. At seven am she rolls out a huge barrel of pickles with a sign that says “Help Yourself,” then she rolls out a barrel of fresh baked French

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breads, three feet long, the same size as me, the aroma is euphoric. While grandmother is busy with customers I toddle into the street, a torn piece of lace hangs from my shoulders like a cape, (I see what happened as clearly as if it happened yesterday), cars whiz by, I have no concept of danger, I am simply lost in a feeling of love so huge that a childlike song bursts out of me. I am singing about God, I don’t even know who or what God is, nevertheless, I am filled with a spirit more powerful than any human in my life ever matched. Suddenly I notice people laughing and two hands yank me to the sidewalk, “Go home, kid.” The miracle is that I never forgot that song. Age four, the war is declared over, but brutality learned overseas is a twoedged sword which continues to cut and slash. I soon realize my father is mentally ill, but he is also handsome and a good talker, attractive to ladies and he loves gambling, which is easy to do in the French quarter gay life of night and day cabaret. There are no pre-schools, so my early education comes from strip joints, saloons, barrooms and gambling halls. When I enter a normal school teachers will say, “Gay is precocious, she knows too much for a kid her age.” Third Miracle: By age five I am conscious I live in two worlds, one that loves “gay” people and one that murders gay


people without guilt or regret. My family’s regular “gay” entertainment is Club My O My*, not much more than a big stage, a tin roofed shack, every show sells out, seats are long benches, same as pews in a church building, before the curtain rises shots of bourbon are passed out and if you’re a tiny kid who needs to make wee-wee, grandma pulls down your pants, puts you on the floor and tells you to pee. The adults are half drunk and nobody cares. Suddenly show time, men impersonating movie stars dance and sing, I know all the routines, my favorite is Doris Day wearing polka dots, elbowlength gloves and giant high heels which sparkle up my brain cells. I also see the audience, soldiers, sailors, women, children, truck drivers, pastors and priests, I remember grandmother saying “Those priests better keep their hats on their laps.” The shows are great fun, I laugh, but then I cry, because there are times entertainers will be murdered in alleyways, heads beaten with baseball bats simply because they are gay. Try to imagine what it is like for a child to see the people she loves killed because they are gay. “So, Mom?” I ask, “How come you named me Gay?” and she says because gay is a beautiful name. “I named you that because I wanted you to be happy.” My mother is my third miracle. Fourth Miracle: Age six, father’s gambling forces us to quickly move out of the quarter, which means piling in the back of a pickup truck, sitting on top of suitcases, scooting down a highway, clutching side rails so we don’t fall out; our next home looks like Mexico, it has fruit vines and banana trees, children of former slaves prepare our meals, nobody explains anything to me, in the annex of an old plantation I sleep in a room used by servants, my parents sleep in a bed owned by a dead woman named Dorothy Dix.* I guess this is the time to better explain the miracle of my mother: no matter how bad things are, she tithes

beauty and wellness into the situation, she uses her hands to decorate the barren ugliness, sewing curtains, painting walls, making pillows, determined to “leave behind” something of value so the next person has a better life. Anyway, it is in this place I come face to face with the Divine through a tiny black servant, Leola, who cannot read or write, but Leola’s ability to love has a powerful taste. She has the Holy Spirit, the power preachers want; when I think of her, which I often do, a rumbling travels through my body, the song of slavery, of people overcoming pain. Because of Leola I learn what the KKK is, how they burn down the homes of the poor, how they eviscerate, gut, disembowel and hang her people from trees. The Klu Klux Klan might appear any time of day or night, worse yet they are disguised as neighbors. There is a famous song about this by Abel Meeropol. In 1937 he wrote Strange Fruit, “Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze, strange fruit hanging from pop’lar trees, blood at the roots, blood on the leaves.” Leola might look like a slave and be treated like a slave, but she knew how to survive, she rose above every sorrow in the light of love that only Christ talked about. I was just a girl named Gay, but at age six I am enfolded by this black woman who had seen it all. I was the only white child who knew she wore a secret coat of armor, Psalms 35/36 and 37. *Club My-O-My: New Orleans Vintage Drag | New Orleans Historicalneworleanshistorical.org/items/ show/367 The Club My-O-My was a female impersonator club that originated and ended in the French Quarter. It flourished after first being kicked out of an informal. *Dorothea Lynde Dix - Women’s History - HISTORY.com www.history.com/topics/womenshistory/dorothea-lynde-dix

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ost of the time I don’t think about my age. It is just something that is and it doesn’t bother me one way or the other. That old adage “You’re only as old as you feel” never meant much to me until recently. I had an “O” birthday this year, and now I understand. Some days I feel 90, and look in the mirror wondering who that old woman is looking back at me, but most days I feel younger than I am. The energy levels are not what they once were, but I’m still kicking and enjoying my life. I am terrible at guessing ages, and always have been. I have good friends who are 15 years older and good friends who are 10 years younger and we rarely notice the difference in our

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age. My husband is 6 ½ years older than me, and while we didn’t know each other as children, we both grew up in Los Angeles, so share a lot of childhood memories of places and events. But every once in a while he will say to me, “Do you remember…….?” And I will have to respond with, “No, honey, I was only two at the time!” Recently I had an experience that showed me just how bad I am at estimating people’s age. I went to the balnearios with three of my girlfriends for a “spa day” to relax and enjoy the thermal pools and each other’s company. As we approached the desk I happened to be the first in line. I whipped out my INAPAM card and asked for the “senior discount” which I happily re-

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ceived. I turned to my friends and said, “Do you all have INAPAM cards? If you do you will get a discount.” One of my friends smiled and said, “Nope, not old enough yet.” But my other friend……. oh, she was NOT happy with me. “Don’t you have to be 60 to get one?” she asked me. “Do I LOOK sixty?!” I stammered and backpedaled and said, “Ummm, no, of course not. I just didn’t think about that.” She was honestly offended that I thought she could be old enough to qualify for an INAPAM card! I told her I truly meant no offense and I was only thinking of the discount that was available. She was decidedly cool towards me for quite some time, and it was only after I apologized several times that she said, “Oh, okay, don’t worry about it anymore.” It was then that I realized I was the “old lady” of this group, and that I was, perhaps, 15 years older than one of them! This got me thinking about aging, and what it really meant to me. I do believe that moving to Lakeside has extended my life and improved my health. I am now retired, but it is more than that. It is an attitude, a way of living and enjoying each day as it comes. I now have time to, as the old cliché says, “stop and smell the flowers,” to try my hand at things I always wanted to do, such as writing, and to wake up

each morning, grateful for another new day and the new adventures that await me. I have learned to understand the saying “Don’t fear growing old; it is a privilege not given to everyone.” But my favorite saying about old age is one that my husband says to me from time to time: “Grow old along with me; the best is yet to be.” Kathy Koches


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ebsters Dictionary offers a wide variety of what “family” means. One being the mating of two same species and raising offspring. Mobs have ‘families’ as do cults and organizations. The Tepehua Community Center Organization considers itself a ‘family’ that houses many ‘families’. Those families we hold sacred and do everything in our power to keep family together. Once a family is split so is their strength. In its eight years the center reported only one single Mother to authorities to take her children away, it wasn’t because of abuse, it was child neglect (although a form of abuse, these children were like wild, happy, uneducated dirty puppies). A year down the road we can report it was good for all concerned, but never the less...taking

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away her children broke that young Mothers heart. Having never been to school she found it hard to figure out what went wrong or the danger she was exposing her children to. She has never stopped fighting to get her children back, even though they are prospering without her. She too is better for it, she has something to straighten up for, a reason to change the dysfunction that was her life. She had visiting rights everyday...but not allowed to take them out. Monies that come into the Tepehua Treasures Consignment store, Riberas, helps support keeping families together, through counseling, education, building up the esteem of family members, job training and independence. Building strength and respect in the family unit. Forced separation of children from

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parents creates an anxiety like no other, and unless the children face immediate danger from being with their parents...it should never happen. In WW2, when the Germans were bombing all London and suburb schools in an attempt to kill the next generation, Government decided to ‘save the children’ , taking them away from their families, and putting them on the infamous train to destinations unknown in the North. It was called Operation Pied Piper (remember him? he was asked by the people of Hamelin, Germany, to pipe the rats out of their town, when he did they refused payment, in spite he piped all the children out as well). Three million people were moved in 4 days (and me) from London and surrounding suburbs. I was about 5 years old, my sister was around 7, we huddled on the train, our first time out of our street. I have never forgotten the look on my Mothers ashen face as we left. We arrived at the train station North and they lined us up, ( every station in the North was like a warehouse for children, we were spread everywhere, some were even shipped to Australia, New Zealand and other British colonies), and people came and picked out the child they would accept in their home (had we been black it would have been like an auction). All we could remember of that time were the words

“I’ll take that one”. We were traumatized, dirty, tired and hungry, we all had a little box with a change of clothes, a gas mask, a name tag pinned to our chest or looped around our neck. It was months before our Mother knew where we were. Fortunately my sister and I were chosen together. Being almost the last left on the platform...nobody really wanted one, let alone two. The abuse some of the children endured will go down in infamy. Those families didn’t want “refugee’s”, it was a Government decree they had to take us in. We never learn from history, what is happening on the American Southern Border is the same madness that happened nearly 80 years ago in London England, and in Europe. The Mothers and children traumatized for life. The majority of the people trying for asylum in the USA are not Mexican Nationals, but they are Mothers trying to take their children to safety from assorted South America’s at Civil war and drug cartels....of course there are a few bad apples in the crate, that is what ‘DUE PROCESS’ is for, to sort them out. Do not separate children from Mothers until there is “JUST CAUSE”. Those who remember those atrocities of separation in the past should speak out now...lest we forget. America was a great country built on the shoulders of immigrants after WW1 and 2,...as was Australia, New Zealand. Migration is as old as the first primates. All looking for a better place. Some small countries have over burdened themselves from their compassion and taken in more immigrants than they can handle all at once. Days gone by immigrants came in hand fulls...not boat loads and in their thousands at a time. Like the mystery of the Universe, we haven’t found the right answer yet, but the way we are handling immigrants world wide is not the solution. We have reached zero tolerance, against poverty, corruption, big company greed, mans inhumanity to man, all over the world. We are our brother’s keeper.


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A Guilty Love NHV NH HV %\ . 3RQWLNHV

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ee e n three weeks the he e town is go gooing to hang Michael Stark for what he did. The e sheriff said the crime c was unprovoked. Now w Don Hart, the town butchb er, is dead. Shot in i the back. But I knew Do Don on Hart and believe me, hee was guilty of something. ng g. I find myself a part p of this drama. I can barely b believe I have become involved. olved. It all started the first time I spotted Michael s on the back of thatt horse, his hands bound behind his back back, his blue eyes searching the crowd on the square; I knew he was the one for me. I can’t really explain what appeal he held. He is not particularly handsome. Of course, I’m not much to look at either. It isn’t like I’m swatting off the suitors, as my dad always reminds me. But there was a lonely look in his expression, and I knew I could make him feel better. Folks around here are quick to judge. All they needed to hear was that an arrest had been made and they were practically collecting the rope to hang him. I ignored every single comment these bitter, small-minded people made. They said a lot too. At the supply store, the blacksmith’s, even at church, people spoke their critical judgments as though they were the hard truth. And it didn’t take long for those same tongues to start lashing out in my direction. The town buzz started the first time I went to the jail, during the trial. I had baked one of my extra special lemon pies. I dressed up right nice, put on my cameo pin and my lace blouse that shows off my bosom nicely. I sashayed right into the jail and told the deputy I had baked a little something for the jail staff. He lit up, so I guess he must have had a sweet tooth. I waited until he had taken his first bite, so I knew I had his attention. “If you want another one of these pies, you need to be nice and give your prisoner a slice.” I smiled demurely. He stopped mid-bite and looked as if I’d put a choke collar on him. I swirled and left right then. I didn’t even have to wait for his answer. The

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next day I came back with some biscuits and ann nounced I wanted to o visit Michael Stark. I saved d two of my biscuits could hand them to s I co so o M Mi ch ha directly. Our Michael fingers fing e touched when I them in his hand. I put tth ssat at and d watched him eathis eyes on iing in g tthem, h me. I can’t tell you the amount of heat that am mo went back and forth we w between us. b I keep going back to the jail every b day, delivering someda thing new that I’ve baked with each trip. The townspeople gawk at me with their slack jaws, aghast that I have chosen a man with such limited time left to be the object of my affections. They can’t understand the depth of my love for this man. I don’t expect them to. Now, you are probably wondering why I’d let myself fall in love with a murderer. I had looked at all the other pathetic excuses for gentlemen in this town, and I didn’t have a tender feeling for any of them. They were all crass idiots, rough and dirty, and none of them were looking at me anyhow. Michael, he looks at me like he really thinks I’m special. We write letters to each other too. He says sweet, flowery things to me. My eyes are like the moon, my lips like ripe cherries. I tell him I know he had reasons for what he did, and that I hope he finds it in his heart to seek the Lord’s forgiveness before he leaves this earth. I also tell him I love him more deeply than I have ever loved any man. I don’t tell him he is the only man I have ever loved, but he doesn’t have to know that. I have three weeks to get him to propose to me. I think my chocolate cake is going to be the thing that breaks down any resistance he may be having. It is called Divine Love Chocolate Cake. K. Pontikes


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If Our Pets Could Talk %\ -DFNLH .HOOXP

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ats are capable of making at least 30 sounds, including at least 19 variations on the simple meow. In general, kittens use meows to communicate with their moms, but grown cats employ them solely to communicate with humans. Cats hisses, growls, squeals, and make other sounds to talk to each other. As a cat ‘parent’ paying attention to the circumstances in which your cat meows or vocalizes, can be fun and help you understand your resident feline a little better. These are a few meow interpretations ‘shortcuts’: I’m hurt: – If your cat suddenly begins to meow excessively, its meows may indicate that there is something medically wrong, especially if it’s behavior isn’t typical. I want food: – The “I’m hungry” meow is likely one all cat parents know well. Some cats run around after you, meowing the whole time if she thought dinner was going to be late. Pay attention to me: – Sometimes cats talk simply because they want your attention

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and they have learned that meowing gets what they want. I’m stressed: Cats who are stressed may become more vocal than normal. You may have had this experience with a cat meowing loudly in the car on the way to the vet. I’m ticked off: An angry, agitated cats will often erupt into a screaming match if they feel threatened enough to attack, this mad meow sounds more like a yowl. I don’t want to be alone: When some cats are left alone for lengthy periods of time, they may become anxious and, among other things, meow excessively. I’m getting older: As cats age, they may display a decrease in cognitive function, demonstrated in a variety of ways, including increased loud meowing.


When cats meow right before dawn, a time when you’re probably trying to get a little more sleep, cats are doing what comes naturally. Their circadian rhythms shift with the seasons just as yours do. When the days get longer and the birds are up earlier, so are they. You could feed them to stop their meows, but know that this will reinforce their behavior. Try to stick to strict feeding times, like once in the morning--but not right after you rise because then they will associate you getting out of bed with getting fed. And feed once shortly before you go to bed. Finally, be patient: You are attempting to undo thousands of years of ingrained cat behavior. A reminder: Just like humans clip and file their nails, cats must maintain their claws. One way is by scratching, which helps them remove dead nail growth. There are two other important explanations behind why they scratch: They do it to mark their territory by using their scent glands on their paws and, to stretch which looks so graceful. Sadly, when a sofa or rug becomes one of their favorite spots to scratch, some people make an inhuman decision and resort to ‘declawing’ a cat. Declawing is comparable to you having the ends of your fingers cut off! This vile action has longlasting physical disability consequences for a cat. Instead, get your cat a nifty

scratching post. You might have to experiment with different models until you find one he likes; rub it with a little catnip, and give your cat a treat whenever he uses it. You are mine. When cats rub their heads against you, they’re actually just marking you as one of their own, using the concentrated scent glands in their cheeks and head. They do this primarily as a way to let other cats know they own you. Um… congratuJackie Kellum lations?

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COLUMNIST

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health trend in the USA is to y count how many steps you take a day in or-der to keep you moving, and help you track your fitness. Some people have electronic equipment that sync to their cell phones, and counts every step of the day. Others use simple pedometers. It is very important to our health to keep moving. Especially those of us with bad joints. We can set goals and try to increase our steps every single day. A year ago after a lengthy illness that kept me in bed for four months, I used a simple pedometer, and was overjoyed when I was able to walk on my own from the kitchen and back. My steps grew each day and spurred me on to strengthening my legs. Of course the ultimate target goal many speak about is 10,000 steps a day. You can imagine my excitement when I managed to crest 4,000 steps just going about my daily business. Imagine what I could do if I started setting goals for purposeful long walks? Then I lost my pedometer. It fell off. My little inspiration device was down and out. So, not to be deterred, I sent off to purchase a device that would fit on my arm where it would not fall off. They had a two for one sale, so I bought an extra one, just in case. I waited weeks for the devices to arrive, and was thrilled when they made it here. But, these devices had to be synced to a smart phone. Don’t ask me, I gave up my “techie” days long ago. And I own a dumb phone. It just dials. It doesn’t play games, or take pictures, or interface with What’s Ap. So, I gave the device to the young Mexican woman, Ana, my husband and I put through college. We call her our “daughter.” She doesn’t drive, she walks or takes the bus wherever she goes. Young and intelligent, she had the

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arm band working within minutes, because she has a smart phone. She wore the band for the first day, and at the end of the day one, she showed me how many steps she had walked that day…some of them running errands for me. She put on over 22,000 steps. The next day it was over 24,000 steps. OK, so what does this tell me? In the United States, I would drive 10 blocks. Yup. Here, 10 blocks is a short walk. Ana has six siblings. They all walk all over Chapala, and they would all run up this amount of steps. Many walk to their work, are on their feet all day, walk to their homes, and walk to their entertainment. The pedestrian life is the mainstay of the Mexican culture. It is not easy to earn enough to buy or maintain a car. To many it is a luxury. Recently, a friend from the USA decided to make Chapala her permanent home. She does not include a car as a necessity. She walks, buses or cabs when necessary. Adopting the pedestrian way of life appeals to her. Me? I have a car. One with many dents and quirks, and I will still drive 10 blocks right now. But I have a new pedometer coming, and I will still try to challenge myself. But my bum knee will never allow me to reach 10,000 steps in a day, let alone Ana’s first day of over 22,000. But it is a device that will allow me to feel a little better about the progress I do make. Victoria Schmidt


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COLUMNIST

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Sometimes, despite holding a wealth of high cards, you will reach a slam and when dummy comes down you will see no clear way to making your contract. Such was the case when this hand was played in a match-point duplicate event. South began proceedings with 2 clubs, the strongest opening bid in their system. North responded 2 diamonds, a waiting bid showing at least a king or two queens, but not saying anything specifically about her diamond holding. This bid meant that the partnership was committed to reaching at least game. South now bid two spades to show his longest and strongest suit and North decided to show her longest suit by bidding 3 diamonds. As South held good support for his partner’s suit, he bid 4 no trump, Roman Key Card Blackwood asking North how many of the 5 key cards (4 aces and the king of diamonds) she held. Her bid of 5 clubs showed 1 keycard so South decided to place the contract in 6 spades, the higher scoring slam and hoped his spades were strong enough to do the job. West led the club queen and declarer saw that he had a problem. Even if the spade suit performed for no losers the most he could count was 11 tricks: 6

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spades, 3 hearts, 1 diamond and, with no entry to the dummy, 1 club. The club situation was particularly frustrating as the ace and king in the same suit are normally good for two tricks but, with no entry to the dummy, there didn’t seem much chance of cashing the ace for his 12th trick. One possibility was to win the opening lead in the dummy, giving up on ever cashing two club tricks, and playing the jack of diamonds from the dummy. If East covered with the king or queen South would win the trick in hand, draw trumps and play the diamond 10 from hand establishing the 9 in dummy for his 12th trick. Then he realized that if East held 3 diamonds to one honor and didn’t cover, west would win the trick and South would never be able to capture the other honor in the east hand. Then the solution hit declarer: if he could strip the opponents’ hands of spades and hearts and then play the ace and another diamond, as long as each opponent held a diamond honor (or both were doublet on in the same hand), whoever won the trick would have to give declarer his 12th trick. And so it transpired. Declarer won the opening lead in hand, drew trumps in four rounds, played three rounds of hearts noting the opponents followed to all three of his honors, and played the ace and 10 of diamonds. West followed low to the 10, east won with the queen and had nothing left but clubs which she had to play allowing declarer to make his contract. If west had risen with the diamond king, he would have gobbled up his partner’s queen and would have had nothing left but low diamonds and clubs and would also have been faced with Hobson’s choice! Questions or comments: email: masson.ken@gmail.com Ken Masson


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I Miss Tom Faloon %\ 0DUJDUHW $QQ 3RUWHU

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e need to repaint the inside of our house but I can’t bring myself to do it. Tom Faloon was here when we last painted and we’d be covering up memories. In 2009, Tom was the design-builder who renovated part of our house with his longtime compadres in business, contractor Miguel Ramirez and his brother, Fausto, a talented painter. My husband, Tom and I had struggled with the wall colors, Fausto mustering patience while blending sample after sample on his palette. My husband declared one of the six red patches on the wall to be the perfect color, but Tom insisted that it was too purple – he planned to have Fausto do a creosote rub over it and too-purple would be a total disaster. “Well, we can go without the rub then,” Tom sighed, his face twitching, imperious yet hoping for the right

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words to both please his client and win the day. “But with all the beautiful things we’ve done here, it’ll be a shame … because you just can’t love ugly.” Tom won, as he did almost every battle. The artist in him saw things that he wanted us to experience, like a specific color or angle of the bathroom sink, or the placement of a high window so that we’d greet the mountains while making our coffee – he brought dozens of his inner visions to life in our

El Ojo del Lago / August 2018

home. Tom passed away on August 5, 2014, at the age of 71, after making a life for himself in Ajijic for over 40 years. At his wake, I greeted him through the glass top of his coffin, the Tom-shaped body so still, his chestly laughter and intensity gone. Among the mourners were contratistas, albaniles, fontaneros, electricistas, repartidores de tierra and ferreteria owners, all grief-stricken alongside Tom’s partner Carlos and their longtime friends, some with tears raining from their chins. He was beloved because Tom respected the craft of Mexicans who knew how to build things and make them beautiful; they’d brought him joy in their work and he always let them know it with his abundant humor, love and expressed admiration. Tom died on what would have been my son Ryan’s 34th birthday – I’d lost him to the opioid crisis a few years before after he’d struggled mightily with bipolar disorder. Ryan had so loved visiting us here in Mexico and, shortly after his death, I woke up one day with the idea to build a small memorial to him in the back of my garden. I called Tom. “I’ll be right over, Margaret. I’m so glad to hear from you,” he said, “I’ve been worried.” After he arrived, he stood and lis-

tened to my idea, agreed to everything, then asked if he could sit in the garden by himself for awhile. I went upstairs to write and, an hour later, I heard his soft voice calling from the yard, “Margaret, I’ve found something that Ryan will like.” Tom had found a place to put the memorial that was nothing like I had originally envisioned, but it was perfect. Not only that, he said, “I’ll handle everything. You just go on about your life and then I’ll show you.” A week passed and I was forbidden to look; Tom had the albañiles cover the project with plastic at the end of their work day. I’d wander out there some nights, but avoided the temptation because as they made slow progress, it felt as though Tom and the albañiles had been out there using pretty tiles and mortar to repair the cracks in this mother’s heart; I didn’t want to spoil the magic. Finally, Tom showed it to me and I was so moved by its power that I broke down. I looked around at him and he was crying, too. He blubbered, “I’m so sorry it’s come to this, Margaret. But we can sit out here with Ryan and remember beautiful things …‘cause that’s what life is, beautiful and sad. They kind of compliment each other, if you think about it. Neither one lasts forever.” We stood in silence and Tom held my hand. I will never forget that moment and cannot ever repay it. Now I must do without Tom, too. By no means was I his closest friend, and I surely am not qualified to give an accounting of his amazing life because I only first met him in 2008. But the Tom Faloon episode in my life is something I will always treasure, a time when an artistic, generous spirit chose to share some of his vision, humor and loving compassion Margaret Ann with me. Porter


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One e More e Thought On Americca in The Tim me of Trump %\ .DUHQ 6KLHEOHU

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can’t stand Donald Trump. He is a liar. I hate liars. He is willing to turn us all against each other to achieve his own power and his own gains. I hate that kind of selfishness. But I love a lot of his followers. I love my relatives who have come to every birthday party for my kids, sent graduation gifts, danced at family weddings, made me dinners just for fun. I love my neighbors who kayak with us, go out to dinner with us, share perennials, gripe about the lousy weather and sit through endless town meetings with us. I despise the media moguls who control our thoughts by following the orders of their corporate over-

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lords. Fox News is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Trump and his Corporate Organization. They’re ridiculous. They aren’t news. I would never look to them for news. CNN is less obvious, but “Breaking News” every hour on the hour for the past 10 years? Seriously, dudes? One big story per week, with endless repetitive talking heads pretending outrage and tears? That’s your idea of news? Come. On. I hate the ugly words that are being hurled around by people who disagree on the latest core issue. I hate seeing people berated for their beliefs, their life styles, their religious choices, their sexual preferences. I

El Ojo del Lago / August 2018

hate it. I hate the swear words, the offensive remarks, the name calling, the hatred, the plain old meanness. I don’t love my country, because I don’t know what that means. Am I supposed to love the dirt? The trees? The highways? Am I supposed to love the flag, no matter where it waves or who is holding it or how it is used? I don’t know if I’m expected to love my government? The bureaucracy of it? The big money that owns it? I do love my countrymen. I love them because they’re also trying to make sense of the struggles we face every day. They want jobs, they want some financial security, they want to know that if they work hard they will be able to provide a safe life for their families. I love my countrymen because they are humans. I love my fellow humans. I don’t hate the ones who are different from me. I don’t hate or fear the ones who have different colored skin than mine. I don’t hate of fear the ones who are more or less religious than me or the ones who call the divine by a name I don’t recognize. I don’t fear or hate my fellow humans if they are richer or poorer than me, or if they speak a different language or if they live in a different

part of this earth. And I don’t hate or fear my fellow humans, my fellow Americans, my fellow community members because they disagree with my views on gun control or border safety or trade or taxes. I hope that I am smart enough to find some truth in all the complete bull that is filling our world. I hope that I am brave enough to listen when people have different ideas than my own. And I hope that I am kind enough, evolved enough, thoughtful enough to grant my fellow family members, neighbors, coworkers the right to their own opinions. I will still work as hard as I can to move my country and my world in a direction that seems the best to me. I will still work as diligently as possible to bring a positive, loving, kind world into being. But I will try my best to do that without screaming at my friends on the “other side.” I don’t know if my plan will work. I just know that it’s the only way I can proceed and still feel proud of myself as I look in the mirror every day. I wish more people shared my view. It might make us all a lot safer and a whole lot better informed.


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hile in Cuba, we stayed at the Casa Dianna B&B run by Tony and Dianna. Casa Dianna is a beautiful house in outer Havana. It was the home of a Cuban minister, before the revolution, of course. After the revolution, the houses of the Batista regime were confiscated. These were given out to people according to some method that I never did understand and Tony wouldn’t talk about. It wasn’t just to friends and cronies, although certainly some of that went on. Somehow, Tony and Dianna got this house. Tony is older than Dianna—probably 70-something—and we believe it was through Dianna’s wealthy family that they acquired this magnificent house. Our room, with our own bathroom and roof patio, was going to cost $30.00 a day plus $4.00 for breakfast. Casa Dianna has a beautiful enclosed patio where we will have breakfast, cocktails, and Cuban coffee and cigars. Tony runs the B&B. His wife is a great cook and does the cleaning. Both are well-educated, as are most in Cuba. Tony was part of the Cuban Revolution. More about Tony, but first we go to the Buena Vista Social Club concert. It is at the National de Cuba Hotel. The BVSC, as “people in the know” call them, is an internationally-known group of Cuban musicians that were

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discovered in Havana (the Buena Vista Club) back in the 1960s. A lot of rum went down—by others—we just listened to the great Cuban music. After the show a reggae band was playing on the patio. They were doing Bob Marley songs—in Spanish. Taxies are waiting outside to take concert goers home. The taxis are government owned and licensed and we pay a premium to ride in it. When we get home, Tony is waiting up to let us in. He won’t (or can’t) give us a key. We have rum and cigars on the patio. Tony brings out a faded photo album of his days as an acrobatic motorcycle patrolman. He headed up a motorcycle patrol unit—about 40 men. They did tricks on their motorcycles to entertain the public and eventually specialized into building human pyramids on motorcycles. As Tony showed us his old photos, the pyramids got bigger. First they had three patrolmen on two motorcycles. Then it was five on three (two hanging on the sides); then seven on three (front and back). Eventually they had 32 on five motorcycles! They toured the country putting on performances and participating in parades. Tony was always the main driver. Then Tony started doing individual tricks. First he would stand on the seat while driving, then with one foot and one hand. Eventually he was using stilts—with one foot and one hand. I asked Tony if he ever got hurt. After a long pause, he said yes. I could tell he wasn’t sure he should tell us. “It was during a parade in Havana.” By now he had taught himself to operate his motorcycle while on 10 foot stilts—one hand, one foot! Anyway, something happened. He isn’t sure what it was—the wind, maybe?— and he fell off and got skinned up a little. He wasn’t sure if it was in front of Fidel Castro, but he said Castro was there. Tony finished his career as a “regular” motorcycle patrolman and he and his wife were given a beautiful house that they are authorized to run as a B&B for tourists.


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Sandy Olson

Phone: 331-283-8529 Email: sandyzihua@hotmail.com

OPEN CIRCLE Sunday morning finds many Lakeside residents at the Lake Chapala Society and Open Circle, a forum on a variety of stimulating topics. A social hour with coffee and snacks at 10 am is followed by an interesting lecture and discussion at 10:30. August 12 Creation and the Afterlife—Perspectives of Six Cultures Presented by Daniel Acuff, PhD From the dawn of consciousness, humans have looked to the stars and asked themselves three fundamental questions: Where did we come from? What is the best way we should live? What happens when we die? Dr. Acuff will briefly explore the answers to each of these questions based on the mythology, or “stories,” of Native Americans, Australian Aborigines, Judeo-Christians, Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists. Then there is a revolutionary view of creation and the afterlife that millions of people around the globe are now considering as an alternate view. Dr. Acuff’s Ph.D. is in philosophy, sociology, and education. He has been a seminar leader and radio talk show host and is author of fifteen books including three philosophical/spiritual works of fiction: God Lied–What’s Really Going on Here, The Mysteries of Quan, and Golf and the Zen Master. August 19 Lunas de Maluri Presented by Diana Gorjon and Roxana Rojas A journey began at 11:22 pm, January 23, 2011, when there came a startling knock at the door. A woman named Maria said she needed help, and attending a 12-step meeting just didn’t suffice. In her eyes were despair, anxiety, and fear. Sometimes projects are born this way, sudden knocks on the door in search of hope in the middle of the night. Now Lunas de Maluri, A.C, is home to more than 80 people in recovery from various addictions and emotional traumas. Diana Gorjon is Assistant Administrator and Roxana Rojas is a voluntary facilitator at the Lunas de Maluri, AC. They are part of a team of caregivers consisting of a medical doctor, four psychologists, and ten addiction therapists. Some of the staff are also certified in disaster relief due to hurricanes or earthquakes throughout Mexico. August 26 Then and Now—and What If? Presented by Rachel McMillen Most of us think that history is a record of the past. In fact, the definition of the word is: a continuous, systematic narrative of past events as relating to a particular people, country, period, person, etc. We also know that “history” not only influences the present—how we think, how we react, what we believe—but also the future. But what if the history we know is not true? What if history consists not of facts but of a collection of stories we tell about the past? Rachel (R.J.) McMillen was born in England, raised in Australia, and spent three years in Greece before moving to Canada in 1968. She is the author of the popular “Dan Connor” mystery series published by Touchwood Editions, which includes Dark Moon Walking (2014), Black Tide Rising (2015), Green River Falling (2016), and Gray Sea Running (2018). Rachel McMillen Previous nonfiction, poetry, and freelance articles have appeared in such publications as Write, WordWorks, Pacific Yachting, B.C. Outdoors, Greyzine, Season Magazine and, of course, El Ojo de Lago. September 2 Cuarteto Janus This distinguished quartet of young musicians from Guadalajara is making their second appearance at Open Circle. They were formed in July of 2016 under the direction of Maestro Christopher Wilshere, with the intention of raising Mexican chamber music to a higher level. Despite having been recently formed, they have already participated in several prestigious international festivals. Their musical program will be announced. The ensemble consists of Diana Carolina Laguna Rivas, violin; Francisco Vidal Rivera González, violin; Luís Carlos Rincón Barrios, viola; and Areli Medeles Medina, cello.

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STOP ARGUING AND GET ENGAGED The Naked Stage is pleased to present two one act plays. The Proposal is a comedy by Anton Chekhov about two people trying to become engaged to marry one another if only they could for a moment not be at each other’s throat. This farce’s comedy comes from the fact that no matter what these two do they can’t seem to stop arguing long enough to get engaged. This is a one act play paired with another one act play by Canadian Stewart Lemoine. The Exquisite Hour takes place in the backyard of quintessential bachelor, Zachary Teale, in the 1960s. While sipping his usual tipple of bourbon lemonade on a warm summer evening, his peace is interrupted by the entrance of a mysterious woman, who begins to question his general knowledge, and reveals that she is there to sell him a set of encyclopedias. The casts from left to right: Fred Koesling, John Ward (John Ward has been replaced by Johan Dirkes), and Jayme Littlejohn (not pictured) in The Proposal . It’s directed by Randy Warren. Ken Yakiwchuk and Johanna Labadie appear in The Exquisite Hour, directed by by Jean Llewellyn The show is on August 24, 25 and 26 at 4 pm. Donation is $100. The Box Office and bar open at 3 pm. Reservations are by email at nakedstagereservations@gmail.com. The Naked Stage is on the Carretera in Riberas del Pilar, across from the Catholic Church and in front of the Baptist Church. Parking is available in the parking lot of the Baptist Church. VIVA BUS TRIPS TO GUADALAJARA We hear from Rosemary Keeling, who tells us about upcoming Viva la Musica bus trips to the following events: Sunday, September 23 The Jalisco Ballet performs Carmen and Bolero. Tickets are $550 for members and $650 for non-members Saturday, October 13 Live from the MET Opera—Verdi’s Aida . Tickets at $450 and $550 Saturday, November 3 Live from the MET Opera—Samson & Delilah, Saint Saens, tickets at $450 and $550. Saturday, December 15 Live from the MET Opera—La Traviata by Verdi, tickets at $450 and $550 LAKESIDE LITTLE THEATRE SEASON 54 These hard working volunteers are responsible for the fine showings at the Little Theatre. There are exciting shows planned for Season 54, 2018-2019. Here’s what’s in store for

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theatre goers. September 14-23 Clever Little Lies by Joe DiPietro. Directed by Collette Clavadetscher A laugh-filled story of long-term love and marriage, for better ... and for worse. October 19-28 {proof} by David Auburn. Directed by Randy Warren A captivating and compassionate drama about scientists whose science matters less than their humanity. November 20-December 9 Noises OFF by Michael Frayn. Directed by Dave McIntosh and Assistant Directed by Ann Swiston Life in the theatre meets Murphy’s Law – an ingenious farce about staging a farce. January 11-20 Ghosts by Henrik Ibsen and adapted by Richard Eyre. Directed by Pater King The shocking Ibsen classic openly tackles issues seen as controversial, even to this day. Eyre’s adaptation doesn’t lose Ghosts’ power to disturb. February 15-24 The Same Deep Water as Me by Nick Payne. Directed by Neal Checkoway A sharply observant social comedy about small-time lawyers, fraudulent claims and the lure of easy money. March 22-April 2 Sweet Charity Book by Neil Simon. Directed by Barbara Clippinger. Music Direction by Patteye Simpson. Choreography by Alexis Hoff, Val Jones, Cortlandt Jones, Barbara Clippinger Created by Bob Fosse for Gwen Verdon, this award-winning musical is a tender, poignant and funny look at the adventures, or rather misadventures, in the ways of love. Season 54 Notes First Saturdays and both Sundays are matinées; all matinées start at 4:00 pm. Evening shows start at 7:30. Season tickets are $1300, and will be on sale August 22-23. Individual show tickets are $250, except $300 for the musical, Sweet Charity. Further ticket information is available at (376) 766 0954 or by email at tickets@lakesidelittletheatre.com. FROM SKY TO SPIRIT James Arthur Powers, Jr., known to Lakeside friends and neighbors as Jim, was ordained as an Episcopal priest on June 30 by Ricardo Joel Gómez Osnaya, Bishop of the Diocese of the West of The Anglican Church of Mexico. Jim had a lengthy career in the US Navy before retirement. He says, “I flew the A-6 Intruder in the Vietnam War, a highly sophisticated (at that time) dual jet engine medium attack bomber, and overall amassed about 450 carrier landings onboard three different aircraft carriers.” After commercial piloting employment, Jim and his wife Mina moved to the Raquet Club in San Juan Cosala. He’s been on the Club’s Board of Directors, served as Secretary of the Masonic Lodge No. 31, and has been involved in other Lakeside charities Rev. Jim can be found at Christ Church Lakeside Sunday morning services, alongside Vicar Danny Borkowski, at the La Huerta Eventos on the Carretera Ajijic-Jocotepec in west Ajijic. The Sunday Service is held at 10 am, and is followed by a coffee fellowship time at 11 am. Priest Jim Powers All are welcome. ROMANCE IN THE VILLAGE Viva la Musica continues its summer concert series, “Romance in the Village.” Thursday August 30 “Opera Romance,” a gala afternoon of lush romantic music by Donizetti, Rossini, Wagner and Lehar. The singers are Jessica Alcala, soprano; Mayela Lou, mezzo; and Jose Manuel Gonzalez, baritone. The piano accompanist is Rodrigo Sierra Moncayo. St. Andrews Church in Riberas del Pilar is the venue. There will be a champagne and canapé reception in the garden at 3:30 pm and the concert is at 4 pm. Tickets are $400. Friday September 21 “Piano Romance” with Sergio Parra, pianist and composer, who will play a program of Chopin, Messiaen, Ibera and Debussy preludes. This performance is also at St. Andrews and there will be a champagne and canapé reception in the garden at 3:30 pm and the concert is at 4 pm. Tickets are $400. Tickets will be available at the Lake Chapala Society Thursdays and Fridays from 10 to noon and also at Diane Pearl Colecciones and and Mia’s boutique, The cost is $500. COMEDIC CONFUSION Potter Productions presents a staged reading of The Sisters Rosensweig, written by Wendy Wasserstein and directed by Rosann Balbontin. The story: Sara Goode, an enormously successful American woman working as the British representative of a major Hong Kong bank, is about to celebrate her fifty-fourth birthday. Firmly ensconced in her lovely London home, she leads a quiet, almost cold, expatriate life with her daughter, Tess. For the birthday celebration, her two sisters arrive.

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The cast features (from left to right) Don Beaudreault, Anne Drake, Maryanne Gibbard, Barbara Pruitt, Ed Tasca, and (not shown) Jennifer Wisniewski. As if this weren’t causing Sara enough stress, Mervyn Kant, a furrier, and a friend of Geoffrey Duncan, prominent theatre director and on-again, off-again, bisexual lover of Pfeni, shows up at her door. All of this comedic confusion adds up to unexpected romance, suspected partings, recriminations, reconciliations and, above all, newfound love and acceptance. Show dates are Sundays, August 12 and 19, at 4 pm, at the Lake Chapala Society (LCS). Doors open at 3 pm. Use the side entrance (same as for Open Circle). The price of admission is 100 pesos. Liquid refreshments and snacks are available for purchase, courtesy of Tails of Mexico. Email your reservation requests to potterproductions@outlook.com and include your preferred date and number in your party. MARK YOUR CALENDARS We’ve heard from the planners of Feria 2018, which is November 9-11 this year. The theme is “The Colors of Nature” and artist lectures will be toward that theme. The Feria added lectures with demonstrations last year. One fine example of Feria offerings is the work of Esteban de la Cruz and his son Rodrigo They live in an isolated community in the state of Guerrero. They’re members of an extended family that creates beautiful work with painted clay that has been in their family for five generations. Check Feria Maestros del Arte’s website www.mexicoartshow.com for information on the individual artists. For Feria questions (general information, volunteering, artists), contact feriamaestros@gmail.com. New hours are 9:30 to 5;30 Friday and Saturday and 9:30 to 4:30 on Sunday. Admission will be $80. The venue is Club de Yates on Ramon Corona just past the fish restaurants. IF YOU LIKE TO PLAN AHEAD Viva la Musica announces events coming to the Auditorio Thursday, October 18 The Janus Quartet playing Shostakovich, Dvorak, Beethoven, Haydn and Mozart Friday, November 9 The Nath Quintet playing Brahms Clarinet Quintet op. 115, followed by the Schumann Piano Quintet op. 44. Features Charles Nath on the clarinet, Marita Zimmer on the piano, and a string quartet Thursday, December 6 The Jalisco Ballet Gala EVERY DAY IS A HOLIDAY Or so say the members of The Ajijic Fishing Club. This is a social club for locals and visitors to meet and swap stories and share knowledge of local fishing spots. They meet on the first Monday of each month at Dona Lola Restaurant at 9 am, just west of Ajijic on the lake side of the Carretera, across from Roberto’s Restaurant. Meetings through the end of the year are September 3, October 1, November 5 and December 3. Check the club’s website at http://drhook50hp.wixsite.com/ajijicfishingclub.


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Remembering The Peace Corps %\ %DUEDUD +LOGW

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ifty years ago in July 1968, as 22-year-old newlyweds, David Hildt and I began thirteen weeks of training to serve as Peace Corps volunteers, PCVs, with the agricultural extension service in the state of Mato Grosso (Thick Bush), Brazil. We spent the next two years living very simply in Poconé, the village at the end of a dusty, bumpy three hours drive from Cuiabá, the state capitol of Mato Grosso. In the rainy season the very curvy dirt road often had sections with pools of mud, impassable even for a four-wheel drive vehicle. During our third year we worked out of the Peace Corps office in Cuiabá, the geographic center of South America and a frontier city where adventurers and speculators prepared to head north into the wilds of the central Amazon basin. Until recently, I hadn’t thought much or deeply about our years in Peace Corps, cut off from our families, friends and all that was happening in the US and the rest of the world. Now memories of those years are being awakened as I meet other PCVs living near Lake Chapala, in Jalisco, Mexico. Since 1961, when Peace Corps was established by President Kennedy, more than 220,000 Americans have served as volunteers in 141 under-developed countries, addressing problems and human needs, such as healthcare, food and education in schools, clinics and community service organizations. Every volunteer’s experiences are different in the Peace Corps. Many, like me, had mostly positive experiences working with host country people on projects that made a difference. Others are assigned to live in unsafe situations, only to be frustrated by a lack of support for poorly conceived projects that have little chance of success. Some develop health problems or have hardships and frustrations that cause them to terminate without completing the normal two years of service. From other PCVs, I´ve learned that regardless of how different our experiences were in Peace Corps, we all learned important lessons from coping with our living conditions and work-

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ing with people whose backgrounds, cultures and beliefs were very different from our own. We learned that before we could persuade a parent, teacher, farmer or village to try something new to solve a problem, we had to know their language and as much as possible about their traditions and culture. We had to listen respectfully and accept whatever people were willing to tell us about their lives and beliefs. We needed to practice openminded diplomacy, based on respect for even the poorest, least educated people. Before we could convince a community or an individual to change their thinking or practices, we first needed to get them to like us and trust our intentions. Sharing things we had in common, such as love of our family members, benefited our relationships with each other. Rather than being in a hurry and launching into the purpose of our visit, we learned to socialize first, sipping cafezinho, a small cup of strong sweet coffee or limonada together. By sharing with other former PCVs, we learn that we all grew and were changed for the better from our experiences in Peace Corps, no matter where in the world we were living or how difficult the challenges were. Peace Corps volunteers affect the way people in other countries view Americans, hopefully more positively. Just as important are the volunteers’ changed views of other countries and cultures and how they view U.S. relations with other nations. Serving in Peace Corps causes PCVs to no longer identify just as U.S. citizens. We become citizens of the world, more interested in knowing and caring about the lives of people from backgrounds unlike our own. Note: If you are a former PVC living at Lakeside, who might enjoy meeting with a group of RPCVs, please email the author at barbarahildt@gmail.com


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e met for breakfast at Maquina 245 to start the interview. Mel Goldberg said, â€œI’ve never been interviewed before so I don’t know how this goes.â€?  I promised to be gentle. I forgot for the moment to be intimidated about Mel’s years of teaching English and creative writing. He was raised in Chicago in a tough neighborhood. Sometimes on the way to school he walked through bullet fragments. In spite of this gritty—figurative and literal—start he was always a reader. His main interest was poetry, even when he was in high school, but he didn’t tell anybody then.  â€œIt wasn’t a macho thing at the time.â€?  He also wrote a play in high school that the drama department produced and â€œthis is what got me hooked.â€? After high school Mel went off to Northern Illinois University where he majored in English. â€œWhy English?â€? I

asked.  â€œIt was a nice language,â€? he said, â€œand the only one I knew.â€?  Also, at the time he knew that companies would hire people with any kind of college degrees. (Remember those good old days?) Despite his interest in the literary arts Mel says his most interesting job was when he worked summers on the docks as a longshoreman in LA and he got to meet people from all over the world.  Â

One of these was a guy named Elias Arubajudikas, who jumped ship to remain illegally in the U. S. After several months he signed on to another ship and returned to Greece who wanted to emigrate but jumped ship and went back to Greece. Elias came to life later in one of Mel’s novels. (He enjoys using real names in his novels and so far hasn’t been sued). The adventures on the LA docks were a sideline to Mel’s career as a high school teacher of English and creative writing. He’s written consistently through his life. In college he wrote for a literary magazine and published poetry and stories. By now Mel had a wife and three children. They left LA for a teaching job in Waukegan, Illinois. (Trivia: This was Jack Benny’s birthplace. His kids went to Jack Benny Junior High School. The sports team was the 39ers). Years later Mel would drive to visit his son in California and passed through Sedona, Arizona several times on the way. He fell in love with the area—the beauty, red rocks and hiking trails, and a kind of good energy. He bought land years before retirement in anticipation of an eventual move. By now Mel was a bachelor and planned to live alone. But he had met real estate broker Bev Kephart some years before. He called her before his move to sell the land he owned and to buy him a condo sight unseen. That decision worked out well and he moved there in 1993. He taught writing at Yavapai Community College part time.  Mel says, â€œThere was one stop light there when I lived there. The City Council had a â€˜dark sky’ policy, no street lights to avoid light pollution and people could see the starry sky.â€? As a bonus he got together with Bev and they became a couple and have been together ever since. They lived in Sedona until it became â€œCaliforniafied.â€? Newcomers wanted amenities such as paved roads, sidewalks and the installation of five stop lights. Â

All this gentrification got to be too much and in 2003 they bought a motor home and traveled and worked in private campgrounds for seven years, Mel as a maintenance man and Bev doing accounting work. This well-matched couple eventually drove to Mexico for a couple of months. Mel doesn’t remember the exact year but it was a time when you could get only Nescafe if you wanted a cup of coffee. He says, â€œAnd so here I am.â€? Aside from the poetry he’s written three books (all available on Amazon). Choices involves catching a murderer. Catch a Killer and Save the World comes from Jewish and Islamic theology. Counterfeit Killing is about the murder of a miserly tycoon by his young wife and his son with whom she is having an affair. The working title for his fourth book is A Page Turner, another murder mystery. All of Mel’s books involve murder. Maybe it’s the influence of that early Chicago experience of crunching through bullet fragments on his way to school. What comes across—to the embarrassment of those of us less selfmanaged—is his consistency and discipline. Mel writes every morning, gets up at 4 or 5 am and works for two or three hours while his dogs are sleeping, seven days a week. Once I asked him about this: â€œYou don’t expect to get rich or famous from all this hard work. Why do you do it?â€?  His answer: â€œIt’s what I do.â€?  He mentioned that he had just received a payment of $11.52 from Amazon. Most recently he won a grand prize in the 7th Setouchi Matsuyama International PhotoHaiku Contest, and they’ve sent Mel two yakutas (kimonos), and some very nice towels. Sandy Olson

SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT EMENT T For the 24th FRQVHFXWLYH \HDU El Ojo del el Lago n on will hold its Annual Awards Luncheon th KH WKH RI 6HSWHPEHU DW QRRQ DW WKH 7DQJR 5HVWDXUDQW LQ $MLMLF 7KRVH ZKR PDGH D OLWHUDU\ FRQWULEXWLRQ WR RXU PDJD]LQH RYHU WKH FRXUVH RI WKLV SDVW \HDU DUH FRUGLDOO\ LQYLWHG DQG HQFRXU-ncheon aged to bring along a guest. The luncheon LQJ LWV LV WKH 7LQJHQ )DPLO\ÂśV ZD\ RI H[SUHVVLQJ DUH WKH JUDWLWXGH WR WKH PDQ\ ÂżQH ZULWHUV ZKR DUH WKH PDLQ UHDVRQ IRU RXU VXFFHVV SEE YOU THERE!

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Focus on Art %\ 5RE 0RKU

Deborah Kruger (Fabric Artist), Turbulence - August, 2018

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he creative process is one of surrender, not control.” Julia Cameron “I don’t find art—art finds me.” Xill Fessenden, Ajijic The Bauhaus, a world changing German art and design school shut down by Hitler due to its progressive intellectual and theoretical pursuits, gave flight to fabric art’s stayed images through the woven “Op” art of Anni Albers, and the use of fabric as paint by the Bauhaus weaving master, Gunta Stolzl. In the 1930s and 40s their acts of “creative surrender” coupled with an openness to art “finding them”, has been augmented by the works of contemporary women fabric artists - Ana

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driven by her concerns for the environment and endangered communities of birds. Her art entails an aesthetically, articulated, moral statement about humankind’s willing destruction of life, with a focus on environmental degradation at Lakeside by destructive human overpopulation, and the aggressive reshaping of the lakefront where

Teresa Barboza’s evocative landscapes, Olga de Amaral’s nuance colors and textures, and Naomi Wanjiku Gakunga’s transformative materials (see art in link). Deborah Kruger’s evocative art, her dreams of environmental salvation which draw creative strength from these progressive women artists, is

El Ojo del Lago / August 2018

reeds and other aquatic plants essential to the lives of waterfowl and migratory birds are being dug up by aquatic bulldozers and covered by pavement. This loss has serious implications for the quality of life for all creatures who depend on Lake Chapala’s health. John Gardner, with wisdom, observed, “True art is moral … it seeks to improve life, not debase it … it recovers what is necessary to our humanness.” In just this sense, Deborah brings both morality and aesthetic excellence to bear, as she poetically expresses the risk of humanity’s unwillingness to act. With energy - and understanding of the important role of art in shaping our humanness - Deborah has created a residency program (360 Xochi Quetzal) which brings creative artists, writers, and musicians to Lakeside on short term scholarships, and provides longer term paid housing within a Chapala based artist colony. By enabling international artists to interact with local artists Deborah helps animate Chapala’s artistic community. Deborah’s low relief “fabric” painting, Migration, captures the return of migratory birds to Lake Chapala (photo 1), and fills the air with twisting and turning feathers of birds descending in formation. Complex mixing of colors - turquoise, and a variety of complementary shades of red mated with subtle incised messages encoded on each feather - increase the sense of soaring flight and astonishing life imparted by migratory birds. Her complex spatial structures are a key to the multiple messages seeded within her art. Paid Mexican apprentices make each feather by layering colored materials, with “embedded narratives” which include images of birds, along with

shorthand, Yiddish, and indigenous language passages about environmental realities. These near invisible elements, both on a spiritual and artistic level, add complexity and subliminal meaning to her paintings. Deborah shared, “The way there --- to be a significant artist, is one feather at a time.” Working on multiple artworks as a body --- Migration, Butterfly Effect, Abandon, and her layered and textured Rapture --- creates a spiritual conversation between Deborah’s sight and insight, which, when coupled with her disciplined approach, insures components are well defined and executed, that empowers a sense of dynamic life in each world created. Her drawing, Shoe Billed Heron, (Photo 2) one of twenty completed during a period of creative reflection, illustrates her deep concern that humanity will not work to save endangered birds. Each drawing stands alone as a distinguished work of descriptive art rich in detail, line color, and evocative form, and speaks volumes about

Deborah’s acumen and commitment to the environment and its inhabitants. Join Deborah Kruger for Turbulence, a major show of her works that will be a central component of Sincronico 3, Chapala’s Third International Contemporary Art Festival, Centro Cultural Presidencia Antigua in Chapala, featuring visual arts, music, dance and literature. You are invited to the public opening of her exhibition on August 4, at 8PM. The exhibition will continue through September 16, 2018. *(additional photos in the link below) https://tinyurl.com/ybw3f6wg Rob Mohr


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The Grief Of La Llorona

Easy for a mother to grasp La Llorona, despite each mean version in the myth about her motives for ‘killing’ her children. Every mother gives her children up. The child she would give her life for can never be retrieved from the river of time. Every mother becomes a Woman in White, endlessly crying. She is the mother who asks, *What is sorrow and what is not sorrow? They are dead who do not weep. The child divine become the suffering man, and La Llorona, a living PietĂĄ. The flowers cry when she passes and remembers her child running to bring his Mama a bloom. *Do not think because she sings her heart is joyful. One also sings from pain. If you see her weeping under a tamarind tree or if you see her singing, the Banshee ghost, the grieving mother, know her haunting comes from being haunted. I, too, wander riverbanks, and notice every child who reminds me of the beautiful boy who vanished into the magnificent man. The door of my heart always ajar to the baby, the toddler, the child who will never again walk through. My tears so vast they fill the oceans. Every mother, La Llorona.

‹6XVD 6LOYHUPDULH *verses of the song In Lila Downs’ interpretation of the song, she compares the legendary La Llorona’s loss with the Spanish invasion of Mexico resulting in the demise of indigenous culture. In her 2001 album, Border, Downs dedicated the song to the spirits of Mexican migrants who have died crossing the line. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=oVUmQZdLAfQ Ed. Note: The above is most timely as the U.S. government has recently declared that many of the Mexican children held in custody along the border are “no longer eligible for re-unification with their parents.�

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WHY CAN’T CONGRESS BE MORE LIK KE A DOG? %\ 0DJJLH 9DQ 2VWUDQG

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retty nearly everybody, including cat lovers, know what dogs are like. They greet each other by circling, touching noses, and generally giving each other the onceover until they’re satisfied with what they find and have enough information to decide whether to play together or keep on walking. Why can’t politicians be more like a dog? Wouldn’t it better serve all countries if, when politicians meet other politicians, they’d do the same things dogs do? We can’t count those congressmen from the Democratic Party who call themselves Blue Dogs. That’s just Washington spin. What are we, stupid? If they were real blue dogs, they’d be a painting by George Rodrigue, or have their faces on greeting cards, or have their picture hanging in a Cajun café in Louisiana. A real dog communicates by wagging, barking, or snarling, and you pretty much know exactly what they mean. Unlike the U.S. Congress, in the entire history of the world, there has never been a hypocritical dog. However, there have been congressmen and women who must think they are a dog because they keep on digging holes for themselves. When a dog sniffs fire hydrants, telephone poles and trees, he’s reading messages. He knows who’s been there before him, he knows how tall they were, and he

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El Ojo del Lago / August 2018

knows what they had for dinner. This certainly beats reading autobiographies by politicians when the book is really written by someone else, or having dinner with one and wondering how much such a fancy meal is costing the taxpayer, or even sticking a foot under the partition to somebody else’s bathroom stall to impart a wordless message. A dog may be lower on the food chain than a human, but no dog has ever done anything so covert. There is honor among dogs, and dogs have ethics, whereas Congress, as a whole, is an ethical midget. In order to socialize our politicians the way we socialize our dogs, they should attend Obedience Class and master a few commands: SIT, STAY: This one is just for a South Carolina Republican Senator, who flew to Honduras to interfere in their politics, specifically against U.S. government policy. OFF: Leave that woman alone, you’ve got a wife at home! HEEL: No need to teach Congress about heel; many have already earned that title. FETCH: Does not refer to lobbyist dollars in your own bank account. BEG: Unless you plan on losing the next election, either sit up and beg or quit obstructing progress, and work for your constituents. DOWN: This means getting off your high horse. It does not refer to a pillow under the head of your Argentine tango partner. Congress will not graduate from Obedience School unless they first figure out that butt sniffing and asskissing are not the Maggie Van same thing. Ostrand


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nimal lovers and environmentalists around the globe were outraged in July, 2015, by news reports of the killing of Cecil the lion, a beloved big cat who was allegedly lured from the safety of his home in Hwange National Park in Zimbabwe by Dr. Walter Palmer, a Minnesota dentist, who had shelled out $50,000 to guides in an effort to fulfill his dream of killing a lion with a bow and arrow. Any legitimate hunter hopes for a clean kill, cringes at the thought of his prey being wounded and suffering, considerations that failed to trouble the conscience of Dr. Palmer. According to Oxford researcher Dr. Andrew Loveridge, who had studied the radio-collared lion for eight years, Cecil suffered in agony, struggling for breath, for ten to twelve hours before being tracked down and killed with a second arrow, after which he was skinned and beheaded by Dr. Palmer and his crew. Dr. Palmer had skirted the edge of the law before. A few years earlier, in Wisconsin, he had killed a large black bear forty miles from his permitted hunting area and was fined $3000 by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. During his interrogation, Palmer committed a felony by lying to federal officials and attempted to shift blame for his offense to his guides. The ordeal of Cecil stimulated in-

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ternational outrage and a groundswell of condemnation for Dr. Palmer and all trophy hunters. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals called for Dr. Palmer to be extradited, prosecuted and hanged. Others, equally outraged, suggested less Draconian penalties. Dr. Loveridge, angered and saddened by the obscene fate of Cecil, decided to explore the entire issue of trophy hunting, particularly with regard to Africa’s lions. The results of his research are available in his new book Lion Hearted: The Life and Death of Cecil and the Future of Africa’s Iconic Cats. As early as 2005, seeking support for his lion conservation efforts, Loveridge had traveled to Reno, Nevada to attend the annual meeting of Safari Club International, a 50,000 member hunting club that promotes itself as a wildlife conservation organization. He had hoped to garner support for his lion research, but he met with disappointment, discovering to his dismay that trophy hunting is an industry, fueled by big money and big egos. The conference was an opportunity for those selling firearms and hunting safaris to hawk their wares. Those present sought only to sate their blood lust, inflate their egos, and profit from the suffering and death of defenseless creatures. Their concern was that Loveridge’s research might reveal their true motives and limit the number of lions they could kill. Trophy hunting is

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big business. To paraphrase the character Deep Throat in All the President’s Men, “It’s all about the money. Follow the money.” As cruel and unnecessary as trophy hunting is, it is not a major cause of many species of African wildlife now facing extinction. As with most cases of threatened or extinct wildlife, habitat loss due to increased cultivation of formerly natural areas, spurred by unrestricted human population growth, is the culprit. Currently, an area of subSaharan Africa twice the size of Texas is reserved and regulated for trophy hunting. Without such protections, more of that vast area might be converted to agriculture, leading to even more habitat loss and a greater death toll among lions, elephants, rhinos and other threatened species. Hunters continue to argue that revenues derived from their activities support conservation and provide much needed relief to impoverished African farmers and villagers. In reality, however, revenues from hunting only pay a tiny amount of the costs of conservation, and very little ever filters down to local native populations. Unprotected cattle, goats and donkeys, serve as easy prey for lions, especially younger, inexperienced ones. Small subsistence farmers can be easily devastated by the loss of a cow or the family’s donkey, their only beast of burden. With no other means of survival other than what they can eke from the soil, farmers and villagers insist upon predator control. While in survey after survey, African people have affirmed that lions have a right to exist, a wealthy foreigner who pays an obscene amount to kill a lion or an elephant may be perceived as a benefactor, ridding farmers of an expensive pest, much as rural Midwesterners might happily end the career of the fox who raids henhouses or the woodchuck who devours garden crops. One way to limit the appeal of tro-

phy hunting would be to ban the importation of big game trophies into the United States. To the pleasant surprise of many, President Donald Trump, one of whose sons is a trophy hunter, reversed his own Interior Department’s decision to again permit big game trophies to enter the US, stating, “I would be hard pressed to change my mind that this horror show in any way helps conservation of elephants or any other animal.” And yet, Mr. Trump sends mixed messages on the subject. According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, the President’s Wildlife Conservation Council is weighted with members who are sympathetic to trophy hunters, including the National Rifle Association’s director of hunting policy, the vice president of the Congressional Sportsman’s Foundation that lobbies for hunters, a firearms industry executive, a veterinarian with ties to international animal trade, and a reality TV hunting guide. To date, no one on the council possesses any expertise in wildlife conservation. Lions die horrendous, agonizing deaths from wire snares set by poachers. Others suffer grim fates in the jaws of “gin” traps, made from automobile springs and buried around a lion’s kill site. Some animals have been known to lose a foot in a gin trap, requiring euthanization. A lion caught in a snare will struggle to free himself, causing the wire to dig ever deeper into his flesh, causing great pain and eventual slow death. As is the case with other species targeted by poachers, lion products generally find their way into Chinese and Vietnamese markets to provide imaginary cures for a host of ailments. There is no realistic way to prevent lions from straying outside the invisible boundaries of preserves like Hwange National Park and other wildlife areas. Even more frustrating, there is no way at the present to prevent poachers and trophy hunters from planting carcasses to lure them into unprotected areas,


as Dr. Palmer did in the case of Cecil. Fencing off such areas would be prohibitively expensive for cash strapped African economies, and local peoples have a history of stealing wire from fences to make even more snares with which to snag wildlife, including lions. As human populations continue to grow and agricultural land is expanded, conflicts between humans and apex predators like lions will increase. The solution to disappearing wildlife and vanishing biodiversity would seem to be expanded preserves. Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson, in his 2016 publication Half Earth, urges that one half the land area of earth be set aside as human free in order to preserve biodiversity. At the same time, however, much greater enforcement of boundaries than is currently the case would be necessary. Perhaps the governments of Botswana, Zimbabwe and other nations where wildlife is threatened could recruit and train law enforcement and protection details similar to South Africa’s Black Mambas, a largely female force that protects endangered rhinos and other species from poachers. Kenya has recruited Masai warriors, the Ndebele, and equipped them with mountain bikes, GPS units and plastic trumpets called vuvuzelas, to drive lions and other predators away from livestock. In Kenya the number of livestock losses to lions has been reduced by 50%. However, the greater ethical question remains. What deficiency of mind, body or spirit causes an individual to find gratification in such sadistic activities as those of Dr. Palmer, to turn a magnificent animal like Cecil into a skinned, beheaded shell, an inert and ghoulish trophy to decorate, or defile, the office or man-cave of an egocentric brute. I once visited the home of a person who had killed a large black bear. The remains had been stuffed and mounted in his recreation room. I gazed sadly into the bear’s lifeless glass eyes and saw only the empty facsimile

of the amiable, pulchritudinous creature who had once lived behind them. All animals, other than man, kill their prey out of necessity. Even among humans, poor farmers and herdsmen, living barely subsistence lives, often kill in order to save their crops or livestock, an everyday reality that those of us living out our lives safely tucked away inside protected urban civilizations, often do not understand. Only some men with withered souls take pleasure in dealing out pain, destruction and death in order to reassure weak and insecure egos. What else could motivate a person to kill an animal whose remains will not be eaten or worn, who poses no threat. Be that as it may, the ugly practice continues. Two years after the slaughter of Cecil, an anonymous trophy hunter also killed his son Xanda. An item in yesterday’s news affirms that men have no monopoly on such misbehavior. Ms. Tess Thompson Talley published a photo of herself with the corpse of a rare black giraffe she had just killed. Ms. Talley was quoted as saying, “Prayers for my once in a lifetime dream hunt came true.” The Africa Digest responded, “White American savage who is part Neanderthal comes to Africa and shoots down a very rare black giraffe courtesy of South African Stupidity.” While the Digest’s anger is justified, their response does a disservice to Neanderthals, relatively peaceful creatures who hunted in order to supply food and clothing, not to inflate an inner vacuum. As for the God that Ms. Talley attempts to identify with her misbehavior, attributing evil to the Holy Spirit may constitute blasphemy, an offense for which there is no forgiveness. Dr. Lorin Swinehart

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Immortality Awaits %\ :DLJKWV 7D\ORU -U

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osa Louise McCauley Parks died on October 24, 2005, in Detroit. She was ninety-two years old. On rare occasions, the earth seems to slow on its axis or even come to a complete standstill. The death of the humble, self-effacing seamstress from Alabama brought forth one of those occasions. Rosa’s coffin was flown to Montgomery on October 29 and taken in a horse-drawn carriage to her old church, St. Paul African Methodist Episcopal, where she lay in repose at the altar dressed in the uniform of a church deaconess. A memorial service was held the next morning in the church, and one of the speakers, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, an Alabama native, said,

“I can honestly say that without Mrs. Parks, I probably would not be standing here today as Secretary of State.� Her coffin was then flown to Washington, D.C., where it lay in honor in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda on October 31; Rosa was the thirty-first person, the first woman, and the second African American to be so honored in our nation’s history. Her funeral service was held in Detroit on November 2, and thousands of people turned out to watch the horsedrawn hearse carry her to the cemetery. Rosa was buried between her husband and mother under a headstone she had earlier selected and prepared. It reads simply, “Wife, Rosa L. Parks, 1913—.� All the accolades and tributes paid to Rosa in the last years of her life and

at her memorial services prior to being buried in Detroit pale when compared to one event in 1990 that illustrates the true measure of the woman and the impact she had on the world stage. In February 1990, Nelson Mandela was released from a South African prison after being imprisoned twenty-seven years by the South African apartheid government. Mandela would oversee the peaceful transition of South Africa apartheid past to the open and democratic Republic of South Africa. After the first multi-ethnic elections in the country’s history, he would serve as president of the Republic of South Africa from 1994 to 1999. It was truly a remarkable achievement after so many years of oppressive governance, with the threat of racial violence a constant concern. The strength of character, leadership, and forgiveness Mandela demonstrated in this crucial transition has made him a beloved and revered figure worldwide. After Mandela was released from prison, one of the first things he did was to visit the United States to bolster his ties with our government and people as he prepared to face the daunting tasks ahead in South Africa. One of the cities on his itinerary was Detroit. The city, wanting to roll out the red carpet for Mandela, invited a number of local

business, religious, and political leaders to join the welcoming group at the airport the day Mandela was to arrive. A good friend of Rosa’s noted her name was not on the list, and she told Rosa she would see that she was invited. Although Rosa admired Mandela and had followed his entire career as an activist and prisoner, she told her friend not to bother: “I just shouldn’t be there. It’s okay. They just forgot me.� The woman persisted, and, after some additional arm-twisting with the committee, Rosa was invited to join the group. Even as she was being escorted to the airport to greet Mandela, she kept telling her friends, “He won’t know me.� When Mandela’s plane landed in Detroit in June 1990, the welcoming group was arranged in a receiving line on the tarmac near the stairway to the plane’s door. Rosa was located near the front of the receiving line. Mandela came slowly down the stairway and started to walk toward the receiving line, when he froze in his steps, his gaze transfixed on one person. He stood quietly for a moment and then walked toward Rosa, tears welling up in his eyes, as he chanted in a low voice that rose in a music-like crescendo, “Ro-sa Parks. Ro-sa Parks. Ro-sa Parks.� Seventy-one-year-old Mandela and seventy-seven-year-old Rosa fell into each other’s arms, embracing and weeping, not tears of sadness, but tears of understanding that only these two icons of the civil and human rights struggle on two continents could comprehend. *An excerpt from the book Our Southern Home: Scottsboro to Montgomery to Birmingham—The Transformation of the South in the Twentieth Century by Waights Taylor Jr. Ed. Note: Some months ago, Mr. Taylor visited Lakeside and came to a meeting of the Ajijic Writers Group, where he read the foregoing except from his highly-celebrated book. To say that his reading was well-received is little short of a gross understatement.

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48

El Ojo del Lago / August 2018


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here are some foods n that are in y. the sacred category. ased They can only be purchased re they at certain places where have attained a level of perfection. If en spend your you move away, you then mages to those life on regular pilgrimages na. Bagels are in places that inspire nirvana. h t I like that category for me. I kknow what and I know where I need to go. Those bagels, however, are not here in Mexico where I now live! So along comes a guy who posts on Facebook in my local area that he’s now making and delivering bagels, and he shares his joy of discovery in how to make the perfect bagels. While I’m obviously cynical about this, I’m always charmed by the entrepreneurial spirit and figure delivery is at least a convenience. I order a dozen of his Everything Bagels because I like everything. This guy messages me to say he’s making the bagels tonight and he’ll deliver my bagels at 9 am tomorrow. To my complete surprise he actually shows up smiling at 9 am and a lady driver cheerfully waves to me. If nothing else, this is a pleasant start. I open the package of bagels and the smell of everything profoundly wafts over me, but I quickly remember these are not my sacred bagels. I toast my bagel and slather one side in butter and the other side in cream cheese. I take my first bite, and think this is not my sacred bagel. I distinctly remember how the sacred bagel is supposed to taste. Halfway through my bagel, I start

to think this is different and yet very good. Then I notice tthat all that everything stuff is ery the top and the on th bottom of the bagel, and bott bo ttom o o so both sides are equally enjoyable. This bagel is different and in its own way is also perfection. Rather than continually seek that former ideal, I realize there is another choice in a new standard. As I started thinking more broadly about the criteria I have used for determining my ideal for employment, marriage, purchasing homes, or whatever, I realized that often my choices changed when I experienced something unexpected and new. What was in my head wasn’t always as good as what showed up. I ordered my second dozen of Everything Bagels a couple days ago, and sure enough this smiling guy showed up at the time he said and his driver companion cheerfully waved from the car. As I walked back into my home I had to admit that there is something wonderful about consistency and predictability, and there is also something extraordinarily delightful about surprise in Everything. Mark Boyer

Saw you in the Ojo 49


The Ojo Crossword

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50

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El Ojo del Lago / August 2018

o belong means a ans to be accepted by y those around you. The he e dictionary describes belonging as a “to be in natural association with something�. s When she is a foreigner wi with ith a strong accent dropping into an a existing world as an adult—like e me thirty years ago—belonging p proves roves difficult to obtain. My aura off “otherness� prevents an easy point off rrecognition with another person. Getting to know someone is work and it requires a reason to start that labor. Most people in my adopted country Canada have the intent to be friendly, expressed by the old saw: if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all. Canadians are polite, but more than politeness was needed to break the shell of my foreignness. In the north of Alberta, the population mix is roughly 50-50 First Nation members and non-Indigenous residents. My fresh-of-the-boat history is not theirs. Without the social overlapping points of conversation, it became so much harder for others to get to know me. Although it had made sense for me to join my Canadian young man and to start a family in this far away, cold country, my first years in central Alberta were a time of intense struggle as a newcomer. It was tough going, finding some comfort in this foreign land, building friendships, and a new existence—until my child was born. Three years after immigration, I finally started to have an inkling what belonging was, when I became pregnant. Suddenly, people around me— even total strangers—were genuinely nice to me. Their faces became softer when they met me, something I did not relate to being pregnant at first. I just thought that people simply were nicer in this new place in the north, where we had just settled. After my daughter’s birth, the trend of increased compassion from others continued, and visitors arrived with gifts. I didn’t know what was happening to me: this attention and concern with us, where did that come from? Being in the center of attention felt like sinking into a warm bath. What had I done to deserve this?

Slowly it Slo seeped into see ep ped d awareness myy aw what h had opened door. Giving the d th door birth was the b Open SesOpe ame to the ccave of all hearts. hea arts People remembered, they remembe ered spoke of their own children, and told me their birth stories; they softened. I have no words enough for describing this most unrelenting, lifegiving event that putting a child into the world is: from the creation of a fetus from my cells and the father’s, and its development over nine month, until its final explosion: the birth. Giving birth is an overwhelming event, but almost as important to me was that the women around me mothered me, supported me, and understood me without words. I was beginning to understand other mothers on a sensory and emotional level. We shared our sorrows and joys. We became a sisterhood of women with small children in this remote area of Northern Canada. We spent time together, and helped out with each others’ kids; we called our group the Moms and Tots group. During my seven years in the north we became a family in spirit, sisters in motherhood. My new family in the north overcame the barriers of my foreignness and eased my own birth as a Canadian. I felt the embrace of friendship and shared motherhood with this group of lovely women, until another move was unavoidable for work, and my family left for another province. Some of those friendship bonds proved to be unaffected by distance and time—all the way into the present—when we are now preparing to spend time together in retirement— this time in Mexico. Belonging is essential to survival. Social relationships make us grow, at any age and wherever you are. We need social connection to survive. What I have learned then in Canada’s north, I have repeated throughout my life, and now in retirement in Ajijic, Jalisco.


Common Scents Artists to nature great odes do compose, like Beethoven’s 6th, everyone knows. I go to the kitchen look out at the trees I open the window hear birds, feel the breeze. I sit myself down At my worn writing desk, sharpen chewed yellow pencils, shred these reams so grotesque. I’m spent to the scrawl. for that immortal phrase. I’ve slowed to a crawl in a Minotaur’s maze. I break out of this maze, the immortality phase from pie-in-the -sky I resign authorship. When a bell calls, awaking It’s the timer for baking, the aroma of cookie, time to play hooky!

Steve Hluchan 6WHYH#+OXFKDQ FRP

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Over 60 years of “People Helping People�

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News

www.lakechapalasociety.com

From The Desk of the Executive Director LCS is an amazing place. Membership is up 17% from a year ago. We schedule more than 100 programs, services and activities every month! Most are ongoing and weekly. New activities and classes are being brought to us regularly. The campus renovation project is going on at full steam (behind the scenes). We are planning more membership and public meetings by the end of the year.  The Creative Communication program for high school students is very successful, and the Chess Club Huarachess celebrated its overwhelmingly successful first community tournament. The Children’s Art Program celebrated its sixth Summer Art Camp and continues to draw more youngsters from Lakeside. The members of the Ajijic Society of the Arts are the generous sponsors of this most popular of all of LCS’s programs. Our ties with other community organizations are stronger. In October LCS will host a community summit on recycling that may result in many new partnerships. We are discussing our ESL program with the University of Guadalajara. In August, the BBC will be filming on our grounds The British consulate is expected to be campus once a month beginning in September. Our Music Fest was the best ever with almost 400 guests. Partnering with the town of Ajijic, we will celebrate Mexican Independence Day, September 16. Other organizations are turning to LCS to host their fundraisers and community work. Many new volunteers are participating in our success! These are just a few of the myriad of new and ongoing relationships we’ve formed. In September we will be entering our 2018 Annual Giving campaign, and I hope that everyone reading this gives serious reflection on how much LCS does for this community.  It’s the annual fund that is linked to making all of these things happen. I thank the Board and every volunteer for making LCS the most important AC lakeside working to enhance our community’s quality of life through education and social exchange. - Helping People. Changing Lives. Terry Vidal Director Ejecutivo/Executive Director

New to Lakeside? This One’s for You. “Introduction to Lakeside� is available to LCS members only. Topics include: banking, shopping, medical services, transportation, housing, utilities, maid and gardening services, social protocols, fiestas, holidays, and religious observations. In the Sala at 9 a.m. Thursday, August 9. The cost is $250 pesos. Register in the office or on the LCS website. Your LCS membership must be current for the duration of the class.

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El Ojo del Lago / August 2018

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BBC to Record LCS’ New Prueba Dance Program!

The BBC will be recording this LCS Personal Enrichment Program as part of the reality show, The Real Marigold on Tour. If you remember the film The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel of a few years ago, the theme will be familiar: three wellknown British celebrities will visit Ajijic as “retireesâ€?. The BBC will film their adventures here as part of the program’s visits to many international locations to illuminate what life might be like as a foreign retiree. Tech Classes Return! Mike Goss, one of our LCS techno-wizards returns with four classes for LCS members only. Sign up by email only at lcs.tech.training@gmail.com. with your member number and expiration date. Membership must be current throughout all classes. In the Sala, 10 to 11:30 a.m. beginning August 2. Bring your devices. Thursday, August 2 Cell Phones in Mexico How to make and receive calls. How to use Mexican cell phones, home phones, and US and Canadian cell phones. Thursday August 16 Google Photos Google Photo basics: storing your photos for free, creating albums, and sharing your photos. Learn how to enhance your pictures and backup your Smart Phone’s photos automatically. Thursday August 23 iPhone Q&A We’ll try to answer all your iPhone questions. Thursday August 31 Android Q&A We’ll try to answer all your Android questions.


LCS Language Classes

U.S. Citizens Voter Assistance

LCS offers a variety of Spanish language courses and classes for those of you who want to learn Spanish or brush-up on your language skills. One of them is sure to suit your schedule and interests. Exploring Spanish: Held every Wednesday from 12 to 1:30 p.m. and Saturday from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. in the Sala. Members only. Free Introduction to Spanish This casual class for beginners covers the Spanish alphabet, simple vocabulary, phrases useful about town, and information about Lakeside and Mexican culture. Classes are held the first Tuesday of each month in the Gazebo, from 12 until 1:30 p.m. and continue for three weeks. Tuition is $220 pesos. Members only. Warren Hardy Spanish Classes Classes meet two days a week for an hour and a half each session at the Wilkes Education Center (Biblioteca). The program is based on the Warren Hardy Spanish language course designed for the adult student. Several levels of instruction are available to suit the student’s proficiency. Classes run from September 3 to October 22. Register for classes at the LCS office or online. You may also register at the Blue Umbrella Patio from August 27 to 31. A representative will be there to recommend the appropriate class for your skill level. Tuition for the course is $900 pesos; the required textbook is an additional $670 pesos. Other instructional materials may be purchased separately. This is a members-only class. Your membership must be current for the duration of the class. For more information about the Spanish classes visit www. lakechapalasociety.com. English as a Second Language If you have a Spanish-speaking friend, neighbor, maid or gardener who is at least 15 years old and would like to learn English, LCS offers a free ESL class at the Wilkes Biblioteca at Galeana #18. Register at the Wilkes office August 13 to 16 from 12 to 2 p.m. The required textbook is $500 pesos. . Call 376/7662490 for more information. Conversaciones en Español will return on October 8.

Democrats Abroad will return this summer to assist any U.S. voter regardless of, or lack of, party affiliation. They will take requests for absentee ballots and make a ballot box available every Tuesday from August 28 through October 23 from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. on the Blue Umbrella Patio. A ballot box will be available in the LCS Service Office during the week or you may submit completed ballot requests to the consulate during the regular monthly visit on Wednesday, August 8.

Volunteers Needed If you are interested in any of the volunteer positions indicated below, or if you would like to offer your skills and time to any of LCS’ many programs and activities, contact volunteer@lakechapalasociety.com, fill out a form on the LCS website, or pick up one at the Service Office. We are looking for an experienced and knowledgeable handyman who can maintain and repair buildings on the LCS campus. Must be reliable. This is a volunteer position requiring five to ten hours a week. The library needs a volunteer to repair books. The Chess Club needs bilingual volunteers. The ESL program needs volunteer instructors. Please note: LCS’ regular blood pressure screenings will return Mondays from 10-12 p.m. on the Neill James patio.

US Passport Checklist August 2018 Proper form must be completed and signed. Simple passport renewal MXN Pesos/$110 USD Form DS-82 Book and Card MXN Pesos/$140 USD Form DS-82 Renewal age 15 and under MXN Pesos/$115 USD Form DS-11 Lost or stolen passport MXN Pesos/$145 USD Forms DS-64 & DS-11 Two photos 2”x2” or 5 x 5 cm. (without glasses) Important news from the US Consulate: Fees must be in the exact amount required for consular services. No money will be exchanged if your check is incorrect for passport renewals and notarizations. Check the LCS website for up-to-the-minute exchange information or visit the LCS Service Office. Bank checks must be made payable to “United States Disbursing Officer on Behalf” in Mexican pesos only. Checks in pesos are available only from Banamex located at Avenida Francisco I Madero 222, Col. Centro in Chapala. Your original passport must be submitted to the bank in order to complete the transaction. Please note: The bank will require a fee for issuing these checks. Contact the LCS Service Office for the exact amount required. Do not sign or write anything on the check. No cash or credit cards will be accepted as payment. No first time applications will be accepted. Do not print your application on one page. Please use one sheet per page. Notarizing a document requires MXN Pesos/$50 USD per impression. You must present an official and current US or Mexican ID such as: a US passport, US driver’s license, Mexican passport, Mexican driver’s license, or a Mexican voter card (IFE) to have documents notarized.

British Consular Services Come to LCS A British consular representative will be available the last Saturday of every month, beginning August 25, from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. on the LCS Neill James Veranda to assist British citizens with their concerns. Contact Ceri Dando, cpdando2000@yahoo.com, or call 333139-4314 for more information.

Saw you in the Ojo 53


August Activities *Open to the Public ** US Citizens (S) Sign in (C) Member card Health Insurance * IMSS & Immigration Services Mon+Tues 10-1 Lakeside Insurance Broker Tues+Thur 11-2 Health and Legal Services * Becerra & Galindo Services Thurs 10:30-12:30 Blood Pressure Screening Mon 10 -12 British Consulate last Sat 10-12 Glucose Screening 1st Tues 10-12 Hearing Aid Services (S) Mon+Sat 11-4 Ministerio Publico Wed Aug 1 + 15 10-2 My Guardian Angel Tues 10-12:30 Optometrist Claravision (S) Thur 9-3 Skin Cancer Screening (S) 2nd + 4th Wed 10-12 US Consulate** (S) Wed August 8 10:30 register 10 Lessons(C) Beginner’s Photography 2nd+4th Mon 12-2 Cardio Dance Exercise Fri 12:30-1:30 Chair Yoga Fri 2-3:30 Children’s Art Sat 10-12* Children’s Chess Club Sat 12-1* Children’s English Class Sat 9:30-10:30* Clases de Bordado Artistico Mon 3-6, Wed & Fri 4-6* Exercise Mon+Wed+Fri 9-10 Exploring Spanish Wed 12-1:30 Sat 11-12:30 Fitness through Yoga Mon 2-3:30 Help with Tech Issues Thurs 1+3+4+last 10-11:30 Intermediate Hatha Yoga Tues+Thur 2-3:30 Introduction to Lakeside (S) 2nd Thurs 9-1 register+cost Introduction to Spanish Tues 12-1:30 register+cost Line Dancing Tues+Thurs 10-11:15 PEP and Prueba Mexico Series(S) register and cost; check office Photography Club 1st+3rd Mon 12-2 Stretch and Balance Exercise Tues+Thurs 8:45--9:45 Tai Chi Chih Beginners Fri 10-11 Tai Chi Chih Continuing Fri 11-12 Taller Comunicacion Ninos de Mexico Sat 11:30-1; check office Tech Help Desk Thurs 12-2 Walk For Fitness Wed 10-11 Warren Hardy Spanish Classes (S) Mon-Sat register+cost Write-to-a-Prompt Writers’ Group Thurs 10-12 Libraries Book & Video Mon-Sat 10-2 Library of Congress Books**/ Talking Books,Audio Thurs 10-12 Wilkes Mon-Fri 9:30-7, Sat 9:30-1* Social Activities (C) All Things Tech Fri 10-11:30 Bridge 4 Fun Tue+Thurs 1-5 Discussion Group B Wed 12-1:30 Everyday Mindfulness Mon 10-12 Film Aficionados Thurs 2-4:30 Games Group Mon 1-4 Mah Jongg Wed 2-4:30 Next Chapter Book Group 2nd Thurs 12-2 Scrabble Fri 11:30-1:30 Spanish/English Conversation Sat 11-12:30* TED Talk Learning Seminars Tues 12-1:15 Tournament Scrabble Tues 12-1:50 Service and Support Groups * Al-Anon (in Spanish) Mon 6-7:30, Wed 5:30-7:30 Information Desk Mon-Sat 10-1 Lake Chapala Painting Guild 2nd Fri 1:30-3:30 Lakeside AA Mon +Thurs 4:30-5:30 Needle Pushers Tue 10-12 Open Circle Sun 10-11:30 SMART Recovery Mon 2:30-4 Toastmasters Mon 7-8:30 p.m US Voter Assistance Begins Tues Aug 28 10-12 Ticket Sales Mon - Fri 10 a.m. to 12 noon

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El Ojo del Lago / August 2018

Video Library August All video rentals are now for five days. The Video Library needs couriers to bring us DVDs. We pre-pay them and have them shipped to the address of your choice. Contact: keanhombre@ prodigy.net.mx

PEP Program: Introduction to Creative Writing We’ll learn to use language and ‘voice’, develop characters, dialogue, narration, back story, theme, point-of-view, plotting, creating the story arc, and, of course, editing and critiquing. Course fee is $400 pesos. Classes are on Mondays from September 3 to 24 from 2 to 4 p.m. in the South Campus Board Room. Min/ Max students:11/20. Enrollment ends August 29. Full payment must be received in the LCS Service Office seven days prior to the start date of the class. You may pay in person or online using Paypal. No refunds. These programs are limited to LCS members. Membership must be current for the duration of the class. Cancellations must be made at least five days before the start of the course. A waiting list will be created If the class is full. Instructor Rachel McMillen is the author of four books, with a fifth scheduled for release in 2018. Two of her books were nominated for the Arthur Ellis Award.

Costco Returns Wednesday, August 22 Look for Costco representatives at the Blue Umbrella Patio with information about upcoming sales and special offers, and to open or renew your Costco memberships.


TED Talks

Thursday Film Aficionados

Tuesdays In the Sala 12 noon to 1:15 p.m. Members only. Bring your card. Tuesday, August 7 A Tale of Two Americas...and the Minimart Where They Collided Anand Giridharadas, Writer Ten days after 9/11, a shocking attack at a Texas mini-mart shattered the lives of two men: the victim and the attacker. In this stunning talk, Anand Giridharadas, author of “The True American,” tells the story of what happened next. It’s a parable about the two paths an American life can take, and a powerful call for reconciliation. Tuesday, August 14 Our Loss of Wisdom Psychologist Barry Schwartz makes a passionate call for “practical wisdom” as an antidote to a society gone mad with bureaucracy. He makes the powerful argument that rules often fail us, incentives often backfire, and practical, everyday wisdom will help rebuild our world. Tuesday, August 21 A Neural Portrait of the Human Brain Nancy Kanwisher, brain imaging pioneer who uses fMRI scans to see activity in brain regions (often her own brain), shares what she and her colleagues have learned: the brain is made up of both highly specialized components and general-purpose “machinery.” Another surprise: there’s so much left to learn. Tuesday, August 28 The Illusion of Consciousness Dan Dennett, Philosopher, Cognitive Scientist makes a compelling argument that not only don’t we understand our own consciousness, but that many times our brains are actively fooling us.

Open to LCS members only. Bring your card. All films shown in the Sala from 2 to 4 p.m. No food. No pets.

August Bus Trips Wednesday, August 8 Tlaquepaque/Forum Mall/Home Depot Shop Tlaquepaque and find upscale retailers and fine dining in an historical architecturally significant, pedestrian-only zone. Cost $370 pesos for members and $470 pesos for nonmembers. For those who wish to shop the Forum Mall and/ or Home Depot, accommodations will be made. Bus departs promptly at 10 a.m. from the sculpture in La Floresta. Thursday, August 23 Galerias Mall/Costco Shop major retailers like Sears, Best Buy and SuperWalmart. Dine at popular restaurants. Cost to members is $370 pesos; non-members $470. Bus departs promptly at 9:30 a.m. from the sculpture in La Floresta. Tickets must be purchased no later than two days before any LCS bus trip.

The first three offerings for August will be a trilogy by the Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski. These films stand alone and can be enjoyed individually. August 2 Blue (Bleu) 1993 France The start of Kieslowski’s trilogy on France’s national mottoLiberty, Equality, Fraternity. Blue is the story of Julie who loses her husband and daughter in a car accident. The theme of liberty is manifested in Julie’s attempt to start life anew. (95 minutes) August 9 White (Blanc) 1994 France-Poland Karol (Polish) marries Dominique (French) and moves to Paris. The marriage breaks down forcing Karol to return to Poland. He never forgets Dominique, and while starting a new life in Warsaw, he begins to plot his next moves. (105 minutes) August 16 Red (Rouge) 1994-Switzerland-France- Poland Redemption, forgiveness and passion. A young model meets a retired judge. Irene Jacob and the great Jean-Louis Trintignant turn in masterful performances in the lead roles. (90 minutes) August 23 Nineteen Forty Five 2017 Hungary On August 12, 1945, 11:00 a.m. two mysterious strangers dressed in black appear at the railway station of a Hungarian village. Secrets, sins, betrayal; everything changes. (84 minutes) August 30 King of Masks 1996 China Wang is an aging street performer known as the King Of Masks. His son died from illness at age 10. Wang aches for a male heir to pass on his rare art. One night he is sold a young boy by a slave trader posing as the boy’s father. Originally shown at the LCS over ten years ago, one of China’s great films. Based on a true story.(100 minutes)

Sixth Annual LCS Children’s Art Sale Join us once again for wonderful Children’s Art Sale on the LCS campus Saturday, August 4, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. The sale features creations by the children who attended the 6th Annual Children’s Art Camp held in July. A portion of your purchase will go to the young artist; the remainder helps support the Children’s Art Program, LCS’ most popular community project.

THE LAKE CHAPALA SOCIETY, A.C. 16 de Septiembre #16-A, Ajijic, Jalisco LCS Main Office: (376) 766-1140 Office, information and other services - Monday-Saturday, 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. Grounds open until 5:00 p.m. LCS BOARD OF DIRECTORS President - Carole Wolff (2020); Vice-President - Sandra Britton (2019); Treasurer - Tim Boardman (2019); Secretary - George Radford (2020); Directors: Azucena Bateman (2019); Howard Feldstein (2019); Nicolas Hanson (2019); Philip Newbold (2020); Janis Sirany (2019); Elizabeth Villaseñor (2020). Immediate Past President: Ben White * Executive Director - Terry Vidal The LCS Newsletter is published monthly. Deadline for submissions is the 14th of the month preceding publication. Submit all news items to lcsnewsletter2016 @gmail.com Note: The editorial staff reserves the right to edit all submissions according to time, space availability and editorial decision.

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El Ojo del Lago / August 2018


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Service

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Tel: 33-1228-5377 3DJ - GENERAL HOME SERVICES - $PDQFLR 5DPRV -U Cell: (045) 331-520-3054 3DJ - MARBLE & GRANITE Tel: 766-1306 3DJ 3,626 < $=8/(-26 '( /$ 5,%(5$

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Cell: 331-250-6486 3DJ - ROBERTO MILLAN - ARCHITECT

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Tel: 766-3771, Cell: 331-340-3758 3DJ 6,.$ Tel: 766-5959 Pag: 24

%(' %5($.)$67 DENTISTS - CASA DEL SOL Tel: 766-0050 - CASA FLORES Tel: 766-5493

- C.D. SANDRA ANAYA MORA 3DJ

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Cell: (045) 331-218-6241 - DENTAL HEALTH ONE Tel: 106-0826 - DR. ALBERTO DON OLIVERA Tels: 765-4838, 765-4805

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* BEER & LIQUOR STORES

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* ELECTRONICS/ TECHNOLOGY %(72¶6 :,1( /,4825 Cell: (045) 333-507-3024

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- STEREN

Tels. 766-0599, 766-0630

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* ART GALLERIES/HANDCRAFTS - ALMA GRANDE Tel: 33-2172-9377 3DJ $57 678',2 Tel: 33-3170-6135, 33-3677-3482 3DJ $=7(& 678',2 3DJ - DIANE PEARL COLECCIONES Tel: 766-5683 3DJ - LA BELLA VIDA Tel: 766-5131 3DJ

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* BOUTIQUE / CUSTOM SEWING

3DJ

Tel: 766-0133

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Tel: 108-1087

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- NAPOLEON Tel: 766-6153

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* HARDWARE STORES )(55(7(5,$ < 7/$3$/(5,$ *$/9(= Tel: 766-0880, Fax: 766-2440

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- LA NUEVA POSADA Tel: 766-1444, 766-1344

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* INSURANCE /$.(6,'( ,1685$1&( ('*$5 &('(f2 Cell: (045) 33-3106-6982 3DJ 3$5.(5 ,1685$1&( 6(59,&(6 Tel: 765-5287, 765-4070 Pag: 22 - PROTEXPLAN U.S. Toll Free 1-800-608-5743 Mexico Toll Free 01-800-681-6730 3DJ - TIOCORP Tel: 766-4828 3DJ

* LEGAL SERVICES

Cell. 331-0091-358

Cell: (045) 331-498-7699

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- SOLBES & SOLBES

3DJ

Tel: 331-520-5529, Cell: 333-676-6245

* FURNITURE 3DJ

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* LIGHTING

Tel: 765-6602

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- L&D CENTER Tel: 766-1064

* CANOPIES 3DJ

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* GARAGE DOORS OPENERS

- LONAS MEXICO Tel: 766-0045, Cell: 33-3956-4852

- AUTOMATIC GARAGE DOOR OPENERS Pag: 24

Tel: 766-4973

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- REAL ORTEGA & SONS-+DUGZDUH IRU &DUSHQWHUV Tel: 765-2404, 765-3404

* CLEANING SERVICES

- COLIBRI GARDEN Tel: 765-4412, Cell: (045) 333-156-9382 - ROCHATAS Tel: 387-763-0295

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* GARDENING

* MALL / OUTLET 3DJ 3DJ

- AXIXIC SPRING CLEANING Tel: 766-5140- Cell: 33-1075-7768

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Tel: 766-4386

Pag: 44

- GARDEN CENTER

* COMMUNICATIONS

Tel: 765-5973

- CENTRO LAGUNA Tel: 766-5514

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* MEAT/POULTRY/CHEESE

%$1. ,19(670(17 - ISHOPNMAIL

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* GOLF

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* CONSIGNMENT SHOP

- ATLAS COUNTRY GOLF COURSE Tel: 33-3689-2620

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* CONSTRUCTION 3DJ

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- EL CHANTE ORGANICOS 721<¶6 Tel: 766-1614

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- TEPEHUA TREASURES Tel: 763-5126

* BEAUTY

58

Tel: 106-2430

* LUMBER

- FRATS Tel: 765-2505, 765-3946

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* CASINO

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- INTERCAM Tel: 766-5978 - MULTIVA Tel: 766-2499

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* FUMIGATION

- CUGINIS BOUTIQUE Tel/Fax: 766-1790 - MI MEXICO

* HOTELS / SUITES

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- CASA TRES LEONES Cell: (045) 331-350-6764

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El Ojo del Lago / August 2018

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* GRANITE & MARBLE - MARBLE & GRANITE Tel: 766-1306

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* MEDICAL SERVICES - PLASTICA LIFT Tel: 108-0595

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* MOVERS /$.( &+$3$/$ 029,1* Tel: 766-5008 - STROM-WHITE MOVERS Tel: 766-6153

* TREE SERVICE

* RENTALS/PROPERTY MANAGEMENT

* SATELLITES/ T.V.

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$-,-,& (/(&7521,&6 6 $ '( & 9 Tel/Fax: 766-1117, 766-3371 3DJ

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- FOR RENT Cell: 331-115-6584

- SHAW SATELLITE SERVICES Te: 33-1402-4223

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- CHAPALA TREE SERVICE Tel: 762-0602

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* TOURS

- FOR RENT

* MUSIC / THEATRE / EVENTS

Cell: 333-667-6554

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* SELF STORAGE

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- SELF STORAGE-BODEGAS CHAPALA Tel: 766-0661, Tel/Fax: 766-1045 3DJ

- FOR RENT '(02&5$76 $%52$' ' - +2:$5' Tel: 766-3044 /$.(6,'( /,77/( 7+($75(

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* NURSERY - LAS PALMAS VIVERO Cell: 33-1195-7112

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* REAL ESTATE

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- ALTO LAGO Tel: 33-3627-6437, 33-3627-6438 3DJ - BETTINA BERING Tel: 766-1049, Cell. 33-1210-7723 3DJ - CHULA VISTA NORTE Tel: 766-2177 Cell: (045) 33-1892-2194 3DJ - CIELOVISTA Tel: 33-2002-2400 3DJ &2/':(// %$1.(5 &+$3$/$ 5($/7< Tel: 766-1152, 766-3369 Fax: 766-2124, Tels: 765-2877 Fax: 765-3528 - CONTINENTAL REALTY Tel: 766-1994 - CUMBRES Tel: 33-2002-2400 - EAGER & ASOCIADOS Tel: (376) 766 1917, 1918

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- FOR SALE BY OWNER Cell: 331-697-6863 3DJ - GEORGETTE RICHMOND Tel: 766-2077 3DJ - GRUPO CORPORATIVO ARELLANO Cell: 331-331-0249, 333-667-3122 3DJ -8',7 5$-+$7+< Cell: (045) 331 - 395 - 9849 - LORI FIELSTED REALTY Cell: 331-365-0558 - MICHAELA SIRBU Cell: 333-141-5979

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- TRUDIE NELSON Cell: 331-074-3308 - VISTA ALEGRE Tel: 33-2002-2400

* RESTAURANTS/CAFES/BAR $-,-,& 7$1*2 Tel: 766-2458 $50$1'2¶6 +,'($:$< Tel: 766-2229

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Pag: 44

- FAR Tel: 331-321-6969

Tel: 766-1066 - GO BISTRO Cell: (045) 33-3502-6555 *26+$¶6

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$57852 )(51$1'(= Cell: (045) 333-954-3813 - PERSONAL TRANSPORTATION Cell: 331-112-5745, 333-954-9694

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* TAXI / TRANSPORTATION

Tel: 766-4253, 331-402-4223

Tel: 766-4767, Cell: 333-393-2770 - SOUTHERN SISTERS RESTAURANT Tel: 688-1525, Cell: 331-329-8748

- LA BELLA VIDA Tel: 766-5131 - TOTAL BODY CARE Tel: 766-3379

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3DJ 3DJ Pag: 22 Pag: 24 3DJ

* RETIREMENT/REST/NURSING HOMES - CASA ANASTASIA Tel: 765-5680 / 33-3452-5864

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- LA CASA NOSTRA Tel: 765-3824 0, &$6,7$ 1XUVLQJ +RPH Tel: 106-2081, Cell: 331-115- 9615 1856,1* +20( /$.( &+$3$/$

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Pag: 42

- TECNO AQUA Tel: 766-3731, 108-0808

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Tel: 108-0887 - ELEGANTE

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Cell: 333-461-6017 - SANTANA RENTALS Cell: 315-104-3283

- CHARTER CLUB TOURS Tel: 766-1777 - TIA STEPHANIE TOURS

Tel: 766-0404 - OHANA Tel: (01387) 761-0403 -THE MOON Tel: 331-357-4205

3DJ 3DJ 3DJ 3DJ Pag: 42

Saw you in the Ojo 59


&$56

FOR SALE: VW White SuperBeetle 2001. Jalisco plated, New tires, brakes, spark plugs. Driven locally only --total 75,000 mi -or-120,000 Km. Bargain priced at $4,500 USD or $85,000 pesos. Comes with several months fully transferable, FREE total liability insurance coverDJH 3ULFH LV ¿UP QR GLVFRXQWV &DOO IRU test drive--please leave message and I’ll get back to you promptly: Ajijic: 331-7223408. FOR SALE: 5x8 enclosed trailer with Jalisco plates, Single side swing rear GRRU +DUG WR ¿QG KHUH LQ WKLV FRQGLWLRQ photo to follow. Call 333-461-5442 to see, Price: $28000 pesos. FOR SALE: 2003 Harley Davidson 100th Anniversary Wide Glide MC FXD in excellent condition. Has windowshield and saddle bags. Asking $5,000 US or $100,000 Mexican pesos. Email: jausten09@yahoo.com. FOR SALE: VW Sportvan (Compact SUV) - 2007 - Manual - Mexican Plated, Engine: 4 Cylinders. Transmission: Manual - 5 speed + R, Mileage: 85,630 miles. Price: $99,500.00 pesos. For viewings contact Pablo at: Cell: 33-1424-1667. Email: pcabralk@gmail.com. FOR SALE: Jaguar XF, 2011, 5 liter V8, 87000 Kilometers, that is only 54000

miles, Top of the line Premium Luxury, Mexican plates, it has all the bells and whistles you can desire, 6 speed auto with 4 driving modes, paddle shifter on the steering wheel, dual climate, cooled and heated seats, 12 positions adjust seats with memory, lumbar support, stereo, CD 6 disks, USB MP3. Price to sell $315000 pesos, all tenencias payed, Serviced by USA Jaguar Dealer. Email: rennicint@yahoo.com FOR SALE: 2005 Ford Freestyle, green, 7-passenger, 3.0L, 6 cyl, 5-door, 129,000 miles, smooth ride, very clean & well maintained, lady driven, only 2 owners. Mexican plated. $95,000 pesos. Michaela 333-141-5979. FOR SALE: This is a 1995 model. It has a V6 engine installed in either 1994 or 1995. Price: $35,000. Email: 1988jeopardychampion@gmail.com. FOR SALE: Mercury Mariner Premier 4 dr. SUV, 100,000 miles, leather interior, Jalisco Mexican platted white, new tires, 9 86 RU EHVW RႇHU

COMPUTERS

FOR SALE: Mitsubishi EX200U DLP Projector 2300 Lm HDMI-Adapter Remote TeKswamp, PLUS Projector-Gear Projector Ceiling Mount for MITSUBISHI EX200U, PLUS 100� wall screen. $5000

MX. Email: egweiss@outlook.com. FOR SALE: Logitech Harmony Smart Control with Smartphone App and Simple All In One Remote – Black, $75 on Amazon ($70 + $5 tax), New in box, very, very slightly used one time, wife doesn’t like. $1500 MX, Same price as Amazon, but it is HERE without shipping and 16% IVA. Email: egweiss@outlook.com. FOR SALE: Asus tf 300 t 10.1 inch tablet with detachable keyboard to give up to 12 hours battery life. Leather like case. Original charger. Comes with two apps for free live u.s. and uk mainstream tv and one for free movies.not kodi. $2300 pesos. Price reduced to $1800 pesos. Email: derekyoungmex@gmail.com. FOR SALE: GoGrove Bass Pulse computer loudspeakers. $200 pesos. Call 331-318-1597 San Antonio. FOR SALE: Slightly used Android TV Box USTVNOW + 70 More channels. It gets USTVNOW and over 70 more channels in a common list. Of couse you need a USTVNow account to use it but it is easy to change the account. The additional 70 channels cost $30 US Dollars per YEAR ; some entertainment lots of news, some sports. Opra WInfrey Network , BYU TV, Golf Channel, PAC12 Networks, MSNBC, CBSN , Euronews and lots more. USA number +1-917- 2009099 OR whatsapp ONLY 331-650-1635 (this phone is not receiving calls but whatsapp works!) Mark. FOR SALE: Used ASUS MA97R2.0 Motherboard. Complete with drivers and manual. Socket 3. Price $1,500 pesos. Email: peteredwards052@gmail.com. FOR SALE: I have up-graded my PC and have a good used AMD FX 6100 8 core Processor and fan assy. for sale. Socket 3, 3.3 to 3.9 GHz. Price: $800 pesos. Email: peteredwards052@ gmail.com. FOR SALE: Custom built desk. 2x6 construction to support attachment of dual monitors and steel arms. $2200. Monitors with dual desk mount monitor stand $3300. Keyboards, Mouse, Speakers $1100. Tower and power supply $5200. Email: dlemel@dlemel.net.

PETS & SUPPLIES

FREE: Daschund and Mini Schnauzer IRU $GRSWLRQ 7KH\ DUH &OLႇRUG D EHDXWLful male daschund, 10 months old, and and Mitzy, a lively female mini-Schnauzer of six years. Both are housebroken, upto-date on vaccinations, and neutered. No special diets or medications. It’s preferred that they be adopted together, but if necessary they can be placed in separate homes. Sweet-tempered and loving, each would make a wonderful companion. Please PM me for details. Email: NOPFKDႈQ #JPDLO FRP. FOR SALE: I have two small pet carriers for sale $300.00 pesos each. Proceeds go to the Ranch. Email: vivtomh@ hotmail.com.

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FOR SALE: Up right home oxygen FRQFHQWUDWRU OLWHU (YHUĂ€R ZLWK H[WUD oses and canulas. New $13,421.37 pe-

60

El Ojo del Lago / August 2018

sos, will sell for $6,000.00 pesos. Call Charlie 331-219-8448 or email sundevil306@gmail.com. FOR SALE: Portable oxygen concentrator, Inen One 3 system, bought new Oct 2017 for $2,445.00usd. I’ll sell for $35,000.00 pesos or $1,861.00usd. Includes 4 and 10 hour batteries with home and auto power cords. Call Charlie 331-219-8448 or email sundevil306@ gmail.com. FOR SALE: King sized mattress therapedic back sense, very comfortable mattress with the box spring. $200. us dollars or $4,000 pesos. Mattress with the box spring. Location Vista Alegre. Email: pattierobertson@gmail.com. WANTED: 2 bicycles, we’re looking for two. A standard sized one for a man, and a short one for a woman, happy to borrow, rent, or buy. Any leads appreciated! stymiebopcaretakers@gmail.com. WANTED: Is anybody making Kombucha? I’m in need of a scoby to get me started in making my own again. I can WUDGH IRU HLWKHU NH¿U JUDLQV IRU PDNLQJ ZDWHU NH¿U RU SRVVLEO\ JUDLQV IRU PDNLQJ PLON NH¿U DV ZHOO (PDLO ilerner2@shaw. ca. FOR SALE: Four golf bags. Two ladies’ and two mens’. From MXN$5001200. Three travel bags MXN$600 each. 11 assorted woods from $100-150 each. 24 assorted irons $100 each. 3 putters $200 each. Email: Aivarsamy@gmail. com. Tel: 766-2225 FOR SALE: Celestron 15x70 Skymaster binoculars, About 1 year old...not a scratch. Paid $2640mp new and askLQJ PS ¿UP 7KH\œUH JUHDW EXW TXLWH honestly just too heavy for Heidi. If you have questions or are interested, call me at 331-442-3930. Rick FOR SALE: MABE slide-in stove, 3 years old, glass top missing, $4,500 MX pesos. Call Pierrette 106-2131 for more details. Email: kenypierrette@hotmail. com. WANTED: Wanted to buy Aluminum boat, 16 to 18 feet, with or without motor, prefer welded bass model. With or without trailer. Email: edholthe@yahoo.com. FOR SALE: Sony bravia 22 inch tv. 720 hd hdmi and usb ports. Lightly used. $1700 pesos. Email: derekyoungmex@gmail.com. WANTED: I need someone to help doing data entry, English, basic information. I lost my hard drive on my computer, so I’m starting from the beginning, but on the cloud this time. I have about 300 ¿OHV WR HQWHU IURP P\ KRPH LQ 6DQ -XDQ Tecomatlan, (22k from Ajijic, 12k from Chapala). Michael chromeblues@yahoo. com. WANTED: Nordic Track Ski Machine...contact at ShalomBeWell@gmail. com. WANTED: Gazelle Glider...contact at ShalomBeWell@gmail.com. WANTED: Schwann Airodyne Exercise Bike...contact at ShalomBeWell@ gmail.com. FOR SALE: Frigidaire upright freezer, new from TioSam in Novermber of 2016. $11,000 pesos new, asking $3500 or best


RႇHU (PDLO pablosemanas@gmail.com. WANTED: Hi i am here until the end of August and am looking for a massage table so i can do some Reiki, willing to beg borrow or borrow and beg. Do you have one i can use, maybe do a trade of sorts. Please let me know. Email: lsdoucette@hotmail.com. FOR SALE: Unblocked Hisense F32 smartphone, with clear protector case, in original box. Features: 5� screen, 16GB, ¿QJHUSULQW VHQVRU $QGURLG 1RXJDW 4GLTE, Dual SIM, Micro SD expansion slot, 13MP camera, 1.4Ghz Octa-core processor. New price $4,500 - $5000 pesos. $2,500 pesos OBO. Call (045) 331453-6800 WATED: I am looking to buy an outside propane gas grill. Email: debigreth@ gmail.com. FOR SALE: Two outdoor brown wickHU 3DFL¿F 6XQ /RXQJHUV OLNH QHZ VWLOO LQ box. $3000 pesos for both. 762-1695. FOR SALE: Commercial Meat Grinder. $VNLQJ SHVRV (PDLO (PDLO jausten09@yahoo.com. FOR SALE: 2016 Italika motorbike, this a white, 125cc motorbike with only 5000 kilometers. Comes with helment and a new, cover. Located in Roca Azul Rv Park and price is $12,500 pesos. Jalisco plates paid up thru 2018. It has

been well maintained and is in excellent conditon. E mail me at lawandrew29@ outlook.com if you want pictures. Or call me at 333-949-8770 after 10 a.m. or before 10 P.M. Please, reduced price is now $10.500 pesos. FOR SALE: Small half round table black fancy wrought iron with glass top. 26� high x 25� wide x13� deep. $850 pesos- can email photo. Phone: 766-3170. FOR SALE: Aqua Pump for fountains, waterfalls and aquariums. Paid $25 USD asking $250 pesos. Call: 766-4360. FOR SALE: Fine China, Mikasa Black Chrisma. Dinner plates alone sell for $20 USD each. Will sell the entire service for $250 USD or $5000 pesos, 7664360. FOR SALE: Professional padded shoulder bag for transporting your of¿FH 5RRP IRU WZR ODSWRSV DQG ORWV PRUH $400 pesos, 766-4360. FOR SALE: Zoom Portable Studio R16 with carrying case, used this recorder once or twice. Paid over $450USD Will sell for $250 USD/$5000pesos, 7664360. FOR SALE: Audio Technica Professional mic and 4 channel 48 V power supply, frequency response 10-25,000 Hz. Call: 766-4360 for more info will sell together for $200 USD or $4000 pesos.

Email: casitarodante@yahoo.com. WANTED: We are looking for 2 modern comfortable armchairs, queen size mattress and a twin mattress, all in very good/excellent condition. Also, any suggestion of consignment stores or furniture stores would be most welcomed. Email: mexicanmahayana@gmail.com. FOR SALE: 2 Oaxacan Large Hammocks. $10 or $200 pesos each, 7664360. FOR SALE: I have two hospital beds IRU VDOH 7KH\ DUH LQ ¿UVW FODVV FRQGLWLRQ Clean mattresses, solid frames Electric motors for raising/lowering head and foot portions of the bed with remote controls. Asking $8,000 pesos each. Email: ÀD#SURGLJ\ QHW P[. WANTED: Looking to buy a used, small, outdoor storage shed. Prefer plastic. With shelves. Roughly 6’ x 5’, or smaller. Need it delivered and assembled. Email: v.v.kaskow@gmail.com. WANTED: Looking for two recliners ASAP. Reasonably priced. 766-4338 WANTED: I am looking for a 3 panel privacy screen about 6ft tall, preferably on wheels (or not), preferably wood (or not). Email: VLONÀHXUV#RXWORRN FRP. FOR SALE: Cuisinart ice cream maker. Makes up to 1 1/2 quarts. $800 pesos. 766-5896.

FOR SALE: Heavy Metal Security Door and Frame. The measurements are 35 1/4 inches x 84 1/2 inches with the frame. The door itself is 32 inches x 81 inches. There are 24 panes of glass. A separate deadbolt has its own key so even if a pane of glass is broken a thief cannot open the door. My contractor says the door alone, without the frame, latch and deadbolt, would cost over $5000 pesos. Asking $3000 pesos. Phone 376766-2521. FOR SALE: Scooter Italica GSC 150, 365 KM, Price: $17,000p. Cell: 333-7224457. FOR SALE: Queen size bed frame and two sofas. Contact me make an offer. Phone: 332-632-9728. WANTED: Looking to buy a small used electric air compressor. Email: nothingfromchina@gmail.com. FOR SALE: COLLECTORS ITEM JAPAN PORCELAIN LOVE BIRDS. HOKUTOSHA DOVES - In Immaculate condition - $1250 pesos. Phone: 766-3170. WANTED: King size bed almost new/ excellent. Cell: 333-461-5442 FOR SALE: Bionic treadmill, asking $3000 pesos. Contact 387-761-0002.

Saw you in the Ojo 61


62

El Ojo del Lago / August 2018




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