Last month, I was back in Southern California for my semi-annual medical appointments. My first task was to rummage through the stack of mail that my daughter had set aside during my absence. It is always a crapshoot as to whether I find pleasant or unpleasant surprises. This time, I rolled “snake eyes.” There was …
Back in 2015, a friend, who is a teacher in Iowa, asked me to do an online interview with her Spanish class describing what it is like living in México. Fortunately, it didn’t have to be in Spanish, because neither I nor her students were quite up to that yet. I prepared a few poster …
I recently read an article by a fellow who had interviewed many famous celebrities during his radio career. It got me to thinking about my own experience meeting a genuine Hollywood celebrity while I was working for the air pollution control agency in Los Angeles. Back in the 1990s, a major Hollywood movie studio ran …
It’s about time to see another posting on social media of what purports to be a crocodile lurking among the weeds in Lake Chapala. It happens every couple of years. The last one I recall was in 2021 when a newspaper article reported that the Chapala harbormaster had issued a bulletin warning the public that …
Although I live full-time in Mexico, I return to my home in Orange, California, every six months to stock up on prescriptions, get whatever vaccinations need boosting, and spend a few weeks driving my family crazy. My first task upon returning to California is to check the drawerful of mail that my daughter had set …
I can’t remember when I first heard the term “politically correct.” I suspect it was back in the 1960s, when I was living near Anaheim, California. That was the year that Disneyland decided to make some changes to its popular “Pirates of the Caribbean” ride. It was the last ride that Walt Disney personally oversaw …
The game of chess no longer carries the prestige it did when our uncle taught my older brother and me to play when we were still in grade school. I still don’t know where my uncle learned to play. Nobody else in the family knew how. And I can’t imagine that he learned it at …
I’m not easily embarrassed. But, lately, a number of my house guests have commented that my guest room décor is “Bordello-Chic.” Apparently this is because there are beaded curtains hanging in all the doorways and windows in that room. It seems that beaded curtains have gotten a bad rap over the years. They have been …
DNA genealogy testing has become all the rage. One of the biggest companies conducting this testing has more than 20 million people in its database. Sad to say, I may be one of them. It turns out that I participated in a DNA research project back in 2006, long before today’s consumer genealogy companies were …
Everybody knows that in Mexico, around Christmastime, the local parishes reenact the Posada. A procession of school children follow Joseph and Mary as they go from door to door in search of a place to spend the night. Ultimately, they end up in a stable. And the rest is history. Most people down here are …