Schadenfreude & Sobremesa Though I can trace much of my ancestry to Germany, I didn’t experience schadenfreude until I moved to Mexico. Schadenfreude, a word directly borrowed from German, is defined as taking delight in the troubles of others. It is a compound noun created by joining two German words together: [Schaden] (Harm / Damage
Editor’s Page – October 2026 Read More »
Tepalo Pickleball Club Back in 2018, local resident Rodger Ericson approached the principal of Santos Degollado Secondary School in Ajijic with an idea. The school had a covered concrete playground that sat unused during certain hours, particularly during the summer months. Ericson asked if he and a few friends could use the space to play
Good Works Gazette – September 2026 Read More »
The Blue Robe Mystery The rabbit hole started with a hangover in Barcelona. A small, brown-robed friar appeared on the nightstand accompanied by a voice on high. “Hair of the dog?” The voice asked. The voice belonged to my cousin, Wayne. The monk was a bottle of Frangelico. The bottle is shaped like a Franciscan
Editor’s Page – September 2026 Read More »
Beyond Textbook Seasons I didn’t experience a warm summer until I went to junior high. The four seasons I learned about in school taught that spring was rainy, summer was hot, fall was chilly with bright colored leaves and winter meant snow. None of this made much sense to me. Summers in my Northern California
Editor’s Page – August 2026 Read More »
México Te Quiero Verde Joaquín Villanueva Rosales and Cinthya Verónica Velarde Nuño are building something ambitious from the ground up: a native forest nursery dedicated to restoring Mexico’s compromised ecosystems. Their project, México Te Quiero Verde, began with a shared love of nature and a growing awareness that many native tree species are disappearing from
Good Works Gazette – July 2026 Read More »
So… Do Chicharras Really Call the Rain? The first time I heard a chicharra, I thought a transformer was about to blow: Chica, chica, chica, chica, chica —whireeeeeeeh, whireeeeeeeh. The sound was mechanical, very loud and, for me, terrifying. I ran outside and asked my neighbors, the resident street mechanics, “Did you hear that?!” They
Editor’s Page – July 2026 Read More »
Chapala Sunrise Rotary Club “Boots on the ground” isn’t just a vague idiom for Chapala Sunrise Rotary Club (CSRC). It looks like this: volunteers standing in a rural village measuring contamination levels of raw sewage so they can design a workable sanitation system. It looks like a doctor teaching a small group how to manage
Good Works Gazette – June 2026 Read More »
Learning to See in Mexico The 19th century naturalist, Louis Agassiz, once handed his students a preserved fish and told them simply, “look at it.” Hours passed. Then days. Frustration grew as the students insisted there was nothing new to notice about the dumb, dead fish. Slowly, almost reluctantly, new details began to emerge, structures
Editor’s Page – June 2026 Read More »
Operation Feed San Juan Cosalá Something remarkable is happening on Thursday mornings in San Juan Cosalá. There’s no whistle. No one barking orders. And yet, everything moves smoothly, rhythmically, almost musically. Bags are filled, produce is sorted, staples are portioned, and within a short span of time, nearly 150 families will walk away with a
Good Works Gazette – May 2026 Read More »
Chisme El chisme crece cuando camina. Gossip grows as it walks. My grandma used to tell a story about a bridge in Germany. The bridge itself is real: the Göltzsch Viaduct in Saxony, a vast sweep of brick arches built in the 1850s to carry trains across a deep valley. At the time it was
Editor’s Page – May 2026 Read More »
