El Ojo del Lago - November 2016

Saw you in the Ojo

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Saw you in the Ojo

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z D I R EC T O R Y z PUBLISHER

Richard Tingen

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Alejandro Grattan-Domínguez Tel: (01376) 765 3676, 765 2877 Fax: (01376) 765 3528 Associate Publisher David Tingen

Index...

FEATURE ARTICLES

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COVER STORY

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COVER STORY

VOLUME 33 NUMBER 3

Graphic Design Roberto C. Rojas Sandra Hernandez

Associate Editor Victoria Schmidt Contributing Editor Mark Sconce Theater Critic Michael Warren Book Review Panel Margaret Van Every Margaret Porter Clare Gearhart Roving Correspondent Dr. Lorin Swinehart Art Critic Rob Mohr Sales Manager Bruce Fraser 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 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

FERIA MAESTROS DEL ARTE

10 IN MEMORIAM Carol Bowman remembers Bob Tennison, an enormously popular longtime Lakeside resident and a highly-valued contributor to the pages of the Ojo.

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Editor’s Page

Alexsi Currier assumes the mindset of an old man watching the world go by as he sits on a bench along the malecon.

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Imprints

22 LOCAL ARTS

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Front Row Center

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Uncommon Sense

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Bridge by Lake

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Lakeside Living

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Welcome to Mexico

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Anyone Train Dog

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LCS Newsletter

18 REMEBRANCES

Harriet Hart has found a little shop in Ajijic where the work of some of our very best local artisans is on display, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year.

24 POETRY Judy Dykstra-Brown waxes eloquently (and humorously) on the trials and tribXODWLRQV RI ¿OOLQJ RXW DQ DEVHQWHH EDOORW

28 MYSTERY Bob Koches relates the chilling experience of a restaurant critic for a newsSDSHU XS LQ WKH 3DFL¿F 1RUWKZHVW ZKR discovers the true origin of the food he was eating.

32 AGE-GAP FUNNIES Tae Kim, a “whipper-snapper” (from DQ DJH VWDQGSRLQW ¿QGV WKDW /DNHVLGers speak a version of the English language that he has never heard before.

PRINTING: El Debate El Ojo del Lago aparece los primeros cinco días de cada mes. (Distributed over WKH ¿UVW ¿YH GD\V RI HDFK PRQWK) &HUWL¿FDGR GH /LFLWXG GH 7tWXOR &HUWL¿FDGR GH /LFLWXG GH &RQWHQLGR Reserva al Título de Derechos de Autor 04-2011-103110024300-102 Control 14301.

Permisos otorgados por la Secretaría de Gobernación (EXP. 1/432 “88”/5651 de 2 de junio de 1993) y SEP (Reserva 171.94 control 14301) del 15 de enero de 1994.

Distribución: Hidalgo 223 Chapala, Jalisco, México.

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\ UHÀHFW 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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El Ojo del Lago / November 2016

LAKESIDE LIVING

Special Events Editor Sandy Olson

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Saw you in the Ojo

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COLUMNIST

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America’s Scary Flirtation with Trump

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a s c i s m , thanks to Adolf Hitler, is a word one must use with care. The scale of horror that Hitler brought to the world in the name of an ideology has become indelible history. Still, the fascist movement pursued

by Mussolini, Generalíssimo Francisco Franco, Hitler, and others, had identifiable characteristics in its formative stages, on a continuum to calamity.

A dictionary definition is “a system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism. Donald Trump flaunts enough of these characteristics to alarm responsible people. They include the German news magazine Der Spiegel, actor George Clooney, former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, the Bush family, Mitt Romney, Ann Frank’s step-sister, ex-President Vicente Fox, and the current president of Mexico, Enrique Peña Nieto.

Trump is focusing his campaign on the anger of white working people who have been losing economic ground for decades, and who are easy prey for demagogues seeking to build their power by scapegoating others. Trump has several times tweeted quotes from Mussolini, and when questioned about it, dismissed the quotes as being “inadvertent.” The question is “How can a fascist Mussolini quote be inadvertent?” He had to first find those quotes and then make the decision to use them.

In the 20s and 30s, military defeat and economic depression plagued Germany. In America, we had the crisis of 2008. There has been some recovery, but all the gains have gone to the upper .01%, basically, a handful of extremely wealthy American families. There is the problem of student debt from college loans. American workers

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have lost $5,000 a year in purchasing power in the last couple of decades. Although we’re not in the same economic depression that Germany was suffering after WWI, Americans are suffering from failed expectations. The 50s and 60s saw a prosperous middle class, and people expected even better for the next generation. It didn’t happen and Trump exploits this and promises to be the strong man to correct stagnant wages by putting big tariffs on outsourced production in places like Mexico and China.

Trump’s constant theme is that we’re in decline and the world is laughing at us, but he’s going to make America great again and force Mexico and China to the will of the United States. It sounds a lot like Deutschland Über Alles. A chilling sight is when Trump asks his supporters to raise their arms and pledge that they will vote for him, no matter what. It looks eerily like the Sieg heil salute at one of Hitler’s rallies.

A characteristic of fascism is that the leader does not depend on a political party, but instead, the leader appeals directly to the people. That’s what both Mussolini and Hitler did. And that’s what Donald Trump has done. For him, the Republican Party is not even relevant.

He’s not part of the Republican establishment, but he’s taking over the Republican Party, just like Hitler took over German political institutions.

Fascism depends on scapegoating. For Hitler, it was the Com-

munists, Jews, Slavs, and others.

There was the nationalistic focus on purity of race. Donald Trump is using Mexicans, Muslims, and even blacks. When blacks have held protest signs at Trump rallies (Black Lives Matter), they have been roughed up and Trump approved, even saying, “Don’t worry about it.

I’ll pay your legal bills.” When white nationalists such as David Duke have endorsed Trump, he was careful not to offend such support, and claimed he had never heard of David Duke, the famous Klansman and Neo-Nazi. Jews, including a the New York Times, report receiving anti-Semitic messages from Trump supporters.

Robert Paxton is a professor who has specialized in the study of fascism. He said, “I think that Donald Trump shows a rather alarming willingness to use fascist themes and fascist styles – and the response this gets, the positive response, is alarming.” Fascism rests not on any truth of doctrine. Facts don’t matter, only that the leader will actually get things done. Trump promises over and over, “Trust me. I will make America great again.” The fascists created cults of personality that assumed the appearance

of strength and confidence. Trump tells his followers not to worry. “If you get laid off, I’ll get you a new job. Don’t worry about it.”

Fascists, being so nationalistic, didn’t bother about international law. Nor does Trump. He advocates torture and killing innocent family members of terrorists, against both international and American law. Donald Trump presents a profound danger to the future of America and the world.

Fred Mittag

Saw you in the Ojo

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he bec a m e mine here in Mexico. She is young, sleek, exotic and “with it.” I am none of those. She he knows far more than han I will ever know about bout subjects I never heard rd off before. She could learn n a few things from me too too, but she resists. We concur we have little in common. We don’t even speak the same language. Yet there are those times we are so immersed in being “us” that she seems to be a part of me–or am I a part of her? I did not know it could be like this, a compelling craving for her daily presence in spite of her limitless, arbitrary, and even bitchy ways of making constant alterations in our relationship communications. Then just

when whe wh he I have once again begun to a trust in what t w works for us, she persists in s saying that I s must be the one to conform to her next incomprene hensible whim. hen When my work is going well, I’d swear she is jealous.

She challenges and dares me with naughty or evil tricks, like sabotaging my writing, which is my heart’s-work, or my contact list, in other words, my essential links to others on this planet who are more like me than she, a fact she resents. I wonder why I put up with her when she’s at her worst. Has she enhanced some alien hyper-link transplant in my cranium without my

knowledge or permission that enforces a virtual acceptance of her pretense of being my ardent beloved?

That is, until I become a bore or she sickens of doing my bidding, and then she just quits. With no warning I am left alone and bereft, as a test of my devotion. And all the while she knows there is no backup plan for that kind of mental/emotional hijacking. Damn her, she plays a dirty game.

Surely you understand my visceral response to that level of betrayal, my frustration, and yes, even hatred. The lesson I’d teach her, if only she’d listen, is to consider the feelings of someone who loves her as much as a person is able. She should show some compassion and try to see my viewpoint.

As smart as she is, our life needn’t be made so difficult. If only for a nanosecond, I doubt our connection. But no matter how she behaves, I always do what I must to placate and please her, for I have come to feel I need and want her as much as air and water. We have this “symbiotic thing” where we each must have the other in fingertip reach in order to live, mi computa Dora y yo, (my computer and I.) Which is when, my fellow human beings, the universe steps in and yells Stop! in the only way it can, to get my attention back on this business of being within the literal physical existence, that it has to tell me over and again, I was born to be living in person.

In the present. Not in bytes and bits of recorded this and that, which strangers have chosen to woo me to their interests, make me a statistic, watch their stupid ads, and have me pay for the privilege.

That is when this body I neglect demands its right to be freed from its narrow subsistence of being pinned in one place between that glowing 12 inch screen and a cross-eyed 15 inch focal distance. Whenever not beguiled

by Dora’s hypnotic persistence, this body screams at me, “Get up! Go out!

Walk! Stretch! Eat! Kiss! Hug a living being. Remember to pee. Those are the

things a body misses!”

I know all this. And still, although I can barely glimpse it through dryeyed, spastic, strobe-light blinks caused by exhausted facial muscle tics, I reach for the phone. With shaky fingers cramped into a claw-like fist from excessive Point, Scroll, Tap and Drag, I must call someone this instant for immediate assistance. Come and heal my Dora! Quickly! Quickly! I’ll pay whatever you say! That’s how badly I want her here with me, giving me her all even as she flirts, tortures, teases, and tests my limits.

And, oh yes, grants me a satisfaction I have found with no one else, for we are more present for each other than any usual lovers, and together work miracles of perseverance. We go without sleep to grope in the dark for words and thoughts of substance amidst the dross of easy responses.

We wander the unexplored caverns of the thesaurus in search of that treasure, the version of a vision worthy of a reader.

We obsess beyond back aches, and my legs that wobble as I attempt to stand erect after many an hour spent hunched to peer with wide-eyed interest into her compelling, gorgeous wide-screen abyss which holds me entranced with seductive infinite offerings, options, solutions, imaginings and facts. Not to mention, Ooo . . . , the inspiration she grants that lures me away from this actuality and into hers, which is more pliable and manageable than the literal life I am stuck with, and cannot sign off from, whenever I feel I must to protect my sanity from too much reality.

But then there is this: although I pretend my own life, time and ideas will wait for me until after I’ve had my next Dora fix, they never do. My life vanishes, time dissipates, my thoughts “obliviate” as I choose to believe her assurance that she has all the answers for my every quandary, and is the best next step in the evolution of my perfected existence. When extrapolated unto all of humanity that could well scare me into thinking long and deeply.

But I have decided not to think about that until tomorrow. Perhaps. No time today. And no real need to think anyway since she does much of mine for me. And are not the best relationships based on simple acceptance? Meanwhile, my pupils dilate. My fingers itch. I palpitate.

Dora and I have another hot date. Instant gratification awaits; if she is still in the mood.

G. Martin Roman

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Remembering Bob Tennison %\ &DURO %RZPDQ

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icture this. Over 50 years ago, before airplane cabins were pressurized, as a plane was taking off and gaining altitude, the hatch door popped open! A dashing young steward, the first male flight attendant to work for Braniff Airlines, grabbed the door, hung onto it and attempted to close it without falling into the sky. That steward was Bob Tennison, and that story was just one of the funny experiences shared by close friends at the recent Memorial Service to celebrate the life and times of Robert Roland Tennison. He died on Aug, 31, 2016, at the age of 93.

Born in Dallas, Texas on August 13,

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1923, Bob spent his youth learning how to be a proper Southern gentleman. He joined the US Navy after graduation from high school, and then used the G.I. bill to complete a degree at the University of Southern California Commercial Art School. His received acclaim for his fabric and wallpaper designs while working at Virginia Helms-

El Ojo del Lago / November 2016

ley Studios in NYC. Later, he changed professions, and life as an airline steward provided hilarious material, which Bob turned into ingenious short stories. While working for Braniff, Bob flew to Hawaii 148 times. His goal of 150 runs loomed, but on number 148, the plane had serious landing problems, a near-crash. He decided that he didn’t need to make those two additional flights.

Bob and his life partner of 46 years, Allen Turnipseed, moved to the Lake Chapala area in 2000. They designed and built their home in Riberas del Pilar, where they, three dachshunds and a German shepherd lived a peaceful life. He dedicated his free time to serving the needs of St. Andrews Anglican Church.

With his flamboyant, wild clothes, his quick wit and unending jokes, Bob entertained writers at Ajijic Writers Group and readers of El Ojo del Lago monthly magazine with stories gleaned from his untamed imagination and storehouse of life experiences. Awarded Best Fiction in 2011 and Long Standing Contributor of 2014 and 2015 by El Ojo del Lago, who can forget his last appearance at the El Ojo Awards luncheon in 2015, when he came decked out like a sailor.

Due to failing health, Bob spent his

last years at Casa Nostra Nursing Home in Riberas del Pilar. On Aug. 31, longtime friend and fellow writer, Jim Tipton, gave Bob a special gift. Jim, Jim’s sister, Nancy and Cindy Paul gathered at Bob’s bedside to sing a few cherished hymns. Despite being on the brink of death, Bob acknowledged his gratefulness for their kindness with a brief glint in his eyes and a scratchy, barely audible ‘thank you.’ Bob Tennison died peacefully several hours later, to join his beloved partner.

Thanks to his close friends, John McWilliams and Earl French for providing bio information.

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Capitalist China

One of the most striking features of Shanghai’s spectacular skyline is the Oriental Pearl Radio & TV Tower.

Completed in 1994. It is still one of the world’s tallest broadcast antennas (468 m./1,535 ft.).

The Tower stands on the east bank of the Huangpu River across from the historic city center in the Pudong (“East Bank”) District.

Pudong is home to Shanghai’s tallest skyscrapers including Jin Mao Tower (421 m./1,380 ft.), the Shanghai World Financial Center (492 m./1,614 ft.), and the nearly completed Shanghai Tower (632 m./2,073 ft.)

The Pearl Tower observation deck af- 9LHZ IURP WKH EDVH RI WKH 3HDUO 7RZHU

fords a spectacular bird-eye view of the city, and is a good place to get the lay of the land.

With a population of 1.4 billion, it’s no surprise that the Chinese excel at moving staggering numbers of people around with efficiency, and the crowd at the Pearl Tower is no exception.

The lines move briskly, and elevator attendants uniformed and coiffed as immaculately as pre-deregulation U.S. flight attendants keep the foot traffic flowing.

As I look out over this sprawling city of 25 million, I can’t help but think that anyone looking down upon the Manhattan skyline in the 1920’s must have been similarly awestruck.

3URPHQDGH DW RXWVLGH WKH 3HDUO 7RZHU There’s an impression of incredible energy pulsing through the landscape below, and an inescapable sense of looking through a window into the epicenter of the global future.

Pudong is the site of the city’s Finance & Trade Zone and the Shanghai Stock Exchange, making it China’s financial hub.

The District also encompasses a high-tech park, the 2010 Shanghai Expo Center, and the Pudong International Airport.

Incredibly, this entire area was farmland until 1993.

Such explosive growth is the product of an economy that’s been growing at almost 10% annually – about three times the global average – since Deng Xiaoping introduced economic reforms more than 30 years ago.

China’s shift from a managed economy to 'RZQWRZQ 6KDQJKDL IURP WKH 3HDUO 7RZHU a market economy has grown its GDP from $147.3 billion in 1978 to $11.2 trillion in 2015. The Peoples’ Republic of China is

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The Maglev Train pulls into the station now the world’s largest economy.

It’s hardly surprising that the Chinese people have embraced a free market economy so enthusiastically, or that they excel at it.  The Chinese already were trading their goods via the Silk Road before the birth of Christ.

The success of Chinese joint ventures with foreign manufacturing and technology giants seem to reflect the enterprising nature of a nation of shopkeepers now unbridled following three decades of Mao’s managed economy.

The nation not only manufactures more cars – about 22 million – than any other country (almost 3 times as many as the U.S.) – but is also the biggest market for new cars.  China became the world’s biggest exporter in 2009, and Shanghai recently surpassed Singapore as the world’s largest containerized freight port Construction of Shanghai’s Pudong International Airport began in 1997.

It is now the world’s third busiest cargo airport, the busiest international hub in mainland China, and one of the world’s 20 busiest passenger airports.

It is connected to the city by Shanghai’s Maglev Train, which uses magnets to lift and propel it.

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The reduced friction allows the train to move at very high speeds, and it cuts a highway drive of nearly one hour to 8 minutes, reaching a peak speed of 430 kmp/267 mph).

A third passenger terminal and two additional runways scheduled to open later this year will raise annual capacity to 80 million passengers and 6 million tons of freight. DHL’s Pudong cargo hub is the largest in Asia.

I’m struck by the amazing contrast between the way in which nominally Communist China has advanced even as the republics of the former Soviet Union have devolved.

The irony is also not lost upon me that Pudong’s modern skyscrapers directly face the city’s historic Bund.  It was from their Bund headquarters that the banking houses and merchant traders of the Western powers imposed their imperialism upon China, and first made Shanghai a financial and trading giant until its fortunes turned with the outbreak of World War II and the 30 years of isolation which followed.

This time around, China is solidly in control of its own destiny, and is turning its new prosperity into better lives for countless millions of its people.

Antonio RamblĂŠs

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his play received considerable acclaim on its offBroadway debut, and was subsequently nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1982. I found this hard to understand, as there are some intrinsic problems with the structure of the play, and these problems make the play difficult for both actors and audience. The play concerns the relationship between an artist daughter and her aging parents, who are packing up and leaving their Boston townhouse (which they can no longer afford) to go to a lonely retirement by the ocean.

The daughter wants to paint her parents’ portrait in the midst of all the chaos of moving furniture and packing boxes.

The entire first act is devoted to setting up this unlikely scenario.

There are some humorous lines as we get to know the ditsy mother “Fanny Church” and her abstracted husband “Gardner Church” who used to be a famous poet. Now he just potters around and hides in his study, writing a book of poetry criticism which will never be published. The tension between mother and daughter is hinted at, but is painfully slow to develop. The actors do their best with the material, and I congratulate Peggy Lord Chilton who took on the role of Fanny at very short notice. Peggy is a natural comedian and she makes the most of the opportunity to play the crazy old lady. She wears strange hats and puts up with her poetic husband. Perhaps being a bit loony herself is the only way she can put up with him.

David Wharff is sweet and lovable as the somewhat ga-ga Gardner, wandering in and out of his study, losing papers as he goes.

David is a newcomer to LLT, and has considerable theatrical experience, so I look forward to seeing him in more dramatic roles. One of the features of the play is his recitation, at odd and unexpected moments, of some famous and very beautiful poems. I felt that they

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should have been recited with more feeling, but possibly that would have been out of character.

Tina Leonard has the most awkward part as daughter “Margaret,” the portrait painter. She doesn’t help much with the packing, and is preoccupied with getting her parents’ approval that she actually is an artist and has real talent.

She has some long speeches about how her mother messed up her first one-woman exhibition, and destroyed her childhood melted crayon masterpiece. Tina did well in the part, though her pain and frustration should have come through with more explicit anger.

When the portrait of her parents is finally unveiled, she showed genuine emotion at the climax of the play, and overall I appreciated her performance in a difficult role.

On the whole, this was a mixed beginning to the season. The play is billed as a comedy-drama, but it’s not really a comedy nor is it sufficiently dramatic. Peggy Lord Chilton and her cast worked hard to entertain us, and I admired the original set with special lighting effects. I should also mention the cameo performance of “Toots,” the parakeet who recited Gray’s Elegy remarkably well. Congratulations to Stage Manager Beth Leitch, Assistant Stage Manager Debra Bowers, and all the backstage crew who did such a good job. They had to haul all the furniture off the stage during the show, and then put it back again for the next show. A backbreaking performance!

Michael Warren

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here has been a lot of talk about the number of jobs in the United States and Canada which have been lost to cheaper labor markets overseas.

The issue is a complicated one, and although many jobs are lost, new markets can also be created. Nevertheless, it is a popular notion that trade agreements like NAFTA have hurt workers in the US and that the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement would do the same. I’m sure there is some truth in this, but I think we face a far greater threat to employment. We will be losing many more jobs to various forms of automation in the coming years.

For years economists have been trying to figure out how many jobs could be lost to automation. Many of these are obvious: bank tellers, department store cashiers, heavy manufacturing jobs, and the like. I think most people believe the old saw that technology will create more jobs to replace jobs lost to automation. After all, that has been supported by the historical record. We see many jobs today that simply did not exist a few years ago.

However, the new threat from automation is different. Instead of just robots, we now have the emergence of big data and sophisticated algorithms. Many middle-class jobs which have produced good incomes will likely be eliminated in the next few years: accountants and bookkeepers, medical data and insurance claim processors, educators and corporate trainers, telemarketers, middle management data analysts in business and finance, legal aides, and the list goes on. Many jobs which require evaluation of nonstandard data, which used to require human intelligence, will soon be relegated to computer algorithms and software.

A 2014 study published in The Economist suggested that nearly half of the jobs in the US could be eliminated by 2034. That may be an overestimate, but the trend is clear.

We are already seeing trends which indicate that productivity is becom-

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ing decoupled from employment.

In other words, corporations are increasing their productivity while continuing to reduce employment. I suspect that the recovery from the 2008 recession, which many people expect to return employment to prerecession levels, will not occur. When these jobs are lost they are gone permanently. Of course, new jobs are created, but not that many because of the tremendous increase in productivity created by technology.

So where does this leave us? As an op-ed in the New York Times asked in September, can we have “good lives without good jobs”? Good lives have always been associated with steady, lucrative employment. We may be entering a quasi post-employment economy, where many people will be unemployed or only able to find part-time jobs. We are already seeing many men with low education dropping out of the workforce while women are supporting families.

We will need to transition into an economy which accommodates this new reality. Obviously, government will have to play a role in this transition, whether expansion of the earned income tax credit or other income redistribution mechanisms.

Something will have to take up the slack from the loss of employment opportunities. Sweden recently proposed, and rejected a guaranteed annual income policy. Daniel Patrick Moynihan proposed such a scheme in the Nixon Administration, claiming it would eliminate the need for so many welfare programs. Nixon tentatively liked the program but could not get it passed the Republicans in Congress. Is it time to re-examine some form of income guarantee today? It doesn’t seem likely, but we will have to do something as jobs continue to disappear!

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was that old gringo geezer on the Malecon bench gazing out over the lake with the cell phone lying in my cupped hands.

I couldn’t remember how to use the phone. I was in a grumpy mood. I wanted to ask you to help me but you looked too young. I was afraid you would give me a lingo like the Tel-Mex girl, assuring me it was simple, (Lord how I hate that word!) and all I had to do was to tap here, click there, scroll down and blah, blah, blah. You passed and I mumbled after you in self defense: “I can drive stick shift and I can write cursive.”

I immediately felt childish and ashamed. You see, I’m 85 now. I am well aware that fissures are appearing in the foundation of my knowledge and facts are leaking out. Compulsive order is essential for me to stay on track. My learning curve has flattened. On the mountain of life I am now well above the timberline. I may have a magnificent view of the wider world, but on the level of the everyday life around me, everything seems to be growing stranger and less intelligible. Even my body no longer does what I ask it to do. When I was recently invited to climb up to the chapel, I answered with an emphatic “No!” I immediately smiled and remembered that when we used to invite our old German grandmother to join us on such an outing or adventure, she would often respond with a laugh and reply:

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Nein, das Zug is schon gefahren,” or “No, that train has left the station.”

That German phrase brought a smile to my heavy heart. Old age and Ajijic faded out and I floated back into the pre-teen years of my childhood.

Every now and then when I was little, Mom and Dad would motor down to Parker, South Dakota, to visit in the small town that was still home to my maternal grandparents. There my country cousins would run me all over the dozen or so blocks of the town trying to convince me that Parker was bigger than Minneapolis.

But for me the highlight of the day was the arrival and departure of “the train.” In the late morning when I heard the whistle, I would drop everything and race through town on my spindly little legs to watch that wonderful massive belching monster slide up alongside of the station, and with a screaming screech, stop. For the next few minutes I’d run back and forth checking out the things being unloaded and loaded as well as the travelers getting off and getting on.

Then the most dramatic moment of all approached. With an ear splitting blast from the whistle the mighty engine would thunder a chug, followed by another, followed by a third, fourth, fifth and so on as the mighty monster beside me began to move along the platform and out onto the prairie. Again I would walk, and then trot, and start to run alongside. With a leap I’d jump off the platform and start to run through the weeds beside the track. Soon the passenger cars would be rolling past me and then the whole train would slide by my racing wee legs and huffing and puffing, I would slow down and finally stop, still panting hard, and watch the train slowly grow smaller and smaller as it disappeared down the track toward Marion, South Dakota somewhere out there, just beyond the distant prairie horizon.

And that my dear ones, is how I now feel: alone, lost among the weeds, realizing simply that the train has left the station.

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EXQFK RI ZLOWHG FDUQDtions lie beside the signpost tied to which, with dark blue ribbon, is a bright bouTXHW RI DUWLÂżFLDO Ă€RZHUV This is an intersection I’d normally never notice walking to the store. A small pot of baby red roses is half hidden behind a larger one of orange chrysanthePXPV 3URSSHG DJDLQVW WKH Ă€RZHUV in place of honor, is a pink canvas picture with a big letter ‘B’ painted in yellow. A blue bristol board with damp curling edges is scrawled with childish notes of love. A soft toy completes the still life, reminiscent of the graves of children once seen in a Cree cemetery.

I stoop to read the rain-washed faded notes: “We will miss you Boris.� Ah! that’s the ‘B’. “You’re the best�. “You were an awesome person.� “You always made my day�. “You were so kind.�

“Thanks for always being so cheerful.� “Thanks for keeping us safe.� “Thank you for making sure I always cross the road safely.� “Thanks for saving my life, twice!�

A touching tribute to someone I have never met and never will. Boris, the Crossing-Guard, who safely guided the children each day across this intersection to school. I wondered was he old and bald? Did he learn their names? Taylor, Owen, Cara, Noralli, Juliette, Ester, Amelia, Thomas and more. How sweetly he is remembered by these Grade 2s.

And as I stoop to read their board, other passers-by stop to see what this is all about. We make a little crowd at an intersection that normally goes un-noticed.

A kind of ceremony. And I murmur: Boris! You’ve crossed over but you’re not forgotten.

GROUNDHOG DAY %\ 0DUN %R\HU

D

o you ever feel like you are in an endless loop on Groundhog Day? Sometimes I think it is just here, but I don’t think so. Same jokes, stories, dreams. Moments when you realize your jokes, stories, and dreams belong to someone else.

Potluck. Forced laughter. We’ll have to do this again soon. Maybe the redundancy is designed for us to see or understand something new. Or maybe redundancy is all there is.

Whatever. Drink coffee, put on the same clothes, listen to the same song, eat the same food, and at some point in the evening shuffle off to sleep. Occasional sparks of creativity in a be-nice world.Â

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El Ojo del Lago / November 2016

And every once in awhile a dog licks your face, and you wonder if he knows something you don’t. And every once in awhile there is a happy ending to a story, but somehow it feels forced . . . not genuine . . . not authentic. Or at best, impermanent.

And then it is time for another cup of coffee.

Saw you in the Ojo 21

THE HIDDEN TALENT OF MEXICAN ARTISANS %\ +DUULHW +DUW

M

ary Ellen Rushworth and Mony Angulo opened El Creativo Corazon, a retail space for local artisans in central Ajijic two years ago. Since opening day they have grown from eight to fifty artisans and put over $250,000 pesos into the talented hands of those individuals. Mary Ellen says she has learned a lot in that time frame, but the most incredible lesson is how much untapped skill Mexican artisans possess.

“A customer came in looking for a hand-carved chess set for

22

Christmas. We called Lalito, a local cabinetmaker who hails from a long line of woodworkers, and he carved and hand-tooled an exquisite set for her.”

This brought back memories. I have at least five items in my home that were custom made for me because I asked someone one simple question: “Can you make me one of these?”

I met local carver Rene Moran in the Ajijic Plaza about seven years ago now. I craved a horizontal wooden angel for my living room.

I took Rene a Christmas ornament

El Ojo del Lago / November 2016

to give him the idea. A week later I had my masterpiece: Gabriela is six feet long, blowing a trumpet, and she is exactly what I wanted. Since then, Rene has carved a mermaid and a merman for me, and a totem pole for my friend.

Talent surrounds us. Mexicans have artistic ability buried in their DNA. I was walking down a village street one morning and spotted an embroidered blouse hanging in a doorway. I entered, asked the proverbial: “Can you make me one from a picture?” I took Lupita a colored photo of a russet crowned motmot and asked her to make me a cotton blouse with the bird embroidered on the front. She had never seen such a bird, but tackled the assignment with enthusiasm.

When I stroll through town wearing my top, people stop and ask me where I got it.

Mary Ellen recently gave a lecture to the British Society and generously shared her thoughts with me: “There is a lot to be said about generational skills; many of these folks learned their craft at their father’s or grandfather’s knees. They intuitively know more about the materials and processes than can ever be taught. But they have always made the same things, in the same way, generation after generation, because that’s what sells. And, as you know, most marry young and live week-by-week financially, so their focus quickly becomes income versus expanding their creativity.

Our seamstress Carmen is a perfect example. She worked at Los Telares when she was a girl, learning to weave and sew and embroider from an uncle. As a teen she always wanted to be a designer, but needed to work to help the family. She cleaned part time and helped her husband at the polleria.

My partner Mony brought her in, in her “off hours,” to sew our WINGs

line to raise funds for a vocational training group. A month or so after she started I took a photo of a customer’s blouse and showed it to Carmen as something I thought women would like. It was a fairly complex cross-layered item. The following day when I arrived, there it was. She had no pattern, no example to follow, just a picture on a cell phone, yet she just intuitively knew how to create it. Fast forward a year and she’s making half a dozen custom dresses and suits for the Niños Incapacitados Denim & Diamond ball, from customers’ pictures or hand sketches. And there are so many like her.”

Everyone knows the traditional San Miguel de Allende rectangular tin mirror frames, sometimes inlaid with tiles. We asked artisans to replicate a 6ft oval antique tin mirror for a client. It was easy for them, and we’ve sold another half dozen for them since.

These artisans know their skills inside and out, they are ingrained from childhood, and they can create just about anything our imaginations can concoct, so think about us next time you say “I wish I could find…” or “wouldn’t it be cool if we had a… And, an added bonus, we’ve seen the confidence artisans gain given the opportunity to create a custom piece, not just pride in a job well done, but renewed passion for their traditional trade and true pride in themselves.”

I think Mary Ellen and Mony should be equally proud because they have created a retail space where customers can discover the untapped talent of the Mexican artisans who are our neighbors. Pay them a visit at Galeana #14 in Ajijic.

Harriet Hart

Saw you in the Ojo 23

Absentee Ballot When I went to print the ballot out, minutes later I had to shout “Stop!!!!” when minute after minute the printer always had more in it!

It printed out ream after ream no end in sight—so it would seem.

To vote for president was simple, but that just seemed to be a pimple on the ass of all the choices for which they sought to hear our voices.

Senators for state and nation, congressmen, then more frustration: Water boards and State Assembly, then measures ’til my hands grew trembly.

Statements by candidates to rate, endorsements, ballot measure debate, instructions, warnings, declarations occasioning more perturbations.

School bonds, statutes, legislation, reeled out with no hesitation.

Tax extensions, cigarette tax, laws that we were asked to axe.

School laws that were multilingual, laws prophylactic, cunnilingual.

Initiatives on marijuana, and fire protection made me wanna rip my hair and cuss and scream.

Still out they rolled, ream after ream.

When I got to number sixty-seven, it made me want to pray to heaven, “Please, dear God, not one measure more or I’ll soon be at heaven’s door!”

I gave the ballot one more poke as with one sure determined stroke, I banned the plastic bag, then broke my pen over my knee–a joke, For then another page popped out as victory smirk turned into pout.

District initiatives, then county made me rue this voting bounty.

For when I thought that I was done, I discovered I had just begun.

Pages? Thirty-seven in all are printed out, before they fall fluttering, onto my floor.

The printer burps, pops out one more.

“Oath of Voter” said this one.

And so I cussed. And I was done!!!

—By Judy Dykstra-Brown— 24

El Ojo del Lago / November 2016

Saw you in the Ojo 25

COLUMNIST

BRIDGE BY THE LAKE %\ .HQ 0DVVRQ

While most players would agree that defence is the most difficult part of bridge they would also likely be of the same mind that choosing the best opening lead is the most difficult part of defence! It can certainly be very hard to recover from a bad lead as declarer can immediately be in the driver’s seat in the battle for supremacy.

If West had been paying attention to the bidding in the illustrated hand played at the Lake Chapala Duplicate Bridge Club he might have avoided the one lead that helped declarer make her contract. South dealt and even though she had a balanced hand and 16 high card points she decided to open 1 heart due to the quality of the suit and the honour-less doubleton in diamonds.

Playing the popular 2/1 system, North responded with 1 No Trump which showed 5 to 12 high card points and requested South for a further description of her hand. South now bid 2 clubs which in their system could have been a three card suit (it was!)

North’s next bid of 3 hearts showed 10 to 12 dummy points and precisely 3 cards in the heart suit. After that it was easy for South, holding a non-minimum

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El Ojo del Lago / November 2016

hand to bid the heart game.

Possibly to prevent declarer from ruffing too many losers in the dummy West promptly led his singleton trump but he had neglected to grasp the significance of the North-South exchange of information, South was very likely to hold exactly 5 hearts as she didn’t repeat the suit in her rebid which she would be expected to do holding 6 or more cards in the suit.

Therefore, East probably held 4 trumps and the lead of a heart could expose his partner’s holding very quickly. And that was precisely what happened when East had to split her heart high cards and play the 10 in order to prevent South from winning with the heart 8!

South won the opening lead in hand with the queen and cashed the trump ace to discover that East held the other outstanding high heart. Now it was easy for declarer to enter the dummy with a diamond and finesse East out of her heart jack. Now, with a good guess in the club suit (cash the ace and run the nine if not covered) South managed to score 10 tricks and make her contract).

You may well ask: “Couldn’t declarer have played the same way without the trump lead” and the answer is: “Yes, of course but it would make no sense to do so as the natural way to play the heart suit with the actual holdings would have been to cash trumps from the top as the opponents’ hearts are much more likely to be divided 3 – 2 rather than 4 -1.” If declarer cashed the ace and king of hearts she would have an inevitable trump lose and no matter how well she played the other cards under her control would ultimately have gone down one.

The lesson here is for the defenders to avail of the information that has been provided during the auction before selecting an opening lead.

Ken Masson

Saw you in the Ojo 27

The Night Chef

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A

s a restaurant critic for the Portland area, what if I told you that there was a place run by a chef so mysterious and elusive that you might never discover its location. This restaurant is only known through whispers, hints, and suggestions, but never is there any concrete or written information. In fact, it doesn’t even have a name.

First, let me say that it is only open after midnight. It is said to be the haunt of those in the industry, those chefs, sous chefs, line cooks, servers, bartenders and others who provide us with our meals during normal operating hours.

To get to this restaurant I traveled up Castle Road, through swirling fog, deep into the woods in the foothills of the Cascades. That is as much as I can tell you, as I was sworn to secrecy as to the exact location. When I opened the door I saw what appeared to be a counter-culture convention. Everyone sported tats, piercings and dyed hair of various hues. The air was filled with thick smoke and raucous conversation.

Looking around I spotted a number of the cutting-edge chefs from the Portland area.

Plates came out of the kitchen, with the customers themselves passing them around. There seemed to be no menu, but dishes kept appearing from the open kitchen. Presiding was the Night Chef himself, dressed all in black.

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El Ojo del Lago / November 2016

He was a tall man, regally thin with an aquiline nose and an opaque complexion.

As I tasted the various dishes, I could not determine what I was eating. The spicing seemed classical, and yet the meat had a slightly sweet taste. Those seated around me, all professionals in the kitchens of Portland, said they too were puzzled as to the exact nature of the ingredients in the various dishes.

Mind you, these are some of the finest pallets in the area.

As the Night Chef finished preparing the dishes, he relaxed at a table across the room. He glanced my way and beckoned me to join him, agreeing to give me a brief interview. Did I mention that no one knows his name?

Throughout our entire talk I was not able to persuade him to reveal it to me.

I wanted to know his background, so I asked him how and where he was trained. He leaned forward, placing his elbows on the table and tenting his long, thin fingers. “I studied the masters,” he answered with an enigmatic smile on his pale, thin lips. He then began naming a veritable cornucopia of world famous chefs through the ages, including 14th century French master chef, Guillaume Tirel, known as Tallevent, 15th century chef, Lancelot de Casteau, 18th century chef Vincent la Chapelle, and 19th century chefs Auguste Escofier and Henri-Paul Pelaprat, co-founder of Le Cordon Bleu.

When I asked him, “How do you make the meat so sweet and tender?”

He raised his head, and stared at me with his flat, black eyes, lips curling in a sneer, and replied, “I cannot tell you all of my secrets, my friend, but I will say this: the protein must be well drained.”

My final question, before he concluded the interview was, “Why do you have this restaurant and what is the purpose?” As he rose from the table, he left me with this response: “I want to serve mankind.”

Bob Koches

Saw you in the Ojo 29

%\ 7RP (FN

I

n the song Me and Bobby McGee, Janis Joplin lamented, I’d trade all of my tomorrows/For one single yesterday/Holdin’ Bobby’s body next to mine.”

At that time, I thought very little about my yesterdays, believing I had an infinite number of tomorrows. But as years passed by, my tomorrows dwindled, and, as with many of us, yesterdays seemed to loom larger and larger.

One of those yesterdays was named Lenor. I first saw her in San Diego as I walked by a restaurant near the courthouse in which I had just finished a week-long trial. There she was, a beautiful blonde, with full lips, soft brown eyes

30

and a generous countenance, sitting by herself at a table near the window.

Without hesitation, I turned around, walked through the door, and pointed to the table where she was sitting, as if she were expecting me. The maître d’ motioned me through.

“Hello, my name is Tom. I was just walking by, saw you eating by yourself, and was hoping I could join you…unless you are expecting someone else.”

She looked startled, but then smiled.

“Of course, have a seat.”

I learned that she had arrived from Portugal just weeks earlier and resided at a convent until she could find suitable housing. She spoke five languages,

El Ojo del Lago / November 2016

worked as a court interpreter, and was studying for her CPA license.

“How about a movie? Amadeus is playing. We can take a cab,” I suggested.

“As long as I am back by ten. The nuns lock the doors then.”

I paid little attention to the movie.

Her sweet fragrance and the silhouette of her face highlighted by the screen were seductive and hypnotic. As we drove back, she touched my hand. I had never felt such a jolt of pleasure from just a simple touch. I silently cursed the convent and its rules.

I dropped her off and gave her a hug, and we decided to spend the next day together in Balboa Park. At the end of that next day, she did not return to the convent.

About midnight, I received a call in my hotel room.

“Do you mind if I join you? The girl in your room sounds like she is having too much fun for just one guy. I’m in the room next door.” I hung up and we toned it down at bit.

The next years were magical. Lenor loved tennis, sex and, surprisingly, my companionship. But because we both had private professional practices, we remained 494 air miles apart, trading weekends in Reno and San Diego. It worked for us.

Although she had never been married, she had a son who lived in Oporto.

She wanted to visit him, but without a Green Card, had immigration issues. So, of course, I accommodated her and we were married in Laguna Beach, California. In spite of our living arrangements, she got her Green Card without an interview. In a way, I felt cheated, because I knew which side of the bed she slept on, the color of her tooth brush and most of the other answers to the inane questions asked by INS. About one year after our marriage. I received a call. Lenor was crying.

“Tom, I have bad news. I have been diagnosed with spinal cancer. I have less than a year to live.”

I was stunned. How could someone so alive now be facing death?

I spent the next few months with Lenor, suffering as I never had, watching her writhe in pain so intense that morphine became useless. The one woman who had been a true gift was now being ripped from my life, and in such cruel fashion.

But my sorrow was no measure for Lenor’s mother, who, nine months earlier, had buried her 36-year-old daughter, a medical doctor, and a victim of breast cancer. Now, she was about to bury her only remaining child…one who would not reach her 40th birthday.

I flew to Oporto to bury Lenor, reminiscing about our wonderful times together and damning those last few painful months of her life.

In June of 2017, I will return to Oporto. I will not visit Lenor’s grave.

Rather, it will be to continue to celebrate my tomorrows with someone who now makes my yesterdays irrelevant. I am among the most fortunate to have jettisoned the sadness of the past with the help of a woman who is the happiest, dearest and sweetest of human beings. She is someone who embraces life and love without hesitation.

She is someone who brings home the advice of Will Rogers, “Don’t let yesterday use up too much of today.”

We will pilot a small cabin cruiser up the Douro River to the Spanish border, grateful for each day we share together, anticipating the wonders of tomorrow, tucking away yesterdays into small boxes in the attic of our minds. Hopefully, there will be many more tomorrows, and I will be thankful for each one that unfolds.

No Janis Joplin, I am a lucky one.

My yesterdays are eclipsed by the promise of my tomorrows. And I would not trade a thousand of those yesterdays for a single tomorrow, when I hold Margarita’s body close Tom Eck to mine.

Saw you in the Ojo 31

A n d N o w F o r S o m e t h in ng Com mpletely y Different %\ 7DH .LP

A

s a Lakeside newcomer, I understand the standard array of questions lobbed at me in public. Except for the ones in Español, for I am not very well-versed in the language yet.

But the typical questions (in English) about where I am from, how long have I been here, how long will I stay... are surely a repeated occurrence for most newly acquainted folks.

However, the observation that most stands out is the inevitable comment on my age—neither condescendingly nor inappropriately, simply a remark about my youthfulness.

If there is an official statistic on the median age of Lakeside expatriates,

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El Ojo del Lago / November 2016

then yes, I am surely well below that number. But it’s probably not good manners for me to say to anyone beyond that median age, “Wow! You are quite old.”

Yet somehow the converse is acceptable conversation, to which I usually smile politely and try to talk about how lovely the weather is. I imagine that the comment on my age is surface fodder for some deeper questions they hold. “What brings you Lakeside?”

“What type of occupation do you hold?” “How have you decided at such an early age to leave where you hail from?” “Do you have an absentee ballot for the US Presidential elections?”

I’ve had a handful of these conversations so far, but mostly pleasantries about the weather.

When using broad categorizations to easily discriminate a group, I am a millennial.

At a recent LCS event discussing generational archetypes, the mere mention of “millennial” brought out an audible groan from the crowd. Of course, Justin Bieber, Kim Kardashian, and cellphone zombies are not shining beacons of generational ambassadors.

Yet for every screaming tween fan of the Biebs, there’s some boomer housewife making sure they are Keeping up with the Kardashians or glued to Fox News.

And what about millennials that have so drastically changed the world

already? Mark Zuckerberg, that nerdy billionaire whose social network so many of us use daily. Adele, who’s sold hundreds of millions of records and was an inescapable soundtrack to the year 2011. LeBron James? Roger Federer? Lin-Manuel Miranda?

I guess I simply don’t understand the generalized disdain for an entire generation.

Surely you’ve interacted with a few millennials, for better or worse. We are your sons and daughters, grandchildren, great nephews, and nieces.

And we’re simply the by product of a society inherited to us from previous generations. Those that handed out our participation awards. The voices that told us we HAD to go to college.

That debt was a necessary component of being an adult. That you needed to find a stable job with a good pension (they don’t have these anymore) so you can buy a nice home with a big green lawn and a two car garage.

Whatever happened to the idea of Victory Gardens? I thought that was a nifty and nutritional concept.

Some of those voices said it was wrong for men to marry men. Or for a white woman to marry “outside her race.” Or that it was okay to smoke cigarettes. Guinness is good for you! God bless the Irish.

One big shift that’s hard to ignore is how we’re getting our information: once from a radio, then a television, and now the computers we carry in our pockets. Who the hell reads printed ink on dead trees anymore? You can’t blame those teenagers glued to their devices, because it’s the only world they know. And who made the decision to give a child access to ALL the world’s knowledge in the palm of their hands?

That’s a slippery slope, and typically a sign of lazy parenting. But I don’t have children, so I can’t point fingers.

As with most cases of finger pointing, that outstretched index should probably be turned around, if not shoved into a nostril.

Because it is our own values, prejudices, and beliefs that have pushed this world into existence. And some of the loudest voices have pushed a little too hard to make sure their world view became the norm.

The greatest challenge of our generation will be figuring out which of the accepted values and beliefs we choose to advance, and which ones we collectively decide to abandon.

Also, climate change, because that’s going to severely impact a lot of people, very quickly.

For now, I find myself at Lakeside, listening to Adele’s new hit single Hola, enjoying this lovely day.

Saw you in the Ojo 33

VISIO ONS OF A PERFECT PARTN NER -Life Ongoing %\ &KULVW\ :LVHPDQ

B

eing alone after 40 years of having a special partnership, I am sometimes asked what I would consider to be a “perfect partner.” Knowing that nothing is perfect, I nonetheless take the challenge.

Dreams are free. Realities have a price. “Know thyself” deserves some thought and may protect us in the long run so it seems a good place to begin. Know what you have to give and what you don’t in a relationship as well as what you want in return. Hopefully the other person has done the same.

I visualize a partner who is a best friend; someone special to me and to whom I am special. *Someone that I can totally trust with my heart and body who has similar interests so we can enjoy things together, but also different interests so we can enjoy time apart. *Someone who has a fun sense of humor, with whom I can joke and tease and have fun with in private and also enjoy and be proud to be with in public. *Someone who is kind and thoughtful and bright, however I define that. *Someone who has character and strength in his beliefs who will gently be there when/if I need direction, both by example and by communication - a true partner, not bossy, just a God trusting helpmate whose strength I can share with and count

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El Ojo del Lago / November 2016

on - one who knows who he is as a man and as a true partner and who respects who I am as a woman and as a true partner. *Someone, who when we disagree looks with me for an acceptable compromise so that we both feel the solution is a win/win. *Someone who doesn’t “cut and run” at the first sign of a problem, but has the strength and desire to stay and work things out and who gives me that strength too.

Wrapped in that is a desire for good health, positive attitudes, cleanliness in body and spirit, integrity, and mutual protection of those things that are important to the other, so we can be more together than separately, both for one another and for those we choose to befriend.

Is there such a person in my future? Is there such a person in your now? What was or is your vision and how has that or will that affect your reality?

Most of us in this community of ex-pats are seniors and are only too aware that now is all we have for however long we have it. We want whatever our now is, to be happy and full, whether we choose to be alone or with a partner.

Sometimes, because life is not always perfectly aligned with our wishes, we need to make allowances and we need to find the special privilege in caring for someone we love when, on their journey, they can no longer care for themselves. Sometimes it is they who need to care for us (God forbid!) It is the price one pays for having had that wonderful, but imperfect partner.

“Grow old along with me. The best is yet to be.” —Robert Browning I wish for you, a not so perfect partner, understanding that you aren’t one either and the discovery that for you, the “best” was never about perfection, it is about the joy two imperfect beings can find in one another.

Christy Wiseman

Saw you in the Ojo 35

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A GOVERNMENT-HATER %\ -Hႇ 3DUNHU

J

oe gets up at 6 a.m. and fills his coffeepot with water to prepare his morning coffee. The water is clean because some tree-hugging liberal fought for minimum waterquality standards. With his first swallow of water, he takes his daily medication.

His medications are safe because some stupid commie liberal fought to ensure their safety and that they work as advertised. All but $10 of his medications are paid for by his employer’s medical plan because some liberal union workers fought their employers for paid medical insurance, now Joe gets it too.

He prepares his morning breakfast.

Joe’s bacon is safe to eat because some girly-man liberal fought for laws to regulate the meat packing industry. In the morning shower, Joe reaches for his shampoo. His bottle is properly labeled with each ingredient because some crybaby liberal fought for his right to know what he was putting on his body and how much it contained.

Joe dresses, walks outside and takes a deep breath. The air he breathes is clean because some environmentalist wacko liberal fought for the laws to stop industries from polluting our air.

He walks to the subway station for his government-subsidized ride to work. It saves him considerable money in parking and transportation fees because some fancy-pants liberal fought for affordable public transportation, which gives everyone the opportunity to be a contributor.

Joe begins his work-day. He’s one of the lucky ones who has a job with very good pay, medical benefits, retirement, paid holidays and vacation be-

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El Ojo del Lago / November 2016

cause some lazy liberal union members fought and died for these working standards. Joe’s employer pays these standards because Joe’s employer doesn’t want his employees to call the union. If Joe is hurt on the job or becomes unemployed, he’ll get a worker compensation or unemployment check because some stupid liberal didn’t think he should lose his home because of his temporary misfortune.

It’s noontime and Joe needs to make a bank deposit so he can pay some bills. Joe’s deposit is federally insured by the FDIC because some godless liberal wanted to protect Joe’s money from unscrupulous bankers who ruined the banking system before the Great Depression. Joe has to pay his Fannie Maeunderwritten mortgage and his belowmarket federal student loan because some elitist liberal decided that Joe and the government would be better off if he was educated and earned more money over his lifetime.

He plans to visit his father this evening at his home in the country. He gets in his car for the drive. His car is among the safest in the world because some America-hating liberal fought for car safety standards. He arrives at his boyhood home. His was the third generation to live in the house financed by Farmers’ Home Administration because bankers didn’t want to make rural loans.

The house didn’t have electricity until some big-government liberal stuck his nose where it didn’t belong and demanded rural electrification.

He is happy to see his father, who is now retired. His father lives on Social Security and a union pension because some wine-drinking, cheese-eating liberal made sure he could take care of himself so Joe wouldn’t have to. Joe gets back in his car for the ride home, and turns on a radio talk show. The radio host keeps saying that liberals are bad and conservatives are good. He doesn’t mention that the beloved Republicans have fought against every protection and benefit Joe enjoys throughout his day. Joe agrees: “We don’t need those big-government liberals ruining our lives! After all, I’m a self-made man who believes everyone should take care of themselves, just like I have.”

Saw you in the Ojo 37

Lament Of A Bibliophiliac %\ -RKQ 7KRPDV 'RGGV They’re taking over again reproducing like black flies around standing water.

As soon as I lend out my suitcases, arrange for a new phone number, settle-in with a few old companions who are content to lie about and live off scraps of my time they begin to accumulate in the nooks, the corners, the flat spaces of my life.

At first, the odd one wanders by on a whim, a curiosity, and sympathetic toward my weakness suggests a friend in need of rescue from the doldrums of dust.

Sensing I am a carpenter at heart and love to build shelves some flaunt their spines, wear soft leather and gold braid, name drop and hint at gaps in my knowledge, others attach themselves to me like battered dogs and stray cats— demand more light insist on a place with a view.

They climb my walls crowd my bed, nourishing insomnia while entertaining with their wit and wisdom.

I develop a word rash, a sentence phobia look forward to obscure holidays introduce them to my relatives recommend them to my neighbors arrange blind dates with bored librarians until, I’m forced to cull & prune, herd them into boxes pack my suitcases, cancel my phone, and move on with a few of my old companions, who ask nothing more than to be read and reread.

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El Ojo del Lago / November 2016

Saw you in the Ojo 39

'(67,1$7,21 ' ',63 3$7&+ & &+,$3$6 6WRU\ DQG 3KRWRJUDSK\ %\ *UHJ &XVWHU

A

recent visit to Mexico’s southernmost State reinforces why Chiapas is not only an accessible getaway for lakesiders, but also one of this hemisphere’s grandest nature and culture experiences. Chiapas combines pine forest highlands, steamy jungle lowlands, wild rivers, alpine lakes, deep canyons, and a slice of little-explored Pacific Coast. It’s also the heartland of Mexico’s Mayan patrimony.

Historically, Chiapas has attracted only veteran Mexico travelers, Europeans, and backpackers on their way to Central America. Today it’s an easier-than-ever open-jaw itinerary using Guadalajara non-stops (Viva

40

Aerobus) into Villahermosa and returning from Tuxtla-Gutierrez. And with airfares starting around $100 US roundtrip, why would you stay home?

DAY ONE: Once landed in Villahermosa, there’s non-stop bus service from the airport to Palenque city (fare is around $17US). I suggest you stay in the ‘La Cañada’ area, home to a jungle-shaded, gentrified collection of good eats, coffee shops and small inns. We stayed comfortably at Maya Tulipanes.

Take a full day to immerse your soul in Palenque, the apogee of western Mayan architectural refinement. The jungle hillside setting is breathtaking. An English-speaking

El Ojo del Lago / November 2016

guide can divide your visit between the unexcavated jungle ruins, the regal central courtyard of palaces and temples, followed by a downhill, suspension bridge, waterfall path to the site’s excellent museum. Palenque’s importance to Mayan scholars cannot be overstated.

Studies will continue for decadesto-come and a day visit leaves you wanting more.

DAY TWO: Within reach from Palenque city are a host of nature and cultural attractions. Most opt for the waterfalls at Misol-há and the turquoise waters of stunning Agua Azul. When visiting from November to May, witness the 15 km-long river’s transformation from rainy season cappuccino hues to dry season’s brilliant blues, greens and frothy white cascades, which are the result of bicarbonate minerals that alter refracted sunlight. You can wander upstream to the river’s source, past vendors, restaurants and quiet alcoves.

DAY THREE: After travelling the sinuous two-lane highway south from Palenque to Ocosingo, you’ll swear there was a Mayan God of the Speed Bump. The road (regardless of whether you use private driver or deluxe bus) is tortuous. ‘Topes’ (the tall ones, not the smaller ‘vibrador’ variety) appear with a maddening frequency like no other route in the Americas. Take Dramamine (and your sense of humor) to compensate. You’re rewarded handsomely some upon reaching Ocosingo and a short jaunt east to Toniná.

This little-visited site belongs in anyone’s TOP FIVE Mesoamerican archaeological experiences. Spanning a towering series of terraces are temples, carved stone walls, residences and pyramids, all climber accessible. A mere 30-40 people tour the site each day! The structure towers 75 meters (246 feet) and is now crowned as the tallest in all of Mexico.

After another two jarring hours of ‘topes’ your journey from jungle to highlands ends at magical 7,000foot San Cristobal de las Casas. Rest at your hotel, then rally for an evening stroll along the city’s 16th century flagstone pedestrian arcades and marimba serenaded squares.

(We enjoyed our stay at Las Escaleras, ten suites climbing a hillside a short walk to the main square. The lovely Parador San Juan de Díos is also highly recommended).

DAYS FOUR AND FIVE: A walker’s delight, San Cristobal sits in a valley surrounded by pine forested mountains. Highland communities have occupied the region

for millennia. Spanish San Cristobal dates to 1528, evident in the city’s handsome squares, Catholic temples, mansions, and red tiled roofs.

It was a bastion of Indian conversion to European ways, a work-in-progress that yields both splendor and tragedy.

Across the Highlands, an ancient yet ‘contemporary’ Mayan culture has survived, amidst a patchwork of independent, culturally distinct villages. Of the state’s 5.2 million inhabitants, nearly one million are Native Americans, descendants of the Maya and other ethnic groups.

Much of the state’s history is centered on the subjugation of these people. Satellite communities west of San Cristobal are home to re-settled and refuge-seeking Maya families, a sad reality.

With a population now approaching 200,000, San Cristobal still feels like a village. A ‘Pueblo Mágico’ designation has brought gentrification and hip international dining.

Take time to visit Casa Na Bolom, a step back in time homage to the Lancandon Forest and its ancestral inhabitants. Blocks away is the12rooom Parador San Juan de Díos, a series of lovely bungalows, an excellent gourmet restaurant and former home to the Harvard University’s Chiapas Project, a ground-breaking ethnographic field study.

The region’s signature textiles are seen as daily garb and purchased at shops or mercados. The weaver cooperative Sna Jolobil is adjacent to the city’s fine Textile Museum, part of the Templo de Santo Domingo.

Built between 1547-60, Santo Domingo’s baroque façade is of soft pink stone is resplendent, while the interior is exuberantly decorated with gilt retablos. Sna Jolobil supports some 800 weavers from twenty Tzotzil and Tzeltal-speaking communities.

Day trips from San Cristobal highlight archaeological sites, traditional villages and nature’s splendor.

Take in at least one of these opportunities when not shopping for ambar or sipping Mexico’s best coffee, relaxing in the city’s several plazas.

DAY SIX It’s a one-hour taxi to state capital Tuxtla-Gutierrez and your nonstop home to GDL. Descending over 5,000 feet from the Highlands via a modern autopista, contemplate one of this hemisphere’s most complex cultural corridors, and start planning your next visit.

Greg Custer

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Sandy Olson

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

THERE’S STILL TIME TO GET A TICKET The Bravo! Theatre’s next production is Sylvia.

The creative and experienced cast members are Paul Kloegman, Kathleen Carlson, Jayme Littlejohn, Arlene Pace, Kathleen Morris and Tony Wilshere.

The fabulous Roseann Wilshere is directing.

It is a howlingly funny play! The production will be on November 10, 11, 12 and 13. Tickets are 200 pesos and may be purchased from Diane Pearl Colecciones and Mia’s Boutique or by emailing mymytickets@gmail.com FERIA MAESTRO DEL ART The 15th annual Feria will be held November 1113, Friday and Saturday, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Admission will be 50 'LUHFWRU 5RVHDQQ :LOVKHUH pesos.

The Feria’s location is at the Club de Yates de Chapala (Chapala Yacht Club), Paseo Ramon Corona in Chapala. There are way too many activities to list, so check the website: www.mexicoartshow.com.

HOHOHO Santa Claus is coming and this year he’s on a motorcycle. Los Güeros Motorcycle Club is gearing up for its third annual “Toys for Tots” run. They have placed collection boxes for toys at Mama’s Bar, the Iron Horse, Just Chilling Baby and the American Legion. Please join them in giving the children of Mezcala a Merry Christmas.

The ride itself will take place on December 17 and will start out at the American Legion at 10 a.m. for breakfast. The ride to Mescala to deliver the toys will leave at noon.

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 10:00 a.m. is followed by an interesting lecture and discussion at 10:30.

November 13 The Allure of Gold—A History of Gold, How We Find It, Mine It, Produce and Use It. Presented by John Wells John will cover the history of gold production in ancient civilizations such as the Aztecs and the Incas. He will also discuss where and how we find it, particularly in Mexico, and how we produce pure gold and silver bars from rock. He will conclude with a commentary on current social and environmental challenges.

John Wells, a mining engineer, worked for 40 years in the mining industry in North and South America and Africa. He continues to consult on an occasional basis from his Vernon, Canada, and Ajijic homes.

November 20 Vietnam, Agent Orange, China, TPP, Mongolia’s Emerging Democracy...and More Presented by Kelly Hayes-Raitt During five months of traveling through Vietnam, China, Mongolia, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan, Kelly was warmly welcomed as an American visitor. She will focus her talk on Mongolia, one of the world’s newest democracies, which is plunging into capitalism after decades of communism.

Kelly Hayes-Raitt is a citizen journalist and writer who spent two weeks this summer with a delegation in Mongolia. She posted prolifically on Facebook. “Friend” her to check out her videos and photos.

November 27 Live Your Dream and Have Fun Doing It Presented by Roy Nolan Roy will tell us how to live our dream—how to find a need and fill it, how to live the

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dream, and how to have fun at the same time we help make this a better world.

Roy Nolan is a professional film/video producer, currently living his dream and doing his best to help make a better world. He began his filmmaking career over 60 years ago at the National Film Board of Canada in Montreal where he learned how to make documentary films. In 2006 he moved to the Lake Chapala area. Since then Roy has created many videos about this area. Some can be seen on his website www.lakechapalavideos.com.

December 4 Performance by the San Juan Cosala Music Rescue Project [OFIRC] Presenters: San Juan Cosala Children’s Choir and Orchestra Since they first appeared at Open Circle three years ago, the San Juan Children’s Choir and Orchestra has turned shy, fearful children into confident, 5R\ 1RODQ lively, focused youngsters singing and playing instruments for fun as well as for discipline and achievement. The Orchestra is growing but still in need of instruments (woodwinds, brass, and strings), as well as sponsorships to pay for instruction in those instruments.

The children will perform and Coco Wonchee and Gustavo Medeles will update us on the progress of the project and its goals for the future.

VIVA LA MUSICA! LAKESIDE CONCERTS Wednesday November 16 The Arias Trio from Bamberg, Germany, a special concert in a private home in Rancho del Oro (map on the ticket); 4 p.m., champagne reception, and the concert at 5 p.m.

Tickets are 450 pesos and 500 pesos for nonmembers. This is a very special treat for Ajijic.

You won’t want to miss it.

Sunday December 4 Violin and piano concert featuring Blandine Tricot, piano, and Álvaro Lárez, violin, 4 p.m. at St. Andrew’s Anglican Church in Riberas del Pilar.

Tickets are 300 pesos on sale at the LCS box office Thursdays and Fridays 10 to noon, Diane Pearl Colecciones or Mia’s Boutique.

Thursday December 15 Viva Christmas Concert with the Rafael Terriquez Big Band, 6 p.m.in the Auditorio, 7KH $ULDV 7ULR La Floresta.

Regular Viva Concert tickets are 300 pesos. They are available at the LCS ticket booth Thursdays and Fridays from 10 to 12, and also from Diane Pearl Colecciones and Mia’s Boutique.

PAINTING WHILE YOU WATCH Members of the Lake Chapala Painting Guild will be offering demos in various media at Sol Mexicano. The artists and their demonstration dates are as follows: Winnie Hunt, November 17 and 18; Sonia Mocnik, December 1 and 2; Nancy Gray, January 5 and 6; Carol Ann Owers, January 19 and 20.

Sonia Mocnik, Geraldine Classen and Winnie Hunt.

Each session will begin at 11 a.m. and continue until at least 1 p.m. There is no charge and reservations aren’t necessary. Everyone is invited.

Sol Mexicano is located on Colon #13 in Ajijic, a half block south of the plaza.

SHE’S A GREAT HOSTESS Janice Kimball, weaving maestro Francisco Urzua, Max Bird and Precious Poodle invite the public to Aztec Studio’s eleventh annual potluck celebration on Sunday, November 20 at 2 p.m. Everyone, especially newbies, are welcome.

These potlocks are always fun. A special musical surprise will make this year’s event more entertaining than ever. The location is Aztec Art and Weaving Studios, Carretera Pte, West Ajijic (near Yves’).

For reservations e-mail janicekimball.com Let her know whether you will be bringing an appe-DQLFH .LPEDOO

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tizer or a salad. Wine and soft drinks are provided. Seating is limited so it is advised you get your reservation in early.

LET’S GET ON THE VIVA BUS   Friday November 25 Live Opera Othello with the Jalisco Philharmonic Orchestra and members of the Jalisco State Choir, with tenor Issachah Savage ass Othello, and soprano Maija Kovalevska as Desdemona. The bus leaves at 4:30 pm, with a stop at a fine restaurant. Bus trip tickets 500 pesos and 600 pesos for non-members.

Saturday December 10 ‘L’Amour de Loin’ (Love from Afar) is a new opera by Kaija Saariaho, premiered in 2000 in Salzburg, and set as a medieval love story with Susanna Philips as ClĂŠmence and Eric Owens as JaufrĂŠ. The bus leaves at 10:30 a.m. The bus trip tickets are 400 pesos and 500 pesos for non-members.

Sunday December 18 The Jalisco Ballet performs Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite. This is always a Christmas sell-out. The bus leaves at 10:30 a.m. Bus trip tickets are 500 pesos and 600 pesos for non-members.

Bus trip tickets are available at the LCS ticket booth on Thursdays and Fridays, 10 a.m. to noon.

HE DOES IT AGAIN! Our local poet Mel Goldberg is a winner again! This time he was awarded second place in the Flint Hills Shakespeare Festival Sonnet Contest. Here’s his sonnet: BEFORE HIKING TO THE SNOW-FILLED WOOD Once, before hiking to the snow-filled wood In the pale glow just as the breaking dawn overcomes the darkness, a dappled fawn, steaming in the frosty morning’s light, stood in my garden, wondering if it should flee from me, bound for the hills and be gone, leaving only prints in the snowy lawn, a fleeting fear I think I understood.

My observations scribbled on white pages, the words with which I hoped to make my mark and join the chronicles of ancient sages will melt away as alight subdues the dark, as ancient man in prehistoric ages struggled to start each fire with a spark.

IS IT ART, OR ISN’T IT? The next Naked Stage production will be Art, and is directed by Rosann Balbontin. Cast members are Ed Tasca, Jon DeYoung, and Greg Clarke.

It runs November 25, 26 and 27. Art won the Tony for Best Play in 1998. It’s a comedy which raises questions about art and friendship, and concerns three long-time friends, Serge, Marc, and Yvan. Serge, indulging his penchant for modern art, buys a large, expensive, completely white painting. Marc is horrified, and their relationship suffers considerable strain as a result of their differing opinions about what constitutes “art�.

Yvan, caught in the middle of the conflict, tries to please both of them.

The Naked Stage is in Riberas del Pilar, at Hidalgo #261, on the mountain side and directly across from the Catholic Church.

For more informa/HIW WR 5LJKW *UHJ &ODUNH 'LUHFWRU 5RVDQQ %DOERQtion and reservations, WLQ DQG (G 7DVFD 0LVVLQJ -RQ 'H<RXQJ email nakedstagereservations@gmail. com. For those who use Facebook, look for The Naked Stage for breaking news and updates.

JALTEPEC PULLS OUT THE STOPS AGAIN Centro Educativo Jaltepec is preparing for its annual Christmas Dinner and Luncheon event. The dinner will take place on Tuesday, November 29. The donation is 650 pesos. The luncheon is on the following day, Wednesday, November 30, and the cost is 550 pesos.

Timothy G. Ruff Welch will direct â&#x20AC;&#x153;A Taste of Los Cantantes del Lago.â&#x20AC;? There is a no host bar with hors dâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;oeuvres prepared and presented by the student. The delicious roast turkey dinner with all the trimmings will also be prepared and served by the students.

Contact Linda Buckthorp before Friday, November 21 at (376) 766.1631 or send her an email at buckthorplm@gmail.com to make your reservation in advance.

FISHING, ANYONE?

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The Ajijic Fishing Club meets on the first Monday of the month for breakfast at 9 a.m. at DoĂąa Lola Restaurant to exchange information and fishing tips.

Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not all they do. This active bunch is planning a program for local kids who donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have access to fishing. Theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re also interested in helping newcomers to enjoy outings and can provide the loan of tackle for people who need it.

Then, of course, thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s fishingâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;at Aguamilpa Dam in Nayarit, outings to the coast, and a plan in the /HIW WR ULJKW -LP %ROHV &RRUGLQDWRU 5LFDUGR +HFNHUW works for members to fly to Baja :HEPDVWHU %RE +RFK 7UHDVXUHU California and drive up the coast to a premier fishing spot in the Sea of Cortez.

They welcome new members. People can get in touch with Jim Boles at 766.5127 or check their very useful website at drhook50hp.wix.com/ajijicfishingclub, or just show up at DoĂąa Lolaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s for breakfast. You can buy one of those good looking T shirts too. The next meetings will be on November 7 and December 5.

FINDING ANOTHER SOUL MATE Chapter Two, written by Neil Simon, is the next Lakeside Little Theatre presentation. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s directed by Phil Shepherd. The cast members are Zane Pumiglia, Collette Clavadetscher, Michele Lococo, Dennis McCary.

The characters have to deal with sudden love, grief, recovery from divorce and contemplation of an affair.

Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s called â&#x20AC;&#x153;an extraordinarily funny, heartfelt and witty comedy.â&#x20AC;? The play examines what it means to truly love someone else, and asks whether finding a soul mate can happen more than once in a lifetime.

Show dates are December 2-11.

Curtain is 7:30 p.m. evenings, and at 3 p.m. for first Saturday and both Sunday matinees. Tickets are 200 pesos at the Box Office.

LLT Box Office hours are 10 a.m. to noon every Wednesday and Thursday plus 10 a.m. to noon every day during the show, except for Sunday. For information on ticket sales, call 376.766.0954 (messages are okay), or email tickets@lakesidelittletheatre. com. Also, visit the website at www.lakesidelittletheatre.com for more information on ticket sales, upcoming productions and general information.

YOU SHOULD HAVE BEEN THERE The Culinary Arts Society of Ajijic (CASA) recently took another one of those great tours, this time to a factory in El Salto, where they got in on steeply reduced closing prices for clay bakers. Then they shopped at several Asian markets and finished with a great Japanese lunch.

A member says, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s worth a drive with any tours organized by CASA!â&#x20AC;?

To find out about any upcoming tours, scheduled probably after the first of the year, check the website: casalakeside@yahoo.com Membership is not required for the trips but you may be interested in joining. CASA meets the third Monday of each month at La Mision Restaurant on Rio Bravo.

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T

he martial tradition, of the Gurkha Warrior is known the world over. Their training, and warrior spirit means they will do things in a fight that wouldn’t occur to even the most seasoned combat veterans. Gurkhas will fight outnumbered and outgunned. They hold their positions against impossible odds and often come out on top. They always have their famous forward bent Kukri knife with them. It is said that, in the passage to manhood ceremony, a Gurkha must take the head off an ox with one blow of the Kukri knife, to become a man.

The Argentines knew this in the war of the Maldives / Falkland Islands. A division of Argentines was well dug in on the islands when they heard that the British had brought some of their traditional support in the form of Gurkha warriors. They left their secure positions and ran for the hills, in what might be referred to as a “screaming-like-a-littlegirl, panicked tactical retreat.” And who could blame them. The rumor was that the Gurkha don’t take prisoners, they eat them.

By western standards, the Gurkha is a short man who does not carry a lot of weight. He does not look like the warrior he is. Stories of their bravery, savagery, strength, heroism and commitment abound.

One of these stories of Gurkha heroism involves Lachhiman Gurung in Burma after he was taken by surprise when Japanese troops opened up on him and his men and lobbed some grenades into their trench. Gurung picked up two of the grenades and threw them back to the 200 Japanese soldiers waiting in the darkness.

The third grenade blew up in Gurung’s hand. He lost a few fingers, most of his right arm, and took shrapnel in his face and leg. Partially blind, bleeding profusely, and struggling to move, Gurung did something only a Gurkha would do: he pulled his Kukri knife with his good hand, stabbed the ground, and told the Japanese in a booming voice that none of them would make it past that knife.

He then picked up his rifle — a boltaction Lee-Enfield Mk. III chambered a round, and invited the enemy to “Come fight a Gurkha.” With his friends dead or dying, Gurung fought for hours, firing his bolt-action Lee-Enfield with one

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hand and killing anyone who entered his trench. He would lie down until the Japanese were on top of his position, kill the closest one at point-blank range, chamber a new round with his left hand, and then kill the enemy’s battle buddy.

Gurung killed 31 Japanese soldiers this way, fighting until morning the next day. At the end of the battle, he was shouting “Come and fight. Come and fight. I will kill you!” Gurung was hospitalized through the end of the war, losing partial vision in his right eye and the use of his right arm. He was awarded Great Britain’s highest military honor, the Victoria Cross and was the only recipient still alive when his command presented medals for the battle. Gurung’s only complaint after the fighting was that his wounded arm had flies swarming around it.

He eventually moved to the U.K. to live out his life in peace. But he reemerged in 2008 when a controversial policy revoked the rights of some Gurkha veterans who retired before 1997 to live in the country. The government said the Gurkhas failed to “Demonstrate strong ties to the U.K.!” Lachhiman Gurung put on his rack of medals, went over to Britain’s High Court, and made another “last stand” — this time for his fellow WWII-era Gurkhas, and he pleaded to the Court and to the Queen to be allowed to stay.

As a result of the famous Gurkha tenaciousness, the British high court struck down the law that same year. I think members of the high court didn’t want to wake up with a Kukri knife hovering over their jugulars. Lachhiman Gurung died John Ward 2010. He was 92.

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COLUMNIST

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am not an economist. But like everyone who lives in Mexico, I am concerned about the value of the peso. While it might make our USA or Canadian dollar go further, it really is hurting the Mexican economy.

Prices here are rising to compensate, but the wages don’t seem to be keeping pace. A Mexican friend of mine was complaining about the cost of vegetables. She has a lot of mouths to feed in her home. The peso has gone down, but vegetables cost more, yet her wages are the same. Gas prices have gone up as well, so those fortunate enough to own a car pay more to get to work and earn the same.

My husband and I are on very different diets, so we end up eating out often. We’ve seen some modest increases at restaurants, but not so much as one would expect. We’ve taken to leaving larger tips because of the peso rate. I increased my payment to my hairdresser. She works hard, but she hadn’t increased the price of her services, so I give her more. We also gave our maid a raise. But I know that not everyone can afford to be more generous. We’ve made some cuts here and there, and of course the money we have in our Mexican account doesn’t fare well against the USD. So we feel the pinch there as do our neighbors.

I hear people talk about how the rise in prices is worrisome to them be-

cause they feel that when the value of the peso increases, the prices won’t go back down.

I’m seeing an increase in bazars, and in people selling wares and talents on the street. There is a gymnast near the Chapala Soriana intersection who does hand stands and cartwheels.

I worry about him falling in front of a moving car. I’ve seen jugglers there as well. At the main stoplight in Chapala, a man has decided to offer window washing while we wait at the stoplight.

I used to see this only in Guadalajara, but now I’m seeing it at Lakeside.

There seems to be more car washers. Often I cannot exit my car without someone opening my door and asking if they can wash my car. And there are so many people walking about selling vegetables and fruits from their own yards. Some don’t even wait for me to leave the vehicle! I try to help where I can, but my heart goes out to these people who are simply trying to make money in a difficult economy.

Then there are those who simply beg. A woman walks up and down the street wheeling her disabled son in his chair. Women sit and work on their crafts in front of the entrances to stores with small cups out asking for change.

Once a woman told me “They can walk you know, they aren’t really cripples.” I was dumbfounded. These women never purported to be cripples, but they are probably widows with no one to support them. I’ve seen them prior to the opening of the store as they “pay” for their cold cement seat by sweeping the parking lot and the sidewalk.

The knocks at my door are more frequent. People asking for work, or begging for food, and I wonder how much longer is this going to go on? As I write this the peso is been at nearly 20-1 all week. When we moved to Mexico it was 11-1. I hope we all take this into consideration next time we leave a tip or buy some vegetables.

Victoria Schmidt

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A CHILL IN THE AIR %\ -HUHP\ 0RQURH

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eaves scratch along the sidewalk in front of the café; some, gold, some brown, still cling to the trees in the parkway.

Inside, a couple sits at a table. She wears jeans and a long sleeved Tee shirt, the kind you get when you sign up for a 10-K run. I expect most people who pick up the shirt at the sign-in center actually do run. But not always.

Once, for example, I had signed up and paid the entry fee for a run called the “Butte to Butte” in Eugene, Oregon. I don’t remember for sure, but it was probably a 10-K. As fate had it, the day before the run I came down with the flu and didn’t make the run.

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A friend picked up my shirt for me, a nice long-sleeved Tee shirt. I wore it once or twice, but always felt ashamed because I hadn’t earned it. I don’t remember seeing it lately in my Tee shirt drawer.

Her shirt is maroon with some white letters down the sleeve. From my angle, I can’t make out if the shirt was from a run, or just advertised a car dealer, software developer, or maybe a radio station. I’d prefer it be from a run.

The skin of her lower back, between her jeans and the shirt, is revealed as she sits. I’m pleased to note there’s no trace of a tattoo. I’ve got nothing against tattoos, not exactly. Its

El Ojo del Lago / November 2016

fashion I resent, going with the crowd.

The trouble with fashion tattoos is that when you decide you don’t like it any more, as happens with fashion, there you are with the tattoo still marking your body, or, maybe now, disfiguring your body.

No tattoo here. These days, with hip-hugger jeans and shirts barely reaching the waist, the moment women with a lower back tattoo bends or sits, boom! There’s the skin on her lower back flashing the bottom of a tattoo, or not, as in this case. You can’t see the whole tattoo, just the bottom of it. I think a lot of lower back tattoos are Oriental designs, maybe Buddhist.

I wonder if such superficial, but permanent, body adornment would be encouraged by the monks. I doubt it.

A beam of light from an overhead spotlight highlights downy hairs on her lower back. It would feel nice to lightly stroke her there, so lightly that you could feel the soft fuzzy hair, feel the warmth radiating from her body, and yet not quite touch her skin. That would be nice.

Her face is commonly attractive with well-composed features. The nose is the right size, neither pointy nor blunt. Her eyes are well set and the brow neither pronounced nor too high. Her eyebrows look natural, not particularly full, but today no eyebrow pencil. Her chin is round, yet evokes strength of character, perhaps because her lips seem a tad fuller, well, than you’d expect. Her physique appears balanced. She’s not skinny like a marathon runner, nor muscular like a 100 yard dash specialist. She just looks healthy, like a good soccer player, balanced, proportional, high endurance, yet capable of a burst of speed when called for. Depending on who she might be on the inside, once you got to know her, she’ll either be very beautiful, or just nice- looking.

The man she shares a table with is dark: two or three day’s brown beard, with dark brown eyes, set narrow and recessed. Dark brown hair on his head

cut short but in need of a trim, like his beard. It’s a little spiky, not wiry, not like a painter’s camelhair brush. His facial hair is patchy giving an unkempt look. A beard doesn’t work well for him.

He wears a dark brown cotton Vneck sweater over a white Tee shirt.

On the back of his chair hangs a suede jacket, not a sports coat, not a tight waited windbreaker style. It’s like a large shirt with gold satin lining.

Before him on the table: an open three-ring notebook and a file folder, its papers bound by a two pronged binder at the top. Bankers and lawyers use these folders so papers stay in order and don’t get lost. He doesn’t look like a banker or lawyer. Nor has he the flare of a person in the humanities or sciences. His papers don’t look like those of a businessman. I lean, perhaps unfairly, toward him being a demanding high school administrator who gave up teaching math because it didn’t satisfy a hunger for power.

Pen in hand, he pages through his notebook making a check mark here, circling a word or phrase with a flourish there. Sometimes he opens the file folder and checks it against a notebook counterpart.

Because he is clearly working, the couple converses very little. She looks around at the pictures on display and for sale in the café, she looks at people.

Our eyes meet briefly and we smile.

She picks up the “Living” section of a newspaper and leafs through it, maybe the entertainment pages. For a while, she looks, stares would be more accurate, out the front window into the brightness of late fall morning, her life frozen in silhouette.

Finally, he wordlessly rises. He reaches to the back of his chair and slips on his suede jacket. He closes the notebook and slips the file folder under its cover.

She rises after him. She has no coat.

She steps around the table to him, leans to him, kisses his cheek and pats his arm.

He picks up his notebook and finds a few stray sheets of paper that were under it. He slips them into his notebook too and starts for the door, notebook under his left arm. With his right hand he pulls sunglasses from the breast pocket, shakes them open and puts them on. As she starts to open the door for him with a push of her outstretched hand, he leans his right shoulder into the door and guides her through, his left hand on her shoulJeremy Monroe der.

Saw you in the Ojo 61

Señor Tope %\ 0DUN 6FRQFH

W

hile dining in Paris last year, I had the great good fortune to run into Sr. Tope, originally of Chapala, Mexico. He was sitting alone in Au Pied de Cochon, a restaurant famous for its pig knuckles. Elegantly dressed, mustachioed and reading a past issue of El Ojo del Lago, he welcomed my arrival at a table adjacent to his. Although a very wealthy gentleman, he seemed down to earth, rather shy and noticeably rotund.

When he found out I was living in Ajijic, he lit up and asked about his former pueblo. I assured him that everything was fine Lakeside.

Javier Tope Moreno made his fortune when he was able to show that his invention, the eponymous speed bump we all love to hate, was much more effective and less expensive than semáforos or policemen packing radar guns.

The Sleeping Policemen, Sr. Tope affectionately called them. The Federal government saw a cost-saving device and signed a contract allowing my dinner partner 8 pesos for the standard tope and ten pesos each for the insidious little ones that can launch your vehicle airborne. As they became more and more ubiquitous throughout Mexico, Sr. Tope became wealthier and wealthier.

He was now a permanent resident of Paris, France.

I asked Sr. Tope if he missed Chapala, lakeside pueblo of his youth. “Oh, yes,” he assured me. “Look what I’m reading.

I’m very happy that the folks at El Ojo del Lago decided to print a Spanish edition.”

As we were savoring a smooth Bordeaux, the famous pig knuckles arrived, and we set to work with the little forks they provide for digging into the tender joints. After our exquisite meal, I thought to ask if there was any particular event that shaped his life back in Mexico, something that perhaps accounted for his success and happiness.

“Ah sí,” he replied and launched into a remarkable tale.

When Javier Tope Moreno was a young, ambitious man, he decided to leave his pueblo and journey to a town with a better economy and better prospects. His parents gave him their blessing, and he set out on a long trek. Midday, he came to rest near a little farm community that featured a cemetery

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along the main road. Young Tope soon found himself walking among the headstones interested to read the inscribed names and dates. He soon realized that he was in a children’s cemetery where none of the children exceeded ten years of age. For example, Juan Carlos Zamora lived eight years, six months, two weeks and three days. Alejandro Pacopancho, lived 5 years, 8 months and 3 weeks.

What terrible thing happened here, he thought? What evil befell this community so that its citizens felt obliged to build a children’s cemetery?

Suddenly, an elderly native appeared and, reading the young man’s mind, assured him that there was no curse to worry about. “Sereno Moreno. Here we have an old custom. When a youth attains his 15th birthday, his parents gift him a notebook, which he carries from that day to his death. Whenever he experiences some intense joy, some exhilarating moment, some blessed event, he writes it down on the left side of the notebook. On the right side he notes how long the intense enjoyment lasted.

His first kiss, for example, his wedding day, the birth of his first child, the marriages of his friends… Then, when the person dies, we take his notebook and add up all the times of his intense enjoyment and inscribe them on his tombstone. We think that this is a unique and better way to tell the true time of life.”

“That experience influenced the rest of my life,” said Sr. Tope and ordered another chocolate éclair.

“Intense enjoyment has been my goal ever since. Don’t you have a similar saying, something about taking your breath away?”

“Yes, I think we do: ‘Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breaths away.’”

When I told Herlinda, my Spanish teacher back in Ajijic, about my meeting with Sr. Tope, she laughed and said that that was a famous, old story written by Jorge Bucay, an Argentine writer in the last century. To my chagrin, I suddenly realized that Tope had once again stopped me in my Mark Sconce tracks.

Saw you in the Ojo 63

Trippin’ On The Malecon %\ 7RP 1XVVEDXP

A

male con is a man in prison, a prisoner. A malecón, without a space between the syllables, is an esplanade, a promenade, a walkway along a waterfront common in Latin American cities.

I recently took a stroll along Ajijic’s malecón to escape the nonstop television news coverage of the police shootings of Black men in Tulsa and Charlotte, resulting protests, presidential election, and “breaking” Hollywood gossip. I had become, I realized, the media’s wrongly convicted prisoner or male con.

My first stop on the malecón was the Jardin International or International Garden. I stepped off the sidewalk and into the peaceful, idyllic spot.

64

Immediately, however, my head was jarred by Iron Butterfly’s “In-A-GaddaDa-Vida.” It was blasting at an 11 on the Spinal Tap volume scale. I jumped back onto the sidewalk. The blaring music stopped. I again stepped onto the grass. Suddenly Jimi Hendrix, with his Afro and wearing a tie-dye T-shirt, faced me. He held a guitar. It was on fire. “It’s about the Garden of Life, man,” he said. “Or maybe the Garden of Eden.

That’s it. In the Garden of Eden.

That’s what they’re singing about.” I tried to study his face for a moment, but it suddenly began melting onto his shirt which had begun dripping onto the ground. Then he disappeared in an explosive hazy cloud of purple smoke.

“Holy cow,” I gasped as I stepped

El Ojo del Lago / November 2016

back on the path. “I’m having an acid flashback.” I felt weak, nauseous, and I could feel my face paling. I turned and stumbled along the malecón. That was friggin’ weird, I thought as a gray-haired woman with a thick braid dangling over her left shoulder and a denim skirt hanging to her ankles approached me.

She was carrying a protest sign that read “Black Lives Matter.”

“Are you OK?” she asked. But before I could respond, she said, “My name is Charlotte and I’m from North Caro. . .” Freaked out, I pushed past her and down the sidewalk before she completed naming the state. A safe distance away, I turned around. A multicolored puff of confetti danced in the air where she had stood.

Gaining strength, I raced along the malecón in panic. An acid flashback?

This late in life? I thought as I came upon four white egrets wading in the shallow water next to the sidewalk. As I stopped to gaze at the calming sight, one of the birds slowly rose above the lake, transformed into a wing-spread angel, and floated skyward, dropping a glistening golden harp. The harp immediately sank, but a haunting dirgelike version of Sister Sledge’s “We Are Family” emanated from the rippling water. A snorting sound interrupted the sad tune.

I looked along the shore to my left and spotted two horses, a handsome sandy-brown male and a striking, long-maned white female that looked somewhat undernourished, grazing along the Lake Chapala shore. Six foals of various colors nibbled grass nearby.

How peaceful, I thought as I smiled. It was then that the male glared at me with anger and shouted, “Don’t look at Angelina like that!” Before I could react, the horse morphed into a beige 1970 Volkswagen bus and began racing toward me. I dashed down the esplanade and over a waist-high brick wall to safety just as the bus, which now appeared to be driven by Brad Pitt, raced past me. Pitt was yelling, “Free at last, free at last. Oh, thank God Almighty,

I’m free at last.” as he disappeared in the distance.

Out of breath, I bent over, put my hands on my knees and panted downward. It was then I realized I had landed precariously on a tree stump behind the wall. “That was great,” a voice said. “A horse turning into a VW bus.

You don’t see that every day. That was huge.” The voice seemed to be coming from the stump.

“What?” I erupted, as I leaped in confused fear from the sawed-off tree.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” the stump said. “I should have introduced myself. I’m Donald. Donald Stump and I want to make America grape again.” And with that, the hazy purple cloud that had appeared earlier on the malecón exploded down the walkway and enveloped me and the stump in a grape-colored mist. The voice, fading as the fog grew thicker, continued. “You know, that wall you just leaped over was built and paid for by Mexicans.”

I bolted from the purple cloud and began running home. I need water, I thought. And a Prozac. God, I hope Prozac stops acid flashbacks. Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit” ran alongside me the entire way, repeating a lyric, perhaps a warning, about pills. As soon as I reached my casita, I poured myself a tall glass of cold water and plopped onto my couch. I turned on the TV. But I had left it on CNN. Or MSNBC. Or LSD. Images of protests in the streets of Charlotte stared at me. Protests against police, their tactics, and racism just like in the late 1960s and 1970s when my generation regularly dropped acid. Wow, I thought. Nothing’s changed. We’re still fighting the same battles and I’m sick of it. And I’m sick of being a prisoner of the damn news. SICK OF IT ALL! It is driving me crazy.

It was then I realized I had never, even in my younger days, dropped acid. Tom Nussbaum

Saw you in the Ojo 65

Trick Retreat %\ -XG\ '\NVWUD %URZQ

At five o’clock they climb the hill to ring and ring my bell.

When I do not answer, the mob begins to swell.

Their cries of “We want Halloween!!” resound like cries from Hell.

My dogs begin a clamoring—and barks turn into growls.

The children’s only English words digress to angry howls that prompt a shiver down my back––a loosening in my bowels.

I give in and seize the bowl and open up the gate.

The children swell around me, angry I’m so late.

They dig their hands into the bowl—in no mood for debate.

When I scream out “Take only one!” they begin to mind, and they become more orderly and line up one behind another as a snake of children starts to move and wind From the bottom of the hill up to my front door but when it seems I’ve served them all, there are always more: one hundred, then two hundred, three hundred and then four!

And when I think the line perhaps is starting to get thin, I finally discover that they got in line again and came back to my doorway––where they’ve already been!

My candy store’s diminished, in fact there is no more and they grow disorderly, waiting at my door as I distribute all my fruit—right down to the last core.

Then I start giving canned goods—beans and corn and peas.

By the time my larder’s empty, they have brought me to my knees.

“Please, go home,” I beg them. “Leave my house now, please!”

But they have no pity. They are carrying off my plants.

I go into my closets and bring out my shirts and pants.

Still I hear requests for more—their demands and their rants.

I give them all my easy chairs, my pictures and my rugs, my glasses and my dishes, my pots and pans and mugs.

From my refrigerator, I return with bowls and jugs.

Until my house is empty, they refuse to go away; but finally I have no more, and I begin to pray that they will soon release me from this relentless fray.

And then I see a ray of hope as across the street my neighbor opens up his door and children’s footsteps beat in a new direction—as they mount a swift retreat.

I hear my neighbor’s screams and cries as they shout for more.

Though I should go and help him, I’m yellow to the core as I take the coward’s action and swiftly slam my door!!!

Mexico is lovely. It’s warm and lush and green.

I love its smiling people. I love its rich cuisine.

But there’s one drawback to living here that I have clearly seen.

I rue the day that Mexico discovered Halloween!

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Saw you in the Ojo 67

COLUMNIST

Anyone Can Train Their Dog %\ $UW +HVV artthedogguy@yahoo.com

Breaking News!! There is no Alpha Dog

T

hat’s right fellow “dog people.” There is no Alpha dog nor is there a Beta dog. Your responsibility as a loving, caring, dog person is to be a Dog Manager 100% of the time. That’s right you and only you are responsible for providing the dog leadership 24/7.

Every dog environment, just like every family, must live with rules, regulations, and limitations and it is your job to enforce these rules full time. This does not mean you are a bully or a nag or that you are punishing or disciplining your dog.

You are simply doing your job and enforcing the rules of the house. If your dog is doing something you don’t want him to do, look in the mirror where it says “Boss” across your forehead. If you don’t like what he is doing it is your job to change it or accept it.

Just as when you raise a family you cannot be a part time parent.

There’s no such thing as telling your three-year- old son and five- yearold daughter that you are too busy to be their Mom or Dad because you are watching TV or texting or watching your favorite show on your tablet, so for the time being they can be boss of the house and do whatever they want until you decide to resume your responsibili-

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ties. It doesn’t and can’t work that way.

It’s the same with your dog(s).

You don’t get to be boss in one instance and then put them in charge for awhile and then a little later come back and expect them to hand the responsibility back to you. Every time you put the dog in charge and he makes his own decisions, whether you approve of them or not, you are simply teaching him that he doesn’t have to pay any attention to you in certain instances.

The more you ignore your job of providing leadership the more you are confirming in the dog’s mind that what he is doing and the way he is doing it is entirely acceptable.

Consider the picture we see of a pack of wolves crossing an open space all lined out single file, what do we call the one in front? That’s right, Leader. And when we see the beauty of 8 or 12 husky dogs pulling a sled, what do we call the dog in the front? Right again, he’s the Leader. So when you repeatedly allow your dog to go through doors and gates ahead of you and then pull you down the street while the dog is 4 feet ahead of you on the leash, what is he? Right again, he is the Leader.

Now if this is okay with you, then live with it and don’t expect him to not steal off the counter, get on the furniture when you don’t want him to, ignore you when you call, etc., etc. Remember you have repeatedly put him in a leadership position so he doesn’t make judgment calls, he just continues to be the leader. You cannot continue to allow him to do those things which you do not want him to do because by doing so, you are repeatedly re-affirming to him that what he is doing is acceptable.

I repeat: if he is doing that which you do not want him to do, it is your job as Art Hess Leader to change

Saw you in the Ojo 69

All Cheaters Know %\ -LP 5DPER

S

he was surely a product of one of God’s best days; a singular, glowing beauty.

In his thirty two years, Paulie Samson thought he had seen nearly all of them but this sculpted, raven-haired woman outdistanced the rest by far.

The problem was: he and the prosecution had just chosen her as a juror on this, his first murder trial. Paul had been court- appointed as defense counsel for Dwight Hayden, a strapping, black street thug who had, without any doubt, killed one of his street brethern. It had happened many months ago and Dwight had used a pavement brick, smashing it into the back of his nameless victim’s head. The fight was, incredibly, over who had first rights to a park bench seat that was located just outside the Middletown Police Station.

The city’s assorted losers congregated there day and night.

Paulie had never given himself such a mandate but circumstances this one time, he told himself, demanded it. “I’ve got to have her!” Even the pressure of the pending trial and its demands had not suppressed his fascination...and he found that very strange for a good lawyer and husband, as he was known. He anxiously waited to give his opening statement that would give him the opportunity to look into those dark eyes in juror seat number eleven.

The trial was a three day long drop kick for the prosecution and Dwight was rightfully convicted of manslaughter. But the process was far from routine in Paulie’s mind. Those dark eyes had flashed brightly as juror number eleven bent over to suppress a laugh over his cross examination of one very confused state’s witness. And later, during his summation, she had snickered openly when he mocked the testimony of other prosecution witnesses with biting sarcasm.

Paulie mistakenly concluded that his antics had won her over and that a hung jury, at a minimum, would be the result. Common sense, and not flirtation, however carried the day. Dwight was convicted by the jury and each

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one of them had spoken. They had drawn on what local lawyers frequently referred to as their “God-given, Kent County common sense.”

For the next few weeks Paulie couldn’t get her to go away. Number eleven was constantly in his vivid imagination and his law practice was not his priority for a change. His secretary and good family friend, Myra, had made several sarcastic comments about his lack of focus but nothing more. And then it changed. It all changed when a dozen ruby roses were delivered to his office.

Myra carefully, and without comment, placed them on his desk. Paulie, unsuspecting, opened the attached card that read, “Juror #11, with admiration”. Reading him clearly, Myra turned and returned to her desk, thoughts of Paulie’s wife, Debbie, crowding her mind.

You can reasonably conclude most of the rest of this tale: they had lunch where she demonstrated expertise with chop sticks, extended conversations during which he learned her name, Joanna Walls, and that she was a research chemist...unhappily married.

A heart-stopping chemist? A scientist who exuded body chemistry too? Paulie could not believe it. All stereotypes were set aside. When they entered a restaurant or any other room together, all eyes turned in her direction: men and women.

In time, mere infatuation ran its course and they had circus sex in his office, in her office, and anywhere else available. He knew during their liaisons, that no matter the outcome, he would never ever forget the sight of lightlyshaded sunshine, glistening down her back and over her perfect, undulating, tanned ass. Paulie’s notion of bliss had been forever defined.

However, she soon began hinting about divorce and remarriage. She wanted to go to Dwight’s judge and report that other jurors on his case had admitted visiting the scene of the crime, contrary to the judge’s instructions. Her thought was that Paulie and

Dwight would somehow benefit from the resulting mistrial. When Paulie repeatedly voiced disagreement or was indifferent to her aggressive legal suggestions, the saucy scientist exhibited another unusual and surprising side.

She quickly dumped a shocked Paulie, not answering his repeated calls, and soon thereafter latched onto a chemist colleague.

Joanna had always kidded with Paulie about his being “suicidal,” as she put it. By that, she meant that his behavior would, ultimately, be his undoing with his wife, Debbie. And so, several months later, when Paulie was compelled to get to the local 7-11 for the morning newspaper, he was dumbfounded at the headline: “Local Chemist Victim of Murder Suicide.” Joanna was dead and her new lover, of European descent he learned, had strangled her in her home, which her husband had abandoned only weeks before. Suicidal, the new lover had traveled to his own lab after the killing and inhaled the helium in a ballooning plastic device that had been tightly wrapped around his neck.

I wonder if she teased him about being suicidal, too? Paulie wondered in his homicide-induced haze.

The severely wounded legal warrior drove home from the 7-11, cried bitterly in his coffee, and confessed all to

Debbie, completely ignoring a defense lawyer’s first instinct. Joanna’s beauty, and a temporary, dizzying bliss, had turned him into a being that he didn’t recognize. Debbie pretended not to know most of the sordid truth, thanks to Myra’s call, but she was relieved at its finality anyway.

Debbie and Paulie Samson remained married and are still together today but, as all cheaters know, it was never the same . . .

Jim Rambo

Saw you in the Ojo 71

Cuba Will Never Be The Same Again …. %\ /LQGD %XFNWKRUSH

Teatro Habana

I

had the opportunity of visiting Cuba in April ’16 to find that it was the right moment to visit, before the sleeping giant awoke. I was part of a group of 70 who went on a Cultural Exchange Program with Los Cantantes del Lago. Timothy G.R. Welch, Musical Director of our community choir, went to Cuba the year before in June’15 to work with the Director of Culture and a designated Tour Guide. He said at that time Havana was very quiet, but the day we arrived on April 11th, ’16, the city was buzzing with jack hammers going full bore, renovations and construction taking place everywhere.

There were five huge holes in the ground for new hotels about to rise and to my delight, many renovations now taking place in the Centro Historico.

The Centro Historico was magnificent at one time. Decay over the years of these neglected buildings still show the beauty of its architecture which is most elaborate. Renovations are taking place on many of these historical buildings. Teatro Habana, the theatre for Cuba took four years to renovate and was completed a few weeks before President Obama arrived to visit. Los Cantantes del Lago was the first to perform in one of its Salas, quite an honor for our community choir.

The American Embassy opened its door approximately six months before our arrival but the arrival of Air Force One with a full plane load of businessmen from the USA, along with President Obama has changed Cuba forever.

Fidel Castro made his last speech to his countrymen the day of our departure back to Mexico, April 20th. The first Cruise Ship

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arrived a week later. Today there are 120 flights a week heading to Cuba from the USA. Do understand that in Cuba, every person receives $10 CUC equivalent to $10 USD per month, whether you are a doctor or a dishwasher. Even a doctor who wishes to earn additional income takes out another job, such as driving a taxi. Their housing is taken care of, their medical/dental and their education, plus two meal coupons per day. To me it leaves one with no incentive to do more than is necessary. This I have witnessed in China in the ‘80’s. But Capitalism is raising its head. You see Cubans selling home-cooked goods, home-made ice cream and handicrafts. Their art is colorful and fabulous along with their music, and the people are easy-going and very friendly.

I witnessed the birth of tourism and that is where the tourist must become aware. You can set your price for a taxi ride or pedi-cab, but you better have small bills on hand, as no one ever seems to have change! Their tipping ethics leave a lot to be desired, as well, leaving one with large bills and the staff or cashier unable to avail themselves of any smaller denominations for tipping.

I hope Cuba keeps its charm, beauty and riot of colors to eyes and ears and doesn’t lose itself as it becomes engulfed by masses of tourists by sea and air.

I’d like to return in five years time to enjoy the newly renovated architecture of the Centro Historico, but I know it will not be the Cuba I visited Linda this year.

Buckthorpe

Saw you in the Ojo 73

MEXICANS CAN FIX ALMOST ANYTHIN NG! - PART TW WO %\ .DWK\ .RFKHV

“

I

love Mexico and the Mexican people.

Besides being kind, warm and generous, they possess the most amazing ability. They can fix almost anything!” That was the beginning a of story I wrote which was published in the August issue of El Ojo del Lago relating some of my recent and incredible experiences with this phenomenon.

But I recently had another “adventure” which astonished me. Here’s what happened: My husband and I recently made some new friends, who live on the south side of Lake Chapala, just past San Luis Soyatlan. They invited us to come to their home for dinner and we gladly accepted. We had a great visit, a wonderful meal and some nice French wine, but decided to head for home before dark, as the roads are not well lit on that side of the lake.

We had no problems getting to Jocotepec and turning east towards home. We passed San Juan Cosala and were just a few kilometers from home, when we heard “Flap, Flap, Flap.”

“What in the world is that?” I wondered. Uh oh, sure enough, a flat tire! Neither my husband nor I are what you might call “mechanically inclined” and the ability to change a flat tire, which many consider a necessary life skill, has not been added to our array of talents. What to do?

We knew we shouldn’t drive far so as not to damage the tire further, or even worse, ruin the rim, but there was nowhere to pull off the road that looked remotely like we could find assistance. We drove slowly for another minute and spotted a Pemex station. Hallelujah! Help was at hand, or so we thought.

As we limped into the station we spotted one lone employee, looking bored. Using my very best Spanish, I asked him if he could change the tire for us. Much to my surprise, he said “No.” But he then offered to see if his friend, who owned one of the small stores behind the gas station,

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might be able to help. His friend was just closing up shop for the day, pulling down the metal door of his store, and he and his pre-teen son came to our rescue. They removed the spare tire, tire iron and jack from the trunk and proceeded to begin what we thought was the simple process of removing the flat tire and replacing it with the spare—but this turned out not to be so simple after all.

He began by using the tire iron to loosen the lug nuts which held the wheel on the car. He used all his might, but try as he would, they just wouldn’t budge. He sweated and strained, but they didn’t move at all.

Then he had the bright idea of going to get a hammer and chisel. This when I began to be a bit nervous, wondering if he was just going to bash my car until the dang wheel fell off. At this point a pickup truck with some of his buddies pulled into the station. Of course they all got out, drank some beer while standing around and offering “advice” on what to do, and then piled back into the pickup truck and left.

Meanwhile it was getting dark and the wind was picking up. Now we were not only stranded, but cold and more than a bit worried about what to do. It had been over an hour and still the blasted tire would NOT come off. Suddenly, our rescuer stood up, sauntered over to his shop and returned with a beverage in his hand. “Well,” I thought, “he MUST be thirsty after almost 90 minutes of trying to help us.” He popped the top of the can of Coke, and proceeded to pour about half of it onto the lug nuts! Instantly a huge grin appeared on his face, and he took the tire iron and easily removed the lug

nuts and the wheel, and installed the spare, all in the space of about five minutes.

Who knew that Coke dissolves rust? Well, I seem to remember reading it somewhere on the Internet once, something in an article about “life hacks” but, of course, I never seem to remember those helpful hints when I need them.

This total stranger, whom we had never seen before, spent over an hour and a half working on our problem, determined to find a solution and never giving up, when he could just have easily shrugged his

shoulder and walked away.

After paying him for his time, including a generous tip, we were on our way once again. As we pulled out onto the highway he smiled and waved, calling “Adios Amigos” to us. And that, my friends, reaffirmed how much I love these kind and generous people I call my neighbors.

Once again I was shown that Mexicans can, indeed, fix almost anything!

Kathy Koches

Saw you in the Ojo 75

A FEAST FIT FOR A GHOST %\ -XQH 1D\ 6XPPHUV

O

n November 1st, All Saints Day is celebrated by the Catholic and Angelican Church to glorify all the saints, known and unknown. On the 2nd of November, All Souls Day is the day for welcoming back all departed souls. The mass is a Requiem for the repose of departed souls and of solemn supplication for all souls in Purgatory.

In Mexico, however, there is a different scenario. Here, the custom of welcoming departed souls dates back to long before the Church came to Mexico.

It is a time for remembering roots and a time for fiestas. The children are included, and thus become familiar with death at an early age.

Religious and primitive customs combine to form unique and traditional

holidays. When the Spaniards conquered the Aztecs, they found a pagan culture that honored its dead in commemorations which sometimes lasted for months. The Spaniards and the Franciscan missionaries took the Indian customs and worked them into their own observances.

The trappings are Catholic, but the idea that a dead person returns to enjoy a feast is very Indian. All Saints Day becomes Los Angelitos, (the angel children) and All Souls Day becomes the Day of the Dead.

Preparations begin late in October, as graves are weeded, cleaned and decorated. Pantheons are blessed. Afterward, a fiesta is held, as relatives and friends picnic at the gravesite. There are balloons and candy for the children.

Sometimes all-night vigils are held at the cemetery, as candles burn on the decorated graves and the dead personâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s favorite food is laid out.

On the day of Los Angelitos, a trail of flower petals is scattered from the cemetery back to the front door of the house, so as to guide the child spirits back to their former homes.

The Day of the Dead is observed by all Indians and campesinos. The emphasis is on feeding the spirits of departed family members. Mexicans like to look death in the eye. â&#x20AC;&#x153;We donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t fear death,â&#x20AC;? says one Mexican anthropologist. â&#x20AC;&#x153;It is something we joke about, which we eat with, which our children play with. That way we become familiar with death.

The way of death is our way of life.â&#x20AC;?

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El Ojo del Lago / November 2016

Saw you in the Ojo 77

V + FNV V +LFNV NV %\ -RKQ 'DOODV +LFNV

A

t the Uni-versity of Nebraska at Omaha, I took k a night class in Literature urre taught by Dr. Michael ch hael Skau, a slender, bearded, rded, jeansjean an nswearing professor of about 40 years of age. He liked cigarettes, beer, and the beat poets. Aside from being known as a scholar of the beatnik writers, Dr. Skau was known as a poet.

From time to time, he would join a few university poets at on-campus poetry readings where he would read some of his “God” poems, as he called them.

He wrote poems to God. I attended one of these readings, and I was impressed by his creativity and nerve, the latter for I couldn’t be bribed to stand before that distinguished audience and read my poetry. But then I wasn’t on familiar terms with God.

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Sometimes a group of students would join him at a bar near campus after our Wednesday night class. One evening I joined them. When I found myself sitting next to him in the bar, I asked him why he wrote poetry. With a cigarette in one hand and a beer mug grasped in the other, he smiled benignly at me and replied, “I want to leave something behind.”

At the time, I wanted to ask him how long he thought his writing would survive him and whether he thought he could enjoy his readership when he would already be stone

El Ojo del Lago / November 2016

cold dead. I wanted to press him further: What can anyone leave behind anyway? We yearn, fret, strive, inflate our pride, embroider our illusions.

We prosper, we despair. We revel, we suffer. Yet when death blackens our cosmos forever, what of us endures?

Only brief, unread epitaphs loiter on our gravestones until the vandal Time effaces them. All science and art will vanish with our species at some distant date. For the lone man or woman, what avails our yearning for meaning and permanence? We pass with our shadows.

I would have liked to have challenged Dr. Skau, but I chickened out.

I straightened up, shifted away, and allowed him to resume a conversation with a pretty coed. In retrospect, however, I think I had the broad brush strokes right. What do writers leave behind them? When I was a schoolboy, I delighted in the lives of common insects such as the dragonfly and the praying mantis as described by the naturalist Edwin Way Teale. I still enjoy reading his books about nature not only for their close observations of animals but also for his writing facility.

To my way of thinking, one can open a book to any page written by Edwin Way Teale and discover a lovely sentence with a poet’s cadence. “A continuous carpet of birds peeled from the highway before us.” I serendipitously located the previous sentence in Teale’s Wandering Through Winter, a book that won the Pulitzer prize for General Nonfiction in 1966.

In the summer of 2014, I searched the Omaha public library for books by Edwin Way Teale. I found only one of his books, a book called The Lost Dog in the juvenile section. Someone at the library had decided that all of Teale’s books, excepting one, were not worth retaining or replacing. They were “litter-ature.” At one time, the library stocked his books, but now the many volumes of this superb writer had been sloughed from the body of knowledge like dead skin.

I used to believe the evanescence of art was reason not to bother putting forth the effort to create, for it would come to nothing. But further reflection brought me up short when I considered the masterful design of a butterfly wing or the gay brilliance of a marigold bloom. So what if they are ephemera? The transience of an insect or a flower does not diminish their esthetic value. Even on the large canvas of nature, that which is not fleeting eventually flees: hence the disappearance of the dinosaurs, the leveling of mountains, the destruction of planets, the quenching of stars, the dying of the light universal. The grandest of all in nature live less than a day or longer than human comprehension may grasp … and is lost. The sentiment on a Hallmark card and mightiest galaxy in the universe share the same oblivion.

Creativity doesn’t need a reason to exist; it is a consequence of existence.

Notwithstanding, one can write as a calling, for money, for therapy, for the living, for the dead, for posterity.

Maybe I write for all of the reasons mentioned, or it could be that subconscious currents move me and others in ways of which we are absolutely unaware. Nevertheless, if I were to cite a conscious motive to explain why I write, I would say I write to solve a puzzle. I like word puzzles. Crossword puzzles don’t appeal to me, but completing a poem, story, or essay usually holds my interest long enough to put it together.

I once had a friend Doug who liked to do jigsaw puzzles. He would spread the pieces on a smooth flat surface and spend hours over many days linking the pieces. Typically, he wouldn’t finish the puzzle in one sitting. A single puzzle could take weeks, depending on its difficulty. He told me he would pause by the puzzle when passing by it and try to fit a few more pieces together.

My approach to composition is similar. Instead of small pieces of cardboard, I manipulate words. Over time, I fit the words into sentences and the sentences into paragraphs in an attempt to produce a coherent picture.

When Doug finished a jigsaw puzzle, he would not dismantle it immediately. He would leave it undisturbed and admire it and point it out to visitors in his modest way. The puzzle might depict a little harbor full of fishing boats or a garden resplendent with flowers. After a few days’ appreciation, he would crumple the puzzle and disjoint the pieces. On to the next puzzle…

Saw you in the Ojo 79

The Pe er rilous L Liives Of Sea Turtles %\ 'U /RULQ 6ZLQHKDUW

O

n May 30, 2013, Costa Rican activist Jairo Mora set out with four volunteers to patrol an especially dangerous stretch of beach, intending to protect leatherback turtle eggs from poachers. Mora had been harassed and attacked before because of his activities. People like Mora do what they do at great personal risk.

Next morning, his battered body was found on the beach, where he had died of suffocation after being dragged back and forth behind a vehicle. One of his female associates had been sexually assaulted by the same attackers. A Costa Rican court later convicted four of the seven attackers

80

of murder and handed down 74 to 90 year sentences.

Nearly all of the world’s sea turtles are listed as endangered. In the US, stronger laws are in effect to reduce the poaching of turtle eggs, but it is a thriving trade in such Central American nations as Nicaragua and Costa Rica. Turtle nesting is more common along Central American coasts, leading to greater instances of poaching.

Poachers can earn anywhere from fifty cents to two dollars a dozen for the golf ball sized turtle eggs. Many consider turtle eggs to be a delicacy. They can be hardboiled or gulped down raw, like oysters. Sometimes they are cracked and poured into glasses of

El Ojo del Lago / November 2016

beer. The eggs of leatherback turtles bring huge profits on the black market because those insecure in their masculinity falsely consider them an aphrodisiac.

Special turtle patrols have been hired and trained in some areas, but the work is frustrating and all too often dangerous.

The threats to sea turtles are many.

In the US, the shrimp trawler industry along the southeast coast kills an estimated 53,000 turtles annually.

Shrimp trawler nets harass and injure over half a million each year. Turtles swept to the surface in shrimp nets suffer such severe narcosis that their internal organs sometimes explode, and their eyes pop out. According to Ted Danson’s book, Oceana: Our Endangered Oceans and What We Can Do to Save Them, ten pounds of nontarget marine creatures are captured and thrown away for every pound of shrimp that is netted.

An estimated 200,000 loggerheads and 50,000 leatherbacks are hooked unintentionally by long-line fishermen each year. Drift nets, purse seine nets and gill nets sometimes become detached from fishing boats and become floating death traps. Millions of sea creatures may become entangled in these nets and die slow, gruesome deaths.

As always, human cruelty and carelessness is a factor. The Oceana organization recently reported an incident in which a careless tourist picked up an infant turtle, held it under the blazing bright light of recording phone and then tossed it back on the sand, subsequently blocking its way to the sea. In the summer of 2010, while I was working as a park ranger at Fort Raleigh National Historical Site near the Outer Banks of North Carolina, the staff was shown photos of a female turtle crushed and splattered all over a nearby beach by a speeding ATV. Some locals and visitors were angered by park service restrictions on ATV use during the nesting season.

Other threats include polluted water and beaches, seismic blasting in search of undersea oil and gas deposits, dangerous fishing gear and plastic debris. The Ocean Conservancy reports finding a turtle with a plastic straw stuck in one nostril, another with a fork in its nose. Consumption of plastics is a further threat, with an estimated 52% of turtles found to have plastics in their stomachs; perhaps as many as 62% of the world’s sea birds also have consumed plastics.

In response to a suit by Oceana, the Obama administration recently agreed to issue new rules by December 15, 2016, to save thousands of sea turtles from shrimp trawl nets. The rules will determine to what extent fishing in the Southeast threatens turtles with extinction, monitor fishing impact on turtles, and place limitations on the number of turtles that can be caught and killed.

Turtle exclusion devices (TED’s), metal grates that allow non-target species to escape shrimp nets, promise a 97% success rate in saving turtles.

Ultimately, it is hoped that TED’s will be required on all shrimp trawl nets.

The ancient Greeks defined a hero as one who suffers great loss, endures great hardship, or sacrifices much on behalf of a greater cause. There are many environmental heroes. The names Diane Fosse and Chico Mendes come readily to mind. Leroy Jackson, Pierre Achille Zomedel and Jairo Mora are names less well known. All too often they make the ultimate sacrifice in their quest to save endangered species of wildlife and the habitats that sustain them from the soulless advance of unrestrained industrialism and commercialism and the careless, violent infractions committed by vandals and poachers.

Lorin Swinehart

Saw you in the Ojo 81

The Ojo Crossword

ACROSS 1 Insect $ÀRDW 9 Audible 14 Singing voice 15 Cab 16 Seafood 17 Underground part of Plants 18 Always .HOORJJ V ZDႉHV 20 Parody 22 Fleet 6QDNH OLNH ¿VK 25 Bought alternative 27 Reference point 31 Write one´s name 32 BB association 34 Sonny 35 What leaves do 38 Rowing tool 40 Air- conditioning gas 42 Aleutian 44 Dress edge 46 __Rica 47 Jeweled headdress 48 Pod vegetable 50 Tulle 51 Abdominal muscles (abbr.)

52 Lodge 55 Pain 57 In __ of 59 Island in Malay Archipelago 61 South southeast 64 Gravity discoverer

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El Ojo del Lago / November 2016

66 Alaskan Neighbour 68 Greek ´D´ 71 Whim 73 Jabber 74 Bustling 75 Loch __ monster 76 Nova 77 Asian nation 78 Oh my __! (slang) 79 High Dwelling DOWN 1 Analyze syntactically 2 Run away and marry 3 Kitchen seat 4 Dorothy´s dog 5 Snacked 6 Tropical grassland 7 Wield 8 Aviator 9 Rushed 10 Piano-like instrument 11 Irritate 12 The other half of Jima 13 Nervous system 21 Last day of the wk.

23 Loose gown worn at mass 26 Price 28 Very fat 29 Family lineage 30 Asian bird 31 Mumble 33 College football conference (abbr.)

35 Terminal 36 Defense 37 Engage 39 Representative 41 National capital 43 Thai 45 Evilness 49 Genius 53 Compass point 54 Observing 56 Used to attract attention 58 Undo shoes 60 Cowboy show 61 Ice Equipment 62 Water radar 63 Door 65 Take in 67 __ Minor (Little Dipper) 68 24 hours 69 East southeast 70 Long-term memory 72 Tree

BRIGADOON II %\ 0DUN 6FRQFH

W

hen she first saw me, the jar of water on her head almost fell into the dusty road.

Recovering her balance if not her composure, she heard me say Namaste but rapidly walked away behind a hut.

After a long day’s trek starting in Pokhara that morning, I was covered in sweat and dust, and my Kelty Pack felt heavier than usual. I was pretty sure that I had taken a wrong turn early on and didn’t even know the name of the village I had just stumbled into.

As I un-shouldered my pack, a gentleman about sixty made his appearance wearing a lungi wrap-around, T-shirt and a special Nepali hat called a topi to indicate he was a local official, probably the mayor. I put my palms together and said Namaskar Hazoor, the honorific title of respect I used often during my two years in Peace Corps/Nepal. The look on his face told me that he couldn’t believe his ears let alone his eyes because, as I found out later, I was the first Westerner ever to enter his village.

“Khasto hunchha, Hazoor?” I asked.

He said he was just fine and then began a short conversation to find out who I was and why I had arrived in his village. First, sir, may I trouble you for some water? He barked an order and in no time I had a tumbler of pure Himalayan-fed water. I told the mayor, Sri Ram Adhikari Baun, that I was an American but worked for His Majesty’s Government in Khatmandu, and I came to find out about development programs in his village, a village that had no electricity or running water outside the rambling river that ran nearby. Then I told him my Nepali name, Makaar Bahadur Thapa, Brave Jupiter of the Thapa caste, one step down from the Mayor’s Brahman caste. The perfect host, he barked an order, and I thought I heard: Slaughter the Goat! I was right. We would feast tonight.

I was led to the mayor’s home with a large porch and settled there to take

a rest after my all-day trek up ancient stone steps. I was now in an orthodox Hindu village whose residents had never seen anyone like me. My Nepali name had served me well over the past two years. The caste name Thapa fit my job description as a government worker, and I was treated with respect. I did not mention the words Peace Corps. It was an unfortunate name from the start. The soldiers who guarded our Embassy in Khatmandu were Marines. Since the Nepali dictionary defined Corps as a military unit, Peace Corps became an instant oxymoron and instantly fed into the narrative that Peace Corps was simply another name for CIA. No, I’m just an ordinary American who came to help out and let it go at that. My reveries were interrupted by an invite to dinner. As the sun was settling into a pure perfect mountain night, I was led to a large home where the village elders, sitting cross-legged around a glowing warm fire pit, greeted me sincerely, almost reverently, with deep bows and friendly expressions. What would the evening bring?

Since our only light was firelight and a few sooty kerosene lanterns, I couldn’t get a clear view of the women in the dark recesses cooking the meal.

I could only smell their creations.

Soon a plate arrived with squares of hot goat meat, skin intact, bite size.

The elders prevailed on me to try their delicacy. As I lifted the first bite to my mouth, I couldn’t help notice that the animal’s fur hadn’t been completely burned off, and I was about to sink my teeth into a charred stubble or two.

Well, it was tasty enough but one of those delicacies that gets bigger the more you chew it. I sent my compliments to the chefs back there in the smoke-filled recess which made them all laugh. I took another sip of rakshi, a powerful drink made from fermented millet that all but cancelled the taste of stubbled goat skin.

After a wonderful meal of rice, lentils, spicy stewed tomatoes, curried pumpkin and sizzling goat meat

all served on banana leaves, we got down to business. It was summer, 1969. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin had just stepped onto the moon.

My hosts had heard about it from the transistor radio His Majesty’s Government had given to every village leader.

Bellies full of curry and rakshi, they began to ask questions. I begged them to slow down. “Is it true that Americans flew to the moon and settled there?” Well yes, Sri Armstrong and Sri Aldrin are both Americans, but they didn’t settle; they flew back home. There was a long pause. Shadows flickered on the mud-dung walls.

Mountain chills set in. The eldest of the elderly finally spoke up to say that their village was not in favor of such a flight because their goddess Saraswati abides on the moon, and they didn’t want her tranquility disturbed. I knew that Saraswati was the goddess of music, poetry and everything that flows.

I let the seriousness of their grievance sink in. I knew that a white lie was necessary, and I suddenly found myself saying, “You need not worry.

The control center knows where Saraswati abides. And that is why they landed on the opposite side of the moon.” The proverbial pregnant

pause followed. I took a sip of rakshi and looked the old one in the eye. He suddenly smiled with an expression of good will and understanding. The mood lightened and thereby encouraged another elder to ask, “How many rupees did it cost?” I had read somewhere that the Apollo mission cost in excess of 300 million dollars, but my Nepali vocabulary was not up to the task. “What is the most expensive thing in your village?”

I asked. A water buffalo at 1200 rupees a head. Rounding up for cost overruns, I donned a serious expression and said, “About 3 million water buffalo.” Nepalis don’t say Wow! when amazed nor do they emit a low whistle. In unison, the village elders said Bhaprebhop!

And that’s how the evening ended. We bade each other a fond good night, and I retired to my porch and sleeping bag for a long look at the night sky brilliant with stars unimpeded by electric lights. Suddenly I thought of Brigadoon, the bewitching Scottish village appearing only once in awhile but, in my case, appearing once in a lifetime…

Mark Sconce

Saw you in the Ojo 83

Over 60 years of â&#x20AC;&#x153;People Helping Peopleâ&#x20AC;?

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News

www.lakechapalasociety.com

LCS Health Day Thursday, November 3, 2016 9:30 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 12:00 p.m.

Neill James Patio Shots Offered *Requires sign-up by Monday, October 31. t*OøVFO[B WBDDJOF QFTPT 1SPUFDUT BHBJOTU GPVS TUSBJOT PG JOøVFO[B Considered better than last yearâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s version *Pneumonia (Five Year) 600 pesos t1SFWOBS 1OFVNPOJB GPS MJGF QFTPT

Five-year pneumonia shot is being phased out in Mexico Prevnar-13 is being recommended by doctors t)FQBUJUJT " # TFSJFT PG UISFF TIPUT QFTPT each *Sign-up required by Monday, October 31 1st shot 2nd shot 1 month later 3rd shot 6 months later You must take all three shots for the series to be effective. Good for life when taken according to schedule. *Shingles (Zostavax) 2,300 pesos t5ZQIJN 7* 5ZQIPJE TIPU QFTPT *Sign-up required by Monday, October 31 Typhoid caused by the bacteria Salmonella Typhi Good for five years Please note: Neither the hepatitis nor the typhoid shot may be taken with any other shot!

Flu and pneumonia shots may be taken at the same time.

Blood Pressure Monitoring Lecture â&#x20AC;&#x153;Arthritis - Disease or Aging, and What We Can Do About Itâ&#x20AC;&#x153; presented by Dr. Lawrence Whitehurst at 11 a.m. in the Sala.

PEP 1.5 The LCS Personal Enrichment Program (PEP) will offer a mini-term this November 28 - December 9. More info and sign up in the office.

Members only. $SPTT 4XPSE $IVSDI 4UBUF $POøJDUT - Instr. D. Grippo, Phd. Just as the main church of a typical Mexican city stands at the center of town, the Catholic Church as an institution stands at the center of Mexican history and culture, in a complex and often conflicted relationship with political authorities during both the colonial and the modern era.

Memorable Moments and Movements - Instr. D. Grippo, Phd. Mexico is a nation both ancient and modern, open yet mysterious. We will enrich our understanding of this great nation by examining key movements and moments in Mexican history.

December: Celebrations of Light- Instr. J. King A literary walk through the diverse and fascinating Mexican traditions surrounding the holiday season.

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El Ojo del Lago / November 2016

November 2016

The 2017 Directory If everything goes to plan, we hope to distribute the 2017 annual directory beginning the fourth week of November. Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll keep our fingers crossed.

As mentioned in previous newsletters, begining this year the directory will be coming out early, so that the snowbirds and other members can take advantage of the exciting savings being offered to LCS members. Over 40 advertisers are offering unique discounts exclusively to LCS members.

Make sure your membership is up to date, and that you have a new membership card. Out of date membership cards will not be accepted.

Taking advantage of the discounts offered will more than pay for your annual membership. This is just another way that your LCS membership counts!

Neighborhood Movie Night Every Friday night at 7 p.m., LCS will be showing, at the Wilkes Education Centre (WEC), family films including movies from the Mexican Golden Era (Maria Felix, Jorge Negrete, Pedro Infante, Cantinflas) and Disney classics. The Wilkes Education Centre also know as the Neill James Biblioteca Publica de Ajijic is located at, Galeana 18. Tel. 7662940. Entrance is free.

The films are in Spanish without subtitles and will be shown outdoors, on the back patio. Please tell your Mexican friends and neighbors.

Childrenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Art Program Winners The winners of the 5th Annual Feria Maestros del Arte Contest for the LCS Childrenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Art Program will be announced on November 13. The first prize winner will be awarded $500 pesos; the second prize winner, $300 pesos; and the third prize winner will receive $200 pesos.

Every honorable mention winner will receive $100 pesos and each child will receive a certificate.

Winning entries will be exhibited during the Feria from Friday, November 11 to 13 at the Yacht Club in Chapala. During the Feria, The LCS Childrenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Art Program will be selling childrenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s original art and childrenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s art note cards, including holiday cards.

In Memoriam Please join us for the Celebration of Life for our friend Keith Martin, Sunday, November 6 at 2 p.m., on the Neill James Patio at LCS.

LCS is Closed November 21, Mexican Revolution Day and November 24, U.S. Thanksgiving!

WANTED! ESL Program at Wilkes always needs instructors.

Volunteer Gardeners are needed to trim, plant, weed and maintain our lovely gardens.

Blood Pressure monitoring group is looking for volunteers with medical/nurse education for Mondays and Fridays from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m.

Talking Books Program is looking for a volunteer to work Thursdays from 10-12 p.m.

The Special Events manager is looking for people with a bit of flair to help with decorations, take tickets and greet guests. If you are an outgoing person, this may be for you.

Que Ganga! is looking for an assistant manager to fill in for the manager as needed. We also need on-call help when a volunteer is unavailable.

Singles leader to plan singles events.

For more information about volunteer opportunities, email volunteer@lakechapalasociety.com or fill out a form at the service desk.

Introduction to Spanish Classes This is a casual class for the beginner that covers the Spanish alphabet, simple vocabulary, phrases to use about town, and other useful information about our lakeside community and Mexican culture. Classes are held on the first Tuesday of the month and continue for three weeks.

Classes start Tuesday, November 1, at LCS from 12 until 1:30 p.m.

Learning materials are provided; the cost is $175 pesos. Sign up at the LCS service office during regular office hours or for fast and easy registration, use the website.

Needlepushers Distribute 140 Sweaters On October 20, the LCS Needlepushers made a trip to a poor neighborhood in Chapala and distributed their labors of love to 140 youngsters.

The needlepushers began over 50 years ago with the encouragment of Neill James. Every year they do several distributions throughout the lakeside area.

They meet on Tuesday mornings on the south campus at 10 AM, come and join them and keep a child warm, and smiling.

Thursday Film Aficionados Open to LCS members only. Bring your card.

All films shown in the Sala from 2-4 p.m.

No food. No pets.

November 3 A Man Called Ove 2016 Sweden Ove, an ill-tempered, isolated retiree spends much of his time enforcing the block association rules and visiting his wife’s grave. He is about ready to give up on life, but surprising things happen. Many laughs in this comedy-drama adapted from a wonderful novel. 113 mins.

November 10 Battle for Sevastopol 2015 Russia Lyudmilla Pavlichenko is a hero in Russia. She changed the course of history as a sniper during WWII. 115 minutes November 17 Elle 2016 France A successful businesswoman gets caught up in a game of cat and mouse as she tracks down the unknown man who raped her. Isabelle Huppert stars in the role of a lifetime. 125 minutes November 23 (Wednesday) Casablanca 1942 USA The most watched movie of all time. Bogart and Bergman. They just get better “As Time Goes By.” The 75th anniversary is coming up, but they’ll “Always Have Paris” and continue to “Roundup The Usual Suspects.” So we’ll “Just Play It Again.”

Kick Start to Tranquility Kick Start to Tranquility Coloring Pages, designed by well-known Ajijic artist Diane Pearl, is a pilot program designed to take you to a serene place that will help you restore a healthy balance of mind and body.

Relax, de-stress and improve your vision, coordination, and fine motor skills. Join us on Thursdays from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. on the Art Patio near the Gazebo starting November 3 and continuing through December.

Android Returns Another “Android for Beginners” class will be offered in the LCS Sala on two successive Thursdays, December 1 and 8, from 9:30 to 11:45 a.m. Registration is required, and space is limited. For more information or to register, send an email with your name and LCS membership number to Androidclass@saundersinmexico.com

Photography Club Our newest member offering, the Photography Club will continue to meet the first Monday of the month in the Sala from 12 p.m. to 2 p.m. This is a class for members at any level of experience. Topics covered will be lighting, camera settings, printing and other pertinent subjects.

Contact Doug Huffiness at fdh1004@gmail.com or call 333-9470575 for more information. LCS members only.

Bazaar ¡Que Ganga! (kay gaan-gah) LCS’ new thrift shop is located on the carretera just past La Canacinta next to El Ancla. Hours are Thursday through Tuesday 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. We’re closed Wednesdays.

We can arrange for delivery of your purchases or pick up donated merchandise. Just call us 342-100-2081 or 766-1140 for service. We’re accepting donations now .

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Video Library Additions November

November Activities *Open to the Public ** US Citizens (S) Sign in required (C) Membership card required HEALTH INSURANCE * IMSS & Immigration Services Mon+Tues 10-1 Lakeside Insurance Broker Tues+Thur 11-2 San Javier Hospital Services Last Fri 10-12 HEALTH & LEGAL SERVICES * Becerra & Galindo Services Thur 10:30-12:30 Blood Pressure Mon+Fri 10-12 Hearing Aid Services (S) Mon+2nd+4th, Sat 11-4 Ministerio Publico Wed Nov 9 +30 10-2 My Guardian Angel Tues 10-1 Optometrist Claravision (S) Thur 9-4 Skin Cancer Screening (S) 2nd + 4th Wed 10-12 :30 US Consulate** Wed Nov 16 10-12 Sign up 10-11:30 LESSONS (C) Chair Yoga Fri 2-3 Children’s Art Sat 10-12* Exercise Mon+Wed+Fri 9-10 Fitness Thru Yoga Mon+Fri 2-3:30 Intermediate Hatha Yoga T+ TH 2-3:30 Line Dancing Tues+Thur 10-11:15 Photography Club 1st M 12-2 Strength and Balance Exercise Tues+Thur 8:45--9:45 LIBRARIES Audio Thur 10-12 Book & Video Mon-Sat 10-2 Library of Congress Books**/ Talking Books Thur 10-12 Wilkes Mon-Fri 9:30-7, Sat 9:30-1* SOCIAL ACTIVITIES (C) All Things Tech Fri 9:30-11:30 Bridge 4 Fun Tue + Thur 1-5 Conversaciones en Espanol Mon 10-12 Creative Coloring Consciousness Thur 11-1 Discussion Group W 12-1:30 Everyday Mindfulness Mon 10:15-11:45 Film Aficionados Thur 2-4:30 Learning TED Seminars Tues 12-1:15 Needle Pushers Tues 10-12 Neill James Lectures T 2-4 Open Gaming (open to the public from 2) Mon 1-4* Philosophy Group W 10:30-12 Scottish Country Dancing Thur 11:30-1:30 Scrabble Mon+Fri 11:30-1:30 Spanish/English Conversation Sat 11-12 Tournament Scrabble Tues 12-2 SERVICE & SUPPORT GROUPS * Have Hammer Workshop Demo 1st 3rd Mon 10-12* Information Desk Mon-Sat 10-2 Lakeside AA Mon +Thur 4:30-5:30 Open Circle Sun 10-12:30 Toastmasters Mon 7-8:30 pm

TICKET SALES Monday-Friday 10-12 *

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El Ojo del Lago / November 2016

If you enjoy series, check out the following: for you Helen Mirren admirers we have a very good series for you, Prime Suspect, about a female police detective who conducts murder investigations while dealing with sexist hostilities from her male comrades. And, you action lovers, Justified about an old-school U.S. marshall who is assigned to his childhood home of moonshine and mining in the rural hills of Kentucky. Starring Timothy Oliphant.

The Nice Guys #7413 A couple of mismatched private eyes, Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling, investigate the apparent suicide of a porn star. Comedy 7.4 on a scale of 10 Fish Tank #7414 Everything changes for 15 year old Mia when her mum brings home a new boyfriend. BBC drama 7.2 on a scale of 10 The Water Diviner #7415 An Australian man travels to Turkey after the Battle of Gallipoli to locate his three missing sons. Russell Crowe 7.1 on a scale of 10 Wild at Heart #7416 Young lovers run from the variety of weirdos hired by her mom to kill him. Nicolas Cage and Willem Dafoe Comedy 7.2 on scale of 10 Hunt for the Wilderpeople #7417 A national manhunt is ordered for a rebellious kid and his foster uncle in the wild New Zealand bush. Starring Sam Neill Adventure/Comedy 8.0 on a scale of 10 In the House #7418 A high school French teacher is drawn into a precocious student’s impropriety about his relationship with a friend’s family. French Comedy 7.4 on a scale of 10 Would you please help us? Travelers may legally enter Mexico with 10 DVDs in their luggage. They don’t take up much room. We buy them on-line, prepay them and have them shipped to the address of your choice. Contact keanhombre@prodigy.net.mx

Get your Children’s Art Holiday Cards Now! The Children’s Art Program Holiday Card catalogue is now available at the Café Corazón on the LCS campus. Order forms can be found in the back of the catalogue. All orders will be fulfilled within three days.

Special Discount!

LCS members receive a 10% discount on tickets to the new theater in Guadalajara, Palacio de la Cultura y la Comunicación (PLACCO). Go to www. ticketmaster.com.mx and enter the promotion code PAL312. LCS will also receive a 10% donation by using this code.

TED Talks TED Talks are held in the Sala Tuesdays from 12 noon to 1:15 p.m. Open to members only.

November 15 Public health investigator Maryn McKenna:Â What Do We Do When Antibiotics Donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t Work Any More?

Penicillin changed everything. Infections that had previously killed were suddenly quickly curable. Yet as Maryn McKenna shares in this sobering talk, weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve squandered the advantages and drug-resistant bacteria mean weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re entering a post-antibiotic world â&#x20AC;&#x201D; and it wonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t be pretty. There are things we can do ... if we start right now. November 22 Paleontologist Kenneth Lacovara presents Hunting for Dinosaurs Showed Me Our place in the Universe. What happens when a dinosuaur is discovered? Kenneth details his unearthing of Dreadnoughtus - a 77-million-year-old sauropod that was as tall as a two-story house and as heavy as a jumbo jet and considers how amazingly improbable it is that a tiny mammal living in the cracks of the dinosaur world could evolve into a sentient being capable of understanding these magnificent creatures.

November 29Â Andrew Solomon:Â Love, No Matter What.

What is it like to raise a child whoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s different from you in some fundamental way...like a prodigy, or a criminal?

In this quietly moving talk, Solomon shares what he learned from talking to dozens of parents by asking them: whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the line between unconditional love and unconditional acceptance?â&#x20AC;?

1HLOO -DPHV /HFWXUH 6HULHV 5HWXUQV Join us each Tuesday at 2 p.m. in the Sala. The upcoming schedule includes: November 15 Jim Cook: The Mexican Revolution November 22Â John Milton: Can We Trust Scientific Studies?

November 29Â Tim Cooper: Â Anesthesia: What You Always Wanted to Know.

*ROI &DUW 8SGDWHV

For those of you who own golf carts or are considering purchasing one, this meeting will be of interest to you. Golf Cart Updates will conduct a public meeting Wednesday December 7, from 2 to 4 p.m in the Gazebo. Topics to be covered include rules of the road, being street legal, making your go cart safe and strong, maintenance and upgrades, and future fun.

Bus Trips November Wednesday, November 9 Guadalajara Zoo Enjoy a day at the ever-popular Guadalajara Zoo. Tickets include transportation, admission to the zoo, train ride, safari and the aquatic show. The cable car ride is extra at 43 pesos. Bring bottled water and a light bag lunch.

Food and drink will be available at the zoo.

Tickets on sale at the LCS Service Desk. Cost is 370 pesos for members and 420 pesos non-members. Bus leaves from the sculpture in La Floresta promptly at 9 a.m. and departs from the zoo promptly at 3:30 p.m.

Monday, November 14 Costco/Home Depot Stock up at Costco, Mega and Home Depot on Lopez Mateos.

Tickets are 300 pesos for members and 350 for non-members. Meet at the sculpture in La Floresta.

Bus leaves promptly at 9:30 a.m.

Friday, November 25 Tonala and Tlaquepaque Shop Tonala for home dĂŠcor and handcrafts. Find upscale retailers and fine dining in Tlaquepaque in an historic, architecturally significant pedestrian-only zone. Tickets are 300 pesos for members; 350 non-members. Bus departs from the sculpture in La Floresta at 9 a.m.

Additional holiday shopping trips will be listed in the upcoming edition.

Follow Us on Facebook Now you can follow us on Facebook. Keep up on all things LCS - programs, activities, special events, updates and news. Like us at www.facebook.com/ lakechapalasociety.

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 - Ben White (2018); Vice-President - Cate Howell (2017); Treasurer - Michael Searles (2017); Secretary - Carole Wolff (2018); Directors: Matthew Butler (2018); Dee Dee Camhi (2017); Lois Cugini (2017); Barbara Hildt (2017); Geoffrey Kaye (2018) Yoli Martinez (2017); George Radford (2018) Immediate Past President: Howard Feldstein. * Executive Director - Terry Vidal

The LCS Newsletter is published monthly. Deadline for submissions is the 17th of the month preceding publication.

Submit all news items to newsletter@lakechapalasociety.com 1RWH 7KH HGLWRULDO VWDয় UHVHUYHV WKH ULJKW WR HGLW DOO VXEPLVVLRQV DFFRUGLQJ WR WLPH VSDFH DYDLODELOLW\ DQG HGLWRULDO GHFLVLRQ

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88

El Ojo del Lago / November 2016

Saw you in the Ojo 89

Service

EMERGENCY NUMBERS

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DIRECTORY * ADVERTISING / DIRECTORY (/ 2-2 '(/ /$*2 Tel. 765-3676

* ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS

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* BEER & LIQUOR STORES

- ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS Tel: 766-5961

3DJ

* ANIMAL CLINICS/PET SHOP - CLINICA VETERINARIA SAN ANTONIO Tel: 766-0808

3DJ '((¶6 3(7 +27(/ Tel: 331-765-7074

3DJ /$.(6,'( )5,(1'6 2) 7+( $1,0$/6 $& Tel: 765-5544

3DJ 0$6.27$¶6 /$.( Tel: 766-0287

3DJ - PET PLACE Cell: 333-1964-150

3DJ - PET FOOD AND GROOMING Tel: 766-3062

3DJ 9(7(5,1$5,$ 2PDU (GXDUGR 5H\HV Tel: 766-0725,

3DJ

* ART GALLERIES/HANDCRAFTS - ART HOUSE Tel: 765-5097 3DJ $=7(& 678',2

3DJ - CHAPALA ARTESAN EXHIBITION 3DJ - DIANE PEARL COLECCIONES Tel: 766-5683 3DJ - EL CORAZON CREATIVO / THE CREATIVE HEART 3DJ - LA BELLA VIDA Tel: 766-5131 3DJ 0(;,&$1 .$/(,'26&23( Tel: 108-0887 3DJ - MEXICO BLOOMS Tel: 108-0887 3DJ - NADINA DE NADA 3DJ - SOL MEXICANO Tel: 766-0734 3DJ - ZARAGOZA STUDIO Tel: 766-0573, 766-7049 3DJ

* AUTOMOTIVE - FRATS Tel: 765-2505, 765-3946 - LINEA PROFESIONAL Tel. 766-2555, Fax. 766-0066

%(72¶6 :,1( /,4825 Cell: (045) 333-507-3024 - VINOS LICORES PAZ Tel: 766-0292

Pag: 60 3DJ

%22.6 $ 3,//2: 678))(' :,7+ ',$021'6 %\ 0DUJDUHW 9DQ (YHU\ 3DJ - TROPICAL TALES - TALES OF THE TROPICS 3DJ

* BOUTIQUE &86720 6(:,1* - CUGINIS OPUS BOUTIQUE Tel/Fax: 766-1790 - MI MEXICO Tel: 766-0133 2/*$¶6 Tel: 766-1699

3DJ 3DJ Pag: 66

3DJ Pag: 09

* CASINO - FOLIATTI

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

3DJ 3DJ

3DJ 3DJ

* BEAUTY 3DJ

- EXTERMINIO DE PLAGAS Tel: 765-3237, Cell: 331-102-0834 3DJ

* CHURCHES

* CLEANING SERVICES - THE CLEAN SPOT Tel: 766-5444 Cell: 33-3137-5364

3DJ

Pag: 06

- CASI NUEVO Tel: 106-2121 - TEPEHUA TREASURES Tel: 763-5126

* GARDENING

3DJ

$0$=,1* 0(;,&$1 &8,6,1( &22.,1* &/$66 Tel: 765-6393, Cell: (33) 3186-1990 Pag: 60

El Ojo del Lago / November 2016

- ATLAS COUNTRY GOLF COURSE Tel: 33-3689-2620 - COUNTRY CLUB DE CHAPALA Tel: 763- 5384

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* GRILLS - NAPOLEON Tel: 766-6153

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+$5':$5( 6725(6 - FERRETERIA Y TLAPALERIA GALVEZ Tel: 766-0880, Fax: 766-2440 3DJ

* DENTISTS $-,-,& '(17$/ Tel: 766-3682 - C.D. MARÍA LUISA LUIS VILLA Tel/Fax: 766-2428

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* GOLF

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* GARAGE DOORS OPENERS

$-,-,& :$7(5 *$5'(16 Tel: 766-4386

&22.,1* &/$66(6

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- CALLI

3DJ Tel: 766-5922 - TAO Tel: 765-7078

3DJ - 7(0385 0$775(66 $1' 3,//2:6 Tel: (52) 333-629-5919, (52) 33 3611-3049 3DJ

&$5/26 /$.(6,'( &20387(5 75$,1,1* Tel: 33-3100-9690 3DJ

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

* FURNITURE

- AUTOMATIC GARAGE DOOR OPENERS Tel: 766-4973 3DJ

* COMPUTERS

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* HEARING AIDS /$.(6,'( +($5,1* 6(59,&(6 Cell. (045) 33-1511-4088 - OTICON Tel. 765-4805

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* HOTELS / SUITES - DOLPHIN COVE INN Tel: 314-334-1515 - HACIENDA DEL LAGO Tel: 766-0907, 766-0937 - 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 3DJ - PROTEXPLAN U.S. Toll Free 1-800-608-5743 Mexico Toll Free 01-800-681-6730 3DJ - TIOCORP Tel: 766-4828 3DJ

$-,-,& /(*$/ 6(59,&(6 Cell: (045) 33 1172 1724 - SOLBES & SOLBES ABOGADOS Tel: 331-520-5529, 333-676-6245

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* LUMBER - REAL ORTEGA & SONS-+DUGZDUH IRU &DUSHQWHUV Tel: 765-2404, 765-3404 3DJ

0$// 0$5.(7 - CENTRO LAGUNA Tel: 766-5514

* FUMIGATION

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* FITNESS

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- GENERAL HOME SERVICES - $PDQFLR 5DPRV -U Cell: (045) 331-520-3054 3DJ :$5:,&. &216758&7,21 Tel: 765-2224

3DJ - ROBERTO MILLAN - ARCHITECT Tel: 766-3771, Cell: 331-340-3758 3DJ

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- CORE TRAINING IN CHAPALA Tel: 766-3860, 333 474 1192 3DJ - FIT FOR LIFE Cell: 333-968-3961, 108-0774 3DJ

* CONSTRUCTION

- ART OF BEAUTY Tel: 766-1731 &+5,67,1(¶6 Tel: 106-0864 (',7+¶6 6$/21 Tel: 766-1510 - GLORIOSA Tel: 766-3372 - GLOSS NAIL SALON Tel: 766-0375 1(: /22. 678',2 Tel: 766-6000 - ONLY GELISH Cell: 33-3676-5456

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* LEGAL SERVICES

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* CHIROPRACTIC '5 9,&725 - <28&+$ Tel: 766-1973 - INTERLAGO CHIROPRACTIC Tel: 766-3000

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* FINANCIAL SERVICES

- COSTALEGRE

* CONSIGNMENT SHOP

- STEREN Tels. 766-0599, 766-0630

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- ISHOPNMAIL

%$1. ,19(670(17 - INTERCAM Tel: 766-5980 - MULTIVA Tel: 766-2499

* ELECTRONICS

()),&,(17 :($/7+ 0$1$*(0(17 Tel: 766-4836

* COMMUNICATIONS

- ROCHATAS Chapala: 376-765-3150 Jocotepec: 387-763-0295 6&$1',1$9,$ 6RXUGRXJK %DNHU\ Tel: 766-0604

- C.D. SANDRA ANAYA MORA Tel: 108-0977, Cell: 331-218-6241 3DJ - CHAPALA DENTAL CARE Tel. 765-5584, 766-3847 3DJ - DENTAL EXPRESS Tel: 106-2080 3DJ - DENTAL HEALTH ONE Tel: 106-0826 3DJ - DENTAL OFFICE-Dr. Francisco Contreras Tel: 01 (376) 765 5757 Pag: 66 - DR. ALBERTO DON OLIVERA Tels: 765-4838, 765-4805 3DJ - DRA. ANGELICA ALDANA LEMA DDS Tel. 765-5364, Cell. (045) 331 351 7797 3DJ - HECTOR HARO DDS Tel. 765-3193 3DJ /$.( &+$3$/ '(17$/ *5283 Tels: 766 0144, 108 1707 3DJ - MC DENTAL Cell. 33-1850-8664 3DJ 2'2172 &/,1,&.

Tel: 766-5050

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1(: +23( &+5,67,$1 )(//2:6+,3 Tel: 766-3435 3DJ

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- CASA LUZ B&B Tel: 766-4648 - CASA FLORES Tel: 766-5493 - CASA TRES LEONES Cell: (045) 331-350-6764

EMERGENCY HOTLINE $0%8/$1&( &58= 52-$ ),5( '(3$570(17 POLICE $MLMLF

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* HEALTH /$.( &+$3$/$ &(17(5 )25 63,5,78$/ LIVING Tel: 766-0920 3DJ - OHASHI ISLAS PRODUCT Tel: 766-1527 3DJ

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* MEAT/POULTRY/CHEESE - PURITAN POULTRY Tel: 765-4399 721<¶6 Tel: 766-1614

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* MEDICAL SERVICES - ALTA RETINA - Dr. Rigoberto Rios León 2SKWKDOPLF 6XUJHRQ Tel: 766-1521 3DJ - BIOLOGICAL MEDICINE FROM GERMANY Tel: (33) 3070 3362 / 3070 3372 Cell: 33 3408 5909 Pag: 69 &$6,7$ 0217$f$ Tel: 766-5513 3DJ - CHAPALA MED Tel: 765-6399, Cell: (045) 331-605-9645 3DJ &/,1,&$ < )$50$&,$ 0$6.$5$6 Tel: 765-4805 3DJ - COUNSELER TANATOLOGIST Cell. 33-1863-32136 3DJ - DERMATOLOGIST Tel: 765-2400, Cell: (045) 333-170-6570 3DJ '(50,.$ 'HUPDWRORJLF &HQWHU Tel: 766-2500 3DJ - DR. G. BASIN Tel: 766-4322 3DJ - DR. GABRIEL VARELA Tel: 765-6666, Cell: 333-128-6347 3DJ '5 +(&725 %5,6(f2 * ,QWHUYHQWLRQDO &DUGLRORJ\ Tel: 766-1870 3DJ '5 /$:5(1&( 52:( :+,7(+8567 Tel: 766-5265 3DJ - DRA. CLAUDIA L. CAMACHO CHOZA 2SKWKDOPRORJLVW Tel: 33-1750-8504 3DJ - DRA. MARTHA R. BALLESTEROS FRANCO Cell: (045) 333-408-0951 3DJ - GO LAB Tel: 106-0881 3DJ +263,7$/ $-,-,& Tel: 766-0500, 766-0662 3DJ - HOSPITAL ANGELES DEL CARMEN

Tel: (01) 3813-0042 3DJ ,&0, 0LQLPDOO\ ,QYDVLYH &DUGLRYDVFXODU Interventions Cell: (044) 333-157-4741 3DJ - ISILAB Tel: 766-1164 3DJ /$.(6,'( &$5',2/2*< &/,1,& Tel: (387) 763-0665 3DJ /$.(6,'( 0(',&$/ *5283 Tel: 766-0395 3DJ - PLASTICA LIFT Tel: 108-0595 3DJ 3/$67,& 685*(5< 'U %HQMDPLQ 9LOODUDQ Tel: 766-5513 3DJ - QUALITY CARE Tel: 766-1870 3DJ - RICARDO HEREDIA M.D Tel: 765-2233 3DJ - VARICOSE VEINS TREATMENT Tel: 765-4805 3DJ

* MOVERS /$.( &+$3$/$ 029,1* Tel: 766-5008 67520 :+,7( 029(56 Tel: 766-6153 7+( 029(56 /$.(6,'( Tel: 01 55-5767-5134

Pag: 06 3DJ 3DJ

* MUSIC / THEATRE / EVENTS $118$/ $8&7,21 )$6+,21 6+2: 6$/( 3DJ %(+,1' 7+( :$//6 +20( 72856 Tel: 766-1438, 766-0420 Pag: 66 ' - +2:$5' Tel: 766-3044 3DJ /$.( &+$3$/$ &+25$/( Tel: 762-0865 3DJ 7+$7¶6 (17(57$,10(17 3DJ 7+( 1$.(' 67$*( 5($'(5¶6 7+($75( 3DJ

* PAINT 48,52= ,PSHUPHDELOL]DQWHV Tel: 766-2311 - QUIROZ-Pinturas Tel: 766-5959

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* PAINTING SERVICES /$.( &+$3$/$ 3$,17,1* 6(59,&( Tel 33-1741-5501

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3$,17,1* '5$:,1* :25.6+23 ³$57 $6 352&(66´ %\ -HQQLIHU %URFNPDQQ Tel: 765-6393, Cell: (33) 3186-1990 Pag: 60

* PERSONAL ASSISTANCE 1(:&20(56 ,/6( +2))0$11 ilsecarlota40@gmail.com, www.guadalajarachapalatravelguide.com Tel 01(33) 3647-3912 Cell (045) 33-3157-2541

* PHARMACIES - FARMACIA CRISTINA Tel: 766-1501 - FARMACIA EXPRESS II Tel: 766-0656 )$50$&,$ 0$6.$5$6 Tel/Fax: 765-5827 - FARMEX Tel: 765-5004

Pag: 60 3DJ 3DJ 3DJ

* PHYSICAL REHABILITATION ),6,2 1(: /,)( Tel. 766-4284, Cell. 33-1293-1270

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* POOL MAINTENANCE - EQUIPMENT AND POOL MAINTENANCE Tel: 766-1617, Cell: 33-3952-4175 3DJ

* REAL ESTATE $-,-,& +20( ,163(&7,216 Tel: 766-2836 3DJ - CHULA VISTA NORTE Tel: 766-2177 Cell: (045) 33-1892-2194 Pag: 09 - CIELOVISTA Tel: 766-2688 3DJ &2/':(// %$1.(5 &+$3$/$ 5($/7< Tel: 766-1152, 766-3369 Fax: 766-2124, Tels: 765-2877 Fax: 765-3528 Pag: 96 - CONTINENTAL REALTY

Tel: 766-1994 3DJ - CUMBRES Tel: 766-2688 3DJ - DON SNELL Cell 33-1005-9129 3DJ - EAGER & ASOCIADOS Tel: (376) 766 1917, 1918 3DJ )25 6$/( %< 2:1(5 Tel: 331-256-9255 3DJ )25 6$/( %< 2:1(5 What’s App +55 84 9643 2545 3DJ )25 6$/( %< 2:1(5 Tel: 3313 1961 06, U.S.: (209) 981 4485 3DJ )25 6$/( %< 2:1(5 Tel: 763-5297 3DJ )25 6$/( %< 2:1(5 Tel: 33-2310-1860 3DJ )25 6$/( %< 2:1(5 Cell. 33-1470-3383 3DJ - GEORGETTE RICHMOND Tel: 766-2077 3DJ - GERARDO MEDINA Cell. 331-121-7034 3DJ -8',7 5$-+$7+< Cell: (045) 331 - 395 - 9849 3DJ - LUCI MERRITT Tel: 766-1917, 766-1918 3DJ - MEGAN TINGEN Tel: 765-2877 3DJ - MPR REAL ESTATE Tel: (315) 351-5167 3DJ 3(7(5 67 -2+1 Tel: 765-3676, 331-323-0893 3DJ - SANDI ALLIN BRISCOE Tel: 765-2484, 331-563-8941 3DJ - RAUL GONZALEZ Cell: 33-1437-0925 3DJ - VISTA ALEGRE Tel: 766-2688 3DJ

* RENTALS/PROPERTY MANAGEMENT &2/':(//%$1.(5 &+$3$/$ 5($/7< Tel: 766-1152, movile: (045) 33-1175-9632 3DJ - FOR RENT 3DJ Tel: 765-2671 - FOR RENT What’s App +55 84 9643 2545 Pag: 66 - FOR RENT Tel: 387-761-0987, Cell: 33-1344-3192 3DJ -25*( 7255(6 Pag: 09 Tel: 766-3737 - MANZANILLO VACATION RENTALS Tel: (314) 100-6773 or (314) 109-0657 3DJ - ROMA 3DJ Tel: 766-3163, 766-5171 - SANTANA RENTALS Cell: 315-104-3283

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* RESTAURANTS/CAFES $-,-,& 7$1*2 Tel: 766-2458 3DJ - ALBERELLI Cell: 33-3903-0338 Pag: 60 $/)5('2¶6 &$/,)251,$ Cell: 33-1301-9862 3DJ - ARILEO Tel: 106-1627 3DJ $50$1'2¶6 +,'($:$< Tel: 766-2229 3DJ - CAFE MEDI*TERRA*NEO Tel: 766-2636

3DJ - CASA FUERTE Tels: 3639-6474 / 81 3DJ &,7< 6$1':,&+ Tel: 33-1886-6474

3DJ %5812¶6 Tel: 766-1674

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3DJ - GAUCHERIA Tel: 766-4357 3DJ - GO BISTRO Cell: (045) 33-3502-6555 3DJ *26+$¶6 Tel: 766-2121 3DJ - HACIENDA DEL LAGO Tel: 766-0907, 766-0937 3DJ - HOT ROD Tel: 766-5890 3DJ /$ &$6$ '(/ :$))/( Tel: 766-1946 3DJ - LA CASA DEL CAFE Tel: 766-2876 3DJ - LA CHELITA Cell: 331-431-7257 3DJ /$ %2'(*$ '( $-,-,& Tel: 766-1002 3DJ - LA MISION Tel: 108-0887 3DJ - LA NUEVA POSADA Tel: 766-1444, 766-1344 3DJ - “LA TAVERNA”DEI QUATTRO MORI

Tel: 766-2848 3DJ - LOS MOLLETES Tel: 766-4296 3DJ - MANIX Tel: 766-0061, Cell: (045) 331-065-0725 3DJ 0(/¶6 Tel: 331-402-4223 3DJ 020¶6 '(/, 5(67$85$17 Tel: 765-5719 3DJ - PANINO Tel: 766-3822 3DJ - PIZZERIA TOSCANA Tel: 765-6996

3DJ - TEPETATE THAI RESTAURANT Tel: 766-2020 3DJ - THE BAGEL PLACE Tel: 766-0664

3DJ 7+( 3($&2&. *$5'(1 Tel: 766-1381

3DJ 75,3¶6 %85*(5

3DJ 721<¶6 Tel: 766-1614, 766-4069 3DJ - YVES Tel: 766-3565 3DJ

* RETIREMENT/REST/NURSING HOMES $/,&,$¶6 &219$/(6&(17 Tel: 766 1194, Cell: 333 954 9534 3DJ - CASA ANASTASIA Tel: 765-5680 / 33-3452-5864 3DJ - LA CASA NOSTRA Tel: 765-3824 3DJ 0, &$6,7$ 1XUVLQJ +RPH $VVLVWHG /LYLQJ Center Cell: (045) 33-1115-9615 3DJ 1856,1* +20( /$.( &+$3$/$ Tel: 766-0404 3DJ - OHANA Tel: (01387) 761-0403 3DJ

* SATELLITES/ T.V. $-,-,& (/(&7521,&6 6 $ '( & 9 Tel/Fax: 766-1117, 766-3371 3DJ 6+$: 6$7(//,7( 6(59,&(6 Tel: 33-1402-4223 3DJ

* SCHOOL - INSTITUTO TERRANOVA Tel: 766-2401

* SOLAR ENERGY - ECOSMART Tel: 765-5310

- ESUN Tel: 01-800-099-0272

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* SPA / MASSAGE %$/1($5,2 6$1 -8$1 &26$/$ Tel: (387) 761-0222 - BLUE MOON Tel: 766-0907, 766-0937 - FRAU SPA Tel: 766-4393, Cell. 33-1736-5772 -$,0( ',33 / 0 7 Cell: 33-3815-4902 - LA BELLA VIDA Tel: 766-5131 - RESPIRO SPA Cell: (045) 33-3157-7790 - TOTAL BODY CARE Tel: 766-3379

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* STAINED GLASS - AIMAR STAINED GLASS Cell: 33-1741-3515

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* TAXI - ARTURO FERNANDEZ Cell: (045) 333-954-3813

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* TOURS (1-2< &+$3$/$ 7285 Cell: 33-3955-5214 - CHARTER CLUB TOURS Tel: 766-1777 /<',$¶6 72856 Tel: 765-4742, (045) 33-1026-4877

3DJ Pag: 09 3DJ

* TREE SERVICE - CHAPALA TREE SERVICE Tel: 762-0602

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:$7(5 3DJ

* SELF STORAGE

- ESPRING Tel: 33-1216-1898 - TECNO AQUA Tel: 766-3731, 108-0808

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

* SOCIAL ORGANIZATIONS /$.( &+$3$/$ 62&,(7< Tel: 766-1140 3DJ /26 1,f26 '( &+$3$/$ < $-,-,& Tel: 765-7032 3DJ

The Ojo Crossword

Saw you in the Ojo 91

CARS WANTED: Looking for Vocho (VW Original Beetle) in excellent condition.

Email: rvanparys@hotmail.com.

FOR SALE: Wolkswagen polo 2004. 4 cilinder, estandar, all electric, a/c works fine, Jalisco plates. Tires new. Price $67000 pesos. Make an affert. Call: 333-459-5533.

FOR SALE: Mazda CX-5 Sport 2014, one owner, 56,000 kms, maintenance records at the dealer, still under warranty.

Price: $279,000 pesos. Call me at 331-2692696, Rafael.

FOR SALE: 2008 Nissan Altima SL 2.5 45,063 miles. $165000. Black/black interior/excellent condition. Email: kkenney32789@gmail.com.

FOR SALE: Ford Taurus 3.0L, Texas Plated, nice condition, only 100k miles.

The registration in Texas runs out in November. Only $2600 USD. Call: 331-0816391 mobile +1-323-250-0513 USA number.

FOR SALE: Ford Van, Is 2004, 130000km, whit a/c, new tires, 3 row seating. You can send email to: general_contractor2451@yahoo.com.mx for pictures.

Asking $76000 pesos, like $4200usd.

FOR SALE: Yakima Skybox PRO 16 S (car roof-top cargo carrier) Purchased at REI in 2013 for $670 USD Selling for 8,000 pesos (around $445 USD) Good condition.

Email: cjimchris@aol.com FOR SALE: 1995 Ford Windstar Van. I want $40,000, which is about US$2,200.00.

If you want pictures, send me an email and I’ll send a lot to you. Email: 1988jeopardychampion@gmail.com WANTED: ISO Car, Jeep or Suv. I’m still looking for a safe reliable vehicle to get my family around, if anyone knows or has one that they are looking to sell please let me know. Not looking to spend over $50,000mxn. Emai: shaibuchler@gmail. com.

COMPUTERS WANTED: I am looking for a used laptop in good condition. Does not need to many bells and whistles but would require HDMI capability. Email: davidandsharonb@gmail.com.

FOR SALE: Apple Watch Version 1.

Have used this Apple Watch Sport Model (syncs with iPhone 5 and later) for only two months. questions at (376-766-3420) or (331-746-1288) or email me at jbrickman@mac.com. I am asking $200 but will entertain all offers!

FOR SALE: Wireless keyboard and Optical Mouse. Still in the original packaging, for Windows 98/ME/NT 4.0/2000/XP. Price: $275mxn. Pls call 376-765-5085 or email britkennels@msn.com.

FOR SALE: 4 HP printer cartridges: 3 remanufactured black cartridges (98) and 1 manufacturer’s original color cartridge (99). These are still in their sealed packages. While there is no guarantee, they are being sold for a fraction of their actual value. $200mxn. Pls call 376-765-5085 or email britkennels@msn.com.

FOR SALE: HP Photosmart Printer Cartridges (HP 02). This is a box of 45 remanufactured HP Photosmart HP02 ink cartridges still in their original, sealed

92

packages. 5 - Black* 7 – Cyan, 8 - Light Cyan, 7 - Light Magenta, 9 – Magenta, 9 - Yellow *The black cartridges are 20ml.

Price: $750mxn. Pls call: 376-765-5085 or email britkennels@msn.com.

PETS & SUPPLIES FOUND: FEMALE BASSET HOUND. Found in West Ajijic, close to Villa Nova. 28 lb Female Basset Hound, good condition, very well behaved. Contact Carol 331512-6432.

FREE: Lab mix needs a good home.

Molly is a one year old, housebroken, lab mix. She is healthy, has been spayed, and has all her shots. She is affectionate and gentle. She is shy around strangers and friendly to other dogs.

FREE: Dog walker and sitter available.

Local middle aged honest & dependable gal available for house / dog sitting and dog walking. Animal lover, references available call Diana: 331-012-7818 or email diisfree@gmail.com.

FOR SALE: Nearly New Dog Seat Cover for Cars/SUVS. Brand new is about US$50 plus shipping $20 to MX. Asking $800 pesos (about US$43). Please email lailapaje@gmail.com with any questions.

FOR SALE: Hill’s Science Diet Hairball Control Light formula cat food costs $1300p at the Animal Shelter, expires 12/2016. My Kitty can’t eat it anymore and it is his favorite. Unopened bag. 15.5 lb bag. Call: 106-2103.

GENERAL MERCHANDISE WANTED: I would like to buy, rent or borrow a single bed/twin bed, cama individual. Needed from January 1 to January 17. Email: wmartancik@gmail.com.

FOR SALE: King Size Polyester Fill Duvet Insert. No cover. Pricre: $600 Pesos.

376-766-3416.

FOR SALE: DeLonghi 1500 Watt Electric Heater. 3 Power Settings and Thermostat. Operating manual. Used very little. $600 Pesos. 376-766-3416.

WANTED: Want to buy used washing machine in good condition. Electric.

Phone Patricia (333) 841-7228 or 7664422.

FOR SALE: MOSQUITO REPELENT. I bought several bottles of 40% DEET repelent. It is so effective that I think I have too much bottles now. It is the stuff they use in real infested zones. Although not really ecologic, it is approved by EPA. Pesos $225.00 each. Email: nunez.chavez. jorge@gmail.com.

FOR SALE: 8 ft stepladder Werner fiberglass. Price: $1500 pesos. 3311258877.

WANTED: I’m looking for a mid to large sized dehumidifier or a store that sells them, call Ron at 331-717-2437.

FOR SALE: Furniture REDUCED AGAIN Only 15,000 pesos reduced. Email: gabgary@yahoo.com.

FOR SALE: Pool cue tips/chalk. 1 package of cue tips & cement (assorted, 11-14mm). 1 package of 3 push on tips (11mm). 1 package of billiard chalk (6). All items made by Viper in their original packages. $65mxn. Please call 765-5085 or email britkennels@msn.com.

WANTED: Looking for outdoor chaise

El Ojo del Lago / November 2016

lounge cushion. My light green, Sunbrella fabric lounge chair cushion has finally bitten the dust. Am looking for a new one, or gently used one and/or recommendations as to where to look for one. Email: sandraspencer@gmail.com.

FOR SALE: Inkjet Ink, unopened bottle. Looks like it’s 1/2 liter. Great if you refill your own cartridges. $150, you pick up in Chapala. 376-75-6348.

FOR SALE: Wii System & many extra goodies. The package includes all of the following (many still in their original packaging): -- Wii game console --4 controls (2 regular and 2 “nunchuk” style) --Power up charging stand --Wii Fit Plus exercise board. Price: $2250mxn. Pls call 376-765-5085 or email britkennels@ msn.com.

FOR SALE: Ritchey Pro 4 axis bicycle stem. 100mm. Barely used. $500mxn. Pls call 376-765-5085 or email britkennels@ msn.com.

WANTED: We are helping a friend of ours who is on a very tight budget.

She has just moved into a small place in Chapala. She is in need of some full size cotton sheets, towels, dishes, glasses, blanket, tablecloth, a comfortable chair, bath mat, kitchen rug or larger rug for living area, cleaning supplies (such as dust pan, etc), small gardening supplies such as pots, tools. Emai: zebra@cryptogroup.net.

FOR SALE: Electrical Wheelchair for sale. $18000 pesos. Include two batteries, little use, almost like new. Washer machine gas, like new, only 3 hours used. $5000 pesos. For more info please call Raul 333-459-5533, he can answer for you.

FOR SALE: Warren Hardy Level 1 Spanish workbook and CDs. Good condition. Please PM me for contact info. Email: v.v.kaskow@gmail.com.

FOR SALE: Love seat and over-sized chair $3,000 pesos for the set. Located in Roca Azul in Jocotepec. Call Riley at 387763-0263. Or cell phone 333-480-5571.

FOR SALE: Electric hospital bed comes with rails and mattress. Two and a half years old. Please call me to make arrangements to see; also you will have to pick up. I can send pictures. Can be disassembled easily. Price: $12,000. Phone: 376-766-5024 or 331-191-4094 FOR SALE: coffee 48x22x19 sofa 23square x 24 TV stand with 4 open shelves on rollers 51x15x23 sturdy/excellent condition or ready for painting. Call: 766-1071.

WANTED: In need of a foam mattress topper, preferably memory foam. Email. honorandfaith@runbox.com.

FOR SALE: Have a single piece of sheer curtain for sale. It is brand new; it is approx. 8.5 ft. wide by 7.5 ft. tall. Please email me at quereterokid@gmail.com if interested for phone and directions. Asking 800 pesos.

FOR SALE: Blood Pressure Monitor. Wrist-type BP monitor for sale. Battery operated and shows BP as well as pulse. Hardly used. Send email to quereterokid@yahoo.com for phone and directions if interested. Photos below. Asking 600 pesos.

WANTED: Looking to purchase an Oxygen machine anyone have one they want to sell. Email: julieywayne@yahoo. com.

FOR SALE: Self-protection Taser. This really is a deterrent and a safety device.

Plugs in to recharge batteries and has a holster to attach to belt. Price is $450 and it is legal to own in Jalisco. Carlos David Medeles Serna Oficina Fracc. Chapala Haciendas A.C. Calle Cardenal # 8. Tel: 376765-4045.

FOR SALE: Beautiful Pine Display Case w/5 display shelves. 204cm (H) x 45cm (D) x 171cm(W). 6 panes of glass, 2 fixed in the center (1 upper and 1 lower) and the left and right are doors. Center panes measure 52cm (W) x 82cm (L). Doors measure 44cm (W) x 82cm (L) (contents not included). Price: $375USD or Peso equivalent. Tel: 376-765-5085 or scrubs1946@ msn.com.

FOR SALE: Clothes manufacturing equipment. Selling two steel, saw horse type supports, one cutting board of three quarter inch plywood with cutting slot.

Electric scissors, price tag attached, all for 5,000 pesos. Also available, various colors of special cotton materials to make Ropa de Manta clothing, priced cheaply with purchase of equipment above. This is all in Jocotepec. Pictures possible by e mail later. Email: schraderlarry@rocketmail.com.

WANTED: Looking to purchase a used mobility scooter. Good condition, 4 wheels with at least 10” pneumatic tires.

Email: jaliscojim@yahoo.com.

FOR SALE: Brief case. Tan color with 4 outside pockets, well-padded inside and a space for files and docs. Another pocket for docs on the outside. Plenty of storage.

Designed to be rugged. I paid 50USD plus shipping. Sell for 45USD Call 766 - 4171.

FOR SALE: Motorola cordless phone 6.0 works fine. Price 250pesos. Call 7664171 FOR SALE: Has anyone had luck finding or seen a down alternative comforter for sale? Email: ann_diaz@hotmail.com WANTED: Looking for Craftsman 21400 or equivalent, in very good condition. Responds to van parys@hotmail.com FOR SALE: 2 outdoor chaise lounges.

Price: $1500 apiece. Call: 331-125-8877.

FOR SALE: I have a Wagner Smart Roller only box opened, but not used. Includes extra roll (9”). I can deliver to your place around Chapala. US$49.95. Call or What Sapp 333-1001-555 FOR SALE: Upright quartz heater. $500 pesos. Call: 331-125-8877.

FOR SALE: Have ladies size XL workout wear from Adios, Jockey and Balance. Have 2 jockey tops plus a steel blue 2 piece set. Contact Donna at 766-4636 if interested.

FOR SALE: Rival food slicer. Price: $400 pesos. Call: 331-125-8877.

FOR SALE: Total Gym. Exercise in your own home. As seen on TV and the Internet.

U.S. $800.00. Will look at all offers. Call: 766-6067.

FOR SALE: Smeg stainless steel multifunction convection electric oven with rotisserie. This oven is in excellent condi-

tion, the rotisserie has never been used still in the original bag. I believe that this oven is about 8 years old. Eight functions plus the rotisserie. 27 inches wide by 23 inches high. Price: $9,500 pesos. Email: peteredwards052@gmail.com.

FOR SALE: 2 New Bar Stools. 29” Tall and upholstered top, purchased in Tonala and did not use them. $650p each c/u.

Email: julieywayne@yahoo.com.

FOR SALE: Large pieces of furniture needed for consignment, our inventory is selling quickly. location right next to Have Hammers Carpentry School. HIDALGO 231 RIBERA’S. All proceeds go to local charity. Thrift is run by St Andrews Anglican Church, who gives to local charities. Come by open and open a consignment account. Email: rvhowardrenz@aol. com.

WANTED: Seeking another person to share a standard IShop mailbox. Currently, the cost for the 1/4 share is 99.00 USD per year, and gives you a U.S. mailing address. Please contact Dick at 766-3625 for details.

WANTED: I am looking for a used patio umbrella, 8 foot or better. Also, does anyone know where the vendors get their umbrellas? Email: pgpjam@gmail.com.

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El Ojo del Lago / November 2016